Comics UK

I'm speechless by Dudley D Watkins how on earth did he draw so many strips and such detail...did he have a life!

He drew Tom Thumb (Bimbo)
Ginger
Mickey the Monkey
Lord Snooty
The Broons
Oor Wullie
Desperate Dan every week!!!
and not to mention adventure stories..for Topper..etc..
maybe there was a clone of Dudley...it is amazing...

Belardinelli drew 5 pages of fantastic art for 2000ad, Meltdown Man for over a year.

David

It is often forgotten, Peter, that Watkins was also contributing artwork to Thomsons' text story papers, annuals and free gifts from at least the mid-1930s. I have many examples of such work.

Don't forget Biffo!

Terry Bave was extremely prolific, too, often with work in the Specials and Annuals, as well as the weeklies - and always of the same high standard. I think his wife used to help him out.

Raven wrote:Terry Bave was extremely prolific, too, often with work in the Specials and Annuals, as well as the weeklies - and always of the same high standard. I think his wife used to help him out.

His wife Sheila was the writer, I believe.

Lord Snooty was often reprints, to let Watkins get on with his other strips- The Sunday Post ones , the three cover strips and Desperate Dan must have been given priority. Still incredible workrate, of course. And always lots of stuff by him in annuals, and those picture stories he did for free for Religious publications.

I've always thought the king of productivity must have been John Geering, not so much for his weekly strips as for the loads of comic libraries, Bananaman annuals and summer specials, and other spin-off publications he churned out. (Most of which I had to buy because he was my favourite artist!) Of course his style in these was generally much less detailed than Dudley D Watkins's.

Solano Lopez seemed to be drawing most of IPC's adventure storuies at one point, albeit with assistants.

JOHN GEERING must surely have been one of the most prolific funnies artists the UK ever produced, at least in the last 20 years of his career or so. Sadly the quality of his speedier work was such that I collect none of his post-1979 stuff...a shame really, as I rated him as one of the very best artists of the 70s.


Over at IPC, I was always impressed by the prolific output of MIKE LACEY, and it was always top-quality stuff.


REG PARLETT'S output certainly seemed prolifically abundant, as did that of ROBERT NIXON, at least after 1973 when he jumped ship to IPC.



Regarding DUDLEY WATKINS: it's worth pointing out that lesser artists were employed to assist him to a small degree, filling in the blacks on OOR WULLIE'S dungarees for example. I don't know so much about the early days of his work, but this was used to increase his output later on.



Same goes for Bob Nixon; his son was employed filling in the blacks.


Most comics artists do all this themselves.


I absolutely agree that BELARDINELLI put out hyper-detailed, top-quality material at an astonishing rate for 2000 ad.

and didn't Frank McDiarmid draw most of cheeky weekly but i dont know if he contributed to other comics at the same time

big bad bri wrote:and didn't Frank McDiarmid draw most of cheeky weekly but i dont know if he contributed to other comics at the same time

http://cheekyweekly.blogspot.com/search ... %20artists

I doubt that Frank did any other comic work while Cheeky Weekly was running but like you, I'm not sure.

Edit: Oops, of course Frank was drawing Roger the Dodger while Cheeky Weekly was being published

NP amazes me, because he has drawn so much for the Beano, BeanoMAX and Dandy over the last few years, and Tom Paterson was also quite prolific in the Beano in the last decade (but not so much now) - I seem to recall one issue where he drew nearly half the comic!

And of course Wayne Thompson in the Dandy. He's quietened down a lot now, but he contributed loads of pages to the relaunch, showing quite a maturity in his style.

In my day you couldn't pick up a DC Thomson comic without seeing a George Martin strip like Greedy Pigg, Deperate Dawg, The Hillies and the Billys, Sonny Boy, Send for Kelly etc.

Nigel Parkinson is the latest artist to have a massive flash of creativity when for a while it seemed as if there must be at least three of him to get everything done. Unfortunately, like John Geering, detail did get sacrificed in the process - just compare the later Snooty 3s to his brilliant work on Harry Hill. And, of course, we all know he uses colourists, because he's introduced us to them!

Before that, there was a point in 2007 or so when it seemed as if Barrie Appleby was drawing half of the Beano.

stevezodiac wrote:In my day you couldn't pick up a DC Thomson comic without seeing a George Martin strip like Greedy Pigg, Deperate Dawg, The Hillies and the Billys, Sonny Boy, Send for Kelly etc.

Ever heard of the Beano?

swirlythingy wrote:Nigel Parkinson is the latest artist to have a massive flash of creativity when for a while it seemed as if there must be at least three of him to get everything done. Unfortunately, like John Geering, detail did get sacrificed in the process - just compare the later Snooty 3s to his brilliant work on Harry Hill. And, of course, we all know he uses colourists, because he's introduced us to them!

Actually, a lot of other Beano and Dandy artists use DCT staff colourists - the work they submit is black and white. It's very much normal not to colour them yourself, it's just that Nigel has his own arrangements to get the colouring done before submission.