Fans of Frank Bellamy: Jon Haward

I tripped over an interview between Jon Haward and Terry Hooper with loads of fine examples of Jon's artwork, in which he praised Frank Bellamy. Click on the link and spend time there after you finish here!

I took the liberty of emailing Jon (via his website) asking if he could say more about the influence that Frank Bellamy had on him. He very kindly agreed to me publishing the following:

'What does Frank Bellamy the artist mean to me?'' Well firstly, he's my all time favourite artist full stop, he wasn't just a artist who worked for comics he was a all round illustrator who could draw beautiful nudes in stipple nib pen , he could illustrate film stars, animals, machines, planes, basically anything the Editors wanted he could draw.

He could design fantastic covers for magazines, he was a all round artist who had a terrific graphic design sense with shadow and colour and he used lettering to good effect too he was a master craftsman of his trade.

Radio Times 1st January 1972 - 7th January 1972 "Doctor Who - Day of the Daleks"

He was copied by other artists of his generation but none of them could match him , he was a one off, his work still has a freshness to it even after 33 yrs since he passed away

When I was at art college in 1981 my art history thesis special project was a book all about Frank Bellamy where I put interviews /art and my reasons why I liked his work I got a 70% pass for my efforts


Over the years as a comic pro I've been very lucky to draw Dan Dare and Thunderbirds and draw the odd Dr Who illustration all three Bellamy had drawn in his career, my work never touched his for style and impact, I admit my Dan Dare was one of my first jobs so I was a green horn learning as I went along , Thunderbirds was difficult I tried drawing it on cs10 board with coloured inks like Bellamy but it was a lot of hard work and being forced to draw the characters in puppet character proportions didn't help me either and I was never really happy with my efforts . Dr Who was a storybook so I could not go too wild with the artwork or design so you see I just couldn't match the master craftsman.

Eagle 7 November 1959 Vol 10:38 "Terra Nova"

Bellamy still inspires me I put little nods to him in my layouts with the odd character pointing to the reader and when I draw things in outer space I draw stars like Bellamy, my explosions I try and draw a Bellamy blast that breaks out of the panel box.

His work was very clever he could draw fantastic atmosphere with black figures and a one colour tone over them for background and it still looked terrific, he could draw fantastic fight scenes and amazing battle spreads (Heros), but what hooked me first was his work on Garth a black and white story adventure strip in the Daily Mirror. As a young boy I would copy and copy the art from my brothers scrap books of the strip my all time favourite is The Bubble Man a ''Mekon'' type alien who's ship had crewmen like giant insects I'm thrilled Spaceship Away are reprinting this work for a new generation to discover, I'm also pleased Book Palace books are reprinting his Swift work which is new for me to discover being a 60's child not old enough to see it first time round.

Eagle 3 August 1963 Vol 14:31 Heros the Spartan: The Eagle of the Fifth

Bellamy never handed in a bad piece of work ,he shows that the art form can be exciting and fantastic, dynamic and to me that marks him as a all time great of the medium of Art not just comics.

He died when I was only 11 yrs old before I could send him a fan letter or one of my drawing but he'll never be forgotten thanks to the Internet, publishers and fans like me who will always marvel at his wonderful body of work . Jon Haward http://jonhawardart.com/

I must mention Jon's involvement with the Classical Comics project. I've read both his Macbeth and Tempest as well as some others in the series, and have enjoyed them enormously. Mike Collins, who kindly contributed to this blog recently, has done a title in the series - Christmas Carol and a contemporary of Bellamy's John Burns has two titles in the series. And no, I'm not on commission! All the graphic novels are published in three simultaneous editions (see an explanation here) and are available in the usual virtual and physical bookstores.

Here's an example of a comic frame where Jon might have been influenced by Bellamy's habit of shaping the frame to enhance the breaking action! For the curious, it's Ariel, Propsero's sprite in the Tempest

Jon Haward's art from The Tempest

Bellamy art for sale

Head over to ComicArtFans Galleries as Terry Doyle is selling a lot of his tremendous collection!

You'll need to hurry as despite a recession, they are selling fast!

My favourite, which I certainly can't afford, is the Churchill strip from The Happy Warrior - but £2,500 is a bit much for me!. Also King Solomon's Mines because of its uniqueness and beauty- I blogged about it a while ago - and the price is £4,000 which because of the fact it was unpublished and a full centrespread is worth that sort of order, in my opinion. I recently browsed an art fair and saw far lesser lights sell for the equivalent or more than this.

Oh, and there are lots of non-Bellamy materials

Thanks for sharing the information Terry

ADDITION - Letter from Frank Bellamy

Thanks to Richard Sheaf for forwarding scans of the cover and the letter that was published in Fantasy Advertiser Vol 3:43, May 1972, I thought it worth showing both here



The cover is not by Bellamy, but by Jim Baikie (does he really not have his own website?) who I know best for his co-creation of Skizz in 2000AD. The date of the fanzine is May 1972 - eleven years before that work!

Anway getting onto the Bellamy connection, his letter is really listed here for the purists among us. Later an interview and a portfolio of Bellamy's work appears in Dez Skinn's wonderful Fantasy Advertiser which are brilliant if you ever manage to get a copy

Corrections

Paul Holder let me know that I have got a couple of things inverted on the website, so I thought I better correct them and let you know, just in case you keep a list locally from the website

On the page listing Bellamy's appearances in newspapers, somehow I inverted the cover descriptions of the 2 Garth Annuals for which Bellamy did the covers.

To set the record straight:

Daily Mirror Book of Garth 1975, London: IPC Limited, 1975 was the one with the 'portrait' cover of Garth with the Wolfman of Ausensee

Daily Mirror Book of Garth 1976, London: IPC Limited, 1976 was the one with the 'landscape' cover of Garth swimming

Interestingly both of these contain strips which originally were published in the Daily Mirror with nudity. Obviously an editor must have decided, despite the increasingly seen nudity on TV and in literature during the Seventies (one author I read said there was far more then than now!), that some bits should be covered up!

Titan Books reprinted the strips (excuse the pun!) - more authentically.

Paul also says:

Actually on looking at my copies they have listed in the contents "Cloud of Baltus" instead of "Cloud of Balthus" (missing off the 't'), and they've even got the title wrong on the 1976 contents. "The People of Abyss" instead of "People of the Abyss". Small points I know.

Frank Bellamy font available!

I've been on the Internet since 1992 before the web browser was even available - command lines are nowhere near as pretty as the web interface! I am still constantly amazed at what drifts past my radar even after 17 years!

I received an email from one Keith Bates and after checking out his website decided to ask him why he'd created a Frank Bellamy font, The reply came back:

Hi Norman,

I've admired Frank Bellamy's artwork hugely since I was a kid in the sixties. Beautiful line quality. He seemed to love lettering as well as oozing confidence with figures and faces. Exceptional use of tone, colour and texture. Frank Bellamy exploded the boxiness of the traditional British comic page layout. He made TV21 as good as American comics. I never read Garth but I liked to look at the drawings.

I was delighted to discover "A Cowboy Story' when I bought 'Bert Fegg's Nasty Book' in 1974. It seemed as if Frank was really enjoying that project, I remember at the time thinking how great his pen lettering was.

I recently bought a copy of Martin Baker's 'Artists of Radio Times' and was really disappointed (maybe I was outraged) that Frank only got a brief mention (p.43) and not even a single reproduction of any of the beautiful Dr Who or Biggin Hill drawings he made. I suppose that made me decide to make the Frank Bellamy fonts.

Many of K-Type's catalog are inspired by artists' lettering or handwriting, it's an honour to have Frank Bellamy amongst my greats.

Best wishes,
Keith Bates
http://www.k-type.com

One question....where on Earth do I put this on the website?

Garth and the Bubble Man

Used with permission

In the national newspaper, the Daily Mirror, from the 16th August 1975 through to 28th November 1975, Frank Bellamy illustrated the 15th story in his 5 year run on Garth. Episode numbers J192-J281 - that's 90 daily strips, tell the story of how the Bubble Man is sent by the Warlord of the Universe to retrieve his daughter who had run away with her lover. Garth is taken aboard the spaceship (shown below) and encounters the Bubble Man. The story has all those quirks that you expect in a daily episodic newspaper strip. A highlight is that Garth meets again with Astra his immortal girlfriend whom he meets when time travelling.

Used with permission

The Bubble Man's companions are beautifully drawn and this story contains a lot of the famous Bellamy 'swirls' to shade space, in lieu of the more time consuming stippling which was a trademark. The only three other times, that I know of, when Garth appeared in colour were the two annuals, The Daily Mirror Book of Garth, with original Bellamy covers and the cover of the Disc newspaper If you click on the above picture you'll agree with me, I think, that John Ridgway has done a brilliant job on what could be seen as a controversial move. I find the projected cover somewhat busy but what do I know!

In these Internet days it's great that Rod Barzilay is still able to publish such a gorgeously glossy magazine. I recently moved my stack of the magazines and realised they must be the weightiest tomes I own - and I don't mean content. To order Spaceship Away click here, and here for the list of what's appeared in previous issues and finally here for summaries of stories.

Here for your enjoyment are 2 of the orginal non-coloured strips:

Episode: J272
Garth © 2009 The Daily Mirror

Episode: J273
Garth © 2009 The Daily Mirror

I read this was due to occur, but thank John Freeman and Lew Stringer for highlighting the new coloured strips and look forward to seeing some of this glossy version

REPRINT: Century 21 Volumes 1 and 2

Chris Bentley and friends are to be congratulated for producing an absolutely gorgeous work. This year we have seen so much Bellamy work reprinted, but the reproduction on this is amazing. The original art from the archives has been used where possible. Some of the art will appear publicly for the first time ever as it was meant to be seen. Even photogravure cannot do some of this justice and the modern digital process has been used to great benefit.

Both volumes are available via the usual sources, but if money is no object, go to the publisher's website and order a hardback with Gerry Anderson's autograph. (You'll need to scroll down the page a bit)



The cover reproductions are nice too and some of the black and white Noble work inside has a positive shine on it. Below is the page taken from Reynolds and Hearn's website but obviously a scan of a website graphic based on original art isn't doing Bellamy any justice. Trust me on this one, the two hardbacks are well worth the money even if you still have the original TV21s.


Lastly, just for fun, I've copied what was the provisional cover for one of these two books, but was not used. This was originally published in the Thunderbirds Poster Magazine No.3, I think.


Lastly which of the Bellamy strips are reprinted?

Volume 1 reprints Thunderbirds: Chain reaction and Thunderbirds: The Devil's crag as well as 2 Captain Scarlet covers #185 (3/08/68) & #186 (10/03/68). The Thunderbirds stories come from TV21 #227-234, #184-187

Volume 2 reprints Thunderbirds: Operation Depthprobe and Thunderbirds: Secret of the iceberg from TV21 #105-109, #155-161

All this information has been added to the website