Comics UK

I just wrote a piece about Tammy's Castaways on Voodoo Island, but if anyone ever said it was their favourite I'd be deeply suspicious of their tastes in anything else.

Thanks for those, Phil; I'm intrigued by Tiger in its adventure days. Do you have dates, even if rough, for these serials or those extracts?

The castaway kids adventure yarn seems to have two types in literature: the Swiss Family Robinson, Coral Island, Castaway Island, Young Crusoes type, stemming from Robinson Crusoe, where the castaways have to be practical and adapt to their situation to survive, and the Lord of the Flies type where animosity breaks out and things go horribly wrong; there's an interesting late '60s one of that ilk: The Mutineers by Richard Armstrong, which takes this scenario to a grittier, more intense level. Castaways of Shark Island looks like it's of the former type from this sample, unless you know better and infighting starts somewhere along the line. It looks like a solid strip.

Gorilla Island - wow! An island. Gorillas. What a mix! Do you know who drew that particular sample? This looks like a branch of the H.G. Wells Island of Doctor Moreau-inspired subgenre, with wildlife experiments on an island going horribly wrong. It looks potentially great!

The presence of talking gorillas instantly overrides any rules, but I also wouldn't mind things straying from the tropical desert island if I got to see a bit more of the Tom Kerr-illustrated The King of Keg Island from Lion, which looks great fun - boy inherits island; North Devon rather than South Seas - but which I only have one instalment of!

Rather unusually for one of Fleetway's b&w titles the whole of Gorilla Island (including the example from May 1965 shown above) was drawn by Frank Langford. I think it was later reprinted in an annual.

Another desert island strip I'd like to see more of is the remarkable Robot Archie/Steampunk-type saga 'The Steam Man on Treasure Island' which began in Knockout way back in 1939. Sadly I don't own any issues from that far back but here's a fascinating extract that appeared in the Knockout Index:



- Phil Rushton

philcom55 wrote:Rather unusually for one of Fleetway's b&w titles the whole of Gorilla Island (including the example from May 1965 shown above) was drawn by Frank Langford. I think it was later reprinted in an annual.)

Thanks, Phil - you did explain that Frank Langford drew it in your post, but somehow my gorilla-dazzled mind must have misread your comment about the other strip being "drawn by a baffling array of different artists which even included Don Lawrence at one point" as referring to Gorilla Island.

I found older threads where Kashgar revealed that Gorilla Island ran from 13th Feb to 8th May 1965, and Castaways of Shark Island first appeared in the 23rd November 1963 issue.

Cor to the 1930s steam robot on an island of man-size monkeys.

Oddly enough Gulliver Guinea Pig ended up on a desert island at the conclusion of his first-ever voyage of discovery, way back in 1958:




Artwork, of course, by Phillip Mendoza.


- Phil Rushton

Just remembered another classic Fleetway series set on a desert island, featuring fantastic art by Wild Wonders' artist Mike Western. And this time it's not in the Hebrides!





- Phil Rushton

Thanks for that, Phil; it looks great - but you must reveal the comic and date! (Gulliver is nice, too.)

I've just received the final four instalments of The Byrds of Paradise Isle, and it's turned into something of an action movie, with Olga the teacher revealing herself to be a guerilla leader fighting for "the cause! The glorious cause!" with machine gun and submarine! I think Andrew Wilson should have been used much more as an adventure artist as there's some superb artwork.

And here's a nice Swiss Family Robinson art cover by Arnaldo Putzu for Look-In. This was for a background feature on the series rather than a strip, but the 1974 TV series would have made a nice weekly colour serial strip.

'Mysterious Island' began in the issue of Film Fun dated 7th July 1962. Though it tends not to be remembered as one of Fleetway's 'Five Star Weeklies' Film Fun did, in fact, feature a nice selection of adventure and humour strips during its final years.

As for 'Swiss Family Robinson', there was at least one British strip adaptation serialized in Treasure.

- Phil R.

philcom55 wrote:'Mysterious Island' began in the issue of Film Fun dated 7th July 1962. Though it tends not to be remembered as one of Fleetway's 'Five Star Weeklies' Film Fun did, in fact, feature a nice selection of adventure and humour strips during its final years.

As for 'Swiss Family Robinson', there was at least one British strip adaptation serialized in Treasure.

- Phil R.

Thanks, Phil. I don't think I'd realised that Mike Western drew for Film Fun. Did the final year adventure strips generally tend to tie in with films based on novels that had entered the public domain?

This is also a good place to mention that Steve Holland's excellent Bear Alley blog published the entirety of Look and Learn's full colour thirteen part adaptation of R. M. Ballantyne's Coral Island from 1966, drawn by Mike Hubbard:

http://bearalley.blogspot.co.uk/search/ ... l%20Island

I now have my first Beezer with a Kings of Castaway Island strip, featuring a flock of unusually aggressive bats. Dad's bat-bashing Buzzer comes in handy, but a second attack is prompted by the darkness of an inconvenient eclipse!

Probably doesn't count, but the 1993 Dandy Summer Special had the whole of the Dandy crew washed up on a desert island somewhere...

When I clicked on this thread originally, I was thinking it'd be "What comics would you take to a desert island?". I'd still've chosen that Dandy Summer Special!