Comics UK

Hello Vautour, In case this is of use, I can provide a few more details of the original English names and publication dates in Girl for some of the Belle stories: Le Joyeux Camp-Volant = The Jolly Wagoners: 24/7/57 – 19/3/58 Le Casino de “Port-Jolie” = The Pier Theatre: 26/3/58 - ? September 1958? R...

I can do all of these. Will email scans to you asap, hopefully tomorrow.

I can't help with the name of the series, but the artist looks like Dudley Wynne.

Many thanks, Vautour. A very happy Easter to you also.

Thanks for the details of these reprints, Vautour. I had come across some of them on the website encyclo-bd, but didn’t know about the reprints of Lucky’s Living Doll or The Happy Days. As you say, it’s very striking how many stories from UK girls’ comics were reprinted in France, and I think the sa...

My apologies, Vautour. I should have mentioned that the picture posted in my last message is in fact drawn by Andrew Wilson. Wilson’s style underwent an astonishing transformation during the 13 year run of The Happy Days. If you know the stories mainly through the reprints in Line, you may only have...

Thanks, Vautour, it’s nice to see Belle getting the appreciation she deserves. So many great UK comic strips have been largely forgotten in this country. Perhaps it’s not surprising that The Happy Days had comparatively little success in France. A good deal of the charm of the series was its suburba...

Thanks for posting the examples from Capucine - the first time that I’ve seen Belle and Mamie having a row! How popular the series was in the UK is an interesting question. I don’t know of any source of hard information about the relative popularity of UK girls’ comic series. The original editors co...

For those who may not have heard, this much loved artist of girl's comics (mainly Jinty, June and Judy) has died. There's an obiturary tribute on John Freeman's website:

https://downthetubes.net/in-memoriam-co ... i-tinture/

Rest in peace, and thank you.

Ah, that’s more difficult, and is really a question for an expert on the subject, which I am not. I can only speculate. Odhams Press, which at that time was the publisher of Girl, was sold to Fleetway Publications in 1961. Fleetway published many of the most popular girls’ comics of the time, and ha...

Most British publishers of girls’ comics did not give artist credits. Girl, however, was an exception, and gave credits to both artists and writers for most of its run. Credits seem to have been given up to around 1962 at least, and included at least some of the strips drawn by Lindfield. If you fol...

He's a regular on the Guardian. You can see a lot of his stuff on their website:

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/ben-jennings

The artwork for this series seems to me to be particularly good, even by the standards of other Anderson strips. I think Mike Noble really excelled himself in some of these stories, and even the annuals (which were often given to second-string artists) had very good art from Burns, Martin Asbury and...

The first piece of work of his that I've seen in Princess was a serial called "The Silver Mountain" which started in January 1964, almost certainly in the issue of 18 January.

Jean Sidobre was one of the artists for the Miss Adventure series that appeared in School Friend and June (and possibly Girls' Crystal). I don't know of any specific stories he did for the weekly comics, but he did several of the picture libraries (Schoolgirls' and June & School Friend). Happy to pr...