Eric R. Parker

Eric Robert Parker was born in Stoke Newington, London, on 7 September 1898, the second son of Edwin Alfred Parker (a clerk with Waterbury Watch Co.) and his wife Helen (née Morton). Parker was a London County Scholar attending Northwold Road School where his artistic talent so puzzled the local authorities that they were uncertain what to do with him. The Council had no school sufficiently advanced to give him the scope he required, so the Education Committee decided to award him an advanced scholarship and a maintenance grant to cover the cost of his travel to an art school.

His studies were soon interrupted by the Great War in which he served with the Bucks Hussars. After the war he resumed his artistic career but as a freelance illustrator. His first commission had come in 1915 for a series of humorous postcards but his big break came in 1921 when he placed his first work with the Amalgamated Press.

He found his true metier as the illustrator of the Sexton Blake detective yarns in 1922. His first Blake cover appeared on Union Jack in October 1922 and Parker soon became one of the main Blake artists. His strength, like Arthur Jones before him, was atmosphere. Some of his drawing could look crude—although his characters were always recognisable—but the atmosphere he imbued into his drawings was always perfect for the story it illustrated, whether the dark, sombre gloom of the Paris catacombs or the open prairies. Parker also proved to have a lighter side when required that could bring humour to the illustrations that accompanied 'Tinker's Notebook' and the 'Detective Supplement' pages.

H. W. Twyman, the editor of Union Jack, asked Parker to produce a bust of the renowned detective which appeared on the cover of Union Jack issue 1169 (6 March 1926) and copies of the bust were offered as prizes for promotional competitions. Twyman felt that Parker captured the essence of Sexton Blake so well that he appointed him the sole cover artist of the Sexton Blake Library from April 1929, a position he held until February 1953—a run of 842 covers. Other artists were introduced but Parker continued to produce occasional covers until 1959.

Parker's long association with Blake ran parallel to his work elsewhere, producing illustrations for The Strand, Pearson's, The Corner Magazine, Chums and other magazines and books throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1939, Parker began working for the newly launched Knockout Comic as an illustrator on the long running 'Mickey's Pal the Wizard' text story. His work was championed by editor Edward Holmes, who had used Parker extensively on his previous title Wild West, and was to remain a favourite of Holmes' wartime replacement on Knockout, Percy Clark.

Parker switched from illustration to comic strips in 1939 when he drew the short-lived 'Tec Sharp' in Sports Budget a few weeks before the paper folded, followed in 1940 by 'The Queer Adventures of Patsy and Tim' in Knockout, the story of two children whose uncle invents some 'dwindling pills' that turn the youngsters into two dolls' clothes-wearing Tom Thumbs.

Parker went on to draw 'The Adventures of Bear Cub' (a young Indian boy) and 'Jimmy Jingles' Time Machine' before drawing the first of a number of literary adaptations in 'Gulliver's Travels'. More Lilliputian-like adventures followed in 'Frank and Ted, the Pocket-Size Cowboys', Frank Grey and Fred Smithers being two pals from a tribe of tiny people who lived in a lost valley in the Rockies.

Parker's adaptations over the next few years included 'Stories from the Arabian Nights', 'Peter the Whaler', 'Mr. Midshipman Easy', 'The Children of the New Forest', Kidnapped', 'The Three Musketeers' and 'Westward Ho!' before he revived a favourite from Wild West in comic strip form, 'The Phantom Sheriff'.

At the same time, Parker also began drawing newspaper strips, which he continued to produce into the 1950s. The most notable of these was 'Paula' which began appearing in the Daily Express in September 1946 relating the adventures of a young continuity girl in the exciting world of film studios. The strip was credited to no less a writer than Dennis Wheatley, although the day-to-day continuity was probably written by scriptwriter T. E. B. Clarke. Parker's other newspaper strips were 'Pepys Diary' (Evening News), 'Making a Film' (Daily Express), 'An Age of Greatness' (Daily Globe) and 'Our Gang' (Sunday Pictorial).

The last of Parker's literary adaptations, 'The Black Arrow' based on the novel by R. L. Stevenson, appeared in Knockout shortly before the movie starring Louis Hayward was released in the UK (as The Black Arrow Strikes). Ted Holmes now began featuring comic strip movie adaptations, with Parker producing the first, 'The Exile' based on the Douglas Fairbanks Jr. movie. His next strip for Knockout united him with the character he had helped define. 'Sexton Blake & Tinker in The Secret of Monte Cristo', written by Holmes, is often cited as one of the best of the Blake strips.

Over the next few years, Parker's output was as diverse as ever, ranging from westerns featuring Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill and Buck Jones for Knockout and Cowboy Comics to historicals ('The Quest of Midshipman West', 'Highway Days', 'Mr. Bash the Brutal', 'The Snare'). He also produced two episodes of 'Tommy Walls', the advertising strip published in Eagle.

One of Parker's most popular strips began appearing in Sun in February 1954. 'Max Bravo, the Happy Hussar' told the story of a young trooper in the 9th Hussars of the French Army serving under General Napoleon Bonaparte. The strip ran on the paper's colour centre pages and rear cover in colour for some years with Parker producing 87 episodes in all over a three-year period.

In June 1955, Parker began drawing the story of Nelson for Comet, also in colour. It was his work on 'Nelson' and 'Max Hussar' that confirmed Parker's talent for drawing historical subjects. Since the 1920s, Parker had been fascinated by military history and spent many hours in museums examining uniforms, adding to his knowledge of old-time military matters. Every historical strip and feature Parker drew benefited from his hobby as every uniform was accurate down to the last button, one notable feature being 'Soldiers of the Queen' for Comet which ran for six months in 1953-54.

In 1959, Leonard Matthews, the former editor of Knockout, Sun and Thriller Comics, had risen to the position of director of juvenile publications and set up a group within the department known as Experimental Art to create dummies for new publications. Parker was employed by the firm, now called Fleetway Publications, and assisted on the creation of Buster. His efforts were visible in the early issues in the title heading for 'The Sea Hawk', although the strip itself was drawn by Patrick Nicolle. Parker did draw in full the replacement strip, 'Three Rollicking Rogues', a humorous historical strip based on the three musketeers starring Filbert, Frollo and Florian.

Parker was involved heavily in the early creation of Experimental Art's next two successes: for Princess, launched in January 1960, Parker illustrated various stories by Enid Blyton and, in 1963-64, produced the full-colour strip 'The Daughter of Lorna Doone'; and for Look and Learn, launched in January 1962, he produced 'scamps'—rough layouts, sometimes in colour—of pages so that artists would know how the feature was envisaged. He was to provide similar roughs for other papers, including cover layouts for Valiant and page layouts for Ranger.

Parker did not give up strip illustration entirely, although his work during the 1960s was as a feature artist, contributing to 'Do You Know Your Name?' and 'Ticket to Adventure' in Boy's World before launching a long running series of features with 'The Story of the Soldier' for Ranger. This began as an illustrated text feature which Parker developed into a full-page feature entitled 'My Scrapbook of the British Soldier' which Parker wrote as well as illustrated in colour.

This series drew on Parker's decades of study of British military history and found a perfect home in Look and Learn when Ranger merged with that paper in 1966. The follow-ups, 'Scrapbook of the British Sailor' ran for over a year in 1968-69 and 'For Valour' for six months in 1969-70. Parker did not limit himself to military history and also illustrated 'The Story of the Motor Car' in 1967, the comic strip 'Frazer's Folly' in 1972 and 'A Highland Journey', the story of Dr. Johnson's travels through Scotland, in 1973.

Parker was working on another back cover series for Look and Learn, to be called 'A Thousand Years of Spying' when he died in March 1974, aged 75.

Examples of Eric R. Parker's artwork can be found for sale at the Illustration Art Gallery.

Glenn Pepple

A high school contemporary of Jon J. Muth, Glenn David Pepple (b. 1960) contributed illustrations to Epic (1985) and a one-page painting to Clive Barker's Hellraiser issue 4 (1990). Pepple was also one of six contributors to Night, a collection of six prints published by Peter & Pan Publishers (1985) in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, each plate signed and numbered.

Pepple lives in New York.

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

Malcolm Poynter

Malcolm Poynter was born in Croydon in 1947 but grew up in Southampton. He is related to the painter Sir Edward Poynter which helped develop his interest in artwork, as did his boyhood reading of The Eagle. He attended Winchester School of Art (1965-67) and St Martin's College of Art (1967-70) where he was a contemporary of Gilbert & George, Richard Long, Bill Woodrow nad John Goto.

His comics work began to appear in the 1970s in underground newspapers, including "Eddie Trunker" adn "Rip Toph" in Oz and International Times. He also contributed to Xozmic Comics, It's All Lies, Rock 'n' Roll Madness Funnies, Animal Weirdness and Ally Sloper.

He worked for a wide range of magazine and book publishers, including Radio Times, Time Out, Image, Science Fiction Monthly (NEL), Pan Books and several top shelf magazines. He also did advertising for Levi jeans and Octopus Books and album artwork for Peter Gabriel.

He became art director for Mecanic, a high street fashion manufacturer and t-shirt printer and then produced graphics for many yearsa for ITN, Thames TV and Meridian TV.

In 2000 he returned to painting and subsequently had exhibitions in New York, London, Dorset and Wiltshire. He has also worked in embroidery.

A few years later, Poynter moved from his studio in Dalston, London, to Aigen, Austria, where he bought a former garden centre which he has turned into a gallery. Aigen is also the home of Nick Treadwell, Poynter's agent, who moved to Dalston some years before Poynter and bought a 500-year-old prison which he also turned into a gallery.

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

Angel Nadal

Spanish artist Angel Nadal was one of a group of artists discovered in Spain when Ron Clark, Barry Coker and Keith Davies went in search of new humour artists for planned launches by the new Fleetway Publications. In Spain, they discovered the Bruguera School of artists and introduced a host of them to the pages of Film Fun, Knockout and the newly launched Buster.

One of the leading artists thus discovered was Angel Nadal. Born Ángel Nadal Quirch in Barcelona in 1930, Nadal began his career in 1944 as an assistant to Antonio Ayné and Emilio Boix. He began working for Editorial Valenciana's Jaimito where, in 1948, he credited the strip "Sindulfo Sacarina". That same year he also began working for Bruguera.

Editorial Bruguera were established as Black Cat Publishing by Juan Bruguera in 1910 but was renamed by Bruguera's son in 1939. Black Cat launched the weekly comic Pulgarcito [Tom Thumb] in 1921 but its popularity grew after 1947 and Bruguera expanded with more humour titles such as Din Dan and El DDT.

Nadal began working on strips for the magazine Pulgarcito, his creations including "Casildo Calasparra" (1948), "Sandalio Pergamín" (1948), "Don Folio" (1951), "Don Cloroformo" (1951) and "Pascual, criado leal" (1953). Nadal's style of artwork mixed realism with caricature and he became known for his ability to draw attractive women in such strips as "Rosita, la vampiresa" (1951) and "Las mujeres de Nadal" (1954). Nadal also drew historietas costumbristas – stories of daily life – including "Matildita y Anacleto, un matrimonio completo" (El DDT, 1954) and "Maripili y Gustavito, todavía sin pisito" (Sissi, 1958).

In 1957, some of Bruguera's contributors – amongst them José Escobar, José Peñarroya, Carlos Conti, Guillermo Cifré and Eugenio Giner – were unhappy with their lot and set up the group DER (Dibujantes Españoles Reunidos [Spanish Designers Reunited]) who created Tio Vivo, a Spanish adult humour magazine along the lines of the Argentinean comic Rico Tipo. Nadal's contributions included "Tip y Top y su pandilla" and "Marilin, chica moderna" (1959), which were immediately dropped when the paper was taken over by Bruguera in 1961.

The struggling paper was also home to the work of Gin (Jordi Ginés) and Raf (Joan Rafart), who, along with another Bruguera regular Martz Schmidt (Gustavo Martínez) and Nadal, were to become regulars in British comics, represented by Bardon Art.

Nadal's first work in the UK was the gag strip "Laugh in a Line" for Film Fun, but he soon became a regular in Buster and Knockout. Although a prolific contributor to the early issues of the former, his earliest success was with "Blarney Bluffer" in Knockout (1960-63). In 1962, Nadal took over the front cover artwork on Buster when he began drawing "Buster's Diary" (later "Buster's Dreamworld"), which he continued to draw until 1974. At the same time he also drew the popular "The Nutts" for Valiant (1962-76). His later work in the UK included "Minnie's Mixer" (Whizzer & Chips, 1969-73) and "Penny Pincher" (Buster, 1973-74).

In the 1970s, Nadal also began contributing stories featuring Goofy and Mickey Mouse to the Danish Disney publications published by Gutenburghus. He also drew episodes of Donald Duck in the 1980s. For the German market, he drew "Viva la Revolution" in Primo and "San Tomato" in Zack. Other German strips include "Bussi Bär" and "Fridolin" for Kauka Verlag.

Nadal's studio was based in Cadaques, where Salvador Dali was a near neighbour.

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

Paul A. Nicholas

Little is known about Nicholas. He produced many beautiful watercolour paintings of birds of all varieties and other nature scenes, incorporating woodlands and river banks. Paintings appeared in the 1960s and 1970s — he was active at least 1964-72 — but I have not traced any books illustrated by Nicholas. It is possible that he was an amateur, albeit talented, painter rather than a full-time illustrator.


Examples of artwork by Paul A. Nicholas can be found for sale at the Illustration Art Gallery.

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.

Russ Nicholson

Russ Nicholson describes himself thus:

Russ Nicholson is an illustrator best known over the years for his black and white fantasy art. He has contributed to such notable game related titles such as as 'The Warlock of Firetop Mountain', first in the illustrated series of Fighting Fantasy game books by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. He also illustrated many creatures in the original UK contribution to the first edition of the 'The Fiend Folio', and the six original published "episodes" of 'The Fabled Lands', and numerous Games Workshop products, and to their magazine White Dwarf. He studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Scotland. Russ moved to England in the 1970's and, save for a brief sojourn in Papua New Guinea, has lived and worked in England ever since. For over fifty years Russ has produced work for a wide range of companies and publishers, including Puffin, Pan, Collins, Hodder and Stoughton, TSR, Games Workshop, Hoggshead Publishing, DC Thomson, and Le Grimoire Publications. His work has been reproduced in over twenty countries.

Deconstructing this a little...

Nicholson was educated at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, part of Dundee University. He came to the attention of fantasy fans through his work for fanzines in the 1970s. His early work appeared in girls' comics and annuals. He has revealed: "I was introduced to the world of drawing comics through a comic artist, Ken Houghton, who ran a comic artist evening class at a school where I taught Art & Design."

Nicholson contributing to Bunty, Diana, Jinty, Misty and Tracy and he also produced cartoons for Mayfair in around 1980. His career really took off in the early 1980s with his association with the Fighting Fantasy games books. Nicholson had been the illustrator of Dicing With Dragons: An Introduction to Role-Playing Games (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982) written by Ian Livingstone. The book included an adventure game, 'Eye of the Dragon'.

In the mid-1970s, Livingstone was the co-founder, with Steve Jackson, of Games Workshop, who were importers of Dungeons & Dragons and publishers of White Dwarf. Nicholson has been a prolific illustrator for the magazine and the company.

In 1981, Livingstone and Jackson wrote the first of a series of fantasy role-playing adventure books which they sold to Puffin Books and published as The Warlock of Firetop Mountain in 1982, which Nicholson illustrated. The book sold well and Puffin asked for more, which Livingstone and Jackson eagerly provided. Nicholson illustrated the following Fighting Fantasy titles: The Citadel of Chaos (1983) by Jackson, Masks of Mayhem by Robin Waterfield (1986), Chasms of Malice by Luke Sharp (1987), Stealer of Souls by Keith Martin (1988), Island of the Undead by Keith Martin (1992), Deathmoor by Robin Waterfield (1994) and Magehunter by Paul Mason (1995); Advanced Fighting Fantasy titles illustrated by Nicholson include Blacksand! (1990) and Allansia (1994), both by Marc Gascoigne & Pete Tamlyn. Nicholson also illustrated two Fighting Fantasy novels, Demonstealer by Marc Gascoigne (1991) and Shadowmaster by Ian Livingstone and Marc Gascoigne (1992).

Nicholson also created creatures for the Fiend Folio Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game book (TSR, 1981). The six episodes of the 'Fabled Land' series, co-written by Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson, were (1) The War-Torn Kingdom (1995); (2) Cities of Gold and Glory (1995); (3) Over the Blood-Dark Sea (1995); (4) The Plains of Howling Darkness (1995); (5) The Court of Hidden Faces (1996); and (6) Lords of the Rising Sun (1996).

Other stories illustrated by Nicholson have included numerous titles by Dave Morris, including The Lands of Legend (Corgi, 1986), The Battlepits of Krath (Knight, 1987), The Kingdom of Weird (Knight, 1987), The Walls of Spyte by Morris & Oliver Johnson (Knight, 1988), Necklace of Skulls (Mammoth, 1993), Knightmare: Lord Fear's Domain (Yearling, 1994), Heart of Ice (Mammoth, 1994), Twist of Fate (Mammoth, 1994). He was also the illustrator for the Richard Carpenter's Robin of Sherwood Gamebooks: The King's Demon by Graham Staplehurst, 1987; The Sword of the Templar by Paul Mason, 1987.

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