Illustrator Detectives

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Well, two down, three to go. Good work, LWHistorian!

The sportsbra Jane was nice enough to give her support, eh?

A tumbleweed blows across the Project Aon Forum. Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolls.

[Doomy]

I wondered if any letters have been sent to Richard HOOK, just on the off-chance that he's our guy?

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Not yet. I was waiting to see whether the Ladybird lead would pan out, but nothing as yet. I'll sort out the contact letters for Osprey / Richard Hook tonight.

[Doomy]

Cool. I'll keep checking the boards for any kind of news.

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Hi Doomy

The Letter went off to Osprey Publications today. Still no word from Ladybird. :-\

[LWhistorian]

On that note, none of the remaining Janes have replied yet, so that is why I have been silent.

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Well, received a letter from Ladybird this morning--not good news.

I am afraid that we have not been able to find any contact details for the illustrator named Richard Hooks. The design team here searched the contact database here with no luck.

The only other advice we could give you is maybe contact the following websites:

www.easyontheeye.net
www.ladybirdflyawayhome.com
www.dottybug.co.uk
www.ladybirdbookcollector.co.uk
www.theweeweb.co.uk

These websites specialise in older Ladybird titles and provide facilities to help you search. They may be able to assist you further.

Best of luck with your search.

So that's a dead end. Here's hoping that the Osprey lead pans out. I must say, I am not confident that any of the websites listed will be of any use to us since we're looking for the illustrator himself, and not any particular book he's illustrated, but it was a polite thought.

Oh well.

[Zipp]

Couldn't these sites lead to more recent publishers? They have to know where the artist is, right? Too bad we can't just let him know we're looking for him.

Just think, at this very moment, someone could be looking for me and going "WHERE THE HELL IS THIS GUY?! WHY IS HE SO HARD TO FIND?!" And all the while I'm sitting here not knowing...

... then again, I probably don't want them to know.


I guess you could look in a giant UK phonebook

[Doomy]

Hi guys. Just catching up on any recent developments.
Shame the Ladybird angle turned out to be a dud, here's hoping we have more luck with Osprey.

Long shot time - www.roehampton.ac.uk/oc/cpc/
This is a webpage about a professionally-run calligraphy course.
Perhaps it is time to broaden our search into the various places which offer calligraphy tuition. Jane does not appear to have done that much work in publishing, so perhaps we'll find her in a college.
Since in most cases you will only find the names of senior staff on these contact pages it could explain why Jane has so little web presence.
The downside to this approach is that it is liable to produce far more results than we can realistically handle, even if we start by concentrating on one particular region. Suggestions/comments welcome.

PS: Would it be worthwhile contacting the illustrators we have already found to see if they can help us find Jane? I know it's been almost 20 years but it might be worth a punt. They might know if she got married or something.

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Doomy said:

Would it be worthwhile contacting the illustrators we have already found to see if they can help us find Jane? I know it's been almost 20 years but it might be worth a punt. They might know if she got married or something.

Actually, the official Project Aon contact leter does ask whether 'you' have any idea how to contact the other 'missing' illustrators--then lists their names. Graham Round, Rob Adams, and Pete Lyon had no idea where the other illustrators were. I have mentioned in the Richard Hook_ letter that we're still looking for Jane Layc0ck, but I'm not even sure whether we're contacting the correct guy; I'd be extremely surprised if he can give us any leads on the whereabouts of Ms Layc0ck. Still, we can live in hope since I've had no reply from Osprey as yet.

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Hey, has anybody tried using the new MSN search engine at search.msn.com to find Mr Hooks, Ms Layc0ck, Mr Julien? It seems to be quite good (though I doubt it'll replace Google simply because of just who it is running the show).

[Black Cat]

outspaced said:

Hey, has anybody tried using the new MSN search engine at search.msn.com to find Mr Hooks, Ms Layc0ck, Mr Julien?

I gave it a try for Cyril Julien, and here what I found:
www.dccomics.com/comics/?cm=2402

I don't know if you already know that he was working at DC Comics, but I'm trying to help you the best that I can.

[LWhistorian]

I will try that new search engine out later today. Those other three Janes still have not replied so that is a dead end for now. I don't know if the Janes even read those e-mails. It has been about two weeks since I sent them out so they either just trashed them without reading them or decided not to reply.

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Black said:

I gave it a try for Cyril Julien, and here what I found:
www.dccomics.com/comics/?cm=2402

I don't know if you already know that he was working at DC Comics, but I'm trying to help you the best that I can.

Thanks, Black Cat. I think we've tried contacting him via 2000AD, but not DC. I've mailed the person who was contacting 2000AD to see what response he's had, but if it's a dead end, we can try DC, though their website doesn't mention anything about contacting the illustrators.

LWHistorian--I know how you feel. I seem to have been extremely fortunate with contacting the artists involved. Most of the Jane Layc0cks on the MSN search are from genealogical lists or tables, which takes an awful lot of patience to read through. (Or use -"genealogy" which is how I deal with it).

Doomy--I dunno about contacting colleges, but I think teaching would seem the most likely career change for Ms Layc0ck. Anyone got a full list of teachers in the UK?

[doomwolf]

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Doomy--I dunno about contacting colleges, but I think teaching would seem the most likely career change for Ms Layc0ck. Anyone got a full list of teachers in the UK?

I agree that we need to get some -any- information on Jane to give us a starting point before beginning an investigation of this nature. If we could get our hands on one of those "Crazy" books she seems to have worked on, might it contain a bio? I know it would be out of date but you never know, there could be some useful info.

PS: The National Union of Teachers would have a fairly extensive list of British schoolteachers (and possibly FE staff) who are also trade union members. The trick would be getting any info out of them! Do we have any forum members who happen to work in clerical positions at large educational trade unions? (Unlikely! )

PPS: Yes, I AM running out of ideas!

PPPS: I am Doomy but this computer is signed in under a different email address and I forgot to change it over before posting! Oops, my amazing double life is revealed! Seriously though if you feel like deleting this username I won't miss it.