Wednesday 25 June 2008

Eric Roberts- What comic characters he drew and for how long

Hi Peter, As promised a quick resume of Eric Roberts' comic strip work.

First known work Podge in the Dandy in 1937, followed in 1938 by three strips in the Beano Helpful Henry, Good King Coke and Rip Van Wink.
By 1942 he seems to have dropped out working for comics, probably due to some type of war work. He next surfaces in AP's Knockout in 1945 with the strip Mike which would run until 1957 (becoming Mike and Dimps in 1954). His other original work for the AP being Biily Bunter (1958-1959) and Sinbad Simms (1957-1958) both also Knockout and Niblo Nibbs (1960) in Film Fun. Mike would then be reprinted in Big One and then Buster (1964-1972) under the title Smiler and then latterly Smiler and Dimps while Sinbad Simms would follow the same reprint route Big One / Buster (1964-1965).
Niblo Nibbs would resurface in Giggle (1967) and in Cor (1971) with his Cor appearances coming under the slightly altered title Nippy Nibbs. More anon.

Eric Robert's first work for Thomson's after the war was Smudge in the Dandy (1947-1949) (reprinted as Hy Jinks (1955-1957)).The Dandy being the comic for which he would draw all his subsequent Thomson work. This was followed by the first of his many strips for the paper in the comic adventure strip format Willie the Wicked (1953) then came The Wee Black Scallywag (1954), Willie's Whizzer Broom (1956) Rip Snorter (1956-1957) and Ginger's Super Jeep (1958-1959).
When the Dandy expanded its page count in 1960 Eric Roberts was given the comic strip Dirty Dick (1960-1967) to draw and from that point on he never worked for any other company, not least because the strip to which he devoted more of his career to than any other, Winker Watson, was just about to go into regular production. Between 1961 and 1979 Eric Roberts providing 775 episodes of the Winker Watson saga spread over twelve series with his only other comic adventure strip work in that time being Moe, Joe and Daddy-O (1965).

Just for completeness sake Peter I forgot to mention that in the late 1940's (1948-1949) Eric did a series of one-off strips for a series of one-off and short run titles published by Philmar publications.


Thanks Kashgar

1 comment:

bigpetehansen@gmail.com said...

He also did work for the Knockout, The Big one and the Buster.