I finished reading Terry Bave's autobiography entitled Cartoons and Comic Strips a few days ago, and it was a smashing read! The book, which has just over 300 pages, talks about Terry's early life, breaking into comics and the inspiration for creating characters for many years.
The book is illustrated with suitable scans and cartoons both published and rejected, including Terry's first submitted cartoon and his first one published (which appeared in Picturegoer in 1954). Throughout the book are well over 100 drawings, many of which are full comic strips!
Terry goes very in depth with the creations of his characters, particulary Baby Whamster, his first break into comics, and how he quickly developed to producing half a dozen pages, if not more, every week! One thing I found very interesting is Scribbler, who turned out to be "too popular for his own good" - the strip was ended because he recieved TOO MUCH fan mail!
I was thrilled to see so much of the book dedicated to Whizzer and Chips which, as regular readers of this blog may know, is my favourite comic. Terry contibuted a good number of strips to the first issue of Whizzer and Chips and even created the 'raids', but I'm suprised to learn that he didn't even know the name of the comic until it was released! He also mentions the television advertisement for the comic, which featured an animated Ginger the cat (one of Terry's strips - Ginger's Tum). I've been looking for this ad for a long time, and have contacted many different companies and archives, but sadly with no success. Maybe somewhere someone has got it recorded, and will one day bring it to light.
At the back of the book is a complete list of all of Terry's characters and appearences in specials, annuals etc. The list, accompanied with occasional images, is a huge 44 pages long, and also notes when a strip first appeared, which comic it was in and wether Terry or Shiela created it or took it over from somebody else etc!
The book covers a lot of stuff, and I definitely recommend it for fans of his art, others looking for tips and tricks of the trade or somebody just looking for a good read. At the moment the book can only be ordered from Lulu and costs $23.75, which is equlivelant to about £15 at time of writing, and can be ordered by clicking on the link below:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-bave/cartoons-and-comic-strips/paperback/product-20625272.html
Yesterday I got my copy of Lion King of Story Papers by Steve Holland in the post, and, although I haven't read it all yet, I've flicked through and read the first chapter, and it is incredibly well researched and beautifully laid out with suitable illustrations. I'll be posting my thoughts once I've read it, but if you've already decided you want to get a copy, click on the link below!
http://bearalleybooks.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/lion-king-of-picture-story-papers_3.html
7 comments:
George, how many times have I told you? It's 'definitely', not 'definatly'. Commit it to memory at once.
The only person likely to (inadvertently) have had a recording of the W&C ad is the late Bob Monkhouse, who had several video recorders for recording TV shows back then. However, a VCR was about the price of a car, so they didn't enjoy a widespread domestic use back in 1969. It wasn't until around 10 years later, when they were far cheaper, that households started to have them.
Definitely, definitely, definitely!
It's always (well, not always) bothered me how EASY it is to find anything from America's cultural history, no matter how obscure (the amount of TV ads fro breakfast cereals from the 1950s alone is boggling).
Yet try and find anything like that from, say, before 1985 here and you'll mostly be met with a brick wall.
'Definitely' not 'definatly'! Got it! (I think.) It's just like 'intresting' and 'interesting'!
As for the videos, I don't suppose you know if they're still around in an archive somewhere do you? It would be a very cool ad to see!
The late Bob Monkhouse's videos still exist. Comedian (?) Lenny Henry's New Faces debut was found amongst them, allowing him to see it since he first did the show. ('Though I'm sure I saw it repeated somewhere before it was 'found' in Bob's collection.)
Therefore, you need to find out who now stores Bob Monkhouse's vast video collection. (Look for The Secret Life of Bob Monkhouse on BBC iplayer.)
I managed to find this:
http://www.kaleidoscopepublishing.co.uk/bobsfullhouseflyer.pdf
which lead me to this, the webpage of the people who own Bob's archive:
http://www.kaleidoscopepublishing.co.uk
and have sent them an email! Let's hope they have it!
I love reading this blog and got many insights about the Terry Bave life and how he inspires to go into comic world, I love to read his book as well. War of Heroes
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