José Luis and Alberto Salinas

José Luis Salinas was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 11 Feb 1908. His grandfather was an emigrant in Montevideo during the time of the Rosas. In 1929 he was employed by the Exitus agency as an advertising artist. Although he stayed until 1939 Salinas began experimenting with comics, concentrating on the romantic style of Hal Foster, Burne Hogarth, and Alex Raymond.

In December 1936 he made his name when a thrilling pirate serial, Hernan el Corsario, began publishing in Patoruzú, a magazine named after Dante Quinterno’s famous comic Indian. In 1937 he began illustrating comic adaptations of the classics for El Hogar. Titles included The Last of the Mohicans, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and The Three Musketeers.

In 1949 José Luis moved to the United States where he assisted various cartoonists (including Frank Robbins) before he was contracted by King Features to draw The Cisco Kid western comic strip, with scripts by Rod Reed. The strip began on 15 Jan 1951 and came to an end on 10 Aug 1968. He contributed to the British weekly Tell Me Why in 1969 and drew a King Features comic strip, Gunner, written by Alfredo Grassi, from 1971 to 1972. He died 10 Jan 1985.

José Luis’ son Alberto César Salinas, born in Buenos Aires 1 Nov 1932, followed in his father’s footsteps, and became a popular cartoonist in Argentina and abroad. He too, began in advertising; for Pueyrredón Propaganda. His initial comic work began in 1950 with the series Capiango in Superhombres magazine. In 1961 he drew Spartacus for the Italian Eurostudio. In 1968 Alberto ghosted The Cisco Kid comic strip while José Luis was in Europe. José Luis, who generally worked without assistants, had problems with his eyesight and was operated on for cataracts. The strip continued with the help of his son.

Alberto Salinas returned to Argentina where he worked as an illustrator and drew comics for Editorial Atlántida, Editorial Columba and Editorial García Ferré. Dago, with scripts by Paraguayan writer Robin Wood, was first published by Columba in Argentina then in Italy for Eura Editoriale from 1983-1986. He drew a Dracula comic with scenario by the same author. He contributed many illustrations to Look and Learn in London and taught workshops in his specialty in Britain, Spain, France and Sweden. He was the recipient of the prestigious Yellow Kid Award in Italy. His paintings of horses were exhibited at the Exhibition Rural de Palermo.

Alberto Salinas was a knight of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. He died about 2 January 2005, apparently victim of a shooting accident. His Wikipedia entry gives the date of death as 27 Nov 2004 but I am relying on the obituary which appeared in La Nacian Cultura for 3 Jan 2005.

Rocambole

Ponson du Terrail’s great criminal mastermind Rocambole was introduced in France in La Patrie in 1859 in a newspaper feuilleton called Les drames de Paris that has remained in print to this day. Rocambole’s adventures were popular all over the continent, in Belgium, Spain, France, Italy and Germany. In England he appeared in 1867 at the Grecian Theatre in a wild melodrama called The Knave of Hearts. The author was William Suter.

Feuilleton is French, from feuille, “a leaf.” The word was also a pun on Octave Feuillet (1821-1890), the originator of the French newspaper serial. Its interesting that “flying sheets” as sold by flying stationers -- street hawkers and ballad singers "on the fly," was a term for English broadsheets, usually printed on one side, sometimes just text -- sometimes caricature like the broadsheet "comicalities" of C. J. Grant, the Cruikshank’s, John Leech, and Phiz. In Germany “Fliegende Blätter” the comic periodical published by Braun & Schneider translates as “flying leaves.”

The creator of Rocambole, Ponson du Terrail, was a favorite with the caricaturists of La Lune and La Petite Press, in one picture stirring his characters into a boiling pot, perhaps this was the origin of the term “pot-boiler.”

The author’s greatest influence was Sue’s Mysteries of Paris, which had in turn been influenced by The Memoirs of Vidoq, the “French Jonathan Wild.” Rocambole was the grandfather of Moriarty, Zigomar, Rouletabille and Fantomas. Ponson du Terrail wrote most of his manuscripts at a small coffee-house on the Boulevard du Temple, in Paris. When he died the café was renamed Café Rocambole in his honor.

Most recently (2009) Rocambole was the subject of a bande dessinée from Delcourt’s Ex-Libris series of classic tales of literature where he keeps good company with Dickens, Poe, Kafka and Voltaire. The scenario was by Frédéric Brrémaud with great art by the Italian cartoonist Federico Bertolucci.

Excerpt from Parisian Notabilities Bentley’s Vol. XVI 1864

“In these pages I have already given some interludes from a very chequered career in Paris, extending over ten years. I now purpose consulting my diary and telling my readers something about various strange characters whom I either met or heard of during the period. I cannot commence my picture gallery with a worthier type of the day than the most popular novelist who has stepped into the popular shoes of Alexander the great, and is becoming more and more adored by the lovers of sensationalism with every romance his prolific pen produces.

The Vicomte Charles Dieudonné de Ponson du Térrail is a gentleman who earns his fifty thousand francs a year, and hence is a highly respected personage, who in the great gold balance, in which everybody is weighed in Paris, stands higher than a councilor of state, who has only twenty-five thousand francs a year. Since the new Empire it has been fashionable to give any man who distinguishes himself in any way the agnomen of Napoleon; and thus Ponson du Térrail is called, and not unfairly so, the Napoleon of the Feuilletons. He has really acquired the first place in the rez de chausée of the daily papers. He rules there as an unbridled autocrat; everything is laid aside when he appears with a “to be continued,” and many thousand readers, male and female, certainly read Ponson’s Feuilleton before they turn to current events.

The great significance of the Parisian feuilletons dates from the time when the two most celebrated romance writers, Dumas and Sue, commenced the publication of their sensational and monstrous works, which day by day, kept the readers in a state of excitement, and spread through Europe in wretched translations. It was stated with amazement that Dumas was paid a hundred thousand francs for his “Monte Christo,” Sue an equal sum for his “Wandering Jew,” and even double for his “Mysteries of Paris.” Such a thing could not be comprehended, and such was the case with the romances themselves, which were nothing but a pot-pourri of impossibilities, absurd crimes, and eccentric scenes of virtue, but which pleased through their very eccentricity and impossibility, and were not merely read, but devoured.

From that period all French romances passed through the feuilleton, though not with the same success, and, only to mention one author, George Sand made her début before the public in this way, and in a few years laid the foundation of her present enormous fortune; though she wrote her first romance in a wretched garret on the Quai des Augustines. Such prospects were so tempting as to produce hundreds of imitators; but as in Paris only novelty draws so long as it is novel, the same was the case with the feuilletonists -- the wares gradually fell in price, the gold mines were exhausted, and the dream of California was unattainable by the majority. After the February revolution politics exclusively occupied heads and pens, until the coup d’etat put an end to liberty of the press and political discussions, and turned the attention of the French once again to more innocent and less dangerous literary pleasures.”

The entire Bentley’s article can be read HERE (pp. 343).

Spirou le journal d’un ingénue

Spirou le journal d’un ingénue, scénario et dessin by Émile Bravo, Dupuis 2008.

This fourth album in Dupuis’ alternate series of Spirou tales is a very impressive work of Hergéan inspired comic art. It preceded Yann and Schwartz bande dessinée Spirou Le Groom Vert-De-Gris by one year. Schwartz and Yann reworked the children’s comic as a violent fast moving adult-oriented adventure, while children’s book illustrator Bravo’s version is a quiet slow moving evocation of childhood, first love and friendship in the tumultuous year 1939. In May of that year the journal Le Vingtième Siècle stopped publication of the Tintin episode then in progress; Tintin in the Land of Black Gold.

Spirou works as a bellhop at the Moustic Hotel but lives quite some distance away in a seedy part of town in a top floor room with plank floors and peeling walls. He sleeps on a lumpy mattress on an iron cot with a chamber pot and a bowl for morning ablutions. He readies himself for work in front of a cracked mirror and has a picture of a Madonna and child on the wall. His shelf contains copies of the Bible, Davy Crockett and Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Bravo draws with a brush in a naïve style very similar (probably unintended) to that of John Stanley’s 60’s comic Thirteen Going on Eighteen.

The story does involve Nazis but that peg of the plot is peripheral to Bravo’s main concern, the blushing romance between Spirou and a young Jewish girl who also works at the Moustic Hotel in domestic service. There are dazzlingly atmospheric pages involving Spirou’s first meeting with the journalist Fantasio; a cold morning game of football with a neighborhood kid gang; a revival of Spip, the squirrel, from an accidental electrocution; a boat-ride on the lake with his girl; an open air sale of used goods; and Nazi intrigue at the majestic Moustic Hotel. Unusual for these days my fingers keep itching to pull this unforgettable album off the shelf to revisit haunting images that stick to the brain like glue.

A blog devoted to the art of Émile Bravo can be found HERE.

Alberto Giolitti (1923-1993)

Alberto Giolitti art from the pages of Dell's The Cisco Kid no. 38 Jan-Mar 1958.

Tintin et Milou

The first time I laid eyes on the intrepid moon-faced reporter Tintin and his sagacious dog Snowy was in elementary school about 1959 when I delighted in finding a copy of the Methuen book Red Rackham's Treasure in the school library.

Tintin et Milou first appeared in the 11th issue of Le Petit Vingtiéme, the weekly children’s supplement to the Belgian daily newspaper Le Viengtiéme Siècle on 10 January 1929. In 1951 the strip was serialized in the British comic weekly Eagle, followed by Methuen’s English-language versions of the albums, beginning with The Black Island in 1958. Translation was by Leslie-Lonsdale Cooper and Michael Turner.

‘Tintin, Milou, and European Humanism’ was written 3 October 1957 for The Listener, and is a welcome counterpoint to scurrilous attacks on Hergé on the internet and in print. Tintin and Asterix the Gaul were in trouble in England as early as October 1983, when librarians received complaints of racism and sexism in both titles. Tintin was considered the worst offender. This brought forth a letter to the Times which said “Mr. Dunn admits that the children who frequent the library would be sorry to see the books banned: on the available evidence, so would anyone with any sense or sense of humour.”

“I never met Georges Remi. I didn't miss anything,” wrote Pierre Assouline in the introduction to his recent biography, Hergé: the Man Who Created Tintin, Oxford University Press, 2011. Actually he missed quite a lot. Assouline knows or cares nothing about comics so he ignores them almost all together. His biography is like reading about a cipher. Hergé could be a banker, a baker, or a bureaucrat, rather than one of the most famous and influential comic creators who ever lived.

I would recommend another biography in English instead: Benoît Peeters Hergé, Son of Tintin, the John Hopkins University Press, 2012. Peeters knew Hergé personally, interviewed him, and does not dissasociate the man from his work. Nor does he shy away from the more contentious aspects of wartime collaboration.

Comic History

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

James Parton: Caricature and Other Comic Art, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1878

William Murrell: A History of American Graphic Humor, Volume I (1745-1865), New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1933

William Murrell: A History of American Graphic Humor, Volume II (1865-1938), New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938.

Martin Sheridan: Comics and Their Creators, 1944.

Coulton Waugh: The Comics, University Press of Mississippi, 1947.

Lancelot Thomas Hogben: From cave painting to comic strip: a kaleidoscope of human communication, New York : Chanticleer Press, 1949.

Stephen D. Becker: Comic Art in America. Simon & Schuster 1959.

Jules Feiffer: The Great Comic Book Heroes. Dial, 1965.

James Steranko: The Steranko History of Comics Vol. One. Superghraphics, 1970.

James Steranko: The Steranko History of Comics 2. Supergraphics, 1972.

David Kunzle: The Early Comic Strip, [2 volumes] Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.

Jerry Robinson: The comics: an illustrated history of comic strip art, New York: Putnam, 1974.

Ron Goulart: The Adventurous Decade: Comic Strips in the 1930’s, Arlington House, 1975.

Bill Blackbeard: The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977.

Richard Marschall: The Sunday Funnies. Chelsea House, 1978.

Richard Marschall: Milton Caniff, Rembrandt of the Comic Strip. Flying Buttress, 1981.

John Canemaker: Winsor McCay: His Life and Art. Abbeville Press, 1987.

Richard Marschall: America’s Great Comic Strip Artists: From the Yellow Kid to Peanuts. Abbeville, 1989.

Brian Walker: The Comics Before 1945. Harry N. Abrams, 2002.

Brian Walker: The Comics After 1945. Harry N. Abrams, 2004.

Dan Nadel: Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969. Abrams, 2006.

Peter Maresca: Little Nemo in Slumberland So Many Splendid Sundays. Vol. 1. Sunday Press, 2006

Robert C. Harvey: Meanwhile... a Biography of Milton Caniff. Fantagraphics, 2007

Peter Maresca: Little Nemo in Slumberland. Vol. 2. Sunday Press, 2009

John Wells: American Comic Book Chronicles 1960-64. TwoMorrows Publishing, 2012

Eddie Campbell: The Goat Getters: Jack Johnson, the FIGHT of the CENTURY, and How a Bunch of Raucous Cartoonists Reinvented Comics, IDW Publishing/Ohio State University Press (The Library of American Comics), May 1, 2018

MEXICO

Juan Manuel Aurrecoechea & Armando Bartra: Puros Cuentos : la Historia de la Historieta en México - Edited by Consejo. Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares and Editorial Grijalbo, Mexico, D.F. 1988, 1993, 1994. 3 vols.: I. 1884-1934 ; II. 1934-1950 ; III. 1934-1950.

CANADA

Alexander Ross: A Fond Portrait of those Wild Wartime Comics [article]. Maclean's Magazine 19 Sept 1964.

Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert, designed by Clive Smith: The Great Canadian Comic Books. Toronto: Peter Martin Associates, 1971.

Michel Ouelette: La bande dessinée québécoise est bien partie! A brief five page history of French-Canadian bd from the small press underground Mainmise. Mainmise, November 1974.

John Bell: Canuck Comics. Montreal: Matrix Books, 1986.

Carman Cumming: Sketches from a Young Country: the images of Grip magazine. University of Toronto Press, 1997.

John Bell: Invaders from the North. Toronto, Dundurn Press, 2006.

UNITED KINGDOM

Thomas Wright: A History of Caricature & Grotesque in Literature and Art. Virtue Brothers, 1864.

Graham Everitt: English Caricaturists and graphic humorists of the nineteenth century. S. Sonnenschein, 1893.

George Perry/Alan Aldridge: The Penguin Book of Comics. Harmondsworth 1967.

Denis Gifford: Stap me! The British Newspaper Strip. Aylesbury 1971.

Denis Gifford: The British Comic Catalogue 1874-1974. Mansell, 1975.

Denis Gifford: Happy Days: a century of comics. Jupiter Books 1975.

Denis Gifford: Victorian Comics. Allen & Unwin, 1976.

Peter Bailey: Ally Sloper's Half-Holiday: Comic Art in the 1880’s [article]. History Workshop, no. 16, Autumn 1983.

Denis Gifford: The International Book of Comics. Hamlyn, 1984.

Alan and Laurel Clark: Comics an Illustrated History, Green Wood, 1991.

Roger Sabin: Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art. Phaidon, 1996.

Paul Gravett/Peter Stanbury: Great British Comics. Aurum, 2006.

Alan Clark: Edwardian Comic Papers, A Half Holiday publication, 2021

Alan Clark: The Fun Factory of Farringdon Street, A Half Holiday publication, 2021

Alan Clark: Sugar-Plums & Tootletum - The Work of C.H. Ross, A Half Holiday publication, 2021

Alan Clark: Ally Sloper – His life & Times, A Half Holiday publication, 2021

Alan Clark: Comic papers of the Platinum Age – Creators & Their Work: 1874-1914, A Half Holiday publication, 2022

PORTUGAL

Leonardo De Sà/Antonio Dias de Deus: Dicionario dos autores de banda desenhada e cartoon em Portugal. Amadora 1999.

Leonardo De Sà: O Sonho Comanda a Arte -- Considerações Oniricas Antes e Depois de Winsor McCay [article]. BDAmadora 2005.

Joao Paulo Paiva Boleo/Varlos Bandeiras Pinheiro: Le Portugal en bulles. Lisbon 2000.

SPAIN

Luis Gasca: Los Comics en Espana. Barcelona: Editorial Lumen, 1969

Antonio Martin: Historia del comic español: 1875-1939. Editorial Gustavo Gili, 1978.

Antonio Martin: Los Inventores del Comic Español 1873-1900. Collections Moebius, 2000.

Pedro Porcel: Clásicos en jauja. La historia del tebeo. Valenciana Edicions de Ponent, 2002

Pedro Porcel: Tragados por el abismo, La historieta de aventuras en España. Edicions de Ponent, 2010

TURKEY

Sanat Dünyamiz (Ed.): Çizgi roman: çiszgi, roman. Istanbul 1997.

Levent Cantek: Türkiye'de Çizgi Roman. 2nd Ed. Istanbul 2002.

YUGOSLAWIA

Slavko Dragincic/Zdravko Zupan: Istorija Jugoslawenskog Stripa. Novi Sad 1986.

AUSTRALIA

John Ryan: Panel by Panel. An illustrated history of Australian Comics.

INDONESIA

M. Bonneff: Les bandes dessinées Indonésiennes. Paris 1976.

ARGENTINA

Carlos Trillo/Guillermo Saccomanno: Historia de la Historieta Argentina. Buenos Aires 1980.

Franco Fossati: Il fumetto argentino. Genova ca. 1980.

Judith Gociol/Diego Rosemberg: La historieta argentina. Buenos Aires 2000.

Judith Gociol & José Maria Gutiérrez: La Historieta Salvaje. Primeras series argentinas [1907-1929]. Ediciones de la Flor, 2012.

LATIN AMERICA

Div.: Historietas. Milano, 1997.

BRASIL

Herman Lima: História da Caricatura no Brasil (4 volumes). José Olympio Editora 1963

Ionaldo A. Cavalcanti: O mundo dos Quadrinhos. Editora Símbolo 1977

Álvaro de Moya: História da História em Quadrinhos. Editora Brasiliense 1993 (segunda edição aumentada).

Gonçalo Junior: A guerra dos Gibis. Editora Companhia das Letras 2004 (conta a história da guerra entre dois grandes empresários depois do advento dos suplementos em quadrinhos no Brasil - Gibi é o mesmo que revista em quadrinhos)

Roberto Guedes: A saga dos super-heróis brasileiros. Opera Graphica Editora 2005.

Goida & André Kleinert: Enciclopédia dos Quadrinhos. Editora L&PM 2011 (segunda edição aumentada)

Luciano Magno: HISTORIA DA CARICATURA BRASILEIRA: OS PRECURSORES E A CONSOLIDAÇAO DA CARICATURA NO BRASIL. Gala Edições 2012

Rogério de Campos: IMAGERIA O nascimento das histórias em quadrinhos. 2015

Lancelott Martins: Catálogo de Heróis Brasileiros (2 volumes). Universo Editora Independente 2016

ITALY

Carlo della Corte: I fumetti. Milano 1961.

Leonardo Becciu: Il fumetto in Itala. Firenze 1971.

Alfredo Castelli: Eccoci ancora qui!; 1895-1919; I primi 25 anni del fumetto americano per quotidiani, 2006.

Fabio Gadducci [Ed.]: SIGNs - Studies in Graphic Narratives. International Journal for the History of Early Comics and Sequential Art. No. 1, 2007.

Matteo Stefanelli and Gianni Bono [Ed.]: Fumetto! 150 Anni di storie italiane [150 years of Italian stories]. Rizzoli 2013.

FRANCE

Champfleury: Histoire de la caricature antique. Paris, E. Dentu, 1867.

Pierre Couperie and others: A History of the Comic Strip New York: Crown Publishers, 1967.

Pierre Couperie and others: Bande dessinée et figuration narrative. Paris 1967.

Jacques Sternberg: Les Chefs-d'uvre de la bande dessinée, Paris: Éditions Planète. 1967.

Jacques Marny: Le monde étonnant des bandes dessinées. Paris 1968.

Francis Lacassin: Pour un 9e art la bande dessinée. Paris 1971.

Georges Pernin: Un Monde étrange; la bande dessinée, Paris, Éditions Clédor, 1974.

Gérard Blanchard: Histoire de la bande dessinée: une histoire des histoires en images de la préhistoire à nos jours. Verviers: Marabout Université, 1974.

Michel Pierre: La bande dessinée. Larousse, 1976.

Richard Medioni: Mon camarade, Vaillant, Pif Gadget , L’histoire complète, 1901-1994. Les journaux pour enfants de la mouvance communiste et leurs BD exceptionnelles. Vaillant Collector, 2012.

GERMANY

Günter Metken: Comics. Frankfurt am Main/Hamburg 1970.

Karl Riha: zok roarr wumm. Zur Geschichte der Comic-Literatur. Steinbach 1970.

Reinhold C. Reitberger/Wolfgang J. Fuchs: Comics. Anatomie eines Massenmediums. München 1971. Published in America as Comics Anatomy of a Mass Medium, Boston: Little Brown 1972.

Ulrich Merkl/Alfredo Castelli/Jeremy Taylor: Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. 2007.

Eckart Sackman: Deutsche Comicforschung. 2004 - 2012.

Tim Eckhorst: Rudolph Dirks; Katzenjammer, Kids & Kauderwelsch. Deich Verlag, 2012.

BELGIUM

F Fréderic Empaytaz: Les copains des votres enfance. Denoël, 1963.

Pascal Lefèvre and Charles Dierick (eds.): Forging a New Medium: The Comic Strip in the Nineteenth Century. VUB University Press, Brussels, 1998.

Thierry Smolderen: Naissances de la bande dessinée De William Hogarth à Winsor McCay. Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2009.

Thierry Smolderen: The Origins of Comics: From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay. Translated by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. University Press of Mississippi. 2014.

THE NETHERLANDS

Kees Kousemaker/Maria Willems: Strip voor strip. Amsterdam 1970.

H. van Opstal: Essay RG Het fenomeen Hergé. Delange 1994

RUSSIA

Jose Alaniz: Komiks: Comic Art in Russia. University Press of Mississippi, 2010.

There is also a bibliographic catalogue of “Comic Strip Histories”  in French covering world comics:

Harry Morgan/Manuel Hirtz: Le Petit critique illustré. Guide des ouvrages

And:

John Lent: Comic Books and Comic Strips in the United States through 2005: An International Bibliography, 2006

*Compiled with help from Eckart Sackmann, Leonardo De Sà, Mario Lucioni, Alfredo Castelli, Thierry Smolderen, Darrell Coons, Francisco Dourado and Ron Evry. Additions welcome. To be continued...

Cartoonists of 1925

Harry Maguire (1832-1916)

Henry Carlton (or Calton) Maguire was, along with Robert Prowse senior, the most indefatigable illustrator of penny dreadful and boys story papers of the eighteen sixties, seventies and eighties. “Harry” Maguire led a double-life, one as a respectable illustrator of music sheets (c.1860-1885), and one as a provider of thrilling woodcuts for penny dreadful and boys’ story papers.



According to his baptismal certificate Maguire was born on 24 July1832 (He seems to have shaved a few years off his age in various census reports) in Marleybone, Middlesex, London. Harry was the son of Henry Calton Maguire (1790-1854) a member of a well known Irish family of painters, etchers and lithographers working in London, and Eliza Bussman. The father, born in Dublin, produced lithographs for sheet music and was also a well-known water-colourist and book illustrator. After the death of the elder Maguire, Harry junior continued in the sheet music business producing lithographs for the songs of Arthur Lloyd, the Great Vance, Nellie Power and Harry Rickards. Maguire married Catherine Laura Pope in January 1860. She died in March 1889 without having borne him any children.

Harry Maguire sidelined drawing woodcut illustrations for the penny dreadful trade. His earliest known penny dreadful employer was the Newsagent’s Publishing Company at 147 Fleet-street. Maguire illustrated Vane Ireton St. John’s The Wild Boys of London; or, the Children of the Night, published on July 17 1864, The Work Girls of London; their Trials and Temptations in 1865, and The Boy Pirate; or, Life on the Ocean a Novel, also in 1865. In October 1867 he illustrated The Boy Detective; or, the Crimes of London.



In 1867 Maguire was employed by William Emmett Lawrence illustrating serials in the Young Englishman’s Journal which began on 13 April 1867. For the first seven issues the Young Englishman’s Journal was published by John Millbank Crisp of Temple Publishing Company, 45, Essex Street, Strand. Temple had been an early penny dreadful rival of the NPC. The first serial to feature Maguire’s woodcuts in the Young Englishman’s Journal was Willie Gray; or, the Wreck of the Polar Star. In number 8 appeared George Emmett’s famous serial Boys of Bircham School, partially illustrated by Maguire. His prolific woodcuts were used as illustrations to serials by Captain Mayne Reid, Charles Stevens, Vane Ireton St. John, Percy Bolingbroke St. John, and William Stephens Hayward. Henry Carlton Maguire became a member of the Society of Arts in 1869 while living at Brook villa, Earlsbrook-road, Redhill. According to one relative Henry also gave elocution lessons to actors and taught fencing to military officers.



In 1870 Charles Stevens Alone in the Pirate’s Lair was issued in penny parts. Pirate’s Lair was reprinted from The Boys of England, where it had been the opening serial for the first issue on 27 November 1866. Frank Jay says that most were illustrated by “an artist named Hebblethwaite, who could draw as well with his left hand as with his right,” but the 1870 parts work was illustrated by Harry Maguire.

The Young Englishman’s Journal was incorporated into The Sons of Britannia on 14 Mar 1870. Maguire continued drawing the cover serials and was so popular that his name was used in advertising material for the various Emmett story papers and penny parts. The 1871 census listed Maguire under the name Henry Maguire. He was described as an artist living in Islington with his wife Catherine (born in 1835), a nephew and a niece. In this census Annie Savory, who Harry was later to live with in a common-law situation, is listed as "artist's wife" and is living with daughter Kate and a servant.



Maguire was the most frequent contributor of illustrations for The Sons of Britannia. He seems to have been a favorite with George Emmett and illustrated all of his employers’ titles including Tom Wildrake and the famous Shot & Shell series. The Sons of Britannia’s last number was No. 394 on September 15, 1877 and the paper was to have been incorporated with The Champion Journal, which I have not been able to trace. Maguire also contributed to The Boys’ Standard, published by William Lucas then Charles Fox, which ran from 6 November 1875 to 7 March 1881. Its only speculation but I think in the eighties Maguire may have contributed full-page woodcuts for Charles Fox penny dreadfuls of Spring-Heeled Jack, Cartouche, and Sweeney Todd. The style is quite different from his early work, and unsigned, but there are a few resemblances to his sixties and seventies work.

Harry Maguire is recorded in the 1881 census under the name Henry Carlton, living at 13 Avenue Road, Wanstead, Essex, with Annie Savory and the following children; Kate (born 1870) Annie (born 1872) Henry (born 1874) Jenny (born 1877) Lody (born 1879) and Sarah (born 1881.) All the children were registered with the surname Carlton. Harry Maguire is described as an "artist and draughtsman (with "E & M" in brackets.) He married Annie Savory, with whom he had had a long-standing relationship, in July 1889 - i.e. after she had borne him 9 children. The other children were Mabel and Emily - presumably there was another who died in infancy.

By the time of the 1891 census Maguire is listed as married to Annie, aged 42, also born in Marleybone. Their home was at 1 Zetland Villas, Lewisham, and was described as a “lithographic artist.” The couple had seven children: Harry, born in 1874 in Tottenham, described as an artist’s pupil, Kate (born 1870, Islington), Annie (born 1872, Islington), Jane (born 1877, Brighton), Lody(?) (born 1880, Brighton), Mabel (born 1882, Leytonstone) and Emily (born 1883, Leytonstone).



The last work by Harry Maguire that I could find was the school story The Lambs of Littlecote by his old mate E Harcourt Burrage. The Lambs of Littlecote was published by the Aldine Publishing Company in 1894, and must have been one of the last penny dreadfuls published with wood engravings. By 1895 the photo process engraving sent the woodcut the way of the dinosaur. Maguire supplied the first 13 illustrations before the job was taken over by Robert Prowse junior.

In 1901 he was recorded as Henry C. Maguire, watercolour artist. He was a widow now and resided at 141 Bensham Lane with his son Henry Terrence, a photo process etcher, and a daughter, Mabel. By 1911 Harry was living with his son’s family at 1 Preston Road, Upper Norwood. Henry is now called Harry Carlton Maguire, and described as an artist. His son, now known as Harry T., was a process engraver. He and his wife Lilly had two daughters, Nora and Kathleen. Harry J.’s sister Annie Josephine, also a process engraver, shared the house with the couple.

Henry Carlton (or Calton) Maguire died April 1916, at Homelands, Park Place, Eltham, Lewisham. He was buried on 17 April 1916 at Norwood Cemetery.

*Thanks to Robert Kirkpatrick for his contribution of census material.

Gag Cartoons

Original artwork by 3 gag cartoonists: Dell, Engel, and Lubnay. Thanks to Don Kurtz.

*Update: Actually Dell, Bill Wenzel and George Ludway. See comment!

All Star Western

I began collecting DC comics All Star Western in 1955, when superhero titles were on the wane, and was a regular reader until its demise in 1961. The western comics were not signed in the fifties but I did recognize the work of one of the star artists, many years later revealed to be Gil Kane, from an earlier fascination with Rex the Wonder Dog, a tree-climbing horse-riding, car-driving canine hero based on Rin Tin Tin.

All Star Western began with no. 58 (April-May 1951), making use of the title of the discontinued All Star Comics, home to the long-running series Justice Society of America. The great artists and writers on All Star Western, as well as the Julius Schwartz science-fiction titles, would also be the crew responsible for DC’s later return to superheroes with The Flash (Carmine Infantino) and Green Lantern (Gil Kane).

All Stars’ most prolific contributing writer was Robert Kanigher along with John Broome and Gardner Fox. The stories were as gimmicky as the corresponding science-fiction titles. The first major feature was the Trigger Twins, a buckskin duo, one brother a milquetoast Clark Kent type, the other equivalent to a gun-toting Superman. The stories were drawn by Gil Kane and Carmine Infantino. Among the artists who contributed for the next ten years were Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, Alex Toth, Ross Andru, Irwin Hasen, Howard Sherman, Leonard Starr, and Dan Barry.

All Star Western was canceled with no. 119 (June-July 1961) in the middle of a two part story featuring Johnny Thunder and a beautiful masked gunwoman named Madame .44. I had been a little upset by the fact that Johnny Thunder had changed his marvelous fringed jacket for a red shirt --much more upsetting was the demise of All Star Western, one of the best drawn comic book westerns of the fifties.