I'm in awe of anyone who spotted those few strokes in the sand as Lupatelli! Fantastic work...oh and by the way, I love the fact we care ....even after all this time. I keep hearing the Brits (me included) don't revere their comic creators, well, poppycok, I say!

Speaking of Lupatelli and to confirm the above Quote, the Lupatelli scan below is from 7th December 1957, it is the earliest Lupatelli example I have with a signature. Looking at earlier examples Lupatelli took over from Peter Woolcock sometime in June 1957.

I know we have moved on from 'Freddie Frog' but I thought for the record on here it might be good to post these two examples by two more artists.

I believe although I could be wrong that the example with Freddie and the calf is a rare Hutchings example? The other one I cannot place, they are both from 1959.
Would anyone like to comment?

Speaking personally I don't think one can ever have enough of Freddy or Toad!

I agree that those examples look different from the work of the 'usual suspects' and - while it's always possible that they were drawn by artists we don't even know about - I'd say that Gordon Hutchings is a good bet for the first of them; what's more I wouldn't rule him or one of his brothers out when it comes to the other one either.

To my mind the problem in identifying Gordon is that he is just so versatile, and while those pages don't have much in common with his version of Gordon Guinea-Pig there is certainly a similarity to his Billy Brock. Probably the most convincing element, however, is the way in which the calf itself is standing. For comparison here's a panel from an original page of 'The Little Horses' which he drew in a slightly more realistic style for Harold Hare.



- Phil Rushton

I agree with you there, in fact I have just been going through 'The wind in the willows' again looking at those lovely Peter Woolcock illustrations. I'm sure that if they were to be published as a book it would be a best seller!

In respect to Hutchings that is a very clever comparison, for me the faces of his characters especially the tiny ones are a Hutchings trademark!

As it is nearly two years since last talking about 'Freddie Frog'. I thought it might be a good time to see, possibly? His only appearance with Mr Toad.

In his early strips 'Freddie Frog' appeared with some 'Wind in the Willows' characters, which of course stopped when 'Wind in the Willows' started in Playhour, in December 1954.

Brilliant!

Thanks Phil, I agree!!

I wonder when they decided on 'Wind in the Willows' only it is as if Peter Woolcock was using 'Freddie Frog' to practice on. The scan below could quite easily be a scene from it?

That's very interesting; you could well be right about this being a trial run Matrix! Of course 'The Wind in the Willows' (unlike 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves') was still under copyright until the 1980s so AP might have originally thought twice about paying Kenneth Grahame's estate to license the book. Presumably things were also complicated by the visual copyrights to the versions of the characters established by EH Shepard and Disney - both of which Playhour went out of its way to avoid.

As you can see, in the scans below with 'Snowdrop' as 'Snowwhite' and the dwarfs named after the colours of their caps.

Sorry to revive this old topic, but we have recently added 'Douglas' Turnbull to the Comiclopedia (with great thanks to all the info in this topic).
However, his name appears to be Jim Turnbull:
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/t/turnbull_jim.htm
Any idea where the name Douglas Turnbull came from? It seems to me they are the same: the signatures on the Freddie Frog strip and on the lion-cartoon match.
Here is more on Jim Turnbull:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/1240 ... ies_at_74/

Looking through the posts here I'm surprised no mention has been made of Harry Hargreaves and his Hayseeds comic strip. I used to read it in the London Evening News and have a Hayseeds book somewhere.

I've learned sometimes the obvious is the answer but I wondered whether this might be Douglas TRUMbull the SFX supervisor on 2001 and Close Encounters? Just my weird thinking!

I LOVE his cartooning. I too can't believe his art is not mentioned but that division between comics, comic strips and illos is like the argument "fine art vs. illustration"


Front Cover

Back cover

Front Cover

Back Cover

Of course, Hargreaves was one of the first artists to draw Harold Hare when he appeared in Sun.