Tuesday 9 November 2010

Don O' The Drums - Embleton's Monochrome Masterpiece

As I await the arrival of the proofs for the epic Book Palace Production of "Ron Embleton's Complete Wulf the Briton", I thought it might be timely to look at one of the strips touched upon in the introduction to this book.



As a young artist Ron Embleton was incredibly busy throughout his twenties and even when he commenced Wulf he had various other projects on the go and one of his most beautiful strips was a subject close to his heart, "Don o' the Drums".

This strip which is even less documented than "Wulf the Briton", shows how well versed Embleton was in the very then (1957) vogueish "U.S. Comic Book" school of comic art. This kind of work in U.K. boy's comics  in the 1950's just looked so damn good and even now the strength and dynamism of Embleton's artistry is undimmed.

Once again I have to thank David Slinn for supplying me with some truly outstanding scans of these rarely seen pages from Mickey Mouse Weekly.


















Thanks David - and thank you too dear reader for taking the time to check these out.

2 comments:

  1. Embleton's work is an ongoing revelation to me, and it's great to see these black and white strips in the context of the Wulf stuff that came later. My favourites here are those rapids, the men struggling in the snow, and that marvellous sweeping view of the battlefield. Soooo much better than kids' comics today that it isn't funny!

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  2. Really great to hear from a seasoned comics fan such as yourself Dave humming with enthusiasm over Ron's early work. I'm going to see if I can unearth a few more of these gems as just the business of posting them has got me all fired up for more.

    Proofs of the Wulf book are I believe arriving tomorrow and speaking to the publisher today there was a general buzz of excitement when the opened the package.

    Might have a shot at taking some photos and posting them here.

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