As a follow-up to his article about the
origins of Gulliver Guinea-Pig, John referred me to a blogpost about another
appearance of the little traveler outside of his home-paper (Playhour). It
turns out that Gulliver made a guest appearance in Harold Hare comic
immediately prior to its merger with Playhour in April 1964. Apparently, the
intention of the editorial team was to entice the readers of Harold Hare to start
following Gulliver’s adventures in the new combined paper.
What’s curious about the episode (apart from
the fact that it was printed in another comic) is that it looks like it was
illustrated by Mendoza who had stopped drawing the feature for Playhour 4 years
ago. The episode is unsigned - not very typical of Mendoza, but I am positive
it is by Gulliver’s original artist. The style and even the theme (lost
treasure, etc.) are quite similar to those of one of the last Playhour stories
by Mendoza. I have shown it below for you to compare.
I wonder if it was an unused episode that
Mendoza drew back in 1960, or perhaps it was printed in a Playhour annual (I
don’t have copies to check, but the size of the panels suggests it may very
well have been the case)? If you have the last issues of Harold Hare, I’d
appreciate if you could check how many featured Gulliver.
These scans of the episode from Harold Hare comic
are from the issue cover-dated 4 April, 1964 (the last one before merger with
Playhour), I borrowed them from http://www.artofdiving.co.uk
– a brilliant blog owned by someone who runs it combining his two hobbies – scuba
diving and comics/illustration.
And here are the pages from Playhour issues cover dated 17 and 24 December, 1960; the Harold Hare story and the one below have certain similarities, don't you think?
So much nicer in cheerful colours...glad the story was in colour..
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