Comics UK

Hi everyone,

Does anyone know anything about Dudley Wynn please? I have identified some stories from 1980s Bunty annuals which may be his work, I'll get it scanned in this evening for your viewing pleasure I understand that he illustrated a strip from Action called Sport's Not For Losers so he would have been working on boys' comics as well as girls' ones.

Toni xx

Kashgar can probably give you much more background on Wynn, who drew some of DC Thomson's most memorable girls' series over the years, but one character that springs immediately to mind is Mandy's immortal super-girl Valda (whose initial appearances were also collected in the elusive Lucky Charm).

- Phil R.

If Toni or Phil...or anyone else can add some VALDA artwork, I'd be eternally grateful.

Oh yes, of course! I have a couple of Mandy annuals but not with me, but I can remember Valda

I think he did some Catch The Cat too, though there's definitely more than one artist who has worked on that strip.

As Valda seems to have been comprehensively dealt with elsewhere I thought I'd use this thread to show an example of Wynn's other major character from the pages of Mandy: the long-suffering and saintly Angel. In a way Angela Hamilton presented the opposite side of the coin from Valda: while the latter seemed able to live forever, the fourteen-year-old 'Angel' knew she had only a single year to live. As a result she resolved to leave behind her privileged lifestyle and use what little time she had left to give a future to Victorian London's vagabond children instead. A real tear-jerker this as the very fact that it was written in the past tense ensured there would be no last-minute reprieve. Angel was dead before her story began!






- Phil Rushton

Although my guide to annuals doesn't reflect it, I'm pretty certain Dudley Wynn contributed the 'Lady Penelope' strip in the first 'TV Century 21' annual. I'll see if I can get a scan up shortly...

That "Angel" strip is precisely the sort of thing I always loved most about Bunty, Mandy etc Completely ace stuff, thanks Phil!

Was 'Angel' one of those strips which was re-run/reprinted? The page is dated for a December 1989 issue but I was reading a strip in my sister's comics (Bunty & Mandy) not a million miles unlike this before she married and moved out, which would have been late 1970s/early 1980s...

Having said that, when I wrote a thesis on comics for college, I did recall finding two strips among my sister's collection of comics and annuals, which were obviously the same script (or near enough as damn it) but by two different artists - one in a comic in installments, the other a complete story in an annual! (One, the weekly I think, was drawn by Kim Raymond.)

That's happened before. Two Dandy annuals, one from the 70s, the other from a few years ago, have Winker Watson strips with the same storyline, but the more recent one was redrawn to modernise the art style to that being used in the comic at the time and also remove any reference to the cane.

I've also come across a Bea strip in the Beano (around 6-7 years ago) which clearly should've been a Beezer annual Little Mo story - it featured Cruncher Kerr bullying Bea without fear of repercussions from Dennis, who wasn't mentioned.

Here's some earlier Dudley Wynn artwork that I found in the 1967 June annual

Game to Nurse Jones