Jack and Jill (comics)
Jack and Jill was a British children's comic published between 27 February 1954 and 29 June 1985, a run of approximately 1,640 issues.
The title was derived from the nursery rhyme of the same title but the characters 'Jack and Jill of Buttercup Farm' were otherwise unrelated. 'Jack and Jill of Buttercup Farm' was the cover strip for many years, originally drawn by Hugh McNeill and later by Antonio Lupatelli.
The stories of 'Jack and Jill' were related in rhyming couplets, as were a number of other early stories. Others were told in captions below the illustrations, a style of storytelling common to pre-war nursery comics such as Puck and Rainbow.
Jack and Jill contained a wide variety of original tales for young children, some of the long-running characters including:
- Harold Hare
- Teddy and Cuddly
- Fun in Toyland
- Flipper the Skipper / Flipper the Jolly Penguin
- Freddie Frog
- Jerry, Don and Snooker
- Pixie Pip
- Gregory Grasshopper
- Chalky the Blackboard Boy
- Katie Country Mouse
- Tiger Tim and the Bruin Boys
- Fliptail the Otter
- Douglas Dachshund
- Joe, based on the BBC TV series
- The Wombles, based on the BBC TV series
- The Enchanted House
- Linda and Her Magic Bubble Mixture
- Little Miss, based on the characters created by Roger Hargreaves
Artists who worked on these and other strips included Eric Stephens, Bert Felstead, Fred Robinson, Sergio Asteriti, Walter Bell, Walter Booth, Arnold Beauvais, Gordon Hutchings, Peter Woolcock, H. M. Talintyre, Terry Willers, Ron Nielsen, Mick Hall, Roberto Sgrilli, Geoff Squire, Philip Mendoza, Harold Tamblyn-Watts, Bernard Long, Jesus Blasco, Bill Phillips and Sep E Scott.