CICELY MARY BARKER - The FAIRY And FLOWER GIRL - PART ONE...

Copyright relevant owner

Way back in the early '80s, I was at a Christmas Fayre in my old primary school and acquired a small publication called The LITTLE PICTURE HYMN BOOK.  For no other reason than one of accuracy, I should perhaps mention that it was a Christmas Fayre on behalf of the church across the road from my old house, but was held in the school at the bottom of the same street for reasons of space.  (The Fayre was bigger than the church building could easily accommodate, you see.)  Not that it's important, but I'm fuelled by a compulsion to be as precise as I can when relating these small matters of personal history.

Anyway, the book had attracted my attention because it was illustrated by CICELY MARY BARKER (1895-1973), a celebrated artist of fairies (and flowers), much in the mould of the Cottingley fairies photographs which had so entranced Sir ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE back around 1917-1920.  The little book had a distinct charm and, through its colourful illustrations, conjured up a long-vanished era when children were children - and not the fractious, obnoxious creatures they are today. One of the hymns in the booklet was "All Things Bright and Beautiful" which, in my previous primary in a different neighbourhood, my class had sung every morning just before the start of lessons.  I only had to hear (or read) a few lines of the hymn and I was transported back to practically the dawn of my childhood, so how could I resist buying the book for my very own collection?

Sometimes, when lying in bed at night, with nothing to read and bored out of my skull, I would dig out the book from my bedside drawer and look at the pictures - and sometimes even read "All Things Bright and Beautiful" to myself to help remind me of my childhood days so many years before.  When we moved to a new house in 1983 and I found myself repeating the experience in my new abode, I couldn't do so without wistfully remembering doing the same thing in my old room in what seemed another life away.

Amazingly, just over four years later, we moved back to the previous house - where I still reside nearly 25 years later.  Now, whenever I look through my little book of an evening, not only do I remember doing so in the same room of the same house over 30 years before, I also recall doing so in the other house while looking back on the one I now reside in - almost as if I'm observing myself through a window, watching myself through another window as I contemplate myself in the room in which I now sit looking back on the past.  Yeah, I know, it's a difficult one - you'll have to think about it for a moment.

So what's the point of all this philosophical rambling?  Merely this: I wanted to explain the reasons why I now unleash upon you the first six of twelve colour illustrations by Cicely Mary Barker from The Little Picture Hymn Book.  Looking at them, don't you feel like a little kid again, playing under the hot Summer sun in the grassy green fields of your childhood when you thought you'd be a child forever?

 Someone tell me that it's not just me.

(Click here for Part Two.)

BEANO And DANDY SCANS And SCAMS - The TRUTH REVEALED...

The CHIMERA-POSNER book

I run this blog because I'm a fan - I don't consider myself an expert - on anything!  There are some things I know a little about, some things I know a lot about - but absolutely nothing I know everything about.  It's the same with most people.  Even those who write detailed and informative articles on some subject or other have to check their facts with other sources as they go along.  If I'm not sure about something, I usually say so - and I'm never dogmatic when there's an absence of proof or room for doubt.

Now, at the risk of boring regular readers, I find that I must return to an earlier topic, but bear with me - hopefully it'll be instructive.  Recently, someone posted scans of a facsimile of The DANDY on their blog.  I left a fairly innocuous comment along the lines of: "Shame you don't have an original copy from which to scan, instead of a mini-facsimile."  Well, blow me down if that didn't open a can of worms.  The indignant blog owner replied that the scans weren't from a mini-facsimile, but rather the 1978 CHIMERA-POSNER volume, D.C. THOMSON FIRSTS.  Let's take a look at the scan he posted, shall we?

Scan from site which claims image is from D.C. THOMSON FIRSTS

Click on the above image - then enlarge it and study it.  Now look at The Dandy cover below, which was actually scanned from the book that he claims his images were sourced from.  This is from my own copy of the book so there's no room for doubt - and it's because I can finally show conclusive proof that I've returned to the subject.

Scan from D.C. THOMSON FIRSTS book

As you can see, the Chimera-Posner book used a different source - one that has a tear in the cover and hasn't had an outline added to the lettering in the upper-right corner of the page. Now study the following pic, scanned from a mini-facsimile in my possession, and compare it with the cover taken from the other blog - apart from some scuffs on the first image, the two are identical - even down to the positioning of the staples.  (I've left a margin on the spine so that you can check for yourselves.)

Scan of mini-facsimile



When I pointed this out to the blogger, he claimed that someone else had supplied the scans and informed him they were from the Chimera-Posner book.  Really?  I just don't buy it.  It's hardly a mistake one could easily make, given the clear differences between the two sources.  The simplest and most obvious explanation is that the blogger is lying.  As someone else has since pointed out, he once lifted scans from another blog without permission, and only sought retroactive consent once he'd been caught out.  (If he's running true to form, he probably claimed to have been sent the scans by someone who hadn't revealed where they were from.)  Is this what lies behind his denials?  Has he been lifting scans from other blogs and mis-attributing them to other sources in a bid to escape detection?

This blogger is a member of a comics forum to which a detractor of mine also belongs, and says that he has had many a discussion with said person in the past, so the pair are certainly not total strangers.  This detractor turned up on the other's blog claiming that the facsimiles contained in the book had also been issued separately (which I have never disputed - the late comics historian DENIS GIFFORD had some in his collection), and that the blogger was therefore correct in his original assertion that The Dandy pages did indeed come from the 1978 C-P book.  The above scans confirm the erroneous nature of his claim.

Scan of SUNDAY POST's BEANO facsimile from other site

I had also pointed out to the blogger that The BEANO scans he had featured on another post were missing four pages and had come from a facsimile given away with The SUNDAY POST a few years back, not D.C. Thomson Firsts.  The blogger originally disputed the page count, saying that several 'experts' had confirmed his statement, but has since admitted, grudgingly, that I was correct after all.  So much for his un-named 'experts' - or was he lying again?  Also, contrary to what he currently appears to be suggesting on his blog, The D.C. Thomson Firsts book printed the full 28 pages of The Beano, not 24 - and a different source seems to have been used for the facsimile given away with The Sunday Post.

Scan from D.C. THOMSON FIRSTS book

So - the verdict is in.  The blogger has been consistently wrong - but blames others for supplying him with misinformation.  His honesty, however, has already been demonstrated to be highly suspect.  My detractor - who fancies himself as a comics 'expert' - in his eagerness to spite me by endorsing the blogger's inaccuracies, has demonstrated that he doesn't know what he's talking about in this instance.  The fact that he only responded to the blogger's two posts on which I had commented - in order to disagree with me and take a dig - seems highly suggestive of his motivations.

The above scans prove beyond doubt or dispute that I was right all along.  If only the blogger could have contented himself with a gracious 'thank you' - instead of a bitter tirade against me for merely trying to be helpful - both he and his forum chum could have been spared the resulting damage to their credibility.

MOONFLEET - A CLASSIC FOR ALL AGES...

You've probably seen the 1955 movie, MOONFLEET, starring STEWART GRANGER - very atmospheric, but massively abridged and with a completely different ending.  If you haven't read the book by J. MEADE FALKNER, treat yourself without delay.  Don't be put off by the fact that it's described as a 'children's classic' - that only means there's no bad language or sex scenes.  It's an absolutely terrific read and definitely a classic - but adults would certainly enjoy it too.

"Ah, sweet boyhood, how eager are we as boys to be quit of thee, with what regret do we look back on thee before our man's race is halfway run!!

Now ain't that the truth!

FANTASTIC COVER GALLERY PART FOUR...

Copyright MARVEL COMICS

And here we are again, folks - with the latest batch of groovy FANTASTIC covers from the swingin' '60s. Let's not waste any time wading through waffle from me and get straight into them. Amen, brother!