welcome and enjoy!

Hi and welcome to my blog about comics from other people’s childhood! It is dedicated primarily to British humour comics of the 60s and 70s. The reason they are not from my childhood is simply because I didn’t live in the UK back then (nor do I live there now). I knew next to nothing about them until fairly recently but since then I’ve developed a strong liking for the medium and amassed a large collection, including a number of complete or near complete sets. My intention is to use this blog as a channel for sharing my humble knowledge about different titles, favourite characters and creators as I slowly research my collection.

QUICK TIP: this blog is a sequence of posts covering one particular comic at a time. The sequence follows a certain logic, so for maximum results it is recommended that the blog is read from the oldest post up.

Copyright of all images and quotations used here is with their respective owners. Any such copyrighted material is used exclusively for educational purposes and will be removed at first notice. All other text copyright Irmantas P.



Showing posts with label The Queen of the Seas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Queen of the Seas. Show all posts

Friday, July 3, 2015

DAFT MARINERS OF CANALS AND THE HIGH SEAS




Nautical antics was one of Ken Reid’s favourite themes. The Queen of the Seas in SMASH! comic is a classic example considered by many to be his best work.



Interestingly, my mate and UK comics collector and researcher extraordinaire Peter Hansen has discovered that Ken’s inspiration for the pompous skipper Enoch Drip and his one-man-crew Bertram Bloop came from the 1964 British comedy film The Bargee by Duncan Wood.



The film is about two boatmen operating a commercial canal-boat. The main character is Hemel Pike (played by Harry H. Corbett) who is quite a bit of a lothario with girlfriends all across the canal network. As such, Hemel wasn’t suitable for a children’s paper, but his cousin Ronnie (played by Ronnie Barker) became the prototype for Ken’s Bertram Bloop:



.. while the character of the inept mariner (played by Eric Sykes) was the inspiration behind Queenie’s skipper:






Ken actually owned a boat and had quite a few comical adventures when sailing the canals. If you take a close look, Enoch Drip often looks like Ken’s self-portrait.