Belbin and Waugh (Split from Leslie Otway topic)

[philcom55]

Ouch! Been there and done that...!

In the meantime, for anyone who's never come across them before, here are a couple of examples of vintage Australian art by Stanley Pitt and Phil Belbin.





(To my mind Belbin and Jack Waugh drew some of the best 'hardboiled' magazine illustration ever for MAN during the 1950s, in a style that reminds me very much of the outstanding work Sean Phillips and Duncan Fegredo are currently producing for the American market)

- Phil Rushton

[matrix]

Phil, any chance of a Jack Waugh (Man) example? I have some of his work in a magazine called 'Adam' unfortunately my computer and scanner are both playing up so cannot post an example on here, he was a bit of a character in his day!

[matrix]

Sorted the problem!

The Jack Waugh illustration below is from 'Adam' magazine, for a story called 'Samoa Sal' about a very strong Samoan (Female) wrestler!

[matrix]

That's marvelous Matrix - and something of a departure from the usual way in which females tended to be depicted in MAN!
Phil Rushton

Adam also!

I felt the same about his work you really have to have a second look as you could almost pass it by, the use of those colours as well.

I agree about a seperate topic, if you start one could the mods move a couple of these posts over?

[colcool007]

All you need to do is ask.

[philcom55]

Thanks Col - though I guess this one belongs here too:

That's marvelous Matrix - and something of a departure from the usual way in which females tended to be depicted in MAN! Looking at my own copies it occurs to me that a lot of the 'Wow!' factor in so many of those illustrations can be attributed to the anonymous layout artist who designed the pages - particularly the way in which text and pictures were integrated. For example, this Jack Waugh spread from 1958 seems deceptively simple at first sight, but the more I look at it the more impressed I become by the way in which the key elements are organized. That crescent moon is just perfection, and balances the whole composition brilliantly.



Of course, Belbin and Waugh weren't the only outstanding artists from 'down under' to be featured in these publications - though in deference to poor old Leslie Otway I'm tempted to start a separate topic for them.

I'll try to add some other examples when I get the chance.

- Phil R.

[colcool007]

Darn it! I missed one...

[matthew emery]

I've been meaning to blog some of Waugh's illustrations, will try and get them up this week, picked up some nice work by Belbin and Waugh at my local market last weekend. I suspect Belbin involved with the layout as some of his illustrations are tightly tied together with the title and layout of text.

[philcom55]

Of course, MAN and MAN Junior also featured some nice comic strips in the style of Alex Raymond's Rip Kirby. Here, for example, are the first two pages of a 1955 Belbin story featuring the globetrotting Jimmy Smart, followed by the opening to one of Hart Amos' Devil Doone strips from the 1960s.







(Interestingly Devil Doone's first illustrator was June Mendoza, who subsequently moved to the UK where she drew 'Belle of the Ballet' for Girl)

- Phil Rushton

[matthew emery]

wow these are great I hadn't seen jimmy Smart before, is that from Man or Man Jnr? Did not know that about June Mendoza either, do you have any examples of her Girl work?

[philcom55]

The 'Jimmy Smart' strip is from a digest-sized magazine that's simply called 'The Man' - I'm not sure if that was the same as Man Junior or not. Here's an advert for the series from the November 1954 issue of Man Senior.



And here's an example of June Mendoza's work on Girl's 'Belle of the Ballet', for which she employed the masculine pseudonym 'Chris Garvey'.



Of course, June later went on to become a world-famous portrait artist, painting pictures of everyone who was anyone - from Frank Sinatra to Princess Diana! You can see a wide selection of this work on her website here:

http://www.junemendoza.co.uk/index.html

- Phil Rushton

[matrix]

Those portraits displayed on her web site are fantastic! And if I may say so she has aged very well, just like her artwork!

Some more of her work for 'Girl' comic, this time 'Soldier Joan' the story of Joan of arc, this is the final episode where she is burnt at the stake.

How mindsets have changed, hard to believe that people actually stood there and watched someone being burnt alive.

There is another example on the Girl 50s 60s topic.

[matrix]

Some more Jack Waugh examples, and artwork on a typical 'Adam' cover.

Apparently Jack Waugh posed in a mirror so he could include himself in some of his artwork, possibly in the bottom example?

[philcom55]

Yaroslav Horak was another Australian comic artist who found fame and fortune in the UK when he took over the James Bond newspaper strip in 1966. Here are some of his 1950s illustrations from the pages of Man Senior.







- Phil Rushton

[matthew emery]

Thanks for the gems posted here, I was completely unaware of June Mendoza's work in English comics and her portrait career. Amazing. A fellow historian mentioned to me a few months back that Yaroslav Horak is still with us, in a home in Sydney now. Here's another page of Jack Waugh. I know an old timer here that worked with Waugh during WW2, I'll see if he has any recollection's about Jack.