Tiger, cover date 2 September 1972

Yvonne Hutton’s Roy of the Rovers covers rank alongside the very best examples of British comic art. She had a gift for capturing the athleticism, excitement and atmosphere of a top football game.

Here’s just a few of her many other great covers. Looking at these captures a feeling of being a young supporter standing right at the front of a crowded terrace, inches away from the powerful action.

Hutton was the ROTR artist for ten years between 1967 and 1975, and 1976 and 1978, before moving on to the long-running Durrell’s Palace strip. Tragically she died in 1992 following a car accident, at a time in which she was drawing Roy’s adventures once more, for the Daily Star.

Tiger in 1972 had recently become a sports-only title although it retained some of the fantastical storytelling elements common to adventure comics of the 60s. Liked The Barbed-Wire XI, for example. I’ll let the introductory panel describe the madness; art by Jim Bleach.

Football Family Robinson (John Gillatt), The Tigers (Ron Turner), Martin’s Marvellous Mini (David Sque), and Johnny Cougar with Splash Gorton (Sandy James) offered more fun but unlikely sports tales. Cougar betrayed the usual ‘Red Indian’ tropes: ‘Heap good!’, and so on.

The comic celebrated Rangers’ European Cup Winners’ Cup victory from the end of the season, with colour photos and a Request a Star feature on captain John Greig.