EXTRACTS: Pirates! Illustrators Special Edition © 2020 The Book Palace (128 PAGES in Full edition)

16 FACING PAGE: One of a series of 13 covers by Ron Embleton for the comic, Lone Star Magazine , in the early 1950s. ‘Captain Cutlass’ was the only pirate strip series to appear in the comic. ABOVE: Big Pirate Comic from Scion with early artwork by Ron Embleton, 1947. RIGHT AND BELOW: Middy Malone , a pirate series written and created by Australian Syd Nicholls. Self-published, it was very popular ‘down under’. The fourth adventure of Sabatini’s ‘Captain Blood’ was published in the Thriller Comics Library under the title, ‘Captain Blood Sails Again’. It was again well scripted by Joan Whitford but the artwork did not have the same sense of bravura or historical atmosphere of the other three titles. It had a splendidly swashbuckling cover by James E. McConnell ( illustrators 11 ) but the interior black and white illustrations by Guido Buzzelli were, by comparison with the other ‘Captain Blood’ titles, somewhat lack-lustre. In 1956 D.C. Thomson published in full colour on the back page of their large-size comic, Topper, a splendidly action-packed strip serial of Rafael Sabat‐ ini’s ‘Captain Blood’ drawn by Paddy Brennan, Thomson’s top action artist at the time. It is unfortunate that only one of the great Chums stories was adapted into pictures for the Thriller Comics Library : ‘To Sweep the Spanish Main’. Adapted from the Chums serial and ostensibly authored by Admiral Lord Mountevans