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
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.
