Well Swordies, we are nearing the end of the Blog's fourth birthday bash and I hope that you have enjoyed it. I certainly have and there are still a few choice goodies for your delectation this final party weekend.
To kick off the Saturday here's a little something on Zero-X. Like many of you I love this particular spacecraft's design and remember how awesome a toy it was back in 1967. Seeing it cruise along the lounge floor between the lava lamps was a thing of beauty. Like many of you as well I love illustrations and paintings of the Zero-X and it was a random browse through the fabulous GACCH website [Gerry Anderson Complete Comics History], where I discovered that legendary illustrator Mike Noble had drawn it as the brilliant black and white masthead for the TV21 story THE SCAPEGOAT [17th August 1968] pictured below.
In March 2011 I wrote to Mr. Noble about this illustration and below is an extract from his insightful and interesting reply:
"Regarding the Zero X mast in your letter [below], I did not do it specifically for Project SWORD. It was I'm sure recycled from a strip story I recall doing for the magazine [TV21] at an earlier date....
....You are quite right in thinking that I got quite a lot of inspiration in my work from NASA space projects that were going on the time. An aunt living in America used to send me LIFE magazines on a regular basis and there was a lot of information there about space vehicles and pictures of outer space which was very useful to me. I did however, like to design my own hardware and make them practicable and believable. because we freelance artists worked at home generally there was not much personal contact between us, consequently any inspiration and ideas we may have gleaned from one another would have been through seeing their artwork in TV21. As to my knowing the artists you mention in your letter, I know only about Eric Eden and those regulars drawing for the magazine. There were any number of people doing artwork for packaging and annual work whom I was not aware of at the time.
Kind Regards
Mike Noble"
[Brackets] indicate inserts from me, Woodsy.
The earlier TV21 strip Mike refers to in his letter, from which his Zero-X was recycled for the SWORD story was found in a TV21 over a year earlier, 25th March 1967, in a colour strip entitled Story Two aka The Stowaway/ Sentence of Death/ The Alien Menace. You can see the colour original of the 'SWORD' Zero-X, below top right, courtesy of TV21 enthusiast Mike B.
For more Mike Noble you can do no better than read GACCH's lengthy interview with him in two parts. There is also a great 12 minute video interview on You Tube by TB1fan, which you will find in the right-hand side-bar of the blog. Lew Stringer also covers Mike's work on his great blog BLIMEY!
Although Mike Noble is the most famous, many of you will know that there were a handful of comics' illustrators who tried there hand at Zero-X, not to mention Shigeru Komatsuzaki's box art for Imai. One of my favourite TV21 artists is Ron Turner, whose dark shadows and epic mechanics are instantly recognisable, also had a crack at the OX. His unique rendering of the spaceship can be clearly seen on the strip CONFLICT ON MARS, which appeared in the 1967 TV Century 21 Annual. An extract of the strip and close-up appear below.
None of these great illustrators would have been able to get stuck into the Mars ship had it not been for the late great Derek Meddings and his genius for designing grand hardware and space machines including the Zero-X. I have never seen his original concept art for the spacecraft but you can get an idea of what it looked like from this black and white photograph of Sylvia Anderson admiring what appears to be Zero X concept art in the Meddings style [picture Frasers]. I shall consult my copy of his book 20th Century Visions but in the meantime, if anyone has insights into Derek Medding's original art or any other Zero-X illustrators you admire then let us know and we can keep this thread going. OX is GO!
[photo: Frasers/ Sylvia Anderson]
The other main artist on the Zero X strip in TV21 was, of course, Jim Watson. The latest Century 21 reprint volume 'Menace from Space' features a couple of strips by him, sourced from the still surviving original artwork. Watson also illustrated the novelisation of the film 'Thunderbirds Are Go!'.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm not entirely mistaken that bottom illustration of the Zero X was the same one on the newspaper that jeff Tracy is reading in Thunderbirds are Go.
ReplyDeleteLove Ron turners take on her, that's mytwo top artists and one of my top ships!
ReplyDeleteMust say I loved Ron Turners stuff too. I've got some old Rick Random strips in Super Detective Library from the fifties and some of the space craft designs were really imaginiative.
ReplyDeleteWhile I like Ron Turner's stuff, I always (now and as a youngster)hated the colouring of the Annuals, patchy washes of colour that were nothing like the comic's vibrant images. I have heard that the publishers paid low prices for the annual art, so there was little incentive to do detailed work.
ReplyDeleteAndyB, having interviewed Century 21 Books art editor Roger Perry and one of his art assistants, and Howard Elson, one of the book editors (the comic and annual departments were on different floors) the truth of the matter was it cost a lot more and took longer to originate full colour artwork. The annuals did not have the budgets of the weekly TV21, and were innovative for the time by having full colour print throughout, when most others would have perhaps some full colour, others duotone, and the rest b/w. All the art was commissioned in b/w for speed and cost, and the colouring done inhouse using overlays and a special translucent ink. You can see the original b/w art for one annual story (a Captain Scarlet, I think) in one of the Century 21 reprint volumes. Towards the end of its life, Century 21 Books were starting to commission full colour strips for other non-TV titles such as 'All About Cars' so one can only speculate on whether this trend would have continued had Century 21 Publishing as a whole had not been shut down...
ReplyDeleteI remember meeting Roger Perry at an Eagle do a few years ago in Manchester. He talked about Ron Turner and another TV21 and Countdown artist, Jon Davis. He observed that Ron who was a short thin man liked to draw huge muscle bound heroic types while Jon, who was a giant of a man was happiest drawing pixies and elves.
ReplyDeleteWhile I take your point about the use of colour, Shaqui, the reason I mentioned thepoor rate of pay was that Keith Watson commented in an interview, regarding a Captain Scarlet Annual, "I did a Captain Scarlet Annual and it was terrible,...but the pay was pretty disgusting as well"
ReplyDeleteInitially, one imagines for speed, the workloads for the Century 21 annuals was shared around - the first TV21, Thunderbirds and Lady Penelope annuals had strips all by different artists. Later, when Century 21 Publishing became a distinct company in its own right, it was decided one or two artists could do pretty much whole annuals by themselves - the volume of work was negotiated at a discounted rate consequently, as it would occupy the said artists for a good few months. Mike Noble also indicated that he turned down annual work for the same reason - it didn't pay nearly as well as the full colour weekly work. But these are commercial factors necessitated by the facts the annuals were not supplemented by any advertising revenue, as the comics were!
ReplyDeleteThere is fantastic black & white Ron Turner art in the last Fireball XL5 annual ( with the M Noble cover )
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info Anon. I'll have a look.
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