Comics UK

Steve Holland has probably forgotten more about British comics than the rest of us will ever know: not only is he the owner of the superb Bear Alley blog but he also provided most of the information on the Look & Learn website. I should have known better than to accuse him of getting his 'Leo' artists mixed up!

Having said that I have to admit that I'm still quite astonished to hear that your examples of 'early' and 'late' Livraghi artwork could have been produced by the same artist. In my experience it's almost unheard of for any artist's style to change that radically in such a short time.

One possible explanation is suggested by the fact that Ron Nielsen (a brilliant colourist) was apparently employed to provide the colour finishes for Hugh McNeill's 'Harold Hare' during the same period. Bearing this in mind it seems quite reasonable to assume that he could have been asked to use his experience as an animation artist in softening Livraghi's style as well.

Though he may have taken over the strip quite late in the day, however, I do feel that the Bert Felstead version of Leo came closest to being the definitive one. Whereas Livraghi made him look a little bit too much like a real lion for my taste, and Nielsen gave him a perpetually worried look, it seems to me that the Felstead Leo had a special twinkle in his eye that could somehow make him look mischievous, timorous, playful and friendly all at the same time. This is especially noticeable in the half-dozen or so pages of original art I've been lucky enough to acquire. (When I get chance I'll try to post a few more of those...!).

As far as Lupatelli goes, however, I'm afraid I've never even seen his version. I'd be really fascinated to see an example of this if you have time to scan it Matrix!

- Phil Rushton

I suppose we will never know for sure about the Nielson/Livraghi examples. I was wondering being as Livraghi's style of Leo changed so much was he using Lupatelli's version before developing his own, and maybe Nielson drew a version early in the piece that he continued with?

I agree with your comments on Bert Felstead's work, although I think it's good that there are different examples, it's a shame Lupatelli did not do more.

I do not have any Lupatelli to scan Phil, only this link to the Look and Learn site http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-ima ... endly+lion

philcom55 wrote:.

and Nielsen gave him a perpetually worried look, - Phil Rushton

That is a funny quote, I can't help but think of the Lion in the original 'Wizard of Oz' movie before he got his heart!

Looking forward to seeing those examples you have.

As promised here's a Leo strip by Bert Felstead, scanned from the original art:













...I really love those crazy ants!

- Phil Rushton

Nice examples, I hope you have your nursery comic art collection insured Phil? With all those expensive pieces you have exhibited on here, you never know who's peeking!

For most of 1959 the Playhour puzzle page was replaced with lovely one page short stories starting in January with 'Katie country mouse nursery rhymes' drawn by Ron Nielsen (as mentioned by Steve on Bear Alley), these carried on for most of 1959 with other stories, as per scans of 'The Three Mouseketeers', 'Rock-A-Bye Birdie' and it seems a one off 'Coffy the clown' with the artist in the strip. Looking at the style I believe Ron Nielsen may have been the artist on most of these stories?

Would anyone like to comment or add any info? Is the artist in Coffy Ron Nielsen?

Wow! That 'Coffy the Clown' strip is absolutely wonderful. I agree that Rock-A-Bye Birdie and the Mouseketeers look like Nielsen's work, but it's a little more difficult to tell with Coffy. Going by this mid 1950s photograph of Nielsen taken at an Odhams Press dinner for contributors to Mickey Mouse Weekly (Nielsen is the chap with glasses and a mustache sitting in front of a young Ron Embleton) I'm inclined to think that the artist in the strip must be somebody else again. Of course it's always possible that Nielsen simply asked a friend to pose as an artist so that he could take the photos himself.



(The above image of the 'Two (artistic) Ronnies' is a adapted from a photo that appeared in Book Palace Books' excellent 'Wulf the Briton' collection by the way)

- Phil Rushton

For all fans of Hugh McNeill and Ron Nielsen: their version of The Water Babies.
McNeill's original b/w-strip ran in Woman's Pictorial. The issue of 13 January 1951 featured the ‘beginning [of] our grand new picture serial of The Water Babies’. The series was published till 7 July 1951: 26 episodes with a total of 104 illustrations.
Playhour reprinted the story in 1957. This version lasted for only 8 episodes, with 64 illustrations. According to the surviving Playhour payment records a small part of these were altered or newly drawn by McNeill himself. A lot of the old illustrations were simply left out. The scans I provided below will show how four episodes with 16 illustrations in Woman's Pictorial were cut back to one instalment in Playhour with just 8. What a loss!
Ron Nielsen was brought in (presumably by his former Mickey Mouse Weekly colleague and now Playhour's art editor Basil Reynolds) to colour the original b/w-drawings. He also drew the title and the decorations in the middle of the centre-pages and the ones left and right of the title.
Playhour's assistant editor David Roberts wrote the new captions to accompany this shorter version.
Lionel Morgan (lettering department) did the lay-out of all episodes.

John

And the last two scans.
For additional information: http://bearalley.blogspot.com/2007/08/water-babies.html

John

That's fantastic John! People who only know McNeill from his later strips like 'The Trolls' don't have any idea what a good realistic artist he was.

For anybody who's interested here's another episode of the original run, scanned from a copy of the March 10th 1951 issue of Woman's Pictorial and Home Journal that I picked up at a local boot sale last year:



- Phil Rushton

Surprising really even in that era how much was reprinted. There were more reprints, not sure how many but one other was 'Five children and it' by E.Nesbit, drawn by Seabright.

Back to Leo for a moment, here are the Lupatelli examples from the 1958 annual.

Great stuff - thanks for showing that Matrix!

Interestingly I've just discovered yet another version of Leo - this time by longtime frog & toad artist Peter Woolcock:



- Phil Rushton

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but in 1965 Playhour changed their covers from the normal panels with yellow background, to the example below (and Peter's example earlier) with just one scene of Sooty etc. It also grew in size, by 1966, one and a half inches wide, and long, making it the same size as the original 'Harold Hare'comic, the paper texture was also changed.
Does anyone know why? I've been curious for a while, were sales dropping then? Trying something new? By 1968 it had changed back to the orignal format.

Interesting to see that. I don't have any Playhours from the mid 1960s so I wasn't aware of the alterations in size and format. Sometimes these changes were a purely logistical matter dictated by presses being switched to new publications, or becoming freed up when other magazines were discontinued.

I must say I prefer the Hutchings version of Sooty to Fred Robinson's interpretation which began to appear on the cover of Polystyle's rival comic Playland after that title made its debut in early 1968. Presumably Fleetway lost their right to publish the character at the same time?

- Phil Rushton

Peter Woolcock took advantage of this new size by including these extra large panels in the 'Mr Toad' stories, at least for a couple of weeks at the end of 65, before going back to normal in early 66.

And another from Christmas 65. Great stuff!

Here is the cover of the first combined issue of 'Playhour' and 'Harold Hare' dated 11 April 1964. Not much fanfare really just a mention inside of some new strips 'Mr Toad', 'Moony of the moon', and 'The Wonderful island of Yum'.
Although completely subjective as I don't have the previous issue, there may have been more mentioned in that one?

Just for the record, the 'Harold Hare Weekly' name on the cover only lasted for a short while, and was gone by the end of May 64.