Bear Alley Books Presents CL Doughty

Cecil Langley Doughty is not a familiar artist, even to those of us who regularly write about the history of British comics, but Steve Holland is planning to change all that with Pages From History: Illustrated By CL Doughty, the next release from his Bear Alley Books imprint.

CL Doughty was born in Yorkshire in 1913 and contributed illustrations to the Radio Times, amongst other titles, before WWII. After spending the war in the army he returned to civilian life and began drawing comic strips for The Children's Newspaper, School Friend and the digest Thriller Picture Library. Later titles included Mickey Mouse Weekly, Swift, Girl, Princess and June before he moved over to the magazine Look and Learn. For Look and Learn, Doughty provided a varied selection of both historical comic strips and feature illustrations, much of which is featured in Pages From History.

In its 172 pages, the book includes an 11 page article on Doughty's life and career, over 60 pages of feature illustrations and more than 90 pages of comic strip including complete stories of Pott's Progress, The Crusader, A Sword For The Stadtholder and The Black Pirate, all from Look and Learn. The book also includes four pages of comic strip artwork from a Moll Moonlight strip that was probably created for the girl's comic School Friend around 1960 and has never been published before. Over half of all the artwork in the book has been scanned from the original artboards.

Pages From History: Illustrated By CL Doughty is available directly from the Bear Alley Books website and the cover price is £17.99. Anyone ordering a copy of the book before Friday 3 February 2012 will receive a 10% discount on the cover price.

The Bear Alley Books website is here and includes links to the trio of Eagles Over the Western Front books, written by Michael Butterworth and illustrated by Bill Lacey, and the Hurricane And Champion Comics Index book written by Steve Holland.