Call of the Wild - Friends and Enemies (Original)

Artist: Bill Baker
Medium: Pen & Ink on Board
Size: 12" x 17" (300mm x 420mm)
Date: 1974
Code: BakerCall45

This is the unique original Pen & Ink drawing by Bill Baker.

A single page pen and ink comic illustration.

The Call of the Wild is a short adventure novel by Jack London published in 1903 and set in Yukon, Canada, during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, when strong sled dogs were in high demand.

The central character of the novel is a dog named Buck. The story opens at a ranch in Santa Clara Valley, California, when Buck is stolen from his home and sold into service as a sled dog in Alaska. He becomes progressively feral in the harsh environment, where he is forced to fight to survive and dominate other dogs. By the end, he sheds the veneer of civilization, and relies on primordial instinct and learned experience to emerge as a leader in the wild.

This adaptation, serialised in two page instalments, was published in Look and Learn issues 656 - 662, 10th August to 21st September 1974. It was later reprinted in the World of Knowledge Annual 1983. This meant that the title had to be cut out of the art page and replaced with an extra panel of art (i.e.: pages 38,40,42,44,46).

• Artist Biography
  Bill Baker
  Bill Baker is something of a mystery artist. Although it is possible to track his work through various comics over a twenty-year period, very little is known about the artist himself. He first appears with one-off stories in Top Spot, followed by a brief serial, New Rider at Clearwater, and illustrations for Girl in 1960-64. He remained active in girls' papers for the next decade, contributing to Tina (Two on Cockatoo) Princess Tina (Life with Tina), June (Call Me Cupid, Wedding in the Family) and Pixie Annual.
  
  In 1974 he produced his first literary adaptation for Look and Learn, based on Jack London's The Call of the Wild. This was followed in quick succession by The Sea Wolf (London, 1974-75), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne, 1975), Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1975), The Prince and the Pauper (Mark Twain, 1976), Moby Dick (Herman Melville, 1977), Westward Ho! (Charles Kingsley, 1977), A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens, 1977-78) and King Solomon's Mines (H. Rider Haggard, 1978).
  
  It was during the publication of the latter – in August 1978 – that Baker disappeared from the pages of Look and Learn, the strip taken over with episode nine by C. L. Doughty.