Inspector Jellicoe’s Casebook - a review

Inspector Jellicoe. © D.C. Thomson & Co. Ltd.

See The Hornet (the series possibly started in issue 12 and possibly finished in issue 21. Although I can't confirm this. Earliest issue I have is number 13, 7th December 1963. I've assumed the series ran for ten issues).

Writer:- Not known. Artist:- Not known.

Main cast:- Inspector Jellicoe and associated minor villains

Time period:- London (?) 1960’s.

Text stories featuring Inspector Jellicoe appeared in The Rover, entitled Cases from Inspector Jellicoe's Wee Black Book, between issues 1719 to 1730 for twelve weeks starting on June 7th 1958. I'm not sure if the strips featured in The Hornet are adapted from these stories or if they are new cases.

Inspector Jellicoe’s Casebook is a humorous strip, the text story is told in a straight forward style, whilst the humour is visual. The villains and the odd pompous person are all drawn in a caricature fashion for example, exaggerated noses, weird hair styles and so on. Jellicoe, other policemen and innocent bystanders have their features drawn as normal people. The visual humour can also be found in the background of some of the panels. In the episode below lookout for the scene in Jellicoe’s office and when the villains are on the double decker bus. It’s then that the reader realises that there is more to this strip than he/she first thought.

It would be interesting to know if the writer wrote each episode as a straight story and then left it to the artist to provide the visual humour or whether the writer and artist was the same person. If it was two people, they would appear to be operating as a ‘Morecombe and Wise’ team. The straight man being the writer and the comedian the artist. Or maybe the writer provided notes for the visual humour he/she wanted incorporated into each episode.

Other strips that this artist worked on include Harry the Hitch, Send for Sid, The Colorado Kid, and others for The Hornet.

© Adrian Banfield, 2008.