Pete Sutherland, the definitive Tupper artist
Pete Sutherland was employed as a 'staff artist' & luckily for us, they gave him The Tough of the Track to illustrate. His drawings are, for me at least, & I suspect many many others, the definitive depiction of this fabulous character. Its high time that his genius was publicly recognised, as for too long, information about him has been almost impossible to come by. Hopefully this page redresses that slightly & will ensure that his name lives on thanks to the power of the internet.
Many many thanks to Pete's son & daughter, Paul & Susan, for putting together this lovely piece about their Father.
Peter Sutherland was
born in 1923 in the Leicestershire village of Somerby. He was
always fascinated by art and began to hone his own drawing and painting
skills at a very early age. By his teens, his drawing
abilities were outstanding. His service in the REME during
the Second World war was largely spent with a pencil or brush in his
hand; he hardly saw a gun fired in anger. The powers that be
were far keener on him producing posters for camp entertainments than
aiming weapons. One of the major outcomes of
the war, artistically, was the proliferation of American style comic
books. Peter was determined to get into this new art
genre. He sent in artwork samples to DC Thomson, the major
comic publishers, who immediately set him to work. From that
time he was awash with scripts to draw. After the war he married
Peggy, a Scots girl from St Andrews. They had two children,
Paul and Susan. When first married, they lived in Broughty
Ferry, near the Scottish headquarters of DC Thomson in
Dundee. Here Peter worked in an office full of comic strip artists,
having some of the happiest days of his artistic career. He
then decided to ‘go freelance’, and moved back down to Leicestershire,
where he worked from scripts. He sent the completed Indian
ink on board artwork by post to the DC Thomson offices in Fleet Street. Through the 1950s he
worked on Kit Carson comic books. This American frontiersman
and hero was ideally suited to Peter’s outstanding ability to draw
action scenes – particularly featuring horses – a notoriously difficult
skill to master. In the 1960s and 1970s Peter
worked on many scripts in the expanding range of comics on the
market. The Victor comic was always his main home, but he
also worked on the Hornet, drawing characters like ‘The
Big Palooka’, a bowler hat wearing Scotland Yard detective assigned to
work with a US police force. ‘Mike Fink’, the American raft
trader was another popular creation. He was also
responsible for a host of other stories among the DC Thomson comic
firmament. Peter started drawing Alf
Tupper in the early 1960s, and was still drawing him just before his
death in 1977. Alf was always a special character for
Peter. If there could be a bond between an artist and his
creation, then here one surely was. His visualisation of this
backstreet runner breathed life into a simple storyline. Alf
was lifted far beyond the given outline script. He had
emotions. His body conveyed joy and dejection. His
face was a readable human face. Alf was made to live for many
of his followers each week in a way which few comic characters ever
do. When Alf “ran ‘em”, we all shared his joy. When Peter died he left a
rich legacy of comic creations, and with the knowledge he had given a
great deal of joy to many devoted comic followers. Paul and Susan.
