Battleships By L Ashwell Wood

By John Freeman on December 5, 2010

Battleship Montage by Leslie Ashwell Wood

It is no secret that the team here on downthetubes are all fans of Eagle comic with John Freeman editing Titan’s Dan Dare and Bible Stories reprint books, Jeremy Briggs and Richard Sheaf writing for Eagle Times while Ian Wheeler was the editor of the still missed Eagle Flies Again zine.

Original Eagle’s longest serving artist was Leslie Ashwell Wood, who is best known for his detailed cutaway paintings that were in around two thirds of all the issues of Eagle published between 1950 and 1969. Wood died in 1973, before Eagle fandom had a chance to talk to him and this has left many questions about this career unanswered.

Recently, a selection of his preliminary pencil sketches for various cutaways and other explanatory paintings have come to light and Jeremy Briggs has taken the opportunity to examine these over on Steve Holland’s Bear Alley blog.

The latest of these prelims is for a King George V Class battleship of the Royal Navy, the type of ship that fought battles again the Bismarck and Scharnhorst in the Atlantic during World War Two.

Jeremy compares the seventy year old prelim to its published version and is able to directly link it to a painting by Wood that is held in the UK’s National Archives.

• There are more details of the battleship pencil prelim by Leslie Ashwell Wood on Bear Alley

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.