Ben Heywood :: Look & Learn: Illustrations

Look & Learn No 872 (30 September 1978) - Into The Unknown: Riddle of the Colonel Who Never Came Back

Artist: Oliver Frey (All)

3 Comments - 686 Views - 0 Like

Look & Learn No 872 (30 September 1978) - Into The Unknown: Riddle of the Colonel Who Never Came Back Comic Art

Additional Images:

verso

page as published

following page image!

page as mounted

page with mount (not tape) removed

Cover

Previous Item:
Look & Learn No 868 (2 September 1978) - Into The Unknown: Journey To The Forbidden City

Next Item:
Look & Learn No 754 (26 June 1976) - Dynasties of Destiny: Dutchmen Who Ruled Britain

Artwork Details

Title:	Look & Learn No 872 (30 September 1978) - Into The Unknown: Riddle of the Colonel Who Never Came Back
Artist:	Oliver Frey (All)
Media Type:	Paint - Watercolor
Art Type:	Double Page Splash
For Sale Status:	NFS
Views:	686
Likes on CAF:	0 1
Comments:	3
Added to Site:	6/17/2020
Comic Art Archive:

Description

Grail Alert!

Magisterial image by Oliver Frey of missing Amazon explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett (of 'Lost City of Z' fame), re-imagined as as a Colonel Kurtz-style ruler of a lost civilisation, a la 'Apocalypse Now' (a year before that move was released!).

Crazy, scary stuff for a kids educational magazine like Look & Learn, and I lapped the terror and glory of this mage as a kid. All of Frey's DPS images for this series were crazily good pieces of narrative history painting; an inspiration to me as a child.

This page is the right-hand panel of a DPS. Images below show what it looked like originally, and how it came to me mounted as a single image, and what looked like after I had carefully removed the mount. This revealed a few things. The page had been masked-off twice, once for original publication (the top of the image) and once for a presumed republication (the thick white strip to the right, and a thin strip to the left), which is possibly when the left-hand panel was discarded (the text as the base also implies a later republication as a single image). Sadly the right hand strip is too firmly affixed to be removed without damaging the paint surface, though I was able to remove the thin left-hand strip.

The top strip also contained some textual information, but was too damaged to read more than 'Look & Learn', and a date of 'Sept', 'pages 8/9'. The rear of the piece also shows that it was glued to another sheet at some point, but removed before it was mounted. The fading to the image revealed when I remove the upper tape and mount also implies that it was hung in direct light for some time.

I contacted Oli, but he had not received this work back, and did not know when it had been republished, or when the left panel was discarded. He only had two of the 15 or so DPS painted for this series returned; the rest are, like Colonel Fawcett, lost forever.

Gouache on water-colour paper
Paper 32 x 48 cms
Image 31.5 x 45 cms

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About the Owner

	Ben Heywood Premium Gallery Owner
Joined:	November 2009
Last Login:	September 2025
Ebay Id:	eggwood
Country:	UNITED STATES
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Comments on this Artwork

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Suat Tong Ng
Member Since 2009

1 - Posted on 6/17/2020

Ack! Terrible damage but I remember this image quite well.

Ben Heywood
Member Since 2009

Posted on 6/17/2020

Suat Tong Ng wrote:

Ack! Terrible damage but I remember this image quite well.

Me too! All of Frey's illustrations for this series are seared into my brain...

Peter Sullivan
Member Since 2006

Posted on 8/27/2021

Nice art. Light damage all right but not ruinously bad. I was slightly luckier with the Frey artwork I got. No light damage. So much art has been ruined by too much exposure to direct sunlight. My favourite 2000ad cover looked like a piece of burned toast when it finally surfaced, so did not buy it.

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