Harry North

For an artist so widely admired, there is surprisingly little to be found about Harry North.

North would appear to have begun his career as an art assistant at IPC in the late 1960s before finding regular work as an artist at Look-In where his first work (a fill-in) appeared in February '71. He soon established himself with the colour strip "On the Buses" which ran until 1974 and he remained a Look-In regular until 1988, drawing "Doctor in Charge" (1974), "Doctor on the Go" (1975-76), "It's Madness" (1981), "Super Gran" (1985), "No.73" (1986-87), "Gilbert" (1987-88) and "Alf" (1988).

Strips in other papers included "The Michael Jackson Story" in Valentine (1973), the James Bond strip "Doomcrack" (Daily Star, 1981) and contributions to News on Sunday (1987) and Heavy Metal (1981/82/93).

Parallel to his work in comics and newspapers, he was a regular illustrator and cover artist for MAD Magazine in both the UK and US. Because of a difference in publishing schedule, the UK edition of MAD had to include newly originated material, including covers. North provided 26 covers between 1976-88, beginning with an image of Ping Pong (King Kong) and including along the way Coronation Street, Apocalypse Now, Charles & Diana, the Oscars and EastEnders. For the American magazine, where he contributed between 1976-94, he drew satirical strip version of "Star Roars" (1978), "Moneyraker" (1980) and "Purple Acid Rain" (1985) as well as contributions to "The MAD Nasty File".

North was also known outside the UK (his work appearing in Pilote and Zona 84) and also illustrated  a number of books, including The Shocking Book of Records by Martin Guinness (1983) and The Twitmarsh Files; or, The Barmy Army by R. T. Fishall (1985).

Examples of Harry North's artwork can be found for sale at the Illustration Art Gallery.