Thursday, September 19, 2019

THE ORIGINS OF GULLIVER GUINEA-PIG – PART THREE



Here is part three of the article by John Wigmans, a guest-writer on this blog, where he covers the genesis of Gulliver Guinea Pig. Check out the previous posts if you missed the first and second part.

The First Steps of an Unlikely but Very Likeable Hero: Gulliver Guinea-Pig (Part 3)
by John Wigmans


In February, 2018 I wrote this about what I then considered to be the first steps of our brave little hero, Gulliver Guinea-Pig: "As it turns out, Gulliver didn’t start his travels in Playhour dated 24 May 1958 (No. 189). As far as I now know, his real debut was in Tiny Tots dated 17 May 1958 (No. 1298), as part of The New Nursery Rhymes." Luckily I kept my options open as I continued the post: "Unless other information surfaces, Gulliver made his first steps in [...] Tiny Tots dated 17 May 1958, No. 1298." Well, other and more exact information did surface. High time to share these hitherto unknown details.

In September, 2018 I did some additional research in the bound volumes of Tiny Tots which are held by the British Library in London. In this often neglected comic I found, to my surprise, four delightful stories starring Gulliver, three of which I had not seen before (well, two actually: see the list below). All were published as centre-spreads in 'The New Nursery Rhymes’ series, three in May and the last one in July, 1958. The instalment I had assumed was the first-ever appearance of Gulliver (#1298), was in fact the second. By the way: buying the comic with this episode on eBay in November, 2017 led me to write about the first steps of our unlikely but very likeable hero.

To cut a long story short, here is a list of the numbers, titles of the stories and cover dates of the four issues of Tiny Tots featuring Gulliver Guinea-Pig:

#1296, GGP gathers his cherries; dated 3 May 1958:


#1298, GGP is shipwrecked; dated 17 May 1958 (presented on this blog, 15February, 2018)

#1300, GGP in China; dated 31 May 1958


#1305, GGP under the sea; dated 5 July 1958 (reprinted in Harold Hare comic,  4 April, 1964, and presented on this blog, 25 February,2018)



A revision of my earlier statement is now in order: As it turns out, Gulliver didn’t start his travels in Playhour dated 24 May 1958 (No. 189). His real debut was in Tiny Tots dated 3 May 1958 (No. 1296), as part of ‘The New Nursery Rhymes’. This official debut predates his adventures in Playhour by three weeks. But it still remains a mystery to me why Gulliver started his life in Tiny Tots. Was the fate of this comic already sealed in May, 1958? And were the travels of the guinea-pig used to entice young readers (and their parents) to switch over to Playhour, some eight months before the actual demise of Tiny Tots? Perhaps one of the readers of this blog can shed some light on this matter.

Now Irmantas can hopefully start working on a string of blogposts covering the entire run of the strip in Playhour, as he recently let me know. I can only hope he'll start this string with the adventures of our ‘roving world-traveller’ as published in Tiny Tots 1958 and the Tiny Tots Annual for 1959.

Click on the POWER PACK banner in the right-hand column and get your copy of the POWER PACK OF KEN REID - the deluxe two-volume set of Ken’s strips in WHAM!, SMASH! and POW! comics of the ‘60s.

7 comments:

  1. Hi Irmantas,

    Did you notice that all instalments were signed by the artist? The fourth episode, GGP under the sea, was reprinted in 'Harold Hare' comic without Mendoza's signature in the last panel, but with some extra artwork (by some unknown artist?).

    Thanks for posting the third and last part of my article.

    John

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  2. so special this strip...even in one colour version...sublime..

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  3. Thank you so much for these wonderful articles. I have very fond memories of reading about Gulliver and would love to see a collection.

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  4. A Gulliver Guinea Pig book was one of my first books as a very small child. I loved it and still have it! It was about Gulliver going to the mountains to see his friends and curing a "roaring granny" of her cold. The pictures were very well drawn and very attractive Thank you for this reminder, which caused me to raid my library to find my old copy. Alas without its dust jacket any more.

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  5. Now I believe Gulliver predated 1958 slightly as I was born 1953, and he was my first favourite comic character. My memory takes him to about 1956 or 1957.

    We kept Guinea pigs in London, not to eat, and the first male was called Gulliver and 'we' bought him a mate called Snowdrop. Sex was a major thing for GPs and when presented with Snowdrop , Gulliver spent the first half hour doing cartwheels around his pen. Within no time at all we had a tribe of guinea pigs. Now we moved to Devon in Early 1959, with guinea pigs and even more rabbits acquired at the same time. So, I think 1957 as more 'realistic.'

    The stories ran for 7 years, I wonder if they finished in Peru.?????

    Jeff

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  6. Hi Jeff,

    Interesting recollections. Thanks for sharing your memories and thoughts.
    But I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you. As part of my research on David Roberts and Basil Reynolds, I visited the British Library several times. I worked my way through a multitude of bound volumes from the 1950’s of comics like Playhour, Jack and Jill, Chicks’ Own, Tiny Tots, Express Weekly, Top Spot, and the list goes on. The earliest appearance of Gulliver I was able to find is in Tiny Tots No 1296, dated 3 May 1958. There were four installments in Tiny Tots and after a few weeks, Gulliver was transferred to Playhour, in glorious full colour. I have yet to find earlier publications of the adventures of Gulliver than the ones presented on this blog. So, unless other evidence comes to light, I really think that the guinea-pig you named Gulliver became part of the family no sooner than May 1958.
    Now there was another character in Tiny Tots called Little Snowdrop as early as January 1957 – or even before that in 1956. This young girl and her brother Jim were orphans, and they had all kinds of weekly adventures. In October 1957 Snowdrop and Jim replaced ‘Uncle Jack’, who wrote the weekly Letter to the readers (Uncle Jack’s Corner). From 5 October 1957 until the demise of the comic in February 1959, the orphaned siblings not only had their adventures each week but they wrote the weekly Letter to You from Snowdrop and Jim. Readers could write to Sweetshop Corner, the Fleetway House, London. Perhaps Snowdrop from Tiny Tots inspired your family to call the female guinea-pig after her?

    @Irmantas: can you answer Jeff’s question re the end of Gulliver’s adventures? Did he finish in Peru?

    Best wishes,

    John

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  7. In the last episode Gulliver took a boat, sailed from the British coast and reached Guinea-Pig Land where he was reunited with his Mummy.

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