''Beelzebub Jones'' was a UK newspaper

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

created by cartoonist

Hugh McClelland Hugh McClelland may refer to: * Hugh McClelland (politician) Hugh McClelland (27 December 1875 – 14 December 1958) was an Australian politician. He was born in Smeaton, Victoria, his family reportedly having come to Victoria with the Hen ...

.Lambiek: Hugh McClelland
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Characters and story

The

wild Western ''Wild Western'' (originally titled ''Wild West'') was a Western comic book series published by Atlas Comics, the 1950s forerunner of Marvel Comics. The omnibus series published 57 issues from 1948 to 1957. Kid Colt stories were usually the lead ...

strip ran from December 28, 1937, to December 28, 1945, in the ''

Daily Mirror The ''Daily Mirror'' is a British national daily tabloid. Founded in 1903, it is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was simply ''The Mirror''. It had an average daily print ...

'' newspaper. The sheriff character was based on McClelland's father, a farmer with a wooden leg. After taking over as cartoon chief at the ''Mirror'' in 1945, he dropped ''Beelzebub Jones'' and moved on to a variety of new strips, including ''Dan Doofer'', ''Sunshine Falls'' and ''Jimpy''. In 1952, he exited the ''Mirror'' for the tabloid ''

Daily Sketch The ''Daily Sketch'' was a British national tabloid newspaper, founded in Manchester in 1909 by Sir Edward Hulton. It was bought in 1920 by Lord Rothermere's Daily Mirror Newspapers, but in 1925 Rothermere sold it to William and Gomer Berry ...

''. He launched his last strip, ''Jimmy Gimmicks'' in 1957, but it lasted only two months. McClelland had a working method that expedited his production. He would pencil 20 weeks of strips at one session, writing dialogue as he progressed and then ink these in outline. Lastly, he would go back and fill in the blacks. This speedy working method enabled McClelland to continue producing ''Beelzebub Jones'' during his World War II military service with the Royal Air Force as a Sergeant Instructor on the

Link Trainer The term Link Trainer, also known as the "Blue box" and "Pilot Trainer" is commonly used to refer to a series of flight simulators produced between the early 1930s and early 1950s by Link Aviation Devices, founded and headed by Ed Link Edwin ...

. Horn, Maurice
World Encyclopedia of Comics''. Chelsea House, 1983.
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References

External links

British comic strips 1937 comics debuts 1945 comics endings Humor comics Western (genre) comics Fictional sheriffs British comics characters Comics characters introduced in 1937 {{comic-strip-stub