Comics UK

Jill Crusoe (aka Jill Blair), a female version of Robinson Crusoe, began her comic strip adventures in 1950 in the very first issue of School Friend when she was shipwrecked in the middle of the Indian Ocean while travelling to Australia. As with Daniel Defoe's original novel the treatment of native peoples can seem a little unfortunate to modern eyes, but apart from this aspect the stories were consistently well-written, and the strip quickly became one of the star attractions of Britain's first regular girls' comic. The lush and detailed art undoubtedly played a major part in Jill's success, but I must admit that I always doubted Denis Gifford's confident assertion that it was the work of veteran illustrator Roland Davies, whose style elsewhere struck me as being significantly different.

As a result I was initially somewhat chagrined to notice this almost invisible 'Davis' signature while reading Schoolgirls' Picture Library no.45 this afternoon. Maybe Denis was right all along?





Then I noticed that the surname is actually spelled without an 'e' - unlike Roland's usual signature. What's more, after a quick google of 'Davis Jill Crusoe' I found that somebody at the Book Palace's Illustration Art Gallery website had already anticipated my discovery by posting this informative biography of one Reginald Ben Davis - an artist I'd only previously associated with wildlife paintings in publications such as Treasure.

http://illustrationartgallery.blogspot. ... davis.html

I don't know about anybody else but I get a real buzz from being able to add a new name to my pantheon of favourite comic strip artists of the 1950s and 1960s - especially one who's clearly good enough to bear comparison with the very best of his contemporaries!

- Phil Rushton

A few castaway stories in girls' comics that I have come across:

Castaways of Voodoo Island (Tammy)
Desert Island Daisy (Jinty) - another MacGillivray
Girl the World Forgot (Jinty).

BTW, Girl the World Forgot remains one of my favourites.

That's interesting, looking at his bird illustrations you can see the influence in the comic. It's always nice to be able to identify an artist.

In that biography, Phil, it mentions the artist's covers on some Panmure Publications. Here are the first three of the only seven he appears to have done for the twenty-issue set of Boy's Favourite Library produced by Panmure in 1948/49. His signature is tiny but legible, although on these scans it will unfortunately be indistinct.

Here are the second three.

Wow! I love that motorcycling ape! (Maybe somebody ought to turn him into an American comic-book hero...!)

- Phil R.

On this final one, he signs himself just RBD, which is easy to see. The other thirteen covers are either unsigned or the artist is A.W. Burgess. There was a follow-up series of seven titles in the early fifties, the overall title reduced to Boys' Favourite, the issues were taller and narrower, and the publisher was Comyns, but the stories were still written by Edward R. Home-Gall. Where the cover artist was credited, it was Norman Light. I hope all this information is useful to you.