Online Encyclopedia
Harold Clifton
Colonel Sir Harold Wilberforce Clifton, the flegmatic British colonel and sleuth was and still is one of the most loved, humorous comics heroes for nearly half a century.
The original cartoonist was Raymond Macherot, who created the Colonel Clifton character in 1959 and the early sixties. In preliminary studies, Macherot used Colonel Horatio Amaory Crickett as a working name, but before the first story decided on Colonel Clifton instead. Only in the second story, Clifton's first names Harold Wilberforce were introduced. After three stories, Macherot focused on another character, and it was quiet for Clifton for some years.
At the end of the sixties Jo-El Azara and Greg did one story, and during the seventies and the early eighties the duo Turk&De Groot soared the Clifton cartoon stories to the top of the lists with nearly twenty stories.
Then at the peak of changes in the mid eighties, Bédu took over, and continued with over ten more Clifton stories well into the nineties. His last Clifton story was published in 1995. Recently after a long and quiet period, Rodrigue with again Bob de Groot have taken over, and two Clifton stories have been published since 2003.
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Timeline
Major stories by Macherot, 1959 to 1963
- Op Speurtocht met Kolonel Clifton
- Clifton in New York
- Clifton tegen de spionnen
Single story by Joseph Loeckx and Greg , 1969
- De duivelse dwergen
Major stories by Turk & De Groot, 1970 to 1983
- De rennende stem
- De lachende dief
- Alias Lord X
- Sir Jason
- Dear Mr Wilkinson
- 7 dagen om te sterven
- Hartkloppingen (assisted by Walli )
- Een panter voor de kolonel (assisted by Walli )
- Weekend om te doden (assisted by Michel Breton
- Kidnapping (assisted by Michel Breton
Major stories by Bédu , 1984 to 1995
- Uit de oude doos (with Bob de Groot)
- Geheugenverlies (with Bob de Groot)
- Laatste voorstelling (with Bob de Groot)
- Matoutou-falaise (with Bob de Groot)
- De Mc Gregor clan
- Een fataal spel
- De kus van de cobra
Major stories by Rodrigue and Bob de Groot, 2003 onward
- Jade
- Zwarte maan
Find at the Clifton website http://www.clifton.nl/strips.html the details of all Clifton stories, the above major stories, and also minor publications.
Publications
The cartoonists worked with original French stories, whereas all were published simultaneously in French and Dutch, the two main Belgian languages, in the weekly magazines Tintin (French), Junior (French) and Kuifje (Dutch) and Ons Volkske (Dutch), all four by Lombard Editions in Brussels.
Subsequently, the stories were also published in cartoon albums (BD or Bandes Dessinées in French, stripboeken in Dutch) by the same publisher, and in co-operation with several non-Belgian publishers, such as Drukkerij-Uitgeverij Helmond (the Netherlands) and Carlsen Verlag (Germany), and in several other magazines, such as Zack and YPS (both German).
In the mid-eighties even a movie was made by Belvision, the movie department of Lombard.
Beside French and Dutch, translations were made to Finnish, Danish, and also to German where in some publications our hero is named Percy Pickwick.
Over the whole period of more than 45 years, over 30 stories (from one to 42 pages each, totalling over 800 pages) of Clifton have been published sofar, from the hands of 6 cartoonists and scenarists.
External Links
- Clifton website http://www.clifton.nl
- Lombard Editions, publishers http://www.lombard.be