Beelzebub Jones
Encyclopedia
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
newspaper comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
created by cartoonist Hugh McClelland
Hugh McClelland (cartoonist)
Hugh McClelland was a cartoonist who headed the cartoon department of the Daily Mirror in the UK.In 1937, he introduced his wild Western comic strip Beelzebub Jones in the pages of the Daily Mirror...
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Characters and story
The wild Western strip ran from December 28, 1937 to December 28, 1945 in the Daily Mirror 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
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 offloaded it to William and Gomer Berry The Daily Sketch was a British national tabloid newspaper,...
. 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
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 Ed Link, based on technology he pioneered in 1929 at his family's business in Binghamton, New York...
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