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Monthly Archives: December 2025
Super Story Book For Girls (Part Four)
So here we are at the final part of my series on “Super Story Book for Girls”
- You’ve seen my journey of discovering where the artwork was published
- I’ve shown you my artworks
- Then we saw other artworks I copied from eBay which were published (and some unpublished)
- Now we are mopping up loose ends
- PART ONE
- PART TWO
- PART THREE
- PART FOUR
PUBLISHED ART SCANS FROM THE BOOK
You’ll find the story titles here in Part One
That brings us the end of the SUPER STORY BOOK FOR GIRLS.
STILL UNIDENTIFIED
But I’m left with a few images I can’t account for.
I wondered if the “Super Story for Boys” published the same year was the source of the 4 illustrations above, but no. I have a copy and that contains an assortment of artists and none of them Hubbard.
Could it be Super Book of Adventure Stories, Hamlyn 1977, but this was published after Hubbard’s death? Let me know if you have a copy and can match any of the above.
Or could it be any earlier publication?
That’s it. The end of the quest. More questions raised and unanswered. But that’s the fun and frustration of seeking out sources
Here’s your Christmas bonus
JANE BOND ORIGINAL ARTWORK
and how it looked in Princess Tina
and here’s the following page
Happy Christmas to you all ~Norman
Super Story Book For Girls (Part Three)
So I recognised Mike Hubbard as the artists and searched for where this work was published. Eventually I found it was “Super Story Book For Girls”. But that wasn’t the end of the search.
The artworks shown below are not owned by me, but I took the photos of the artworks to help me identify where mine were published.
That’s the lot for this article. I hope you enjoyed seeing some masterful artwork – and some that look a bit rushed to me. I don’t know what Hubbard died from, but if this was some of his last work, what a shame he “wasted” his time doing two pictures for some stories only for them never to appear in print…to my knowledge.
In PART FOUR, I’ll round up the loose ends with more mysteries.
Super Story Book For Girls (Part Two)
- PART ONE
- PART TWO
- PART THREE
- PART FOUR [To Follow]
In the first part of this three-parter I teased you with how I discovered the place my original art had been published. Super Story Book for Girls was a Hamlyn 1976 publication (ISBN 060030311X). It was reprinted in 1978 too. I mentioned the compiler/editor was Leonard Matthews and writing to my late friend David Slinn, he happened to mention to me “One or two of Leonard Matthews’ special favourites, Michael Hubbard , Ernest Ratcliffe and Edgar Spencely, were to be found handling a number of the later fairytale features.” – which Matthews put together as nursery comics.
What set me on this trail was the gorgeous ink wash image illustrating “The Mystery of the Lake” at the top of this article.
Here is how the story was previously illustrated in Girls’ Crystal Annual 1971 – note with no author or artist credited, exactly as in the Super Story Book reprint. [UPDATE: Apparently the artist is Dudley Wynne – thanks to ‘Goof’]
So who drew the artwork I bought – more to follow below?
MIKE HUBBARD 2 April 1902 – 25 June 1976
Mike Hubbard was born, Ernest Alfred Hubbard in Dublin, Ireland, and after the end of WWI he moved to London and began providing internal and cover illustrations for various Amalgamated Press’ story papers, in the 1930s, like The Thriller and Odhams Detective Weekly and magazines such as Modern Wonder, Everybody’s and The Passing Show in 1938. After the Second World War, he drew for comics such as Knockout, adapting books such as “Treasure Island”, and “The Coral Island” and adventure stories such as “The Adventures of Robin Hood”, “Sinbad the Sailor” and “The Adventures of Marco Polo” which ended in January 1949. Much has been reprinted – especially by Leonard Matthews in the comics he edited. Hubbard’s last strip for Knockout was “Red River”, a five-part adaptation of the John Wayne western.
It was at this point he ‘disappeared’ from comics. The comic strips “Jane’s Journal” later just “Jane” ran in the Daily Mirror, (1932-1959) and was created, written and drawn by Norman Pett, until Don Freeman was drafted in to provide scripts as Pett’s imagination was running dry when it came to story ideas. In 1948 Pett decided to move on to another strip and was replaced by Mike Hubbard, who had been assisting Pett anyway, until the strip’s cancellation in the 10 October 1959 paper.
We then see Hubbard’s work appear in in the girl’s comic Valentine in the early 1960s, and then “Nurse Angela” in Princess and various single issues of Schoolgirl’s Picture Library. My favourite – and where I first noticed his work was in my sister’s comic, Princess Tina where he drew “Jane Bond: Special Agent” for three years. Some of these strips have recently been reprinted.
In the Seventies he adapted “King’ Solomon’s Mines” for the boy’s comic Ranger, (Steve Holland has reprinted this – cost £9.99 + postage) and then “Coral Island” for Look and Learn. Continuing adaptations, he drew “The Secret Garden” for young children’s comic Pixie in 1972 plus “A Little Princess”. His final work was sadly unfinished – “Lorna Doone” for Pixie. As Hubbard died on 25 June 1976 in London, I’m guessing one of his last works will have been the one we are discussing here.
ORIGINAL ARTWORKS
Below are the artworks I bought from eBay. One is even unpublished – presumably Leonard Matthews didn’t need two illustrations for one story due to page constraints. We’ll see in Part Three this happened a few times. Also I have scanned artwork which appeared with other artwork on a single board, so you see them separately.
In PART THREE I’ll show some more artwork by Hubbard from this book …and others plus more mysteries!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Links:
- Mike Hubbard – general overview with pictures – Lambiek Comiclopedia
- Original art for sale on Illustration Gallery
- A biography plus a bibliography on UK Comics Wiki
- Hubbard on the Irish Comics Wiki
Super Story Book For Girls (Part One)
Grab a cup of tea as I want to share a rather long tale of detective work which you might enjoy.
- PART ONE
- PART TWO
- PART THREE
- PART FOUR [To Follow]
On 6 July 2018 I bought five items on eBay. There were more to be had from the series but I felt these appealed and my pockets are not bottomless. But I did download the other images for reference.
What were they? The seller described them thus:
1960's Original Pen and Ink Artwork Children's Book Illustration Stampede Death1960s Original Pen and Ink Artwork Childrens Book Illustration Lake of No Return1960's Original Pen and Ink Artwork Children's Book Illustration Burglar1960's Original Pen and Ink Artwork Children's Book Illustration Mountain Climb1960's Original Pen and Ink Artwork Children's Book IllustrationScuba Diver
But it was the photos accompanying them that grabbed me as I knew who the artist was! I shared a few of the images with Phil Rushton who suspected along with David Roach (both very knowledgeable men) these might be from Bumper Story Book for Girls 1975, which made sense as the covers are by the same artist.
Unfortunately a search of the Contents pages of both the Girls and Boys books did not match anything I had! The search continued.
I happened to win an auction in 2020 of a pile of girl’s annuals which I really enjoyed going through and discovered that some of the stories illustrated on the art boards I mentioned appeared in title only in some annuals but with other illustrations! And in one case, the same artist! Have a look below.
- Girls’ Crystal Annual 1950: Her Perilous War Time Task by Sylvia Macrae
- School Friend Annual 1969: Christmas at Glentor by Denise Barry
- Sally Annual 1971: The Gales of Glentor by unknown
“The Gales of Glentor” Sally Annual 1971, pp 18, 19, 21
“Christmas at Glentor”, School Friend Annual 1969 pp. 89, 90-91, 92
So for those who’d like to see the contents page of the title of this article:
So this is a 512 page hardback, published by Hamlyn in 1976 and edited by Leonard Matthews, who some of you may know as the creator of Look and Learn, amongst lots of other credits in the comic publishing world. Roger Perry shared his thoughts on Matthews as an insider. Now this explains why I found stories in annuals with the same titles! Matthews will have raided the Odhams/Fleetway archives for text stories and hired an artist to illustrate them, but not give the man the credit he deserves!
Part Two will reveal the artwork and who drew it.
~Norman
Visual Rants 