On a recent lazy Sunday morning I was listening to “Magical Mystery Tour” and playing Candyland with my daughter. During a lull in the action I happened to look at the CD booklet and was struck by this illustration:
I had seen this before, of course, but this time wanted to know who drew it. I loved the crisp, sixties style of it and was eager to see more. Unfortunately I couldn’t read the signature at this size, so I knew I would have to turn to the large and zealous Beatles online community.
I went to DM’s Beatles forums, registered, and posted my question. Sure enough I received an answer. Had I been in possession of the LP, I would have known the answer right away:
The artist’s name is Bob Gibson. Unfortunately I have been unable to find much more information about him. Apparently there is a Bob Gibson folksinger, but I’m not sure that it’s the same guy. What I did find, however, was that he created several cartoons for The Beatles Book (or The Beatles Monthly) magazine.
Surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of these cartoons out there on the Web. I figured there would be a healthy supply due to Beatles fans scanning them in. There aren’t. Perhaps they don’t want to dilute the value of the originals. Anyway, what I found was pretty interesting. These are from the Le Dessin blog, a French blog that has a bunch of interesting stuff from Pilote and other cartoonists from overseas. I’ll have to give it more of a look later. Here they are:
Some really good stuff. Anyone have any more?
