The McLoughlin Project - Your Help is Needed!

Glorious weather outside and I hope you are all enjoying the lovely weekend. May the sun shine on you all whichever corner of the earth you are reading this from.

Anyway to business, as well as the deadlines from hell, I also have the publisher from hell to contend with. That dynamo of enterprise and connoisseur of comic art hath bended my ear of late about the resurrection of an idea that I was working on this time last year, which was quite simply to update and reformat the excellent booklet that David Ashford and Denis McLoughlin produced in 1994 titled The Hardboiled Art of Denis McLoughlin.


This idea was put on the back burner when the Wulf project began to take shape - only because I just couldn't afford to take a whole year off to wholeheartedly devote myself to two book projects as well as Cloud 109 (it still lives!).

My task vis a vis the Mcloughlin book is, as stated previously - editing and reformatting, but it also includes such fun tasks as designing the thing so that it has a real dynamic. The sort of book that you pick up and it just welcomes you in, which in the case of Denis McLoughlin is relatively easy to achieve as his work at it's best is just totally seductive.

The book will be a lot less expensive than the recent Wulf the Briton extravaganza, quite simply because the work we are showcasing is relatively small scale and even Denis McLoughlin's Boardman hardbacks are all A5 size, so we are not immediately into the economies of scale dictated  by attempting a same size reprint of a UK broadsheet comic. Consequently this book will be about the size of the Fleetway Indexes and will not be nearly as expensive to produce as the Wulf book.

But, and this dear reader is where you come in, my work also includes sourcing really amazing imagery which we can use to add further visual flair to this illustrative extravaganza. What I really need at the moment is (ideally high grade) material to source, particularly in the case of the Boardman paperbacks and hardback hard boiled fiction. We have some but we need more and if you can help out this would be great. So if by any chance you do have any material of this nature which you can scan, do let me know and also if you have, by some miracle McLoughlin original artwork for the Boardman Hardboiled fiction covers we would be forever in your debt.

In fact any original cover and color artwork would be great, we have some but more would be wonderful.

I have set up a Flickr gallery devoted to Denis McLoughlin's "Noir" covers which is located here

And here as an appetizer are two of the early try out covers for this book, plus a screenshot of a classic McLoughlin cover being reworked to accommodate the new type. McLoughlin actually painted his lettering straight onto the artwork, so I am reluctantly having to commit the ultimate sacrilege by repainting in Photoshop the areas previously occupied by the type face and endeavor to replicate both the McLoughlin style as well as all the printing artifacts, such as grain and off register effects.

Dave Garratt - Steam Powered Sci-Fi with Ian Kennedy

Picture your overworked and hyper stressed bog meister falling on his knees with gratitude as he receives yet another offering from one of our regular visitors - none other than Mr Phil Rushton, in answer to the inevitable questions posed by his comment on yesterday's posting by mentioning Ian Kennedy's earlier sci-fi outing Dave Garratt.

Yup in the dim and distant 1950's when the height of modern age communications was the Dan Dare radio set, or more prosaically two tin cans and an interconnecting length of string and Ian Kennedy was signing himself Chas, boys used to thrill to space age adventures of this ilk...

From Collin's Boy's Annual circa 1955 (ish)

Definite hints of Ron Turner in some of these pieces wouldn't you say???

And from 1962 another example of early Kennedy sci-fi art.

Dan Dare Revisited - Ian Kennedy's Take on a UK Classic

Courtesy of Malcolm Norton here are some of Ian Kennedy's stupendous cover artworks for the Eagle Comic of the 1980's. The comic was launched with Gerry Embleton initially handling the drawing chores for Dan Dare, the rest of the comic being largely based on fumetti strips. Fumetti which in this context refers to photo based comic strips was very popular in European comics from the 1960's onwards and in the U.S. attracted the attention of James Warren who first employed it in the Harvey Kurtzman edited Help magazine as well as adaptations of horror films in his one off magazines Horror of Beach Party, The Mole Men and Curse of Frankenstein/ Horror of Dracula.

Gerry's stint on Dan Dare was however short lived and the man that picked up the reins was the ever dependable Ian Kennedy.

So here without further ado are some of those covers.

Images © IPC Media 2011

Embleton At The Court of King Arthur

Apropos of my previous posting, work is progressing on my tree-house, but ever so slowly and my local gentleman's outfitters are selling trilbys with feathers a la Count Arthur Strong, fedoras are conspicuous by their absence.

But what the hell, here following on from John Wigman's excellent post on Steve Holland's Bear Alley is the complete sequence of artworks for a Playhour adaptation of King Arthur he produced prior to Wulf the Briton. I was under the impression that the adaptation only spanned three weeks, I was wrong it was in fact five weeks and shows a much more stylized treatment than he would eventually employ on Wulf.

Ron Embleton did say of Wulf  that it could have been a lot more stylized than it eventually became, and aside from a lightness of content aimed at a much more juvenile market than Wulf was catering for,  in the pages of King Arthur you can get a hint of the much tighter and more decorative handling of figure work which was also apparent during the first few weeks of Wulf the Briton before the style that dominated his handling of the strip eventually evolved in all it's power and majesty.

All images © Look and Learn 2011

Cruisin' With E.R.P.

I had a call from my old chum Simon, whose work will shortly be revealed unto cinema goers when Green Lantern hits our screens this June. Simon is one of those extraordinary artists whose sheer drive and determination open doors that remain closed to many other illustrators. In addition to being one of the best and hardest working artists in the film world he is also a truly brilliant photographer who has been taking photographs of some of the world's most beautiful women and his charm and died in the wool sheer Englishness gives him the rare knack of gaining the confidence of his subjects to the extent that they just ooze sultry sensuality as soon as he points his camera in their direction.

Someday he'll have an exhibition of these photographs ... someday ...

But I digress, Simon has an uncanny knack of divining my Achilles heel when it comes to my blog. He knows that I have been in cruise mode these last few weeks. Not taxing my readership, turning my blog into a Ron Embleton/ Denis McLoughlin/ Commando Fan page. "I know, I know Simon" I said; "I hold up my hand. But look old chap, I've got this terrible deadline etc, etc."

Then came the truly crushing comment, "Well Peter, you don't need to put up a post every day, just save it for when you've got something interesting to say".

As in ... ulp.

True, I thought all too true.

"But dash it all Simon, look", I countered, "If you don't post something on a regular basis your audience gets confused, they just drift away like the ebb tide." This I thought was a good defense but even this crumbled as Simon then reminded me of the arch nemesis of all lazy comic bloggers, a man who is so cool and has such exquisite taste that he doesn't even have to waste words on his visitors, he just shows them a selection of the treasures from his inexhaustible vault.


Yup old Simon got me dead to rights as he mentioned the dread words Mr Door Tree, he of the wide brimmed fedora and the artwork which is so choice and so esoteric that mere mortals such as myself don't even know it exists until they see it on Mr Door Tree's blog.

"Mr Door Tree doesn't waste words - he lets the artwork speak for itself and he's not afraid to deviate from his audience's comfort zone", Simon reminded me, as if I needed reminding.

Some day I'll buy myself a wide brimmed fedora and build my very own Tree House and fill it with treasure. In the meantime here is some more Eric Parker with portraits of Sexton Blake creatives and characters, including a self portrait of the artist, courtesy of Phil Rushton.

See, I don't even bother to do my own scans these days.

Wulf Is Here!!!

At last - they've arrived. By they I mean the long awaited Book Palace Books, The Fleetway Picture Library Index Volume 2, The Don Lawrence Westerns and last but by no means least, the mega-beast that is Wulf the Briton. As I was sadly unable to make the grand unloading, Geoff West in between co-ordinating the crack Commando squad assembled for this occasion, was able to capture the moment of the palettes arrival, before breaking out the contents, numbering an impressive 200 + of the Wulf books and shipping the first consignment out the doors of the Book Palace before close of play. More numbering and shipping on Monday so more copies will be winging their way to all those who are awaiting them as well as the signed and lettered editions with the gigantic (same size as original artwork) print of the attack on Cartamandua's fortress. I have just heard from Geoff that the proofs of this image are looking really stunning.

I hope you all enjoy these books as much as we have in bringing them to you and many thanks to Frans, Paul, David, Theo and Geoff for making it all happen on the day.

Commando Takes Another Trip Through The Vortex of Time

I've just received the following update from Commando's editor Calum Laird as the UK's longest running war pocket library continues to celebrate it's 50th birthday by reprinting some of it's oldest and earliest titles.

Rather bizarrely they are reprinting the first twelve issues in reverse order, so this week we are at issue 9, which has a truly in your face cover by Ken Barr, who also designed the Commando banner and painted the Sykes Fairburn stiletto dagger, in a manner that indicated he was more than au-fait with what the thing looked like. Barr had in fact seen service in the Middle East and as a tough and pugnacious Scot was not a man to be trifled with. He was in fact not  a million miles away from the kind of characters he portrayed on the Commando covers, covers that burned their way into the subconscious of many a schoolboy in the early nineteen sixties.

As I've mentioned earlier on this blog, Commando was somewhat of an anachronism in contrast to Fleetway's war libraries and all the other knock-offs that rode on the coat tails of War, Air Ace and Battle Picture Library. The first two issues of Commando really sold on the strength of their covers, the interiors were illustrated by second banana European artists and were pretty lacklustre efforts in comparison to the contents of the Fleetway titles. It was Barr's covers and the inventiveness of his panoramic layouts which extended around the back of each comic that made the things stand out.

That and the fact that Barr's paintings embodied the cult of the individual against the system. To emphasize the point the lead characters on issues 1 and 2 appeared bare headed, with rippling musculature bursting out of shredded khaki, a style statement which owed more to U.S. style pulp men's mags than it did British Army dress code circa 1942.

It cannot be over emphasized just how vital Barr's covers were in getting editor Chick Checkley's brainchild into the hands of schoolboys, for at times the art within those early issues lacked the panache of the Fleetway product or as in the case of two artists destined to be stalwarts of the title,  was in the process of finding it's feet.

In the case of Gordon Livingstone, who debuted in issue 4 of the series, he confessed that he was entirely oblivious of war pocket libraries,  his style evolved as a response to meeting Checkley's deadlines in as entertaining and engaging a manner as possible. This phenomenon of artists unencumbered by stylistic conventions was even more pronounced in the case of the artist whose work you will see within the pages of issue 9.


Jungle Fury sees the second appearance of the densely hatched and cross hatched work of artist C.T. Rigby who at the time he embarked on his long running stint for Commando was already relatively long in the tooth. His work much like Livingstone's was just so different that it really obliged you to engage with the stories in a way that  took a little getting used to. Rigby who conducted his work through the mail (unlike Gordon Livingstone who at least started as a studio draftsman) had been working for Thomson titles such as Star Love Story. His other work included political and sports caricatures and clay sculptures of the Manchester United Football team.

Here then is the gallery of those forthcoming titles plus the original cover to Jungle Fury and a sample of Rigby artwork from the same story.

All images © DC Thomson 2011


Commando 4379 — Mask Of Death

The Convict Commandos — Jelly Jakes, Smiler Dawson, Titch Mooney — and their leader Guy Tenby are back in action. This time they are planning to snatch a scientist from under the noses of the Nazis in occupied Europe.
   It’s no easy job and, with treachery afoot, the prison sentences they’re trying to avoid begin to look a very tempting alternative.

The second adventure for the latest band of Commando heroes.

Story: Alan Hebden
Art: Benet
Cover Art: Benet



Commando 4380 — Attack From The East

Most people would think that nothing much happened in the peaceful village of Helmsbeath, situated on a remote island on Scotland’s North West coast. And most people would have been right to think that…until the fateful day in late 1944 when Helmsbeath was invaded. Invaded by the armed and dangerous crew of a Japanese C3 submarine and the crazed Nazi scientist who was with them!
   Would the villagers survive…ATTACK FROM THE EAST?

Story: Tom Hart
Art Rezzonico
Cover: Janek Matysiak



Commando 4381 Jungle Fury

Introduction by Calum Laird, Commando Editor

What hits you most about this story is the cover. Ken Barr’s image leaps clean off the page and you can almost hear that soldier screaming blue murder. Inside the story is of a jungle trek involving an elephant and train. It shouldn’t work, but it does picking up pace throughout.
Artist Cecil Rigby was a Commando regular from 1961 until No 3272 in late 1999 — a total of around 150 books — and he well captures the atmosphere of the jungle and the fury in this one.


In the steaming jungles of Burma, man has a thousand enemies…the wild animals, the snakes and poisonous insects, the deadly fevers. But the fighting British jungle patrols had an enemy more deadly that any of these…the creeping Japanese soldiers who could appear from nowhere and sow the lead seeds of death before melting again into the waiting green background.
   But Sergeant Tom Flynn had his own way of silencing the Banzai cries of those Sons of Nippon.
   With a handful of men and a heart full of courage he fought his way through them — and with him he brought a strange prize…ten million pounds in solid gold.

Story: Couglin
Art: Cecil Rigby
Cover Art: Ken Barr

Jungle Fury, originally Commando No 9 (October 1961), re-issued as No 2587 (August 1992)



Commando 4382 Six Of The Best

Introduction by Scott Montgomery, Deputy Editor

There are many types of hero but, in my opinion, the most interesting kind is the unlikely hero — the underdog. And, as you may have guessed from the title, in this brilliant tale you get six for the price of one (which, back in 1980 was a mere 12p — even at today’s prices we reckon we’re still good value).
So please join me in rooting for half-a-dozen ordinary (if admittedly a bit useless) blokes, left behind as a desert rearguard, determined to prove that they’ve got what it takes to be the best… 


Six men — five private soldiers who couldn’t do a thing right and a brand-new Second Lieutenant who had never been in action. Left behind as a rearguard just in case the Jerries showed up, they landed in a hotter spot than anyone had bargained for — and became the most unlikely heroes of the Second World War! 

Story: David Motton
Art: Ramon de la Fuente
Cover Art: Penalva

Six Of The Best, originally Commando No 490 (July 1970), re-issued as No 1379 (January 1980)