The Origin of the Lion Rock WWII artworks
Back in 1977 when I was playing with the GESTERN WAR'S figures
one thing that I found fascinating were the artworks on the back of the boxes.
There were these colorful, exciting (for a 9 year old, at least :-) paintings of battle scenes.
And each of the 32 figures came with an individual box artwork!
I recently asked myself: Who created these artworks? Where did they come from?
So I did some research. Here is what I found.
The starting point for my research was the painting on the Africa Corps box.
There is a small white text in it: "COTON". I thought: Could that be the name of the artist?
A google search revealed the name of Graham Coton, a British artist living from 1926 to 2003.
The google image search found several paintings by him, painted in that style. It seemed, I was on the right track.
The name Coton can also be found in the artworks for the Japanese Soldier and the German Mountain Trooper.
But there were other names, too:
"FREY" on the artwork for the Italian Partisan:
That could be the signature of Oliver Frey, born in Switzerland in 1948.
(please note that the painting is mirrored - at least on the French release box)
And "Fernandez" on the artwork for the Scottish Guard box:
That could be the signature of Fernando Fernandez, living from 1940 to 2010.
Further searches on google and amazon lead to two books, about cover artworks for old British comic books
that were published during the 60s and 70s. And that is what these painting were originally created for!
Lets take a look inside the first of the books. It's called "Aarrgghh!! It's War".
On page 54 we find the artwork from the Japanese Officer:
According to the book, that painting was done by Jordi Penalva for a comic cover in 1963
(13 years before the Lion Rock line was produced!)
On page 68 we find the artwork for the US Officer:
It was created by Alessandro Biffignandi, for a comic book that was released in 1967.
If you compare the US officer artwork to that on the Lion Rock box you will notice that
on the box the helmet doesn't have the two stars on it. Instead there is a roman II.
I found several examples where the artworks seemed to have been modified for use on the Lion Rock boxes.
I can post more examples, if there is enough interest in this topic… ;-)
I was curious what these comics look like in person, so I bought four of them on eBay.
They are from the "War Picture Library" series.
Here is a comparison shot of the Desert Rat box (French version) and one of the books:
The cover artwork for the Desert Rat can be found in the second book that I found, which is called "The Art of War".
Page 157 tells us that the artwork was created by Graham Coton (there he is again!) in 1970.
The comic story itself is drawn in black and white and these books have around 60 pages.
Did anyone here (who grew up in Great Britain) read some of those comics?
Back in 1977 when I was playing with the GESTERN WAR'S figures
one thing that I found fascinating were the artworks on the back of the boxes.
There were these colorful, exciting (for a 9 year old, at least :-) paintings of battle scenes.
And each of the 32 figures came with an individual box artwork!
I recently asked myself: Who created these artworks? Where did they come from?
So I did some research. Here is what I found.
The starting point for my research was the painting on the Africa Corps box.
There is a small white text in it: "COTON". I thought: Could that be the name of the artist?
A google search revealed the name of Graham Coton, a British artist living from 1926 to 2003.
The google image search found several paintings by him, painted in that style. It seemed, I was on the right track.
The name Coton can also be found in the artworks for the Japanese Soldier and the German Mountain Trooper.
But there were other names, too:
"FREY" on the artwork for the Italian Partisan:
That could be the signature of Oliver Frey, born in Switzerland in 1948.
(please note that the painting is mirrored - at least on the French release box)
And "Fernandez" on the artwork for the Scottish Guard box:
That could be the signature of Fernando Fernandez, living from 1940 to 2010.
Further searches on google and amazon lead to two books, about cover artworks for old British comic books
that were published during the 60s and 70s. And that is what these painting were originally created for!
Lets take a look inside the first of the books. It's called "Aarrgghh!! It's War".
On page 54 we find the artwork from the Japanese Officer:
According to the book, that painting was done by Jordi Penalva for a comic cover in 1963
(13 years before the Lion Rock line was produced!)
On page 68 we find the artwork for the US Officer:
It was created by Alessandro Biffignandi, for a comic book that was released in 1967.
If you compare the US officer artwork to that on the Lion Rock box you will notice that
on the box the helmet doesn't have the two stars on it. Instead there is a roman II.
I found several examples where the artworks seemed to have been modified for use on the Lion Rock boxes.
I can post more examples, if there is enough interest in this topic… ;-)
I was curious what these comics look like in person, so I bought four of them on eBay.
They are from the "War Picture Library" series.
Here is a comparison shot of the Desert Rat box (French version) and one of the books:
The cover artwork for the Desert Rat can be found in the second book that I found, which is called "The Art of War".
Page 157 tells us that the artwork was created by Graham Coton (there he is again!) in 1970.
The comic story itself is drawn in black and white and these books have around 60 pages.
Did anyone here (who grew up in Great Britain) read some of those comics?
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