Talk:Rupert Bear

Painting Competition
Why no mention of the Painting Competition? My brother won it twice, and I once (prize £5 in the 1950's); I can find no details of it elsewhere. The last page of the Annual was a full page line illustration of a Nutwood scene, which you coloured in and sent to the Daily Express. Which Annuals did they occur in - I won in 1959, and my brother thinks in 1949 and 1950?

86.187.174.87 (talk) 23:22, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 03:44, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Rupert Bear by Mary Tourtel.jpg

Hyperlink on the 'In Schoolkids Oz' tab should be moved
In my opinion, the hyperlink on the 'In Schoolkids Oz' tab should be moved to the 'See also' tab as it is a relevant hyperlink and in my opinion it looks strange having a hyperlink in a tab. Xboxsponge15 (talk) 10:11, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Colour change
The article is wrong to say that Rupert was originally drawn as a 'brown bear' and later changed to white. This is to misunderstand the nature of comic-strip art. In the first panel drawn by Mary Tourtel, published in the Express on Monday, 8 November, 1920, Rupert and his parents are shown as 'white', which does not mean that they are actually white, just that they are not dark enough to require awkward and laborious shading in the context of simplified pen-and-ink newspaper illustration. (See George Perry with Alfred Bestall, Rupert: A Bear's Life, London, Pavilion Books 1985, ISBN 0-907516-76-9, pp.8-9.) In Tourtel's watercolour illustrations for the various book versions at that time, Rupert was shown with a brown face and flesh-coloured hands (op. cit., p.16). In addition, Tourtel always painted Rupert's sweater as blue and his scarf and trousers as white, with black boots (ibid.). In the Bestall era, from the 1936 Annual cover onward, the sweater was red and the scarf and trousers yellow, with brown boots, a more cheerful look (op.cit., pp.64-5). Alfred Bestall naturally kept up Tourtel's method of leaving Rupert's face white in the daily strip drawings. The colouration of the strip stories in the Annuals, not done by Bestall, likewise left Rupert's face, hands and boots white for simplicity -- Rupert appears in every panel, so the artist has to have a reasonably economical way of drawing him, and the same applies to the colourist -- but Bestall's Annual watercolour covers and endpapers always had the brown face, the flesh-coloured hands and the brown boots. Bestall was 'particularly grieved' when the Express executives changed Rupert's carefully painted face, hands and boots to blank white on the cover of the 1973 Annual because they misunderstood a query from the newspaper's proprietor Sir Max Aitken. After that, Bestall, who had stopped drawing the daily strip in 1965, declined to do any more covers or endpapers for the Annuals (op.cit., p.95). If you have one of the few original printings of the 1973 Annual with the proper 'brown face' artwork, before they went and messed it up, then you have a sound investment. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:16, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Infobox image status
When Mickey Mouse became public domain, there was a big debate over the Infobox image, as many felt it was required to use a free image in the infobox if one was available, even if Mickey's design has changed somewhat since 1928. Since Rupert is also from the 1920s, would the same apply here? I don't know how easy it would be to find 20s Rupert media though. Or does using a logo supercede that? Ringtail Raider (talk) 01:13, 1 May 2024 (UTC)