Excellent! Your sterling research into the tangled subject of 'Frogart' is truly invaluable Matrix! On the basis of that example I think we can provisionally assume that Peter's pages were indeed drawn by Lupatelli. As a matter of interest here's another rare example of his signed strips - this time from the 1961
Harold Hare Annual featuring 'Moony from the Moon'.
As far as I can gather it now seems that Freddie's earliest strips were drawn by Peter Woolcock, with Antonio Lupatelli replacing him at some point during the mid 1950s. Then, from about 1958, another Italian artist called Sergio Asteriti says that he began to assist Lupatelli prior to taking over the strip altogether for a while. Looking at these two pages from 1957 and 1959 respectively I'd say that the first is almost certainly Lupatelli's work, while the second (and, to my eye, inferior) page is likely to have been a solo effort by his former assistant.
Since Asteriti says that he left the strip in 1960 Peter's 'snowman' story suggests that Lupatelli himself may have returned for a time during the early 1960s until Douglas Turnbull took over the reins from about 1962. Of course, this doesn't rule out the possibility that there were a number of other, as-yet unidentified artists working on the strip during this period as well.
Incidentally, I bought another job lot of cheap artwork yesterday which included several more Freddie the Frog pages by Turnbull, and I have to say that these only reinforce my growing regard for him as the very best of Freddie's artists. The amazing thing is that, while Woolcock, Lupatelli and Asteriti all have personal entries on reference sites such as the Lambiek Comicopedia, Turnbull himself appears to be virtually unknown - and would, in all likelihood, have continued to be confused with his fellow frog artists for years to come if Matrix hadn't brought those signatures to our attention!
- Phil Rushton
