images © IPC Media 2011
Comic Cuts — 20 December 2024
2 days ago
Sunday, 10 April 2011
More Kennedy Magic From the World of Sci-Fi.
Courtesy of legendary gopher and connoisseur of comic art (especially of the Kennedy variety) Mr Malcolm Norton are some more of those now legendary Eagle covers by none other than Ian Kennedy.
It doesn't get much better than this:
images © IPC Media 2011
images © IPC Media 2011
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Very much my era of Eagle must have been 10 or so, for some reason I never realised it was the same guy who drew so many of the Commando comics I loved.Such a great all round artist stunning colours and exciting action scenes but at the same time able to convey real emotion in his characters. Thanks for sharing these.
ReplyDeleteany idea what happened to all the original art from kennedy's eagle work? did he get any of it back?
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame they reverted to cheap newsprint at the end there, though Ian clearly took it in his stride like a true professional. Of course he was soon replaced by other artists such as Carlos Cruz and John Gillatt, but it's interesting to note that this still wasn't the end of Kennedy's association with Dan Dare; in fact on one occasion he even got a chance to draw the old *and* new versions of Frank Hampson's famous creation teaming up with his arch-enemy the Mekon and the crew of Wildcat against a particularly squamous monster!
ReplyDeleteWhat's more it didn't even end when The Eagle's second coming finally came and went as he continues to make appearances in the pages of the excellent (if expensive) Spaceship Away to this day - including the very latest issue! :-)
Sadly the answer to the question regarding the return of Ian's artwork is - precious little.
ReplyDeleteHere (again courtesy of Malcolm) is his response in an interview with The Pulse on this very topic:
THE PULSE: I'm sure you could have made a lot of money selling your originals.
KENNEDY: You can say that again. When I survey the extremely meager collection of my originals I possess, it is somewhat disappointing to know that so many examples of my artwork (along with material by other artists) were pilfered from the archives of the various companies and then quite frequently they sold them on to the financial gain of the individuals involved. I’m afraid this sort of behaviour was not uncommon - I am reliably informed that a fair amount of my work on Dan Dare, Warlord etc. was lost in this way!
THE PULSE: You had a terrific run on Dan Dare in the eighties revival of Eagle...
KENNEDY: I love inventing new aircraft and hardware. That's why I loved doing Dan Dare, because it gave me so much freedom to be creative. It was such a shame the stories didn't feature the 'real' Dan Dare, rather than the adventures of his grandson. Yeah, I think we were caught between two stools there. Younger readers would have been unaware of the connection, and older readers would have resented missing the 1950's character. Personally, I would much rather have re-continued the adventures of the original Dan Dare. I did one that featured him, in a Summer Special, but that was all. I modernised him slightly, but overall I tried to stay faithful to the official imagery.
I enjoyed drawing the Mekon. He was fun.