The Humorous Art of Diving - Shiner

As 1969 drew to a close, publisher IPC's line-up of comics lacked any real rivals to D.C. Thomson's range of humour titles. Whizzer and Chips changed that. At the time the mighty Beano and Dandy were 4d (four pence) each for 16 pages. Instead of competing at the same level, Whizzer and Chips gave readers 32 pages for 6d but with the gimmick that it was two comics in one (16 page Chips sat in the middle of 16 page Whizzer). This proved to be a success and the experiment was later repeated with Shiver and Shake and the football title Score 'n' Roar.

Cover star of Chips was Shiner who was constantly in trouble with his mum for getting a black eye. The strip was drawn by the prolific Mike Lacey (son of adventure strip artist Bill Lacey) who also produced work for Buster, Knockout, Monster Fun, Cor!!, Whoopee!, Jackpot, Shiver and Shake, Wow and Cheeky Weekly. 

This example from 1973 has a twist on the usual outcome and features a great cartoon octopus by Lacey. (Click for larger image).

The True, Thrilling Art of Diving

Operation 'Rescue' - True Thrilling Tales of Human Endeavour was a weekly feature in Valiant comic during 1966 and 1967.

The following page from a December '66 edition features an incident mentioned on a couple of covers featured in an earlier Art of Diving.  The shark involved was an Oceanic Whitetip but the artist here has just drawn a generic, comic-book shark! (Click for larger image.)

In November 1950, Life magazine published a feature on Cousteau and printed some of the pictures taken by him during the incident. You can see them here (pages 124 & 125).

The Original Art of Diving - Man's Action

Today I'm featuring the original artwork of a couple of Men's Action covers.

The first one is from 1965 and is by John Duillo. (Click for larger image).

John Duillo (1928 - 2003) had a long career as an artist after serving in the navy. He produced numerous covers for men's adventure magazines and around 500 paperback book covers. Many of these were westerns but he also covered other genres. In later life he was best known for his western and American Civil War paintings and served as president of the Society of American Historical Artists.

The second offering is from 1967 but unfortunately I don't know the identity of the artist.

Interesting to see that the artwork was flipped for publication.

 

Neptune's Kingdom

No actual scuba-diving today but this two page feature come from the 1960 Topper Book (published in 1959) and looks at deep sea exploration. (Click for larger images).

 

The Daily Art of Diving - Garth

Garth, the Daily Mirror's long-running adventure strip, first appeared in 1943. In 1971, British comics legend Frank Bellamy took over the art duties. The Cloud of Balthus was his first complete story, having taken over from John Allard part way through the previous tale.

Early in the story, Garth has a close encounter with a shark... (Click for larger images).

Later in the story, Lee Wan turns out to be not quite as friendly as she first appeared to be...

Now, you know how I said this was Bellamy's first complete story? Well it's not quite that simple. I don't know if Allard (who was hired aged 15 to assist original artist Steve Dowling) was reluctant to hand over to Bellamy but at this point he would still contribute some art to the strip. The first panel in the strip above is drawn by Allard.

I love the first panel of this final strip - very effective use of black and white.

The Daily Art of Diving - Archie

Just a quickie to start off 2016. This strip is from a 1978 issue of Everything's Archie but originally appeared in newspapers. Reprints of the daily strip were used as space fillers in the comic books. I'm pretty sure the art is by the original Archie artist, Bob Montana. (Click for larger image).

 

The Art of Diving with Dolphins - The Gun Runners

For the final blog of 2015 we're going back to Christmas 1959 when thousands of children all over the UK would have received the Topper Book for 1960 amongst their presents (The book didn't actually have the year on the cover but it was the standard for annuals to be dated for the year to come). One of the adventure strips inside was Dive With the Dolphins which had finished its seven-month run in the weekly comic earlier in 1959 (Regular Art of Diving readers will know that the strip had started life in 1955 as Lucky Dicky Dolphin). Once again, Skipper and Dicky get the lion's share of the action but Sue's quick thinking helps save the day. The artwork is by Bill Holroyd (1919 - 2000). Click for larger images.

William Henry "Bill" Holroyd began his career at a Manchester advertising agency in 1937. After serving with the Royal Artillery during World War II he began freelancing for DC Thomson. Initially working for a number of smaller publishers as well, he soon became excusive to Thomson's where his brother Albert was a staff artist. Speaking of family connections, their sister Elizabeth was married to fellow Dandy and Beano artist Ken Reid. Equally at home drawing humour or adventure stories, Bill is probably most associated with The Dandy where his many strips included Screwy Driver, Spunky and his Spider, Brassneck and Jack Silver. However, his work also appeared in The Beano (The Iron Fish, Red Rory of the Eagles), The Beezer (The Voyage of the Bushwacker) and even in Bunty where he was the original artist on The Four Marys.

As an extra Christmas treat, here's an example of Bill's work on the weekly Dolphins strip from January 1959.