Who's that drawing Union Jack Jackson?

[Patrick]

The Yellowed Pages, an excellent blog of scanned old comics, has just posted the first appearance of Union Jack Jackson in the Hotspur, back when the Hotspur was still a story paper and not a comic, in 1957. The cover's not quite as polished or assured as his later work, but it's unmistakably Ron Smith!

[Spikes]

Ah so it is. Great stuff, thats a lovely cover by Ron. Didnt some of his first published work date back to the 40's?
Been doing a bit of re-reading of Union Jack Jackson myself in some old 70's Warlord Annuals, guess  Hotspur and Warlord merged at some point then.

[Patrick]

Yeah, Ron was one of a group of artists who joined Amalgamated Press (as was) not long after WWII, including Mike Western and Eric Bradbury. I have a copy of the Knockout Fun Book from 1953 which has some spot illos by him on a western prose story, but they look much less like the Ron we know than this Hotspur cover does.

[Patrick]

I don't think the Hotspur ever merged with Warlord, and I know UJJ was in Warlord from issue 1 - he's on the cover (not, sadly, by Ron). They must have had a rummage for suitable characters they already had when they started Warlord.