EXTRACTS: PIRATE TALES Fleetway Picture Library Classics © 2020 Book Palace Books * 272 PAGES IN FULL EDITION

FLEETWAY PICTURE LIBRARY ™ CLA SS IC S 10 like quality that is present in most of his colour work. He also contributed paintings to two of the Amalgamated Press’ Robin Hood Annuals : for each of the 1959 and 1960 issues he painted both back and front covers as well as four magnificent colour plates. In the 1959 issue he additionally drew an adventure strip entitled ‘The Legend of Roland’, which, because it is printed on better quality paper, does far more justice to his artwork than those printed in the Thriller Comics/Picture Library . When the picture libraries went over to more war-based strips and Millar Watt’s fine historical covers were no longer required, a new outlet was found for the artist’s talent. In January 1960 Princess , a weekly for girls, was launched offering a good mix of strips, stories and articles. One particularly successful series was ‘Royal Daughters’, a two-page text feature that looked at the adventurous lives led by queens and princesses over the centuries, the highlight of which was a large, full colour painting by Millar Watt. Another of his stand-out contributions to Princess was a picture strip version of ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’. Spread across a double page and printed in red and black, the artist was given plenty of scope to make the strip as exciting as possible. There were no speech bubbles but instead each episode comprised nine or ten illustrations, with adjoining blocks of text. Millar Watt was allowed the freedom to vary the size of his illustrations to give more prominence to important scenes. Despite the unfortunate fact that some of the strip is drawn by another, inferior, artist, it remains the definitive strip version of Baroness Orczy’s adventure story. In January 1962, Leonard Matthews launched what was to become the most influential children’s magazine of the decade, Look and Learn , and Miller Watt became one of its most prolific contributors. Over the years he contributed hundreds of superlative illustrations to many different series and continued to do so right up until the time of his death. Few enthusiasts would deny that Millar Watt’s finest adventure strip was his version of ‘Treasure Island’ published in Ranger , during 1965 and 1966. As with his ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ strip it was informally laid out with text blocks rather than speech bubbles, but this time painted in full colour, using inks and watercolour. The strip is a real masterwork of the adventure strip genre in both conception and execution. Another of Leonard Matthew’s publications that benefited from Millar Watt’s work was the nursery title, Once Upon A Time , which included a splendid picture-story version of ‘Sinbad the Sailor’, the painted frames all richly embellished with Eastern detail. Millar Watt’s comic work was not confined to the Amalgamated Press alone: he contributed full colour features to D.C. Thomson’s comic annuals, the Beezer Book and the Sparky Book . Despite the fact that, at the time of painting the last of these features, Millar Watt was approaching eighty years of age and the end of his life, his work shows no sign of any falling off in quality. John Millar Watt died in December 1975, aged eighty. During a long career he had worked in almost every field of illustration: quality monthly magazines, daily newspaper strips, comics and annuals. As a cartoonist, strip artist and illustrator his work had brought joy to millions.