The Bozeman Trail original art - Riders of the range

Vincent Ealand-Hicks was generous to share these images on the 'Eagle and Dan Dare collectors' Facebook group and he's allowed me to record their existence for posterity. 

'The Bozeman Trail' book is hard to find in really good condition (the spine always seems to have suffered) so it's always good to see a copy in good condition. I've never seen any of the original art (by Pat Williams) before.   

pages 44 & 45

front and rear cover

Signal comic #2

I've covered Signal comic before here and here (and John Freeman has provided an excellent overview here) but I've now been able to access the previously missing issues in my Signal collection, first up is issue 2...

Cover art is by Don Harley...

Unsigned but art believed to be by Pat Williams

Little Ruth is by John Ryan - another Eagle alumni who drew Captain Pugwash and Harris Tweed for Eagle 

This Nelson story is actually signed by 'Williams' - the only time this strip was signed (by Pat Williams) in any of the 5 issues of Signal

Copyright date is 1962

Signal comic #1 - cover by Don Harley

A while, while researching the Wonder comic from Esso (which is a blog post for another day entirely) I stumbled across an article on Lew Stringer's always excellent Blimey blog (here) about a comic called Signal.

Lew only had (has?) one issue - issue 4 - but what really piqued my interest is that the cover art is by Don 'Dan Dare' Harley. There's no information on the comic in any of Denis Gifford's reference books so the comic looked likely to remain a mystery...I don't claim to have solved the mystery but I have recently acquired another copy of Signal comic - this time #1, so let's have a look at it...

The format is just the same as issue 4 (so, 8 pages, photogravure printing, size is slightly larger than A4)…

The kids in this adventure are different from the kids that in issue 4

The adventure strip (artist looks like Pat Williams to me) Castle Glorious and the white knight is there on page 3 

John 'Captain Pugwash' Ryan is another ex-Eagle alumni who gets to contribute a strip to Signal

The Holiday Adventure strip continues on the back page...

On page 7 there is a competition that has a closing date of 31st October 1961 - so that's a better idea of a date than we had previously. Lew has confirmed that he's dated #4 as 1963 because the editorial says "...now that 1963 is here". So issue #1 in 1961, 2 issues in 1962 and (at least) one issue in 1963. The editorial comment in #1 says "...your chums will be able to get their own copies - but only of course when they go for their six-monthly check-up". So maybe it only came out every 6 months? Anyway, we've found out a little more but I'd still love to find issue 2 and 3 - can you help?