Comics UK

I just recently received a wartime issue of Tip-Top and included in the package some preliminary art for Happy Andy and his Pets by Roy Wilson.

I just want to confirm that the preliminary art is by Wilson.

Here is the preliminary art to be approved by the editor.


and below is the final frame as it appeared in Tip-Top No. 338, dated 8/2/41.



I will be doing a post on this strip when I have a look at Tip-Top later on this week.

It's not always easy to tell the difference between Wilson and artists who were told to imitate him, but looking at the style of the linework, the positioning of the limbs, and the little quirks in the lettering I'd say it's definitely Roy Wilson's art. Smashing stuff. One of my favourite artists. I've been tempted to buy some of that preliminary Wilson art on eBay myself.

It's interesting that he did so much 'preliminary art' before settling on the final version. I've done similar myself from time to time but Wilson seemed to do it regularly, from the amount of surviving preliminary drawings that exist.

That art board they used back then was nice too. You can't get that quality now.

Ta, Lew.

The item I bought had four frames from this strip. When I write my post, I'll show all four pieces, with it's corresponding frame from the strip.

blaing wrote:Ta, Lew.

The item I bought had four frames from this strip. When I write my post, I'll show all four pieces, with it's corresponding frame from the strip.

I look forward to it Bruce. Roy Wilson had a massive influence on UK humour comics and some of his style can still be seen in pages by artists of today. (I include myself in that, although I'd never consider myself in his league of course.)

Roy Wilson was one of the very best - easily ranking alongside Watkins, Law, Reid, Baxendale and Parlett IMHO. I've got a couple of those 'preliminary' pieces as well and they've always puzzled me as its hard to see why any editor would need to reject them. My own feeling is that they're far more likely to reflect Wilson's own perfectionism, such that he simply couldn't bear to submit anything that didn't meet his own impossibly high standards. Any lesser artist would have just been content to plaster his mistakes with process white and overlays but for Wilson spontaneity seems to have been all-important!

- Phil Rushton

philcom55 wrote:My own feeling is that they're far more likely to reflect Wilson's own perfectionism, such that he simply couldn't bear to submit anything that didn't meet his own impossibly high standards.

Yes, I think that's the case too, because many of those drawings I've seen are only partly completed (unlike the one above) so it'd be the artist himself re-doing them before submitting them. I can't really imagine an editor wanting such tiny changes in expressions and suchlike.

The nice thing about that is that a close comparison between the preliminary and finished versions almost allows you to read the artist's mind: showing what he strove most to achieve with his artwork. In almost every case it seems to me that the main factor is a constant ratcheting up of movement and expression - as seen in the bear's face and 'body language' in the example shown above.

In some ways it's the next best thing to a masterclass in cartooning - from a genuine master!

- Phil Rushton

I also love his work...great seeing the differences...like the way the dog holds the book..etc..
look forward to your post..

Happy Days Christmas and fireworks are on my blog at the moment..by Roy..

Sorry about the delay (I didn't change the time, otherwise it would have gone online around 11:00 am this morning) but my post on Happy Andy and his Playful Pets is now online here.

I also get the feeling this work above is by Roy, blaing: its an instinct I got within a second of seeing the imagery.

Very nice imagery you have there---it would look nice framed and up on the wall [out of sunlight]


Wilson was a perfectionist who sometimes redrew perfectly good material from scratch again.

Thought these might be of interest - a couple of frames from some unfinished 'Pitch And Toss' sequences. Wilson evidently decided the drawings didn't look right and abandoned them. The uninked pencils give some indication of his working method - as Phil says, like a cartooning masterclass.
(Bear with me if the images fail to appear - I'm new to this forum lark).

As Peter pointed out a few days ago, some more of Roy Wilson's fascinating 'out-takes' are currently available on E-bay, and I'm more than happy to have picked up a number of them at very reasonable prices. In my opinion Roy is one of the few comic artists who deserves to be placed in the very top rank of indisputable geniuses - alongside Dudley Watkins, Ken Reid, Frank Bellamy, Jack Kirby, Jean Giraud and a handful of others (to be honest I'm not sure that even premier division artists like Leo Baxendale, Reg Parlett or Davey Law would qualify for quite the same distinction!) - but while work by the majority of those artists now tends to sell at eye-watering prices, Roy seems to be largely forgotten by modern collectors.

Still, as long as it means that I can pick up fabulous pieces like this iconic drawing of Hoofer the TeeVee GeeGee from TV Fun I'm certainly not going to complain!

...And the marvellous thing about that drawing is that it reprises one of the most fondly-remembered (and brilliantly choreographed) of all Roy's strips: the classic encounter between Hoofer's direct ancestor George the Jolly Gee-Gee and another wasp that appeared on the cover of Radio Fun no.2.



(Funnily enough George made his debut only a couple of weeks after a bunch of all-too-human mules had set Europe on it's lumbering path to the Second World War when they signed the infamous Munich Agreement with Hitler's Germany...! )

I nearly bought that one...But glad you got it...bought lots of 1976 Whoopee comics on ebay instead...

must be panel 1 it refers too...which Roy changed...

The amazing thing is that Roy almost NEVER repeated himself: even when he redrew the same panel over and over again he kept on introducing new poses and backgrounds to keep everything as fresh and spontaneous as possible!