The sale also included No.1 of the 50 signed, limited edition prints of a special Dennis the Menace strip produced only this year. Showing the manner in which Dennis acquired his famous striped jumper, it was the work of David Parkins, who in 1998 succeeded David Sutherland, who in turn had taken over in 1971 from David Law, and the print is executed in Law’s original style. D.C. Thomson donated the print for Comic Relief, and when it was sold at £400, CBPA chipped in with an amount they would normally have charged as vendor’s and buyer’s premiums.
Original artwork included a full-page ink and poster paint strip by Ken Reid featuring the adventures of the gormless Jonah, who in this 1961 Beano adventure is marooned in the sewers of Clotville-on-Clyde. This sold at £550, but double that sum was achieved for a full-page Oor Wullie strip produced by Dudley Watkins for the ‘Fun Section’ of a 1954 edition of The Sunday Post – one in which Wullie gets his boomerang “confishcaked”.
The American comic section of the sale brought material from the ‘Uncle Stan’ archive that I have mentioned before in these pages, and this time saw a bid of £715 on an original Human Torch artwork of 1953 by Dick Ayers.
Comic Book Postal Auctions, London, March 13,
Buyer’s premium: 10 per cent
Dennis, Jonah and Oor Wullie…
THE 300-LOT postal and online comic auction which ended on March 13 was a complete sell-out and saw a top bid of £2540 for a copy of the first Beano Book (or annual) of 1940, which had a rather worn spine but was otherwise designated vg.
