Only the brave, George Medal and Frank Bellamy

After his successful run illustrating a full colour double-page spread on Field Marshall Montgomery in Eagle, Bellamy created 6 single black and white page stories in the Eagle series "Only the brave". His episodes ran from Eagle volume 13:33 to 13:38 with dates 18th August 1962 to 22nd September 1962.

Background to the series: Only the brave told the true life stories of recipients of the George Medal (as opposed to the George Cross) and the British Empire Medal. Wikipedia has an excellent article on the George Medal which was "instituted on 24 September 1940 by King George VI". I re-read the stories for this blog and was amazed how moving they are after all these years and how Bellamy managed to fit excitement and pathos in the series taking only one page! Bellamy illustrated part of the covers of the 2 Eagles in which he did his first 2 black & white pages. The cover at that time was divided up in illustrative panels. For the curious, this is directly before the Eagle decided to create single image covers of racing drivers "Kings of the road". The name is not to confused with the exciting Gerry Haylock drawn series - but I digress!)

Which names are covered by Eagle?
No. 24 Flt Sgt John Goldsmith I February 1941 Flight Sergeant John Goldsmith was driving his ambulance when he spotted a plane in difficulty. He sprang to the rescue of the pilot stuck in the wreckage despite the danger of a likely fuel tank explosion

No. 25 John Edwards John Edwards, a bank manager in Birmingham, stopped a robbery in his bank, facing up to two masked men. "After the gunmen had stood trail the judge left his bench to congratulate Mr. Edwards"
No. 26 Lilan Daka in 1958, a Ngomi tribesman in Northern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) rushes headlong into a hut where a woman is screaming, as a lion heads towards her baby. He forgets that he has not loaded his rifle yet fights the lion bear-handed

No. 27 Malcolm Bignall In June 1957 Bignall drove a 50 ton transporter (with a tank on board) for the Royal Army Service Corp through the towns and villages of Hampshire. The brakes failed on a hill and he was heading for Hurstbourne Tarrant where villagers were unaware what was coming. Despite personally being injured as the transporter's flywheel hit him he managed to steer the transporter and tank into a nearby field and was awarded a British Empire Medal

No. 28 PC Verth of Manchester P.C. Archibald Verth of Manchester stops a robbery in a gunsmiths and is awarded a BEM. (see the Third Supplement the the London Gazette Fri 23rd May 1958 for further details - or read the Eagle!)

No. 29 PC Tom Young P.C. Tom Young hangs onto a car when he discovers a petrol thief. He's taken for a ride on the bonnet and travels at 70 miles per hour (could cars go that fast before 1962?) Eventually the car runs out of petrol and Young chases the criminal. Later he too is awarded the British Empire Medal

These were the reprinted:

1. WHAM #95 (09/04/1966) "World of Adventure" Bomb Burglar (PC Verth of Manchester)
2. WHAM #96 (16/04/1966) "World of Adventure" Death ride (PC Tom Young)
3. LOOK AND LEARN #545 (24/06/1972) - 549 (22/07/1972) titled the series as Bravest of the Brave

• #545 - "Lionheart" (Lilan Daka) (24 June 1972, p.18)
• #546  - "Crash Landing" (John Goldsmith) (1 July 1972, p.18)
• #548  - "Runaway Tank" (Col M Bignall)  (15 July 1972, p.18)
• #549  - "Maniac Bomber" (P C Verth)  (22 July 1972, p.32)

Baked Beans and Bellamy

Steve Holland forwarded a piece of information which reminded me to post this picture. I had always listed Countdown as being the earliest copy of the advert for Crosse & Blackwell Baked Beans, but Steve has trumped me

Look and Learn 485, dated 1st May 1971 has the wonderful piece by Bellamy

© Look and Learn Magazine Ltd

Bellamy produced a lovely clear picture of knights in battle to illustrate the free pictures (on the rear of the wrappers)for the series "Life as it was 600 years ago". I can't personally remember seeing the wrappers, but feel that C&B beans were too expensive for my family at that time!

I've added large scans on the Advertising page of the website, as usual click on the Note



If you spot an earlier appearance I'd love to know

Don Harley and Frank Bellamy

The latest edition of the fantastic glossy magazine Spaceship Away (number 17, Spring 2009) has just been released. I got a surprise when it popped through the letter box and I found, not only Mike Noble's excellent centrespread, but also an article mentioning Frank Bellamy.
Don Harley is well known in UK comics for having drawn many famous strips at the time Bellamy was alive but the most famous was his time with the Frank Hampson studio (and after) on Dan Dare.

In this article Harley shares amusing anecdotes about his time with Bellamy, but the highlight is the drawing, in colour, of Watson, Harley and Bellamy, with Bellamy showing the cover he's produced for Eagle January 1960. Dan Dare is being chased by a missile whilst flying his spaceship Anastasia at breakneck speed. The two pages of the article are reproduced below with permission. Please do NOT reproduce them without getting Rod's permission - tempting though it is! The quality of the scans does not do the magazine justice - get an original magazine!





Thanks to Don Harley for sharing these memories - I'd love more Don! - and to Rod Barzilay for his producing this brilliant magazine



Where can you get it? Run, don't walk to Spaceship Away's website and spend your money to support Rod - he might even break even one day!

Frank Bellamy and Letraset transfers

LETRASET

Letraset's  Space Adventure Transfers

 None the of the above is Bellamy's artwork, but he did do the advertising artwork for the Space Adventures which I know appeared in TV21 and also Smash comic around October 1969 (a Christmas stocking filler?). Here's Bellamy's artwork and obviously the advert with Bellamy's art appeared in lots of UK comics at the time and not just TV21, it was just convenient to list that as I can say with authority it was the first TV21 appearance of the advert!

TV21 #242 the last issue before joining Joe 90

If you follow the links on his site you'll browse through a load of memories - if you're my age - which have sunk down in the brainpan, but have been quickly re-awakened! To save you time here's the link to the actual contents of this particular Action Transfer set.

Dean, the owner of the - the defunct - 7 Wonders site gave me permission to share images with you. As his site is now down I'm uploading what was there, none of which are Bellamy's artwork.  Read more about Letraset here

Tom Vinelott let me know:

Just to let you know that all Dean's Letraset scans on Seven Wonders moved over to Action-Transfers.com many months ago, so any links you may have on your site (I only checked a couple) will now be pointing to the wrong page.

 

Tom Vinelott's site 

 

Various items

I have had several emails from my kind friend Richard Sheaf since I started this blog. I'm trying in this email to let you know about changes and scans I have added to the Frank Bellamy site as a result, as well as some general tidying up.

MOVED:

• From Articles to Advertising - Comic Media News No 25 Mar-Apr 1976 with scan in the Note This is the black & white advert for Comicon '76. But interestingly this advert appears cropped from the 1975 event poster which I have added too
• Deleted the entry on the Advertising page to my guess work on BOAC and added full entry to 'Welcome Aboard' in the Magazine page as outlined in my previous blog entry
  

ADDED:

• Added to Advertising Comic Media News No. 21 plus scan of the (B&W plus red) poster for Comicon '75
• Added to Books Two romance novel covers (with thanks to Steve Holland) - glad they're out in the open now
• Added FB's complete adventures of King Arthur to the Books page
  

Frank Bellamy welcomes you aboard BOAC

I am always on the lookout for any new Frank Bellamy information. Thus I keep alerts providing updates from all over the web. I had a fantastic surprise when a search I had been doing for many years, said "BOAC's in-flight magazine Welcome Aboard"

I had a reference to Bellamy's BOAC work, but no idea what it was. I knew he had provided some illustrations for a poster to be used at Farnborough Air Show in 1970 and at the same time he did some BOAC work. I wondered whether the two references had got mixed up, as often happens when dealing with memories of 38 years ago - including my own! But getting back to that alert...

"The Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) is the online resource for visual arts. It has provided services to the academic community for 11 years and has built up a considerable portfolio of visual art collections comprising over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in teaching, learning and research in the UK."

One such service is the digitisation of Design magazine from 1965 -1974. DESIGN was published by the Council of Industrial Design, 28 Haymarket, London SW1 4SU. As luck would have it, one of the articles in this archive is titled: "Flight reading" in the issue dated 1st October 1971.

"So is this where Bellamy's work appeared?" I hear you ask. Sort of, is the answer!

The article written by Doug Blain is on pages 48 - 53 and deals with the history of the publication of the bi-monthly in-flight magazine "Welcome Aboard" given out on BOAC flights.

The most amazing coincidence - and why I chased this down - was that in illustrating this obscure article, 8 spreads were chosen as examples of the design work. Amongst those by Bellamy's contemporaries Charles Raymond, Pauline Ellison, Alan Aldridge, Nicholas Thirkell and Alan Cracknell (some of whom, like Bellamy, had illustrations in the Radio Times) appears one by, on close inspection, Frank himself!



Unfortunately the article tells us "John Adams in Birth of a nation" is by Bellamy but not in which of the "Welcome Aboard" (published bi-monthly since 1968) it appears.

Here life's serendipity intervenes. I set up a search immediately on eBay and just two weeks later what appears but a rare "Welcome Aboard" booklet. The answer to my question came back "yes, there is an article on 'John Adams in Birth of a nation' in it". Imagine my joy on receiving my win!

I have scanned the cover of "Welcome Aboard" - not shown in the article mentioned above - as well as a scan of "John Adams in Birth of a nation"

I realise that our American friends hold Adams in very high regard, so I hope they'll forgive Bellamy entertainingly portraying him as a semi-superhero in the last panel! But also notice that whoever wrote the script spelled 'Harbor' in the American way

Frank Bellamy art appears on pp20-21

Cover by Tony Meeuwissen

I'm off to lie down now - too much excitement for one day.

Frank Bellamy and life class sketches

Bellamy ran a life class whilst at Blamires' Studio in Kettering - his first art job - which was a modest affair (in both senses of the word!) and also later for the Studio Club, Piccadilly, London. The club was run for artists and musicians, and was situated in the basement of 15, Swallow Street, and was founded in 1915. I believe it was during the late Fifties and early Sixties that he committed loads of sketches of the female form to paper (I'm trying to avoid words that web-blockers will block!).



I don't own much Bellamy art myself, but I couldn't turn down these pieces when offered to me some years ago. One day I'll get them protected, particularly as you can see I managed to get a fold in one piece! At least I know not to let the light near them, so they haven't faded.

I hope you enjoy these simple speedy sketches done in pencil and coloured pencil. The lady who has her back to us, has a notation worth mentioning: 8.45



Now whether this is the time it was done, or the minutes and seconds the drawing took, I don't know. But I've been in art classes where we had a set time to complete a sketch, so maybe it's not too fanciful to assume the latter. I have seen other sketches in this 'series' from his art pad, and I've listed others I've found on Unpublished Bellamy webpage 

Bellamy proves here that he is adept at fine art and I'm certain his visits to Italy will have inspired his love of the naturalistic poses in these sketches.

If anyone has any others - with notes on - I would appreciate scans and details, thanks