Please identify this girls' comics artist #2: Vitor Peon

[Tonibunny]

Hi chaps, here are some more pics. I've loved this artist's distinctive style since I was four, no joke! They illustrated a text story called "Marinda and the Mermaid" which was my favourite story in the very first annual I was ever given, Twinkle 1980. Awww.

(Can be seen bigger on my Flickr)
"My Brother's a Chimp!" - Bunty annual 1985





"Punch and Jenny" - Bunty annual 1975



Sadly I don't have any other annuals with me that contain this artist's work, but I'll add it when I can. They also illustrated a story called "Rambling Rose" which is I think in Bunty annual 1982.

Once again, thanks for any help!

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

Again, sorry I can't help you on this score, Toni, but this artwork is excellent, and well worth showing us...hopefully someone must recognize this artwork.


'My Brother's a Chimp!' is a story title that could only have come from D C THOMSON, by the way!

[Digifiend]

Yeah, like Beezer's Our Sheriff's an Ape!

[Kashgar]

This is the work of the Portuguese artist Vitor Peon. He was most at home drawing for the Thomson girls' picture papers but he did work for their comic papers too. The Laughing Pirate (Beano), The Wooden Submarine (Dandy) and Buffalo Boy (Beezer) spring to mind.

[Muffy]

The clean lines and detailed backgrounds remind me of Mario Capaldi (who has a gives a slight stiffness to his subjects) from the 1980s.

Having said that George Anthony has a similar, though more lucid style, also in the 1980s.

Kashgar could be right though, as I've never (knowingly) seen Vitor Peon's art

Examples are (hopefully) posted here:

http://www.marabese.co.uk/BuntyTammyArt.html

[Digifiend]

http://www.marabese.co.uk/BuntyTammyArt.html

HTML pages don't display as images, lol

[Tonibunny]

Vitor Peon, brilliant! Thanks loads Interestingly, I had a feeling that this wasn't a British artist.

[philcom55]

The funny thing is I can usually spot Vitor Peon's work in the 1950s and 1950s (though I still sometimes confuse him with Eduardo Coelho), but his style appears to have changed so much over the years that it's hard to make a proper connection with his later strips. Unfortunately I don't have the Annuals from which Toni took her examples so I'd be grateful if somebody could tell me if I'm right in attributing the following two Bunty strips to him?





...Of course I could be completely wrong here, in which case I'd dearly like to know who those pages were drawn by. (And given that both strips ran at the same time it's entirely possible they were produced by two different artists! )

- Phil Rushton

[Tonibunny]

The second one is absolutely by the same artist, I'd be 99% sure of that. The first one I'm pretty certain about too

When are these strips from? And have you any idea when he started to work on girls' comics? I'd be interested to see his earlier work, as I've looked him up on the web and his work outside of girls' comics is so different that I wouldn't have recognised them as the same artist had I not been told.

[Kashgar]

Spanish artist Matias Alonso Andres can easily be mistaken for later Peon.

[philcom55]

Spanish artist Matias Alonso Andres can easily be mistaken for later Peon.

Yes, I wondered about Matias Alonso (who is known to have worked for Twinkle as well). Given that the two pages above were taken from the same issue of Bunty (April 9th 1983) I'd hazard a guess that 'Lessons With Lizzie' was by Peon whereas 'The Travelling Winstons' could be by Alonso. As you say their work is very similar, but I get the feeling that the former had a slightly 'cuter' style whereas the latter seemed a bit more at home with masculine subjects like German soldiers et al (and it's worth remembering that DC Thomson's editors had a tendency to 'typecast' their artists when it came to assigning scripts - hence all the weird and wonderful stories that ended up on Robert MacGillivray's drawing board! ).

- Phil Rushton

[Kashgar]

I agree Phil. Alonso does have that ability to avoid the tweeness that the later Peon
stuff can be prone to.

[philcom55]

I'd be interested to see his earlier work, as I've looked him up on the web and his work outside of girls' comics is so different that I wouldn't have recognised them as the same artist had I not been told.

Here's an example of Peon's work from a 1956 issue of Thriller Picture Library starring Robin Hood:



- And here for comparison is a 1967 page that's actually signed by Matias Alonso:



Hmmmm.....

- Phil Rushton

[philcom55]

Assuming it is him, here's a striking example of Peon's colour work taken from the 1983 Judy Annual, showing that Misty and Spellbound weren't the only girls' comics of the period to feature tales of mystery and imagination:







- Phil Rushton

[Peter Gray]

Amazing work..Very impressive..
very funny ending..