Phantom Highwayman

This is another fantastic project from Stewart, based on a Maxwell Hawke comic strip, from Buster comic in 1961. The story is called, quite appropriately given the title of this website, The Ghost of Gallows Hill Manor! It made a big impression on Stewart at the time, so much so that the character has already put in a 'guest' appearance on this site, on the top panel of the Haunted Manor of 2009! As well as the spooky theme, there are references to other cereal promotions from the period.

First, on the left is an atmospheric panel from the story. To see the strip from which it was taken, scroll to the bottom of the page. On the right is a diorama inspired by this scene. The horse and rider are all in white with details picked out, directly from the drawing. Note the cut-out car from a Weetabix packet of the late 1950s, nicely in keeping with the cereal give-away aspect of this website.

Here's a 3D stereo pair showing how Stewart made cunning use of false perspective in the above scene! Relax your eyes and try to see each pair merge into a 3D image. Re-size as required. Alternatively, print them out and then view them with a stereoscopic viewer, like the Vistascreen/Weetabix one.

Below left, we have the scene from the victims' perspective. The backdrop with moon is a great touch. Below right, is a close-up, showing the figure in all its menacing glory.

Stewart says: The highwayman figure itself has actual cereal figure parts in it.  The hat is adapted from a Kellogg's cowboy, as is one of the hands with a gun altered to be a flintlock pistol.  The other pistol had to be scratch built using the plastic covering from a paper clip.

Here's a signpost to Hang Tree Corner,  brilliantly re-creating the one depicted in another panel of the comic strip!

Naturally, the scene is coated in luminous paint - here it is glowing gently in the dark.

Below we see the diorama mounted on a base with a large scale pistol. This was cast from glow-in-the-dark plastic in a mould taken from another Kelloggs give-away from the 1950s. Note the superb text that completes the display. Stewart says:  I started out using the same Letraset as for the Manor front but I somehow could not get the spooky look by scratching it with a blade tip as I did before, maybe trying too hard as last time it was just the result of randomly trying different techniques and it worked out.  So I found various things on the Internet and then a bit of cutting and pasting of the real kind.  The best part is giving it a coat of PVA glue which finishes everything off wonderfully.  It's very easy to use in that way, and it's impossible to get it anything but smooth.

And here is the original pistol from which the mould was taken. Actually, the original give-away was just half of a pistol and was intended to be mounted on a display.

Finally, here is the the complete strip containing the panel shown at the top of the page.