Garth of the Daily Mirror - rare jigsaw

As a companion piece to yesterday's piece here's that other jigsaw that I mentioned. As you can see the subject is that other very popular newspaper strip Garth. This was up for sale on ebay a few months ago (for a B-I-N price for £99.52).

All other mentions of Garth on the blog can be found here

Lawless 2024 - the photos, part 3

Hard to believe it's another 9 months to Lawless, boo! While we're waiting for the time to pass here's part 3 of my photos from Lawless 2024. 

Part 1 (the artists) was here

Part 2 - 2000AD art was here

Here's just some of the amazing 2000AD art that David Roach had on display...

Mick McMahon art

(mainly) Carlos Ezquerra art

Belardinelli art

Belardinelli art (top), Garth by Frank Bellamy (middle), Carol Day by David Wright (bottom)

Brian Bolland art (top) and McMahon (below)

Garth - man of mystery

This is a rare beast this one, yes, it's "Garth - man of mystery" reprint volume (from the 1940s). This is the last of the reprint volumes of this era that I'm looking for (I've got the Jane reprints, the Rip Kirby reprints and a few others).

Good luck tracking this down!

Kapow - the art of making comics & film; original comic art, part 5

Just ended at the Rugby Art Museum & Gallery is Kapow - the art of making comics and film (more details here). If you've not yet been to this free exhibition here are just a few of the pages of original vintage British comics art that were on display

I looked at vintage British comic art here and here and here
I looked at 2000AD / Dredd art here

Here's the Frank Bellamy art that was on display...

UPDATED: vintage 'Daily Mirror' newspaper strip reprints

Following on from my post earlier this week (here) about Captain Reilly-Ffoul I thought I'd see what other vintage newspaper strip reprints are out there under the 'Mirror features publication' banner.

This is what I've found so far, do let me know if you've come across any other titles...(3 books added to the bottom of this post)

Jane on the sawdust trail

Jane's summer idle!

Garth - man of mystery

Belinda - shooting star

Belinda and the bomb alley boys!

The last 3 images are taken from the brilliant dandare.info site

Patsy's reflections

Patsy's Christmas reflections

Patsy's

The sly, sinister, scurvy adventures of Captail Reilly-FFoul

Friend of the blog Steven Taylor reminded me of this reprint...

Buck Ryan - the case of the broken thistle

and then, slightly later on, there were these reprints as well...

Farewell to Jane

...and then there was this unusual 'two in one' book...

 

Garth and Romeo Brown

Just Jake - by Bernard Graddon

I've enjoyed collecting newspaper strip reprints for some time now (partly because they seem even more under-appreciated than 'normal' British comics do) and I was pleased to recently pick up this reprint from the Daily Mirror 

I'd come across this slightly 'puppet' like front cover on another Daily Mirror reprint...Belinda in 'shooting star'...the effect is slightly...odd.

Anyway back to Captain Reilly-Ffoul...a quick look at Wikipedia (here) tells me that the strip ran in the Daily Mirror from 1938-1952 and it was drawn by Bernard Graddon. The strip is...

A satire of dramatic films and other comic strips, Just Jake depicted events at the village of Much Cackling in the county of Gertshire. The prime character, Captain A.R.P. Reilly-Ffoull, squire of Arntwee Hall, was parody of early movie villains. He was aided by his servant/butler Eric and the local serf, Titus Tallow. Jake, the original hero of the title, seldom appeared after the first year. Other characters were schoolgirl Missy, old crone Maida Grannit and Cactus, a black man.

(having seen a drawing of Cactus I can confidently say that this strip isn't going to get reprinted anytime soon) 

Perhaps the most memorable feature of the strip is the fact that one of the captain's exclamations 'stap me!' was used by Dennis Gifford as the title for his early work on the British newspaper comic strip...

The book was dedicated as follows..."For Pandy - and in memory of Captain A.R.P. Reilly-Ffoul, F.F.I. and bar" so the strip was clearly a favourite of Gifford's. 

See this post for my listing of Denis Gifford's comic related books.

Anyway, back to the captain...here are a few pages from the book that give you an idea of the strip.

The book starts at strip reference D244 ('Educating Eric') so I don't think this can be the first ever strip. The strip runs to D308 and then there's another strip that runs from E1 to E37. 

32 pages plus covers in all. Black & white artwork throughout in a slightly not quite square format.

Add caption

Romeo Brown & Garth - a two-in-one book

Inspired by an article on Down the Tubes a couple of weeks back (here) about newspaper strip character Romeo Brown I've fished out my copy of the only Romeo Brown book published in this country, 

It's a small rectangular book (only slightly larger than a copy of Commando really) that is hard to acquire, I've not seen many copies for sale over the years. 63 pages of risqué daily strips with our hero.

The other book mentioned is this one...

A4 size, 20 page booklet