Online Art Board Supplies Comic art for the major US companies such as Marvel or DC is drawn on special art board that includes 'blue line' indicators so the artists draw to the correct size proprotional to the final US comic book art size. Artists contracted to the companies are provided with this board, although I am not sure if this is still supplied gratis, as it was in Paul Neary's day as Editorial Director at Marvel UK, or if they have to pay for it. Page measurements apparently vary slightly from company to company, so using ordinary Bristol board and a ruler may be a better option for the aspiring artist than seeking down this specialised board. 2000AD is now published pro to US comic book size. BlueLine There is a type of Bristol board called BlueLine which features these the official comic page measurments printed on it. It's solicited through Previews and, therefore, most comic shops should be able to order it. Some artists don't like it. Bristol Board • Most art supply shops in Belfast sell Bristol board in A3 20 sheet blocks. Art Supplies • Great Art Supplies Gerstaecker UK Limited / Great Art, Normandy House, 1 Nether Street, Alton, Hampshire GU34 1EA Telephone Order line 0845 601 5772 (Local call rate) Described as Europe's largest and brightest catalogue for art materials, this company says "Whatever your angle - whether you're an art student, leisure painter, art teacher or professional artist - we're sure that you'll find that we are full of all the supplies you need." They publish a variety of catalogues for each country -- one artist I know orders material from their French rather than UK edition. • London Graphics Company 16-18 Shelton Street, Covent Garden London WC2H 9JL Tel: 020 7759 4500 Fax: 020 7759 4585 London Graphic Centre was established in 1973 as a specialist graphic materials supplier to the London Design and Advertising market. Dip Pens • Hans Presto This Swedish (with English translation) site apparently stocks and sells just about every dip pen ever made. It also has sections on Lettering, Comics and Handwriting. (thanks to artist Kev Hopgood for this one)

NEW BRITISH COMICS COLLECTIONS AVAIALBLE NOW... This is the first Dan Dare collection I've edited for Titan Books, comprising work by Frank Hampson, Frank Bellamy and Don Harley. Superb World War 1 strip first published in Battle and another collection edited by me for Titan

Comics Artists B

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Martin Baines
Official: Martin is represented by Smudged Pencil

Martin's credits include work for Match of the Day Magazine, Spaceship Away and many other magazines, and he was one of the contributors to our 40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing Comics Celebration album on the downthetubes forum in July 2009, delivering this funny a tongue-in-cheek tip of the hat to the film Capricorn One, which capitalised on deeply ingrained claims that the moon landings never happened by positing a faked landing on Mars, all shot in a remote film studio.

Ian Baker
Official: www.ianbakercartoons.co.uk
Ian Baker's work is published in over 50 leading magazines and newspapers all over the world including Punch, Private Eye, Nickelodeon (USA), Cracked (USA), Penthouse (USA), Bravo Sport (Germany), The Picture (Australia), Daily Star, New Statesman and the Spectator.

Jim Balent
Official: www.jimbalentstudios.com
Jim Balent's work has been published by several comic book companies, including Marvel, Dark Horse and DC Comics. He has drawn some notable characters, such as Batman, Vampirella, and the sexy femme fatal, Catwoman. He has worked on many character designs and posters for the film and video industry. In the year 2000, Jim and Holly Golightly started their own comic book company, BroadSword Comics.
Jim's creation, Tarot, Witch of the Black Rose, is an ongoing story about a voluptuous young Witch who battles to keep the balance between Magick and Mankind. Jim Balent lives in Eastern Pennsylvania with his beloved Witch , Holly, a pesky cat, Brujah and he has a black lagoon that he calls a kio pond.

Paul Baker
Official: www.cartoonists.co.uk/paulbaker
Caricatures for all occasions black and white, colour or live 4 minute "on the spot" drawings at parties and events

David Baillie
Official: www.davidbaillie.net
Comics creator David Baille has created his own smallzine prss imprint, dbComics. Scribe, a simply told but effective story of a would-be supervillain with an unexpected secret power, was circulated at the 2004 Comics Festival, alongside a small anthology, Award Fascination.
David also has a regular column in Judge Dredd Megazine. Each and every month he discusses life as an indie comics superstar and offer advice on making comics, self-publishing and the UK small-press scene.

The Bailey Brothaz
Official: www.geocities.com/baileybrothaz
Two enthusiastic artists/writers with plenty of ideas. They've kindly sent me samples of their work over the years, taken on board some of my comments but basically carved their own distinctive style drawing on innate talent.
They both display a determination and passion to their work that deserves looking reward and I'm sure they'd welcome any positive or constructive feedback.
Note: Some of their work such as the powerful, no-holds barred BloodznCripz features violent gang-based storylines though, just in case you're a tad squeamish, but superby told.

Jim Balent
Official: www.jimbalentstudios.com
Many will know Jim Balent from his work on DC's Catwoman for 77 plus issues
(1993-1999).Jim also did the first mini-series of Purgatori for Chaos Comics, Dark Claw, Lobo, Batman to name a few.Jim began the creator-owned BroadSword Comics
in 1999.

Adrian Bamforth
Official: www.adrianbamforth.com
Comics art, design, illustration and game design. Credits include Judge Dredd for 2000AD.

Above: Limited edition print by Ken Barr, available via his official web site. This is the first of a series of brand new paintings created for this limited edition series.

Ken Barr
Official: www.comicsmagazines.com/kenbarrindex.htm

Ken Barr has been working continuously for many years in the British graphics art industry. His innovative style and fresh perspective make Barr one of the most beloved and collected comic artists.

During his long career as one of the top artists in the graphic art and comic industry, he's produced a vast and wide range of subject matter for many of the top companies in these fields, including Star Wars and Star Trek covers.

Over the years Ken's painted many images that have now become iconic cover artwork, delivered in a wide variety of styles ranging from many of the classic early war covers for Commando comics, including the first issue (see checklist on BritishComics.20), to fantasy art covers for Warren publications in the US such as Creepy and Vampirella. He's also produced cover and interior artwork for many other leading comic publishers such as Marvel (including Doc Savage and Planet of the Apes) and DC Comics (such as G.I. Combat), and a large amount of book covers for many of the leading book publishers such as Avon and Random House over his long career as a commercial artist. A collection of his work, The Beast Within: The Art of Ken Barr, was publsihed in 2007.

The official site, part of comicsmagazines.com, offers publishers and individuals the opportunity to commission new work from Ken, and also when available the opportunity to purchase original artwork from the Ken Barr archives. Comicsmagazines.con is also co-publisher with Ken Barr for new and archive artwork publications in the UK and, where copyright allows they are also able to offer licensing opportunities using Ken Barr artwork.

Stephen Baskervile
Official: baskerville.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk
From The Beano to Batman and Transformers, Baz has drawn them all... Artist for Panini, Marvel, 2000AD, concept artist and animator, Stephen's a brilliant creator with a huge list of impressive credits to his name. Check out his as yet unsold superhero strip Just Force on the site.

Leo Baxendale
Official: www.reaper.co.uk
Creator of The Bash Street Kids, Minnie the Minx, Little Plum, The Three Bears, and The Banana Bunch and many other memorable British cartoon characters.

Steve Beckett
Official: www.sam119.co.uk
Artist on Sam 119

Gary Scott Beatty
Official: www.garyscottbeatty.com
Gary Scott Beatty is a publication production expert, typographer, writer, illustrator and comic book colourist, whose "Wedding of Popeye and Olive" was discussed on Good Morning America, in the New York Times, Time magazine and Newsweek. In 1999 he coloured most of Aaron Warner's Adventures of Aaron Sunday strips and the "Sparky and Tim" collection cover. He has coloured covers for Arrow Comics, Modern Comics and Omega 7.

Andy Belanger
Official: www.andybelanger.com

Andy is a writer, artist for TX Comics and DC Comics. He's currently I'm working on a great horror romance comic, Raising Hell.

Frank Bellamy
Frank Bellamy, one of my favourite artists as a child for his Thunderbirds work in TV21, was born in Kettering, Northamptonshire, in 1917. He was called up for war service in 1939, spending much of his time painting aircraft recognition pictures.
After the war Bellamy was employed by various comics, then by Swift [a junior version of Eagle], before moving onto Eagle itself, drawing The Happy Warrior, the story of British Prime Minister and war leader Winston Churchill, the brilliant Fraser of Africa and Heros the Spartan, as well as revamping Dan Dare. He worked for TV21, the Radio Times and the Daily Mirror (on Garth) after leaving Eagle, sadly dying of a heart attack in July 1976.

Links
• FrankBellamy.co.uk
Link: www.frankbellamy.co.uk
Related Blog: http://frankbellamy.blogspot.com

Norman Boyd has put together a website to celebrate Bellamy's life and work. This contains a list of all his artwork in various fields, together with biographical details. He's spent a lot of time researching this, looking through old comics, magazines and newspapers in the British Library and talking to people who knew Bellamy and worked with him on TV21 and other publications.
During its painstaking construction over many, many months, Norman Boyd said of this incredible resource: "It's by no means extensive but Paul Holder and myself are trying our best to write a book on FB - a long term project as Paul's a perfectionist and I'm a nit-picking Librarian! But our labour of love will extend to adding the site ASAP, but our full time (paying) jobs do get in the way!"
The results are simply magic for a fan of Bellamy like myself. Congratulations to all involved.

• Frank Bellamy the Artist
Link: http://www.dandare.org/eagle/bellamy/bellamy.htm

• Comic art collector Terry Doyle has posted some stunning Belllamy art from his collection on ComicArtFans: www.comicartfans.com
• King Solomon's Mines Art: Go
Collector Terry Doyle tells me only three episodes of KSM were produced for the original Eagle before the serial was aborted. Apparently recall, the strip was supposed to be a follow-up to Bellamy's stunning Fraser of Africa, but an Editorial decision was made for a change of pace - and Montgomery of Alamein replaced it.

Massimo Belardinelli
• Yahoo Fan Group
• Profile Page on dandare.info
• Tribute by Pat Mills

Italian artist Massimo was one of the early contributors - his credits include the revived Dan Dare -- to 2000AD and other IPC titles such as Tornado. He died in March 2007. 2000AD co-creator Pat Mills pays tribute to him on downthetubes here

Luis Berjemo
Lambiek Entry: www.lambiek.net/artists/b/bermejo_luis.htm
Luis drew mainly war stories and made many contributions to the Thriller Picture Library, and took over the Eagle character Heros the Spartan from his creator Frank Bellamy.

Nick Bertozzi
Official: nickbertozzi.com
Nick Bertozzi grew up in and around Providence, Rhode Island, has lived in Philadelphia and Madrid and currently lives in Queens, NY with his wife and daughters. He received a Xeric Grant and multiple Harvey Awards and Ignatz Awards for his smart and human cartooning. He is the author of The Salon, a graphic novel about Picasso, the discovery of Cubism, and magical absinthe from St. Martin's Press. He collaborated with Jason Lutes on the graphic novel Houdini: The Handcuff King, the first of Hyperion/CCS's cartoon-biographies. He's hard at work on a cartoon biography of Lenny Bruce for Houghton-Mifflin, written by Harvey Pekar as well as drawing Glen (the Colbert Report) Eichler's Stuffed! for First/Second. For the past several years he has been teaching cartooning at NYC's School of Visual Arts and taught at RISD in 2008.


Rupert Besley
Official: www.besleycartoons.com
Rupert has worked for 20 years as a freelance cartoonist and illustrator, producing cartoons for a variety of outlets, including Postcards / Greetings Cards (Dixon's, Hinde's, Gordon Fraser); Newspapers / magazines (Punch, Private Eye, The Oldie); Book Illustrations (OUP, MGP, Penguin, Canongate) and Guides / Reports (Audit Commission, local councils).

Jesus Blasco
Lambiek Entry: lambiek.net/artists/b/blasco_jesus.htm
The artist who brought chilling life to Valiant's The Steel Claw. British comics expert Lew Stringer points out that the images on the page are not not his most representative style.
Blasco died on 21 October, 1995. If you're of a morbid nature, you might also want to check out this entry about Blasco on FindAGrave. No, really.

Graham Bleathman
Official: www.grahambleathman.co.uk
Graham Bleathman is one of the country's foremost illustrators of Gerry Anderson's television series including Stingray, Captain Scarlet, Joe 90 and, of course, Thunderbirds. He is particularly well known for his 'cross section' illustrations of the spacecraft, vehicles and buildings from those shows and his illustrations have appeared in a number of books, magazines and comics since the early 1990s.
Published works include cutaways for RAF Magazine, Thunderbirds Classic Comics Strips and Supermarionation Cross Sections.

Sue Blundell
Link: www.cartoonists.co.uk/sueblundell

Brian Bolland
Official: myweb.tiscali.co.uk/johnjf/brian_bolland_e/index.html
Still associated with 2000AD's Judge Dredd, Bolland is a comics legend whose work includes Batman: The Killing Joke. In addition to this comic-book work, his art has also appeared on countless magazines, record covers, books and posters. Currently Brian is drawing the covers for DC's Batman : Gotham Knights and recently finished a run on Flash.

John Bolton
Official: www.johnbolton.com

Bob Bond
Official: www.elbobbo.org.uk
Bob illustrates books and magazines, and for many years has drawn picture-strips for various comics... mainly, but not all, on the subject of football.

Bob Borden
Official: The World of Bob Borden
Requires Shockwave. Creator of Mysterymen and Flaming Carrot, America's First Surrealist Superhero!
The Mysterymen is a team (actually more like a "gang") of superheroes, who first appeared in 1987, in a two part story in Flaming Carrot Comics #16 & #17. They are second-string, mill-town, blue-collar superheroes, costumed adventurers who can't get into the big-time superhero teams because they have the mediocre powers, unsightly or ridiculous costumes, behavioural problems, scandalous reputations, or severe character flaws. The strip has since become a cult movie, Mystery Men.

• Buy Mystery Men on Region 1 DVD from Amazon.com: Go
• Buy Mystery Men on Region 2 DVD from Amazon.co.uk: Go

Jim Boswell
Official: www.jimmibo.co.uk
Blog: jimboswell.blogspot.com
Freelance Illustrator and Guitar teacher Jim draws during the day and teach guitar in the evenings. His credits include comics for Markosia, as well as cartoons and illustrations for various companies, websites and individuals.

Duncan Bourne
Official: www.duncanbourne.co.uk
As regular strip cartoonist for 'On the Edge' , 'Mini Magazine', and 'Adventure Travel', Duncan has produced widely aclaimed cartoons and illustration for many years.

Jess Bradley
Official: www.jessbradley.com
Blog: www.squid-bits.blogspot.com
Devaint Art Gallery: venkman-project.deviantart.com/

An illustrator and character designer living and working in Bristol, England who lives to design cute and humorous characters and draw comics. "I design t-shirts for Genki Gear, shoes for Kings of Neon and make a whole lot of stuff myself," says Jess.

Dan Brereton
Official: www.nocturnals.com
Dan Brereton is one of a bare handful of painters left in the industry who still do comics full time. Just barely out of art school, Dan burst onto the scene in 1989 with the award winning Black Terror miniseries (Eclipse Comics) and hasn't looked back since. In the last 12 years, he's produced an amazingly prolific body of work, has been nominated many times for several different industry and fan awards.

Neil Bradley
Link: www.cartoonists.co.uk/neilbradley
Creator of the Ye Gods! SuperComputer Comic Book Range and the co-creator with Rick Siddons of Absolutely Bonkers!, Neil's work has been syndicated by AC Press Services/Syndication International. Neil's been a member of CCGB since 1982.

Left: Cartoon by Neil Bradley. "You're slacking again, Perkins."

Dougie Braithwaite
Link: Info welcome
Doug Braithwaite brought Justice to the printed page at DC, and previously took on Earth X over at Marvel. His skilled draughtsmanship work has been featured at many companies in America and the UK.

Nick Brokenshire
Official: www.nickbrokenshire.co.uk
Blog: www.nickbrokenshire.co.uk/blog

Nick has worked for a variety of clients and done lots of music comics based stuff as you can see from his gallery. "I work in a variety of media but tend to be asked to do ink and photoshop images," he says.

Rosie Brooks
Link: www.rosiebrooks.co.uk
Clients include: Loose Slate Publishing Company (Hammond Gower Publications) Ragged Bear Books, Kingston Museum, Royal Parks, Tommy's the Baby Charity, Discovery Channel Press Office, Comic Relief, Big Draw at the V&A

Kate Brown
• Danse Macabre • ComicSpace • DeviantArt • Behance
• Interviewed on YouTube

Creator of The DFC's story Spider Moon, is the latest of several items being . Kate, who lives in Oxford is a comic book artist and illustrator who says she loves music such as Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails and David Bowie and whose favourite books include Demian by Hermann Hesse, and Peter Pan and Wendy by JM Barrie.
It's been rumoured that, apparently, every sixth leap year, her atoms transport themselves to the moon for thirty-nine seconds.

Bill Bryan
Official: www.comicartistsdirect.com/bryan.html
Bill is the artist on the hit Oz series at Caliber and Arrow Comics: Dark Oz, Land of Oz.

Shaun Bryan
Official: tatooine.fortunecity.com/bear/170
Online portfolio

Adey Bryant
Link: www.cartoonists.co.uk/adeybryant
Adey had his first cartoon was published in The Sun almost twenty years ago. Since then his work has appeared in titles such as The Times Metro Magazine, The Oldie, Squib, The Star, The Sport, Punch, Readers Digest and many more.

Mike Bryson
Link: www.cartoonists.co.uk/mikebryson
Mike specialises in lighting up the driest of literature with my unique range of humorous illustration, caricature and gags.

Jason Brashill
Official: www.caned99.freeserve.co.uk
Jason's web page -- included on a site shared with Steve Sampson and Jim Murray -- includes his covers for Judge Dredd the Megazine and 2000AD, plus other great stuff.

Tom Buchanan
Web Link: www.tombuchanan.co.uk

• James Burley
Official site: www.jamesburleyillustrator.com
Bristl-based cartoonist and illustrator sent me some very funny Star Wars cartoons (not featured on his site, hard luck!). He divides his time between writing "hugely funny" comedy for radio, TV, and film. He has worked sporadically for local web designers and the mighty Aardman Animations. He has also been responsible for many sought after T-shirt designs.
He's also involved in the wonderful Spewmy tales web site (www.spewmytales.com) which is a great place for kids. They hope to include a downloadable cut out theatre at some point. It's fab!

John Byrne
Official: www.byrnerobotics.com
John Byrne's numerous crdits include Star Trek for IDW, Next Men, X-men, Alpha Floight, Wolverine, Fantastic Four, Captain America and many, many more. Site includes lively forum, FAQs and galleries.

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