Comics UK

Sir-L wrote:Another one
Swedish title: "Mordet i den röda ladan" (Translation: Murder in the red barn), a 16 page "one-shot" about the Red Barn Murder in Polstead, Suffolk, England.
Does anyone know it's original title, the creators and where it was published?

And another one
Swedish title: "Den onskefulla ön" (translation: The evil island) an 8 page story about an agent by the name of Harry Craig on a mission to locate a missing submarine, the Stentor.
Is this a "one-shot" or is it part of a "Harry Craig" feature?
And again:
Does anyone know it's original title, the creators and where it was published?

Yet another one
For some reason I've gotten into myhead that there was a British version of the american comic "The Frogmen", about the divers Steve Randall and Jim Collins. Could this be right or just a case of my imagination running wild?

Ps. I could get some scans if that would help.

Sir L, could you post scans of the last two as they ring bells for me, but I just can't place them at the moment.

As to a darker tone than Charlie Pearce, now that could be interesting!

Sir-L wrote:...Here's the first page of the story. It could be edited to fit the format of the Swedish comic book.

It certainly looks like Robert Forrest. Unfortunately I don't have that particular issue of TPL to scan, but here's a page from it that was included in Book & Magazine Collector's article on the artist:


- Phil Rushton

Sir-L wrote:It appears the "Simon Smart" feature has simularities with the comic "Charlie Peace", only a bit darker* in tone. Any ideas what comic that would fit that discription?

[Edit]
*darker compared to this "Charlie Peace" episode

The episodes published in Sweden has a different artist that the one in the example in the link above, was there another artist/artists on the "The Elusive Charlie Peace"?

The episode of Charlie Peace above was drawn by Jack Pamby, the final and most prolific artist on the strip. For 'darker' episodes you would have to go back to the early days in 1964-1965 when the regular artist on the Buster strip was Tom Kerr.

And of course Eric Bradbury drew Charlie Peace at the very beginning. Roughly speaking and ignoring the odd input by Alan Philpott and Doug Maxted the artists on Charlie Peace in Buster were
(27/6/64) - Aug 1964 Eric Bradbury
Aug 1964 - June 1966 Tom Kerr
June 1966 - (15/6/74) Jack Pamby
Eric Bradbury was also responsible for the Charlie Peace preview strip that appeared in Valiant dated 20th June 1964.

philcom55 wrote: It certainly looks like Robert Forrest. Unfortunately I don't have that particular issue of TPL to scan, but here's a page from it that was included in Book & Magazine Collector's article on the artist:
http://www.geocities.com/philcom55/rbarn.jpg

- Phil Rushton

That's it! Thank you very much for that.
(Then I was right that it was edited to fit the Swedish comic bok format. I assume TPL was "pocket sized"?)

colcool007 wrote:

Sir-L wrote: [...]
And another one
Swedish title: "Den onskefulla ön" (translation: The evil island) an 8 page story about an agent by the name of Harry Craig on a mission to locate a missing submarine, the Stentor.
Is this a "one-shot" or is it part of a "Harry Craig" feature?
And again:
Does anyone know it's original title, the creators and where it was published?

Yet another one
For some reason I've gotten into myhead that there was a British version of the american comic "The Frogmen", about the divers Steve Randall and Jim Collins. Could this be right or just a case of my imagination running wild?

Ps. I could get some scans if that would help.

Sir L, could you post scans of the last two as they ring bells for me, but I just can't place them at the moment.
[...]

Here's a scan from "Den onskefulla ön" (better translated as:The Vicious Island)



As for "the British version" of the american comic "The Frogmen", I really don't remember where I saw something about that. It could've been in my comic books or on the Internet, I'll have to get back to you on that one.

The artist for "Den onskefulla ön" is definitely Reg Bunn who also drew 'The Spider' for most of its run in Lion. I'll have to rummage around to see if I can find the source (though like 'The Red Barn' it's always possible it could have appeared in one of AP or Fleetway's digest-sized Picture Libraries). The fact that it seems to use a wash technique is likely to narrow things down considerably, unless that was added later just for the overseas version.

As for 'The Frogmen', in his Complete Catalogue of British Comics the late Denis Gifford lists a four-issue series called 'Frogman Comics' consisting of US reprints. As with many British editions of American comic-books that were produced during this period it was published by Thorpe & Porter, however since he gives the date as 1952 it seems much more likely they were licensed from the Hillman title of the same name rather than the later Dell series.

- Phil Rushton

Reg Bunn did draw a lot of stuff for AP's various picture libraries in the 1950's (they certainly look more likely a source than the weekly picture papers) but offhand I can't think of an agent who fits the bill. It's certainly not his other pre-Spider Lion creation special investigator Rory MacDuff which he drew for five years from 1959.

Ok, so now I have checked around my collection and come to the conclusion that the comic I was thinking for the "British Frogmen" was the following one:




It about Mike North and Rusty Minton, two ex-navymen for the British fleet during the WW2 (some adventures takes place during the war). Copy IPC

Frogmen 'Mike and Rusty' were originally known as 'Spike and Dusty' and appeared in Tiger from 1957 until 1962, then returned for a run of reprints under their new names from 1965. Oddly enough the artist for many of their later adventures was none other than Reg Bunn!

- Phil Rushton

philcom55 wrote:Frogmen 'Mike and Rusty' were originally known as 'Spike and Dusty' and appeared in Tiger from 1957 until 1962, then returned for a run of reprints under their new names from 1965. Oddly enough the artist for many of their later adventures was none other than Reg Bunn!

- Phil Rushton

Thankyouverymuch for that.


God, I love this forum!
I bow to all the expertise around here

Just to add a little to the 'Spike and Dusty' story. The series was written by AP boys paper editor Dave Gregory and the artist on it in 1950's was, for the most part, Colin Dudley-Page. The page you've posted is a Page page!
I've been puzzling over this Reg Bunn 'Vicious Island' strip too and the only thing that seems to fit the bill, although I'm willing to be proved wrong on this, is that it's a reprint of one of his 'Spy 13' strips from Thriller Picture Library. This character arrived quite late in the TPL's run, not first appearing until issue No 242, but then ran up a creditable 44 appearances with Reg Bunn being responsible for the artwork on 5 of them.
Hope this helps.

Kashgar wrote: ...
I've been puzzling over this Reg Bunn 'Vicious Island' strip too and the only thing that seems to fit the bill, although I'm willing to be proved wrong on this, is that it's a reprint of one of his 'Spy 13' strips from Thriller Picture Library. This character arrived quite late in the TPL's run, not first appearing until issue No 242, but then ran up a creditable 44 appearances with Reg Bunn being responsible for the artwork on 5* of them.
Hope this helps.

Ok, I'll look into that.

BTW on the topic of Spy 13. The Swedish Seriewikin, a Wikipedia about comics, says that several of the Captain Phantom strips was recycled as Spy 13, is that accurate?

[Edit]
* You don't happen to know the issues for those 5 episodes?

The Reg Bunn issues of 'Spy 13' were 250 274 282 306 310.

Kashgar wrote:The Reg Bunn issues of 'Spy 13' were 250 274 282 306 310.

ok, the covers don't "look the part" for the "Vicious island". But I have no idea if there was only one episode in each issue or several. Do you know?

"The Vicious Island" has no Nazis in it. The bad guy is an oriental on an island outside of Singapore. His plan is to nuke the cities London, Paris and New York and has taken the sub Stentor to let it act as a launchpad.