Donovan's Dad. The series was about a little lad named Donovan and his extra-strong but rather dim working class Dad with super-powers who didn’t know his own strength: he could knock a torpedo off its course, lift railway tracks into the air to save a runaway car and land an airplane without undercarriage. If he flung a snowball, it could whistle half-way round the globe and hit a native in Africa... Starting from COR!! issue dated 8th May, 1971 (No. 49) the two of them set off on a World tour. They got stranded on an island, met cannibals, visited Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, the USA (Texas), Italy (Pisa, Venice), France (Paris) and returned to England in issue dated 31st July, 1971 (No. 61).
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| Donovan's Dad by Terry Bave in COR!! issues dated 20th June, 1970 and 10th October, 1970 (Nos. 3 and 19) |
The black and white one-pager enjoyed a long run of nearly three years from the first issue until 14th April, 1973 (No. 150). The original artist was Terry Bave. In part II of his detailed account in the Summer 1986 edition of GOLDEN FUN Terry Bave recalls that Donovan’s Dad had been devised by Bob Paynter who invited him to create the necessary characters for the feature. Terry Bave’s drawings were approved and he agreed to take on the weekly drawing provided that the scripts were supplied. With all the work they were doing for WHIZZER AND CHIPS as well as COR!! at the time,Terry Bave and his wife Sheila already had quite enough script writing as it was.
Terry Bave’s account tells that although great fun to draw, Donovan’s Dad did not prove quite so popular and only ran until mid-1971. This isn’t exactly true: the artist probably recalled the time in 1971 when he stopped drawing the feature and it was taken over by another illustrator who I believe was Les Barton. The last set by Terry Bave was in COR!! issue dated 13th November, 1971 (No. 76) and the first one by Les Barton appeared a week later.
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| Donovan's Dad by Les Barton in COR!! issues dated 20th November, 1971 and 1st January, 1972 (Nos. 77 and 83) |
Super Mum in Whoopee!! was another working class strong person who also was too eager to help..
ReplyDeleteYou are quire right, Peter. Super Dad in Whizzer and Chips also exploited a similar theme.
ReplyDeleteDonovan’s dad’s name was Bill; check out Cor!! for 22/8/70 if you don’t Bill-lieve me. Sorry!
ReplyDeleteStephen, you seem to have a knack for finding out those small fun details! Keep up the good work.
DeleteThanks! I slightly disagree about the similarity between Donovan’s Dad and Super Dad. Yes, both featured super-strong fathers, but Bill didn’t seem to know his own strength; Super Dad certainly did and used it to punish his errant son. Bill was more like Desperate Dan – and thinking about it, may quite possibly have been inspired by him.
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