The Wanderings of Ulysses part 9

(* The Wanderings of Ulysses © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

The Wanderings of Ulysses part 8

(* The Wanderings of Ulysses © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

The Wanderings of Ulysses part 7

(* The Wanderings of Ulysses © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

The Wanderings of Ulysses part 6

(* The Wanderings of Ulysses © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

Comic Cuts - 14 June 2013

I shall try to keep vaguely to topic for a few minutes. I've spent the whole week reading through and making notes about the strips appearing in Boys' World. It's a long-winded job, which means that other than saying my notes currently run to about 18,000 words, I haven't anything to say that I won't be saying in the book.

I do, on the other hand, need some help with Boys' World Annual. I have listings for the contents but I'm missing some cover scans and a few examples of pages from inside for the following: 1966, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1971, 1972. For some reason unknown, I only have three volumes (1964, 1965, 1969) to hand and I'm sure I had more.

If you think you can help, drop me a line at the address below the photo (top left) and I'll try to spread the workload.

With that "news" out of the way I'm going to talk about giraffes. Yes, giraffes. These giraffes...

Colchester has been celebrating the 50th anniversary of its zoo and to promote the event a number of 7-foot high giraffes have turned up around town and other locations in Essex. Smaller giraffes have found their way into shops, but the larger ones, dotted around the High Street, the Castle, a few retail parks and elsewhere, have become quite a talking point. Grown ups are having as much fun as their kids trying to track them down. And, being as childish as the next person – especially when that next person is Melissa – I was scooting around town trying to find as many as I could last Saturday.

To be honest, I'd forgotten all about the promotion and spotted my first giraffe and was filled with wonder at this startling random act of art. Even when I realised it was a promotion and I was buying into what was in essence an advertising campaign, I was still overjoyed with each new discovery.

Some of them are brash and colourful, some beautiful and serene, others thought-provoking but mostly they are 7-foot high giraffes brightening up our otherwise dull summer. We've spotted eleven so far and I'm hoping to track down one or two more tomorrow. I'll let you know if I do.

 

 

 

 

Ulysses continues his voyages over the weekend and into next week.

The Wanderings of Ulysses part 5

(* The Wanderings of Ulysses © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

The Wanderings of Ulysses part 4

(* The Wanderings of Ulysses © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

The Wanderings of Ulysses part 3

(* The Wanderings of Ulysses © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

The Wanderings of Ulysses part 2

(* The Wanderings of Ulysses © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

The Wanderings of Ulysses part 1

"The Wanderings of Ulysses" was based on the voyages of the Greek mythological hero Odysseus (Ulysses being his given name in Latin). The King of Ithica, he was the hero of the epic poem The Odyssey written by Homer and played a vital part in The Iliad. I know Wikipedia gets some bad press occasionally, but if you want to learn a little more about the author, Homer, or the story, it's a good starting place. Or you could just let the story unfold over the next few days, beginning here with episodes one and two.

The artist is Gino D'Antonio, who contributed regularly to Tell Me Why. Hopefully I'll run a few more of his strips.

(* The Wanderings of Ulysses © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)

Joy Laurey

While I was researching information on Dave Wallis for last week's biographical sketch, I stumbled across some information on another local celebrity, Joy Wyhowska, in a local newspaper. I had heard of her as the creator of the puppet character Mr. Turnip; the character was always credited to Joy Laurey, which was a stage name. Given that I knew her married name should have made it easy to discover her real name, but I found myself banging my head against a brick wall for hours attacking the problem a dozen different ways before one of them finally paid off.

Joy Laurey was born Joy Dorothy Johnson in Southsea, Hampshire, on 30 April 1924, the daughter of Sidney Charles Johnson (29 April 1904-May 1990) of 67 West View, Letchworth, Herts., who had married Emily Dorothy W. McCulloch (1899-1959), the daughter of Francis Charles McCulloch (c.1872-1949) and his wife Emily (need Camfield), in 1923. A theatrical streak ran through the family as her great-grandfather, Sam Laurey, was a famous Drury Lane clown, and her mother, using the stage name Dorrie Laurey, was a concert artiste and exhibited many watercolour paintings.

Dorrie Laurey, as well as working for many years in children's welfare work, became interested in puppets in 1936 and, along with her young daughter, founded the Laurey Puppet Company in 1938. Joy, who was interested in stage design, had to choose between puppets and painting.

During the war, Joy, her mother and her younger sister Honor, all using the stage name Laurey, travelled 75,000 miles entertaining troops with ENSA, including a secret operation to perform on HMS Bulldog shortly after the liberation of Guernsey.

The Laurey family travelled throughout Britain and Europe performing with Laurey's Puppet Theatre, one of the stars of which was a young marionette boy named Snippet, who went on to appear on  the BBC. She was offered a chance to create a puppet for the children's TV magazine show Whirligig in 1950 and created a vegetable-based marionette called Mr. Turnip, who made his debut on Saturday, 25 November 1950. When Mr. Turnip proved successful, a great many other characters, including Uncle Spud, the Carrot twins, Sarah Swede, HL, Mimi Melon and Colonel Beetroot, were added over the next six years. Mr. Turnip, who often shared the screen with presenter Humphrey Lestocq, was voiced by Peter Hawkins

Mr. Turnip was hugely successful when it came to merchandise, being (perhaps not surprisingly) turned into a commercially available puppet by Pelham Puppets and by Lunntoy, a rag doll by Deans and a cut-out on the back of packets of Kellogg's Rice Crispies. Mr. Turnip and his pals featured in games – Mr. Turnip's Treasure Hunt (Glenvum Games), Mr Turnip's TV Audition (card game from Ariel Production) – painting books, balloons, soap, jigsaws and Christmas cards.

He was also the star of a number of annuals, including Whirligig annuals – entitled The TV Whirligig and even Mr. Turnip's TV Whirligig – and appeared as a cartoon strip in the pages of Mickey Mouse Weekly (c.1951/52) and TV Comic (c.1954).

In 1956, Joy Laurey represented the UK in Rumania at the International Puppetry Festival in Bucharest.

In 1957 she was hired by Gerry Anderson to create the puppets for The Adventures of Twizzle. She not only made the puppets for the show, but also (alongside Murray Clark and Christine Glanville) operated the puppets for all 52 15-minute episodes in 1957-59. She reputedly then made puppets for a film produced by Elstree Studios entitled Britannia Mews, but I have been unable to trace this movie.

One of her last creations was Septimus, a boy gargoyle that came to life and was capable of time travel. The character was devised by Laurey and written by William Thatcher and intended for Anglia Television – having been rejected by the BBC – but was never televised. At least three scripts were completed featuring Septimus and his companion Phoebe.

Looking around the internet, I was never able to discover what happened to Joy Laurey, nor even her real name. Now, I can reveal a little more of her story.

The Laurey Puppet Company was continued by Honor Laurey, who married Ian L. Robertston in 1950. Ian and Honor continued to tour the puppets as far as Australia and, in the 1970s, performed on TV with Dick Emery, David Nixon and Basil Brush as Paul and Peta Page.

Joy Laurey married Wladyslaw Stanislaw Albin Luczyc-Wyhowski, a Polish immigrant who worked as a telephonist after the war and became a British citizen on 1 November 1951. They married in Essex in 1959 and had a daughter, Juliana, in 1960. Luczyc-Wyhowski (sometimes spelled Wyhowska) had a son from an earlier marriage and I believe, movie production designer Hugo Lyczyc-Wyhowski is his grandson.

The Laurey family lived at The Puppet Studio, Tiptree, Essex, where Joy raised her family. In 1968, she found work in the occupational therapy department of Severall's Hospital, where she was able to use her talents for music, painting and puppetry. After four years she became a warden at the Woodland's Centre (now Woodland's Residential Home for Ladies), Colchester.

Wladyslaw Luczyc-Wyhowski died in November 1988, aged 74. Joy continued to live in the Colchester area until around 2005 when she moved to Clacton-on-Sea.

In March 2007, Vektis, better known for their auctions of diecast cars, auctioned 48 lots comprising the 'Joy Laurey Collection'. These included marionettes and glove puppets, scenery, scripts, photographs and scrapbooks.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to trace Joy Wyhowski beyond that date; it may be that she moved into a residential home or died around that time, but I have not been able to confirm either option.

PUBLICATIONS

Books
Mr. Turnip Flies Round the World, illus. Monique Partridge. London, Juvenile Publications (Twirly Book 8), 1955.

Related Publications
Mr Turnip Goes Shopping by Michael Westmore(?). London, Ariel Productions, 1955
Mr Turnip Painting Book. London, Ariel Productions, 1955.

Dan Dare Space Fleet Operations Manual

DAN DARE PILOT OF THE FUTURE

SPACE FLEET OPERATIONS MANUAL

Steve Winders reviews the new Haynes’ Manual by Rod Barzilay and Graham Bleathman

After the U.S.S. Enterprise, the Millenium Falcon and Thunderbirds, Dan Dare’s spaceships have become the latest iconic space vehicles to receive the Haynes treatment. There are more than thirty highly detailed cutaway illustrations by Graham Bleathman, with fourteen in colour. These are supported by a large amount of background information from Rod Barzilay, about Dan Dare’s adventures from the famous Eagle weekly of the 1950s and 60s, the aliens he encountered, the principal characters and the Spacefleet organization. Rod’s informative and well researched pages are supported by illustrations from the original Eagle and almost all the cutaways are accompanied by small pictures of them from the strip.

Graham’s accurate cutaways are well up to the standards he set in his popular Thunderbirds illustrations and in quality, echo those of real vehicles which adorned the centre pages of the 1950s Eagle, when Dan Dare appeared on the front cover. All the principal cutaways are printed across two pages however and consequently a little detail is lost in the guttering between the pages. Clearly considerable effort has been made to minimise this issue, because the problem is not nearly as noticeable as in Daniel Tatarsky’s 2008 Eagle Annual of the Cutaways.

Although a few of the spaceships have been featured previously in cutaways in Rod Barzilay’s Spaceship Away! magazine, the cutaways in the book are all new. Spaceship Away! is a periodical originally devised to carry new Dan Dare strips in the original style and in the case of Rod’s own Phoenix Mission and Green Nemesis stories, predominantly drawn by Don Harley, who worked on the strip in the 1950s Eagle. Two episodes of Green Nemesis are featured on the endpapers of the book and Dan’s new spaceship from these adventures, the Marco Polo, is also included as a cutaway. The stories in Spaceship Away were also set during the period of Dan’s original adventures in the 1950s and 60s Eagle and the Spacefleet Operations Manual restricts itself to this time, avoiding the 2000AD comic’s version of Dan Dare and the adventures of his great great grandson in the 1980s Eagle.

In examining the technical aspects of Dan Dare in detail, this book explores an aspect of the saga that no previous book has covered and in quality and presentation it maintains the high standards that have established Haynes as a leading technical publisher. It is an essential work for fans of Dan Dare and will also interest more general science fiction enthusiasts. It contains 128 pages and is good value for £16.99.

Dan Dare: Space Fleet Operation Manual by Rod Barzilay & Graham Bleathman. J. H. Haynes & Co., 6 June 2013, 128pp, £16.99.