Comics UK

Thanks for flagging up that very helpful article John: I'd completely forgotten about 'Babes in the Wood'.

Of course it's worth remembering that Blasco was producing similar material for the Spanish market long before that. Here, for example, is the cover of a comic from 1944 that I stumbled across a few years ago - in Birmingham of all places!



- Phil Rushton

That's not unlike Frazetta's funny animal style, Phil.

I only have that 30.12.67 issue of "Teddy Bear", plus the 1967 annual. Don Harley and Gerry Embleton contributed, and Peter Woolcock ghosted on the title strip, which was painted in an attractive dry-brush style.

I see what you mean about the similarity to Frazetta's 'funny stuff' Sue - especially those rabbits. What's more it's made all the more noticeable by the American-style colouring of that cover.

Regarding Ron Embleton, it's worth noting that he got his own chance to illustrate Alice just three years later when her adventures in Wonderland were serialized in the educational magazine World of Wonder.



To my mind, however, this version seems a bit rushed and cramped: definitely below his usual standard - besides which it has an off-putting slickness which makes Alice look as though she's strayed from the pages of Embleton's 'Oh Wicked Wanda' strip in Penthouse!

By contrast I'd rate Jesus Blasco's interpretation amongst the best work he ever produced. I don't know if he did all the colouring himself but your mention of the background colours 'crashing together' in startling ways is spot on. Here's a truly spectacular sequence in which the whole scene seems to be viewed through a kaleidoscope:





...And Alice's encounter with a 'magic' mushroom is positively hallucinogenic (this was, after all, just three years after the 'Summer of Love'!).



Finally, an electrifying sequence from 'The Enchanted Lion' where Blasco experiments with avoiding the use of solid black altogether in two panels - thereby producing an utterly stunning effect that seems to jump right out of the page!





- Phil Rushton

Love the dramatic effects of the colours...very creative and original...

I agree about Ron Embleton, that satin-texture "slickness" eventually spoilt his work and made it look static. It's much more lively around the time of "Wulf The Briton" or "Wrath Of The Gods."

Blasco's "Alice" art is very scrumptious, but it's slightly disturbing to see Alice change proportion from panel to panel in a way not quite explained by the story! One moment she looks like a five-year-old, and the next a teenager. No matter, it's still lovely.

I think Ron Embleton readily acknowledged that his technical facility and reliance upon visual formularisation threatened to make his later work seem less immediate. While I agree that it could be quite static, however, I can't help falling in love with some of those iridescent fairy stories he produced for Leonard Matthews - particularly the ones that appeared in Once Upon a Time, like this cover for his adaptation of Beauty and the Beast:



'Scrumptuous' is a perfect description of Blasco's Alice! As for the curious variations in her age, I suspect that Jesus might have used a photographic model for some (but not by any means all) of his renditions, which could well explain any apparent discontinuity. The second panel in the page below, for example, looks to me as though it was based on a photograph - either of a real girl or a doll - which makes it stand out quite oddly from the dynamism of the surrounding panels. (It's also interesting to compare this page with the rather more leisurely treatment of the same scene that appeared in Tiny Tots).



...And here's an even more obvious piece of photo-realism that Blasco used in his slightly-less-scrumptuous adaptation of 'Gulliver's Travels' shortly afterwards:



- Phil Rushton

As you say the use of reference photos can make it look dead and not so alive...But does add to the strangeness of the story being told...

I've really enjoyed this topic..thanks for all these great scans to look at everyone..

I was looking for something else this morning when I came across this Treasure Annual published by Fleetway in 1963. I'd forgotten I had it. I'm posting the cover as it may be of interest to somebody.

Here's all of the Treasure Annual covers: http://comicsuk.co.uk/annuals.php?ComicTitleID=200

The nice thing about early annuals such as that is that they were composed entirely from original material - unlike the later ones which were almost all-reprint. The cover painting is clearly the work of Clive Uptton who drew the majority of Treasure's covers. Just for Phoenix (and Tammyfan) here's a later cover from Treasure's companion title Once Upon a Time by Van der Syde featuring an early appearance of the budgie Elton (and friend) - before he found fame and fortune on the covers of DC Thomson's Tracy!



....Awwwwwwwwww!!!!

- Phil R.

Regarding Sue's earlier observation that Jesus Blasco seemed to have trouble keeping Alice's apparent age stable from one panel to the next I couldn't help noticing that he had similar problems with Tom the chimney sweep in his adaptation of The Water Babies. This rather weird inconsistency is particularly noticeable in the following five page sequence - though it's pretty breathtaking in every other respect.











...As Alice herself said - "curiouser and curiouser!"

- Phil Rushton

It's mostly the variation in the head size. You've got to be really careful with that or you end up adding five birthdays!

Too true. Of course, Blasco wasn't the first notable artist to have trouble with that aspect of drawing children...nor the first Jesus for that matter!



- Phil R.

Phil, did Blasco have a studio? I may be wrong, but wasn't he drawing "Steel Claw", "Rob Riley" and "Edward And The Jumblies" simultaneously? That's an awful lot of detailed high-quality art for one person to turn out each week.

philcom55 wrote: ...As Alice herself said - "curiouser and curiouser!"

- Phil Rushton

So did Uncle Lionel, here he is making a mess of things for Julie!

This Alice story ran for five weeks in Princess.