King Arthur, Merlin and Frank Bellamy

I have missed two events this weekend.

The first was meeting Steve Holland for the first time at the excellent "The London ABC Show" which features amongst other things original art, British comics, newspaper strips, pulps and paperbacks but also book signings. I've been to a few now, seeing John Bolton, Graham Bleathman, Sydney Jordan and Al Davison amongst others.

If all went to plan Steve should have been signing specially flown in copies of the latest Bellamy reprint, Frank Bellamy's King Arthur and His Knights: The Complete Adventures. The book is due out shortly (presumably when copies arrive from China). The reprints are taken from the Swift comic (Vol. 2:31 - 2:53, 3:1 - 3:18 dated 30 July 1955 - 31 December 1955, 7 January 1956 - 5 May 1956) . I make that 41 episodes, 2 pages each.

The story of King Arthur here, was written by Clifford Makins (later editor of the Eagle) Bellamy shows great skill in depicting the knights and their armour, horses and weaponry. He shows long shots of British castles, and battlefields. Bellamy must have been extremely worried when he read "Merlin says to Arthur, “You must build a great Round Table to seat 100 men”". However, Bellamy pulls it off admirably in such little space – the 70 or so knights depicted around an enormous table are amazing. Comparisons with Foster's Prince Valiant, can't be helped, but they are two different products created for different markets.

The second event this weekend, that I'm not worried that I missed, is the BBC's new production for Saturday night, Merlin. I'm fairly sure Steve Holland and the Book Palace did not aim to have the Arthur book available because of the launch of this, but I'm sure it can't hurt. The BBC's modern take on the old story has been hyped a lot and is obviously important to the BBC Saturday evening schedule, but I found the earlier Robin Hood, done in the same vein, bored me so I'm a bit prejudiced. But I'm sure that won't stop you making up your own mind!

Frank Bellamy licks the Daleks into shape

Shaqui and I had some email correspondence recently after I alerted him to the fact that Frank Bellamy had produced some Dalek material for Wall's Ice Cream around September 1975. Even research in the Unilever Archives showed me they do not retain any part of this series except the front part of a wrapper!



"The Dalek Death Ray wrappers was a revelation - I was kicking myself for not recognizing the style but then the repro is mushy at best and I didn't think Bellamy would do stuff like this!" Of course when he says 'mushy' I don't think he was making a pun - these wrappers were covering ICE lollies, after all and had a tendency to make the wrappers mushy! However, in his usual helpful manner, he supplied some examples so we could see what they looked like.

Shaqui tells me that Wall's Ice Cream published two series of Dalek material in the first half of the 1970s. The first series was called 'From the world of the Daleks...', while the second, non-Bellamy, one is called 'The Incredible Daleks...' The titles from the first series are:

The Grenium Invisibility System

Daleks and the Ancient Britons

The Swamp Creatures of Terroth

When the Daleks Flooded the Earth!

The Cyclops Z-Ray

A Dalek Deep Space Battle Cruiser

Dalek Officer

Transmol

Shaqui then told me something that I didn't know about this series: "The other interesting trivia note for the Bellamy series is all bar one ('Dalek Officer' although I think some notes come from some cutaway seen but the approach is quite different) are taken from the 1976 Dalek annual: 'Terroth' and 'Flooded' are based on the two strip stories, while the 'Cruiser' appears in a text story. 'Transmol', 'Z-Ray', and 'Grenium' are from one of those 'amazing Dalek facts/technology' features, while there is a mention of Daleks on Earth in AD42 in another."

Concepts for Bellamy work from this annual - Artist unknown

It should be stressed that no Bellamy artwork appears in  Dalek Annual 1976, and this would have been published at the end of Summer 1975 for Christmas sales in 1975. 

An eBay seller helpfully put some of these up for sale and here is one to show what the back looked like complete

Front and rear of a Bellamy Dalek's Death Ray

Bellamy had correspondence with Eric Fletcher of "Scheme", (presumably the agency creating the designs for Wall's). In it he mentions that "we could sit the creature with the fangs on a sort of 'all-seeing' eye." Could this be the design Alan Davis has on his website? Why was it not used?

 Lastly, in the correspondence mentioned above, a series called "Solar System" is mentioned. Did Bellamy do it? - We have no other reference to it

Peter Cushing liked to read Bellamy!

'Ian from The Receptacle Group', as he wants to be known, recently posted an article that made me smile and with his permission I have adapted it here for you!

The film, Doctor Who and the Daleks, was released in 1965 starring Peter Cushing as the cinema Doctor (Hartnell was on the TV at the time) . In the opening scene, the camera pans around the Doctor's living room. First we see Susan reading 'Physics for the Inquiring Mind' by Eric M. Rogers. Then we see Barbara reading 'The Science Of Science'. And what’s the Doctor himself reading?


Eagle and Boys' World Vol.16 No. 12, 20th March 1965.


As the Doctor puts down the comic, we see that he has been reading 'Heros The Spartan' from the centre pages, which of course was illustrated at that time by Bellamy.



And then we see him reading the next pages, 12 and 13, before he stands up when Ian arrives.

Anyway.. according to Mark Campbell's 'Dimensions In Time & Space' book, the movie was filmed from 8th March to April 1965, then the premiere was 24th June 1965. This issue would have been on sale in the newsagents from 17th March to 23rd March, in the middle of filming, so it could well have been picked up specially for this scene, filmed during that week?

You would have thought that Terry Nation would have wanted a copy of TV Century 21 to be advertised in the movie, what with the Daleks strip appearing on the back cover of that comic. [Issue 9 would have been out at the same time as this issue of Eagle]. Although I suppose its best as it is, otherwise kids and Doctor Who fans would have been saying that how come the Doctor didn't know about the Daleks when he'd just been reading about them!

==============

Thanks for this Ian, great stuff, and for Bellamy fans, here's the actual strip that held Cushing's eye. It's part 4 of the last story of Heros that Bellamy did (he was followed by Luis Bermejo) and Bellamy has used many, almost psychedelic, colours for backgrounds.. The story was called The Slave Army

Thunderbirds unpublished art for TV21 & Joe90

Shaqui has pointed out to me that I have omitted a piece of work that Jeff Haythorpe showed him. I'm ashamed to admit I did know about this already and had indeed left it out of my listing. This allows me the opportunity to tell you about it.

Frank Bellamy drew Thunderbirds in assorted formats for the comic TV21. He started by creating a double page spread in colour with an additional page in black and white halftones for the first 14 episodes. He then dropped the black and white page and completed a weekly colour centrespread for 76 episodes. Reproduction of these centrespreads was difficult in the international market and from issue 141 he created two separate colour pages. This method carried on for 102 more episodes until TV21 merged with Joe90 after which Bellamy drew, for issue 1 one page in colour, for issue 2, 2 pages of colour and finally for issues 3 and 4 he drew his first Thunderbird pages in black and white (x2)

At this point in 1969, Alan Fennell the editor of TV21 could see the writing on the wall and encouraged Bellamy, who quite frankly must have been really fed up with Century 21 Ltd to jump the sinking ship. Fennell let him know that Century 21 would no longer be publishing TV21 from 2nd of June 1969. The editorial packages would be passed to City Magazines Ltd who nominated Martspress to fill the pages. Bellamy, who must have been very frustrated with the changes in formats during 4 weeks, went on to lucrative work with the Sunday Times, Look and Learn, Radio Times and then moved to the prestigious work on Garth, the daily strip at the Daily Mirror

However, the story does not end there. Bellamy seems to have produced one more black and white page of Thunderbirds. Jeff Haythorpe, one of the many kind souls to display their collection of original art on ComicArtFans.com, has in his collection a copy of the Thunderbirds shown below.

Shaqui tells me that the story Bellamy started to illustrate here appears so similar to that of TV21 & Joe90's issue 35 that the script must have been put on the shelf for a later date after Bellamy had left the comic.




UPDATE
I have just been tidying up and found I actually have TV21 & Joe 90 New Series No. 35
So here is the awful version of the same story for you to compare with the Bellamy. John Tracy appears over the page, but I couldn't be bothered to scan that too!

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Walls Wonderman and Frank Bellamy

I wanted to show two pieces of Bellamy's work that is little known but was seen by millions of boys and girls in 1969 and 1970: Wall's Wonderman! I know it appeared in Smash, Lion and in Valiant, but can you add to the list?

In January 1970 Lintas Advertising Agency approached Bellamy to produce two comic strip adverts for their character Wonderman, a superhero who doles out lollies and confuses the name of his super-powers! He meets Jimmy Carter - no, not the ex-President! - and a Walls Van driver and saves the day!

Walls Wonderman and the Martian Inferno

Walls Wonderman and the Bridge of Terror

Bellamy also produced some Point-Of-Sale material and fortunately Alan Davis saved a photo from destruction. It's obvious Walls Wonderman's right arm is vanished because something would be placed over it such as a label which is local to the shop selling it, or maybe some other purpose.

Walls Wonderman photo from Bellamy's studio - Thanks to Alan Davis

Although the three illustration adverts below show they were commissioned by Lintas, and elements look to be by Bellamy are they his work?

Foreign Stamps offer

Moon Stamps offer

Wonder-Kite offer

If you look at the comments below you'll see Peter mentions an animation. The History of Advertising Trust have one on their site.


Here are some other images, just to make sure you see them all. Which are Bellamy and which are influenced by his initial concepts is hard to say. I'm open to comments.

Funundrum competition

Thirst-quenching Woppas

Walls advertising tin sign

Detail

Bellamy starts drawing Paul English in Swift

In my last post I highlighted the difficulties in trying to identify Bellamy artwork. None more so than the early material.

I have an early run of the Swift comic that enables me to scan two pages for your perusal of the strip that was illustrated by Giorgio Bellavitis. That much is agreed by sources over the Internet, but when exactly did Bellamy take over?

Above are  The Exciting Adventures of Paul English from 2nd and 9th April 1955. comparing the two weeks, I think I'm right in seeing one artist (Giorgio Bellavitis) and then another (Frank Bellamy) a week later. Why do I think that?

• Compare the musculature and the ways it's drawn on the boys
• Look at the lines to denote wooden beams
• Look at the window in the room and how it differs
• ...and most important of all, look at the horizontals and verticals that are drawn in the room in the first and not in the second!

Let me know what you think...