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Wednesday, December 20, 2017

The Christmas TIGER (1958)

It's back in time 59 years for this 1958 Christmas issue of Tiger from the days when it had larger, but less, pages, and was printed on newsprint with only one page in colour. The cover strip is Roy of the Rovers by its original artist, Joe Colquhoun. Twenty years later, Joe would be drawing the superb Charley's War strip for Battle. One of the greatest artists in comics.

As I've mentioned before, adventure strips tended to avoid Christmas episodes as it interfered with the flow of the story, but Roy of the Rovers remained seasonal...

Inside, there wasn't much Christmas content, but here's a complete Police Dog Kim story for the occasion. Artist unknown.

The comic strip format was often used for adverts in the 1950s, such as this one for Rowntree's Fruit Gums...

Back then, Tiger carried a mixture of strips and prose stories. Here's Biff Bailey, Fighting Fury...


Finally, a review of Tiger's Top Sportsmen of 1958!


More festive fun tomorrow!


5 comments:

Ray Moore said...

Biff Bailey was drawn by Ron Simmons the original Rockfist Rogan illustrator in Champion and the sports star feature was drawn by Bert Vandeput who took over drawing Roy of the Rover's in 1959.

Lew Stringer said...

Thanks again, Ray. I'm not familiar with Ron Simmons' work but I should have recognised Bert Vandeput's style.

Rods Toy Box said...

This was way before my time so I'd like to think thi sisn't nostalgia talking, but comic artwork seemed so much better back when these comics came out. Same with the old EC horror comics. Amazing looking art! Managed to have a bit of a unique style to it without looking overly stylized.

Lew Stringer said...

I think it might be because a lot of those artists had a different training as illustrators than today's comics-inspired artists. That said, there are still some wonderful artists around today. Sean Phillips for one example.

John Kerry said...

Okay now I am curious. Who were Vanwall and what happened to them? Thanks for the Tiger I have not seen as I living in somewhere in Quebec and only three at the time.

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