I'm currently making corrections and changes to The Comic Strip Companion 1964-1979, working from notes made on the manuscript by my good friend Jon Preddle, who is the book's very first reader.
Jon's notes on the chapter covering The Daleks strip from TV Century 21 alerted me to something I'd overlooked in the manuscript. Jon writes, "I might be wrong on this, but didn’t Chris Achilleos base his Target book cover Daleks on Turner’s style?"
This sent me scurrying over to my bookshelves to check, and sure enough Jon is correct - Target novelisation cover artist Chris Achilleos didn't just base his Daleks on Ron Turner's strip illustrations - he directly copied them, and here's the evidence:
Postscript...
And it doesn't stop there. As Jon has since pointed out, Achilleos clearly again turned to Ron Turner's artwork for the TV Century 21 strip when he illustrated the cover for the novelisation Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks. This time, Achilleos reversed the images and altered the designs very slightly, but they are unmistakably based on Turner's artwork.
I've reversed the relevant sections of Achilleos's cover on the right for a direct comparison.
