DAILY MIRROR — Comic Strip Images, Part 2

   

[1] Belinda, June 23, 1938.      

by John Adcock

 T  HERE is very little information to be found on British newspaper comic strip history — we wrote last year, see links below. Here is our latest. Any additional information is still welcomed, especially missing names of WRITERS and ARTISTS…

[2] Ruggles, by Frank and Steve Dowling, June 23, 1938.

[3] Ruggles, by Frank and Steve Dowling, June 25, 1938.

 ★   Ruggles — at times titled The Ruggles or The Ruggles Family — by Frank Dowling (writer; from 1946 succeeded by Guy Morgan, William Connor & Ian Gammidge) & “Blik” (artist; real name Steve Dowling, sometimes ghosted by Angus Scott): debuted 11/MAR/1935; ended 03/AUG/1957.

[4] Introducing Belinda, by William Connor and “Gloria” [from Australian newspaper], Dec 16, 17, 18, 19, 1949.

 ★   Belinda Blue-Eyes by William Connor (writer) & “Gloria” (artist; later drawn by Steve Dowling under the same pseudonym; sometimes ghosted by Angus Scott): debuted 30/SEP/1935; title shortened to Belinda 07/SEP/1939; drawn by Tony Royle from 1943; written by Peter O’Donnell for a while in 1952; later scripts by Don Freeman; ended 17/OCT/1959.

[5] Gordon Fife, by Bob Moore and Carl Pfeufer, [from Australian newspaper] July 24, 1937.

[6] Gordon Fife, by Bob Moore and Carl Pfeufer, [from Australian newspaper] July 31, 1937.

 ★  Gordon Fife, Soldier of Fortune (USA) by Bob Moore (writer) & John Hales (art), later drawn by Carl Pfeufer: debuted 03/AUG/1936; ended 16/OCT/1937.

[7] Carl Pfeufer, presented in the Brooklyn Eagle, Nov 27, 1935.

CONTINUED IN OUR NEXT:
Terror Keep and Buck Ryan…

Meanwhile, any additional information is welcomed, especially missing names of WRITERS and ARTISTS, gathered in our DAILY MIRROR comic strip series index, compiled and researched by Leonardo De Sá, spanning the years 1919-2014, HERE.

GO BACK TO PART 1 HERE.

Pennies, Profits and Poverty in Bohemian Fleet Street

There is scarcely a writer at the present day, I believe, connected with the periodical press, but who has written picturesque, humorous, or descriptive sketches, upon the sights, characters and curiosities, natural and physical, of the Great Metropolis, the Great Wen, the Modern Babylon, the World of London, the Giant City, the Monster Metropolis, the Nineveh of the nineteenth century, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. — Curiosities of London, in Household Words, June 23, 1855

ROBERT J. KIRKPATRICK’s new information-packed book Pennies, Profits and Poverty; A Biographical Directory of Wealth and Want in Bohemian Fleet Street is an arresting account of the lives, trials and tribulations of the publishers and authors who roamed Fleet Street and environs in the nineteenth century. A small part of this book appeared originally in posts published on Yesterday’s Papers and Steve Holland’s Bear Alley. Those posts have been expanded by Kirkpatrick. Much new biographical material is also added with the aid of digital newspapers, genealogical sites, and the hitherto almost untouched archives of the Victorian era Royal Literary Fund set up in 1773 to provide aid to the beggared and the destitute.

HIS FOCUS is on the contrast of wealth and poverty among the habitués of subliterary London who produced cheap radical newspapers, comic periodicals, domestic romances, boys’ weeklies and sensational literature for the amusement of what was generally referred to among the educated classes as “the mob” or “the million.”

SOME 150 LIVES and finances of publishers and authors are examined in depth. The first part, PUBLISHERS AND PROFITS, begins with the radical publishers of the penny press, among them the Duncombes, Henry Hetherington, James Watson, John Cleave, William Strange and the arch-pornographer William Dugdale. All of the publishers of penny bloods, major and minor are represented; Lloyd, Clark, Pattie, Clements, Caffyn, Pierce, Dipple, Harrison and John Dicks. Moving into the period of the boys’ weeklies and penny dreadfuls we are introduced to Brett, Fox, Ritchie, Lucas, Farrah, Allingham, the Shureys and Alfred Harmsworth. 

HACKS AND HANDOUTS, the title of Part II, examines the often precarious lives of the scribblers Pierce Egan, Hannah Maria Jones, Henry Downes Miles, G.W.M. Reynolds, John Frederick Smith, Thomas Peckett Prest, Thomas Frost, James Lindridge, James Greenwood and James Malcolm Rymer. The lives of the founders of Punch are illuminated with essays on the Mayhews, the à Beckett’s, Ebenezer Landells, Mark Lemon and Shirley Brooks. Some of those featured established good literary reputations with the establishment; Angus Bethune Reach, George Augustus Sala, the Blanchard’s and the Jerrold’s. A list that doesn’t cover half of the lives represented in this 549-page volume.

A DEFINITIVE WORK —lPennies, Profits and Poverty is a learned classic of the celebrated and the obscure; at one and the same time a biographical dictionary, a financial study of the cheap press, a definitive reference work, and an intimate portrait of Bohemian Fleet Street in the nineteenthlcentury.

Pennies, Profits and Poverty; 
A Biographical Directory of 
Wealth and Want in Bohemian Fleet Street
—
Available through 
Amazon Books.

This Man is Dangerous — Part III

[21] May 1, 1952

[22] May 8, 1952

[23] May 15, 1952

[24] May 28, 1952[25] June 4, 1952 MISSING

[26] June 12, 1952

[27] June 19, 1952

[28] June 26, 1952[29] July 3, 1952 MISSING

[30] July 10, 1952

[31] July 17, 1952[32] July 31, 1952 MISSING

[33] Aug 7, 1952

[34] Aug 14, 1952

[34] Aug 21, 1952

[35] Aug 28, 1952

[36] Sept 4, 1952

[37] Sept 11, 1952

[38] Sept 18, 1952

[39] Sept 25, 1952

[40] Oct 2, 1952

[41] Oct 9, 1952

[42] Oct 16, 1952

[43] Oct 23, 1952

This Man is Dangerous — Part I HERE.

This Man is Dangerous — Part II HERE.

[lThe Endl]

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This Man is Dangerous — Part II

(Dames Don’t Care, London: Collins, 1937)

[11] Feb 14, 1952

[12] Feb 21, 1952

[13] Feb 28, 1952

[14] Mar 6, 1952

[15] Mar 13, 1952

[16] Mar 20, 1952

[17] Mar 27, 1952

[18] April 3, 1952

[19] April 10, 1952

[20] April 17, 1952

This Man is Dangerous — Part I HERE.

[lTo be continuedl] 

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This Man is Dangerous — Part I

Most criminals commit crime because of some woman or other. She is usually very good looking. She is usually quite charming. — Peter Cheyney

He boasted that Fleet Street friends knew him as “Ten Thousand Smackers Cheyney” because he claimed that was the fee a journalist should aim at in writing a really big series of articles. — ‘Author Made Crime Pay With Rapid-fire Stories,’ Sydney Morning Herald, June 28, 1951

[2] This Man is Dangerous, October 23, 1952

PETER CHENEY. Peter Cheney began writing newspaper serials in 1926 with The Adventures of Alonzo. The greater crime novel reading public was first introduced to his pulp-writing in 1936 with publication of This Man is Dangerous in book form. 

LEMMY CAUTION. The book featured an American G-man named Lemmy Caution, a hard-drinking, hardboiled, attractive-to-dames detective. Books were filled with sultry unscrupulous dames, written in the prevailing American vernacular. In addition to the Lemmy Caution novels Cheyney wrote books about characters Slim Callaghan and Nick Bellamy as well as spy fiction. Cheyney’s career was bookended by Edgar Wallace in the 20s and Ian Fleming in the 50s. As one obituarist noted he “had the comparatively rare ability to produce book after book of ascending sales quality.” A popular radio drama, newspaper serials and films helped spur on sales of the Peter Cheyney canon. By the time of his death in July 1951 the “Thriller King” was earning 1,500,000 pounds a year. 

[3]

Major Reginald Evelyn Peter Southouse-Cheyney was born in County Clare, Ireland on February 22, 1896 and attended the University of London. He began writing professionally, in verse, in 1910 while still in his teens. Cheyney was a law clerk, soldier, police reporter, actor, director, and journalist. He was wounded in the Great War and mustered out in 1917. He formed and directed the Editorial and Literary Services in London, was editor of the St. John Ambulance Gazette (1929-1943) and news-editor of the Sunday Graphic (1933-1934). By March 1949 he was being touted as “Britain’s best-selling author.” Cheyney died on June 26, 1951.

[4] Dressed to Kill, illustrated by Leonard Cutten, April 4, 1946

On November 29, 1951, a comic strip version of This Man is Dangerous began running in the Western Mail (Australia) and concluded October 23, 1952. The only credit given was “by Peter Cheyney,” and, if the strip did not originate in the Western Mail, it probably had its source in a London newspaper.

[1] Nov 29, 1951

[2] Dec 6, 1951
[3] Dec 13, 1951 strip MISSING

[4] Dec 27, 1951

[5] Jan 3, 1952

[6] Jan 10, 1952

[7] Jan 17, 1952

[8] Jan 24, 1952
[9] January 31, 1952 MISSING

[10] Feb 7, 1952

This Man is Dangerous — Part II HERE.

This Man is Dangerous — Part III HERE.

[lTo be continuedl] 

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