Parbold Antiques

Description

Three original and signed sketches by John Gerald Christopher Ryan (1921-2009) including Captain Pugwash, Cut-throat Jake and Tom the cabin boy. Ryan devised the characters while he was an art master at Harrow and the first comic strip appeared in The Eagle in 1950. A few years later he was commissioned by the BBC to create an animated series of short films. Inspired by the shadow puppetry of the 13th century he used cardboard cutouts of the characters and levers to move the figures and objects against a fixed background.

In 1991 Ryan won libel damages from two newspapers after they had published stories that the BBC had taken Captain Pugwash off the air because of the risqué names of some of the crew aboard. The names of Master Bates, Seaman Staines and Roger the Cabin Boy had first appeared in university “rag mags” as a joke and they had since been accepted as an urban myth.

Item No. 0248.