Raymond Sheppard and Black Beauty (Part Two)

 

Centre-spread for Girl 2 November 1951

GREAT NEWS FOR GIRLS!
Now you're to have your OWN colour weekly — Sister paper to Eagle . . . 

This was the announcement spread over a full page of Picture Post (20 October 1951) with accompanying illustrations showing one feature was the retelling of Black Beauty in comic strip form. 

Eagle 26 October 1951

Picture Post featured further adverts for the comic in 27 October and the 3 November issues - the latter a double page! All the adverts contained a panel of Raymond Sheppard's art. The adverts also appeared in Eagle itself, as can be seen here - an obvious place to promote the new comic. 

Eagle 2 November 1951

 There was a series called "Girl" which ran from 1981-1990 but I'm focussing on the older comic. Hulton Press had had a huge hit with Eagle which began on 14 April 1950 and only one year  and seven months later they started a comic exclusively for girls. This too was extremely popular - printed in photogravure like its predecessor and it ran from 2 November 1951 – 3 October 1964 with over 600 issues in total.

"BLACK BEAUTY" in GIRL comic

In the very first issue of Girl (dated 2 November 1951), Raymond Sheppard produced the strip over a vertical quarter page - see the image at the top of this article. The story was spread over 18 episodes from 2 November 1951- 29 February 1952. In a previous look at "Black Beauty" I showed a few pieces, but today I want to show you the whole thing. I wish to acknowledge my thanks to the much missed David Slinn (1936-2025) and Phil Rushton - whose definitely still with us.

2 Nov 51

9 Nov 1951

16 Nov 1951

23 Nov 1951

30 Nov 1951

7 Dec 1951

14 Dec 1951

21 Dec 1951

28 Dec 1951

4 Jan 1952

11 Jan 1952

18 Jan 1952

25 Jan 1952

1 Feb 1952

8 Feb 1952

15 Feb 1952

22 Feb 1952

29 Feb 1952

I hope you enjoy those strips. Here's all the original art fragments I have on my computer so I get the whole lot in one place.

The first is a picture from eBay many moons ago of episode 7

14 Dec 1951 Original art

Then we have a lovely hi-resolution copy of episode 8

21 Dec 1951 Original art

8 Feb 1952 - only 2 panels!

And finally here's a mystery for you

Christine Sheppard owns ONE panel of the original art. Is it a rejected panel from the Black Beauty strip? Is it from another project altogether? We have no idea. In Episode 17 (22 Feb 1952) we see rain around, and Larry the cab driver, with a blanket on his knees but it's green not brown. However in the next epsiode we see Jerry, the kindly cab driver and owner of Beauty wrapped in a brown blanket against the cold snow - not falling snow or rain!       

I know that Black Beauty was adapted by different artists to comics in Princess during the latter half of 1960 and also again in the Princess Gift Book for Girls 1973.