List of AP Artists from 1906

[stevezodiac]

I recently bought two volumes of the Jester comic covering the whole of 1906. Inside the front covers someone had sellotaped a list of the artists for each volume. Obviously these list aren't a lot of use in isolation but i'm not about to scan the entire two volumes so there. But the names will be of use to one or two of you historians out there and there are a couple of recognisable ones in Tom Browne and George Parlett. And one name may jog someone's memory that they have been searching for for years.





As you can see some artists have been connected with a page number and issue number so that obvioulsy helps.

[Lew Stringer]

Interesting stuff. I think these bound volumes are file copies that, er, wandered out of the archives so in many instances these could be the only issues of certain comics left in existence!

Those names could have been added by editors of the day or the collector who first acquired them.

Lew

[Kashgar]

Very interesting list Steve. I don't think that it was put there by the editor of the time though. In fact I'm certain that this list covers the artistic input to Jester over a wider time-frame than the two 1906 volumes to which they've become attached. For a start there are at least a couple of names listed that couldn't have been working for Jester as early as 1906 namely George Parlett, who would have been only four at the time ( unless of course G H Parlett refers to his father Harry then that might possibly fit) and Alex Akerbladh who, although born in 1886, didn't turn his hand to comic strip work until considerably later.
A fascinating find though.

[Kashgar]

On second thoughts I think I'll take back what I've just written as, assuming that G H Parlett does refer to Harry Parlett rather than his son George, and that it might be just possible that in the midst of his architectural studies Alex Akerbladh earned an extra bit of cash by supplying the odd bit of, as yet, uncatalogued art, it would seem more likely than not that this list was created contemporaneously with the comics concerned.

[Digifiend]

I googled Jester comic and found this: http://www.vernonthevillain.co.uk/

Apparently an artist called Reg Parlett drew Vernon the Villain for Jester in the 1930s. I wonder if he was related to Harry and George at all?

[Kashgar]

Absolutely DF. Reg, ultimately the most famous of the Parlett artistic dynasty,was also the son of Harry and the younger brother of George.

[stevezodiac]

Drat and double drat, not only was I going to point out that the lists were written at a later date but was also going to throw in the word contemporaneous and impress everyone with my erudition. That'll teach me to prevaricate. To enlarge, one of the lists is written on the back of an envelope addressed to a Mrs M Hawkey of Leigh-on-Sea Essex and with a Clacton on Sea postmark dated 3 Jan 1980. I got the volumes from Phil Clarke who bought tons of stuff from the Fleetway archives. He has some more volumes for sale. He'll be at the London comic mart next month at the Royal National Hotel.

[Kashgar]

Logic dictates that they must have belonged to Len Hawkey, who used to be an avid collector back in the day.
Now that we know for certain that they were produced later than the 1906 volumes it does call into question again whether the G H Parlett (assuming that it was referring to son George rather than father Harry) and the Alex Akerbladh attributions were simply wrong.

[Digifiend]

Google is a big letdown on this I see. I did find this about Alex

RADIO FUN. Amalgamated Press. 1 15th Oct 1938-no number 198th Feb 1961 (1,167 issues, joins Buster)

1 15th Oct 1938 George the Jolly Gee Gee by Roy Wilson, Flanagan & Allen by Alex Akerbladh both begin; in Jun 2006 a VG copy sold at auction for £283

http://reviews.ebay.co.uk/THE-COMIC-PRI ... 0004677604

[Kashgar]

Interesting that in the one year the Jester contained contributions from all four of who would become the great Billy Bunter artists namely Warwick Reynolds, Leonard Shields, C H Chapman and R J MacDonald.

[felneymike]

I have some Union Jack volumes with similar lists in, in the same handwriting! Mine are not file copies though as (in most of them) the issues are not consistent, or have the covers removed (argh!).

Are they on bits of old envelopes? An excitable woman i know saw the old 28p stamp in one of them and thought the book had cost that much!

[Digifiend]

Can't be that old if it has a decimal priced stamp on. Especially one as high as 28p, which was current just a few years ago.

[felneymike]

Or was it an 8p stamp? It was from 1980 either way.

The actual comics in the books are now more than a century old, the stamp was just on the list inside. I have some 1904 Union Jacks in which the artists are actually linked to the issue they worked on, when i get around to more updates on my website i'll make sure to credit them to the right issues.