EXTRACTS: Illustrators Issue 5 © 2013 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

92 issue for a new weekly, the Eagle. He presented it to various publishers, and eventually Hulton Press agreed to publish it. The first issue went on sale in April 1950. Morris and his family lived in Surrey, and Hampson set up a studio in their house. In November 1951, Morris launched Girl, a girls’ counterpart to the Eagle, which was followed by Robin in 1953, for younger children, and by Swift in 1954. Another cleric who was closely involved in the production of the comics was Anglican priest Edward Chad Varah, who supplemented his income by working as a script writer for Eagle and its sister publications; he also founded The Samaritans in 1953. When one thinks of Eagle, Frank Hampson’s strip of Dan Dare and the Mekon immediately spring to mind. However, Frank Bellamy who had worked for the comic producing ‘The Happy Warrior’, featuring the life of Winston Churchill, ‘The Shepherd King’, the life of the biblical King David, and ‘The Travels of Marco Polo’, amongst others, replaced Hampson and spent a year drawing Dan Dare, but his triumph for the comic was producing Heros the Spartan in 1962 and 1963. Illustrators editor Peter Richardson has edited and designed a beautiful book entitled Frank Bellamy’s Heros the Spartan. It was a privilege to be invited to do some minor production work on the book, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Bellamy’s incredible artwork at close quarters once again. Richardson has excelled himself with the editing and in his powerful designs of introductory pages featuring Bellamy’s drawings in monochrome, in contrast to page after page of colourful spreads, many of which have been scanned from the originals. There are forewords by John Byrne, Dave Gibbons, Walter Simonson, Ken Steacy, and John Watkiss, with an introduction by Norman Boyd, each giving their own views and insights into the working methods and life of this incredible artist. It is one of the best books of its kind that I have ever seen: pages and pages of pure joy. There must be plenty of us old codgers left who want to take this trip down memory lane, and I only hope that Geoff West, the publisher at Book Palace Books, has ordered enough copies to go round. Bryn Havord ● © Colin Frewin and Associates © Colin Frewin and Associates