The
previous post on Grimly Feendish contained a number of examples of early work by
Tom Paterson. In addition to the weekly strip about Grimly, Tom contributed illustrations
to a few reader participation features, namely Cackles from the Cave, Mirth
Shakers and Jokes section of Shake’s
‘editorial’ page. Since I am on the subject of Tom Paterson, it is a good
excuse to say a few words about the features and show a few more examples of
Tom’s early IPC work.
Cackles
from the Cave started in the first issue of the paper as
a half-pager in which Shiver promoted the reader participation features of his
section and where some of readers’ jokes and other contributions were printed
with illustrations by the paper’s artists. I am unsure about the name of the artist
who was there from the first week (possibly Alf Saporito), and another one who
joined in towards the end, but Tom Paterson started doing these illustrations
from issue 24 (August
18, 1973), a few weeks before the appearance of his first Grimly
Feendish set, and continued drawing them more or less regularly until
the end of the paper’s run. This is the first installment of Cackles from the Cave with Tom's drawings:
Time for
change came in the beginning of the 1974; in issue 48 (February 2, 1974) the
feature was renamed Cackles Corner, but only for one week; starting from issue 49 and
right up to the end of the run Cackles shared a page with Creations
Runners Up, at first on a fifty-fifty basis, later as the dominant
feature (in terms of space). Here are some examples:
The 'editorial’ page of SHAKE had as many as three
columns crammed into it and jokes sent in by Shake
fans was one of the elements. Some of them were text jokes, others were gag
cartoons. Tom Paterson started drawing them in issue 25 (August 25, 1973) and
continued pretty much regularly until the end:
Last but
not least, Tom Paterson’s cartoons can be found in Mirth Shakers feature that
appeared in full colour on the back cover of Shake section during 4 weeks in issues 28 to 31 (September 15 – October 6,
1973) and then in black and
white from issue 63 (May 18, 1974) until the very end of the run. Here are some examples:
Some of these examples (particularly the crime on television one) look like the work of the W&C Super Dad artist. Could it have been him, or was Tom imitating his style?
ReplyDeleteAlthough I love Tom's imitation Bax, I was never too keen on his Buster and School Belle style, if I'm honest. Not sure why, but it just didn't ring my bell. (Awful pun.)
If I remember correctly, Super Dad was illustrated by Graham Allen and although the styles look a bit similar, I am positive that all the examples included in this post were by TP. It looks like his style was shaping itself very quickly in that period and he was under many influences then.
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