EXTRACTS: PIRATE TALES Fleetway Picture Library Classics © 2020 Book Palace Books * 272 PAGES IN FULL EDITION

5 Introduction PIRATE TALES There were two editions of the Thriller Comics Library featuring the adventures of Captain Kidd, (incidentally both boasting covers by Reginald Heade.) The first, ‘Captain Kidd, Buccaneer’, was an unprepossessing reprint of ‘Le Cormoran’, a 1948 French strip by Lucien Nortier that had appeared in the French publication, Vaillant , in 1948. The second, however, ‘Captain Kidd of the Spanish Main’, was drawn specifically for the Library and is an example of the work of the British strip artist, Reg Bunn. Although today chiefly known for his 1960s work on ‘The Spider’ (a series that won him an international following), in the late 1940s and all through the ‘50s Reg Bunn had successfully turned his hand to many different genres, including Westerns, Detective stories, Historical strips and Science Fiction. Bunn obviously enjoyed drawing the ‘Captain Kidd’ strip. It has a real sense of good, old- fashioned swashbuckling adventure, something that was so prevalent in the movies of the 1950s. The story rips along, full of action and colourful characters. The standout villain is a cold-hearted scoundrel with the fitting name of ‘Wolf-Fang Fetterchain’. Described by Captain Kidd as “That double-dyed sweeping of the gutter”, as drawn by Bunn he bears a remarkable resemblance to the real-life pirate, Blackbeard. Of course, the other important element of this strip is that, unlike the previous artist, Bunn had a great sense of history and he is able convincingly to convey an authentic sense of period. Bunn’s strip was later, poorly reprinted in Fleetway’s Film Fun in 1961 and was then immediately followed up by another serial featuring the same pirate but this time drawn by the Argentine artist, Alberto Cesar Salinas (son of Jose Luis Salinas, famed artist of the ‘Cisco Kid’ series). William Reginald Bunn was born in King’s Norton, Birmingham, in October, 1905. Very little has been discovered of his life prior to his time at the Amalgamated Press other than the fact that, before his skills were put to use drawing comic strips, he used them working as a technical draughtsman with Rolls Royce. In 1944 his life changed dramatically when he suffered a traumatic, near fatal accident. As he dryly commented: “I had the misfortune to drive my car under the wheels of a corporation bus”. Through his own sheer determination Reg made a remarkable recovery but the accident seemed to have inspired him to take up a different and perhaps more enjoyable occupation. Whatever the reason, in 1949 he responded to an advert for new comic artists put out by the Amalgamated Press (later Fleetway Publications) and was accepted. (The man behind the idea for the advert, editor Leonard Matthews, later admitted his disappointment in finding only two suitable artists, the other being Geoff Campion.) Bunn was delighted to have been chosen and began drawing full time for their comics, working always from a studio at his home. Bunn was immediately set to work drawing for their Australian Kit Carson and Buck Jones comic books, while, at the same time, contributing a Buck Jones serial strip to Comet comic. Comet at this time had only eight pages but it was well printed in photogravure and in a size slightly larger than A4. Bunn contributed a single page strip consisting of between twelve to sixteen panels, delightfully printed in red and green (not unlike ‘Cinecolor’ in the movies). The panels varied in size, giving a dramatic and very readable look to the page. In 1950, because of the success in Australia of their cowboy comic books, the A.P. decided to try them out in the home country, only this time in a never-before-tried ‘pocket format’, under the title Cowboy Comics Library . It was an instant hit with young readers and, from 1950 to 1960, Bunn became the most prolific of all the artists to draw the adventures of Buck Jones. Towards the end of 1949, again in Comet , Bunn began drawing what was to become his other principal strip character of the first half of his career in comics: Robin Hood. He drew three Robin Hood strips for Comet in 1949 and 1951 (again printed in red and green) but it was with REG BUNN