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 A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
| Rupert QOTD asked recently about our favourite comics. This morning I realised that I’d not answered with complete honesty. In my haste, I’d selected two comics that were both American. The full truth is that this ignores the impact of European cartoons on my development. Although it’s true that, as an adult, I love Peanuts and Calvin & Hobbes, more influential on my childhood was a bear known as Rupert. I knew him as a white bear (probably polar as a result) but he was originally brown. More importantly, he was set apart from his fellow bears by his clothing - red sweater, chequered scarf and trousers, white shoes. Rupert was the creation of a husband and wife team, Herbert Tourtel (story) and Mary Tourtel (illustration). He was born in 1920, which makes him older than the other famous British bears, Winnie the Pooh and Paddington (yes, I know Paddington was supposed to be from Peru but he behaved as a Brit). That makes Rupert 105 years old and his longevity is caused by a list of successor writer/illustrators over the years. He began as a regular item in the newspaper, the Daily Express, and has continued thus right up to the present. I never had access to the paper series but was given several copies of the hardback annual of his adventures that was published each year. These had four ways to read the story. At the top of the page, would be a title for the events of that page. Then there would be the illustrations, four to the page. Under that would be two lines of verse describing what happened in the picture. And, finally, there was a block of text at the bottom with a full account given. It was this that made Rupert so special. The title gave you a quick summary of the latest development in the story, the pictures showed it happening (ideal for those unable yet to read), the verses expanded the story in nursery style rhyme and meter (perfect for reading aloud), and the text gave the literate child all the details that complete the story. The illustrations were so very English in style and content. They are completely realistic, not obsessively and exquisitely detailed, like Hergé’s Tintin stories, and without the verve of Uderzo’s work in Asterix, but evidence of a love for the British countryside. The verses were impressively true to their nature as being for the very young, but the stories were delightfully strange and inventive. There was none of that strict attendance to reality as in Tintin - Rupert’s adventures took place in a world of magic and imagination. Yet always with that English country background. So Rupert deserves mention if we’re talking about cartoons. I was always on the lookout for any annuals that I lacked in those days and seized upon them when found. Even today I wish that I still had those annuals I collected and I happily read every word of any new Rupert story discovered. He’s like that other more recent phenomenon, Wallace and Gromit - a British institution. Word count: 513  |
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