This post comes thanks to Geoff Harrison who administers the 'New Zealand Comics' page on Facebook, who posted the episode of 'Under the Golden Dragon' shown above and alongside from
Comet weekly and to Philip Rushton who posted an equivalent reprint episode from
EAGLE shown below.
Philip's page is the original recoloured page before the words of the captions were added. 'Under the Golden Dragon' was the story of King Harold II, the last Saxon King of England, which first appeared in
Comet in 1954. Written by Mike Butterworth and illustrated by Patrick Nicolle, it was re-edited and re-coloured for
EAGLE in 1961, taking the title 'The Last of the Saxon Kings', following the takeover of
EAGLE and its companion papers by the Mirror Group. It occupied the centrespread and had a mixed response from readers. It was not as historically accurate as most of the back page biographies that readers had been accustomed to and it was much more heavily captioned than traditional
EAGLE strips. Nevertheless, it was an entertaining story and was fondly recalled by the historian Michael Wood. I enjoyed it too.
Below is the next episode as it appeared in EAGLE, which completes the episode from Comet shown above. The strip was partly redrawn and recoloured from a black and white original for EAGLE by Nicolle himself. This was possible because an uncoloured original had been retained for a black and white digest that was published shortly after 'Under the Golden Dragon' ended in Comet.
