Frank Bellamy
Encyclopedia
Frank Bellamy was a British comics artist
, best known for his work on the Eagle
comic, for which he illustrated Heros the Spartan and Fraser of Africa
. He reworked its flagship Dan Dare
strip.
He also drew Thunderbirds
in a dramatic two-page format for the weekly comic TV Century 21
. He drew the newspaper strip Garth
for the London Daily Mirror. His work was innovative in its graphic effects and sophisticated use of colour, and in the dynamic manner in which it broke out of the then-traditional grid system.
, Northamptonshire, He started work at William Blamire's studio, in Kettering in 1933. Bellamy met his wife Nancy whilst he was stationed near Bishop Auckland
during World War II and was married in 1942. In 1944 David Bellamy
was born to the couple. After the war, they lived in Kettering until 1949, when they moved to Morden in south London to be closer to publishers, most of whom were based in London. Bellamy worked freelance from home from the time he left Norfolk Studios in 1953. In 1975 the couple moved back to Kettering.
where his work included Swiss Family Robinson, King Arthur and Robin Hood.
In 1957, he moved to Eagle
and began working in colour on their back page biography strips: The Happy Warrior (the life of Winston Churchill
), The Shepherd King (the life of the biblical King David), and The Travels of Marco Polo
for which Bellamy only did eight episodes before moving to Dan Dare
.
Bellamy took over Dan Dare part way through the Terra Nova storyline, replacing creator Frank Hampson. It was an awkward set-up: the new owners of Eagle thought the strip looked dated, so gave Bellamy the brief of redesigning everything, from the costumes and spacecraft to the page layouts. Bellamy was left to draw the title page unaided (in contrast to Hampson's many-hands approach, where the drawing, inking, lettering and colouring were all separately completed by a team of artists), while two of Hampson's former assistants, Keith Watson and Don Harley, had to do the second page. Bellamy's redesigns were somewhat controversial and, after he left the strip a year later, the next artist was instructed to reintroduce the original designs.
Bellamy then went on to draw two of his most celebrated strips, Fraser of Africa
and Heros the Spartan. He also drew Montgomery of Alamein (the life of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery) and did some work for Look and Learn
.
Fraser of Africa, one of Bellamy's artistic high-water marks, was not his idea but, as he was obsessed with Africa, he was the perfect choice to draw it. Bellamy used a monochromatic sepia colour palette to reflect the sun and desert locale, with occasional bursts of bright colour. It was a challenging and unusual approach and Fraser of Africa became the Eagles most popular strip. Bellamy insisted on proper research and even had a reader living in East Africa supplying reference material.
Heros the Spartan, a sword and sorcery adventure set in Roman times was another artistic triumph. Drawn as a two-page spread and usually organized around a complicated splash in the centre of the two pages, Heros was a bravura display of skill. The battle scenes displayed a vividness and complex layout rarely seen in comics and it won Bellamy an award (for 'Best Foreign Artist') from the American Academy of Comic Book Arts in 1972.
In November 1965, Bellamy left the fading Eagle to work for TV Century 21
, where he drew the centrespread Thunderbirds
strip. Rather than faithfully draw puppets, he took the artistic license of rendering the characters as real people for a more exciting strip, as was already being done by the comic's other artists (including Ron Embleton
and Mike Noble
) in their strips. Apart from one short break, Bellamy drew Thunderbirds throughout its run in TV Century 21 and TV21, leaving shortly after the comic merged with Joe 90 Top Secret to become TV21 & Joe 90 in 1969. He also drew the colour splash pages for five Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
strips.
Bellamy's break from the Thunderbirds strip in the autumn of 1966 enabled him to work on an episode of the British TV series The Avengers
entitled The Winged Avenger. The story featured a villainous strip cartoonist and Bellamy was asked to create all the illustrations used in the episode. He also designed the artist's studio set and the costume of the Winged Avenger himself. Filmed in December 1966, the episode aired in February 1967.
In June 1971, Bellamy began drawing the newspaper comic strip Garth
which appeared in the Daily Mirror. This was the period in which intense competition with the new tabloid The Sun
encouraged large helpings of nudity to be seen in British tabloids, and the strip reflected this. Bellamy's style was much more vivid than that of the original artist John Allard, and he was probably brought in to spice up the strip. Jim Edgar had been writing the strip since 1966 and shared the by-line credit with Bellamy. Bellamy applied all the graphic tricks in his arsenal from stippling and crosshatching to chiaroscuro inking to create a modern and eye-catching look for Garth unlike anything else appearing in newspapers at the time.
Bellamy worked continuously on Garth for the next five years, although drawing in black and white rather than colour gave him time to maintain a number of other regular commissions. During this period he drew the first comic strips The Sunday Times
had ever run in its magazine as non-fiction journalism. He also regularly produced illustrations for the BBC's Radio Times
television listings magazine, in particular for the Doctor Who
television programme.
Frank Bellamy died suddenly in 1976, at the height of his powers. He had plans for many projects including a western strip he was to write himself, inspired by the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, but none of that work survives.
TV21:
Joe 90 Top Secret:
Garth:
Comics artist
A comics artist is an artist working within the comics medium on comic strips, comic books or graphic novels. The term may refer to any number of artists who contribute to produce a work in the comics form, from those who oversee all aspects of the work to those who contribute only a part.-Comic...
, best known for his work on the Eagle
Eagle (comic)
Eagle was a seminal British children's comic, first published from 1950 to 1969, and then in a relaunched format from 1982 to 1994. It was founded by Marcus Morris, an Anglican vicar from Lancashire. Morris edited a parish magazine called The Anvil, but felt that the church was not communicating...
comic, for which he illustrated Heros the Spartan and Fraser of Africa
Fraser of Africa
Fraser of Africa is a comic strip that ran one page a week in full colour in the British comic Eagle in 1960-61, written by George Beardmore and illustrated by Frank Bellamy...
. He reworked its flagship Dan Dare
Dan Dare
Dan Dare is a British science fiction comic hero, created by illustrator Frank Hampson who also wrote the first stories, that is, the Venus and Red Moon stories, and a complete storyline for Operation Saturn...
strip.
He also drew Thunderbirds
Thunderbirds (TV series)
Thunderbirds is a British mid-1960s science fiction television show devised by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and made by AP Films using a form of marionette puppetry dubbed "Supermarionation"...
in a dramatic two-page format for the weekly comic TV Century 21
TV Century 21
TV Century 21, also known as TV 21, was a weekly British children's comic of the 1960s and early 1970s. It promoted the many television science-fiction puppet series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Century 21 Productions...
. He drew the newspaper strip Garth
Garth (comic strip)
Garth was a comic strip in the British newspaper Daily Mirror from July 24, 1943, to March 22, 1997. The strip belonged to the action-adventure genre and recounted the exploits of the title character, an immensely strong hero who battled various villains throughout the world and many different...
for the London Daily Mirror. His work was innovative in its graphic effects and sophisticated use of colour, and in the dynamic manner in which it broke out of the then-traditional grid system.
Biography
Born in KetteringKettering
Kettering is a market town in the Borough of Kettering, Northamptonshire, England. It is situated about from London. Kettering is mainly situated on the west side of the River Ise, a tributary of the River Nene which meets at Wellingborough...
, Northamptonshire, He started work at William Blamire's studio, in Kettering in 1933. Bellamy met his wife Nancy whilst he was stationed near Bishop Auckland
Bishop Auckland
Bishop Auckland is a market town and civil parish in County Durham in north east England. It is located about northwest of Darlington and southwest of Durham at the confluence of the River Wear with its tributary the River Gaunless...
during World War II and was married in 1942. In 1944 David Bellamy
David Bellamy
David James Bellamy OBE is a British author, broadcaster, environmental campaigner and botanist. He has lived in County Durham since 1960.-Career:...
was born to the couple. After the war, they lived in Kettering until 1949, when they moved to Morden in south London to be closer to publishers, most of whom were based in London. Bellamy worked freelance from home from the time he left Norfolk Studios in 1953. In 1975 the couple moved back to Kettering.
Career
Whilst in the army, Bellamy had a weekly illustration published by the Kettering Evening Telegraph. Later, he worked in advertising (for Gibbs Dentifrice). In 1953, he began his first comic strip, called Monty Carstairs in Mickey Mouse Weekly. Shortly after he moved to SwiftSwift (comic)
Swift was a weekly comic published by in the UK as a junior companion to the Eagle. It was founded by the Rev. Marcus Morris and launched by Hulton Press in 1954...
where his work included Swiss Family Robinson, King Arthur and Robin Hood.
In 1957, he moved to Eagle
Eagle (comic)
Eagle was a seminal British children's comic, first published from 1950 to 1969, and then in a relaunched format from 1982 to 1994. It was founded by Marcus Morris, an Anglican vicar from Lancashire. Morris edited a parish magazine called The Anvil, but felt that the church was not communicating...
and began working in colour on their back page biography strips: The Happy Warrior (the life of Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
), The Shepherd King (the life of the biblical King David), and The Travels of Marco Polo
Marco Polo
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...
for which Bellamy only did eight episodes before moving to Dan Dare
Dan Dare
Dan Dare is a British science fiction comic hero, created by illustrator Frank Hampson who also wrote the first stories, that is, the Venus and Red Moon stories, and a complete storyline for Operation Saturn...
.
Bellamy took over Dan Dare part way through the Terra Nova storyline, replacing creator Frank Hampson. It was an awkward set-up: the new owners of Eagle thought the strip looked dated, so gave Bellamy the brief of redesigning everything, from the costumes and spacecraft to the page layouts. Bellamy was left to draw the title page unaided (in contrast to Hampson's many-hands approach, where the drawing, inking, lettering and colouring were all separately completed by a team of artists), while two of Hampson's former assistants, Keith Watson and Don Harley, had to do the second page. Bellamy's redesigns were somewhat controversial and, after he left the strip a year later, the next artist was instructed to reintroduce the original designs.
Bellamy then went on to draw two of his most celebrated strips, Fraser of Africa
Fraser of Africa
Fraser of Africa is a comic strip that ran one page a week in full colour in the British comic Eagle in 1960-61, written by George Beardmore and illustrated by Frank Bellamy...
and Heros the Spartan. He also drew Montgomery of Alamein (the life of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery) and did some work for Look and Learn
Look and Learn
Look and Learn was a British weekly educational magazine for children published by Fleetway Publications Ltd from 1962 until 1982. It contained educational text articles that covered a wide variety of topics from volcanoes to the Loch Ness Monster; a long running science fiction comic strip, The...
.
Fraser of Africa, one of Bellamy's artistic high-water marks, was not his idea but, as he was obsessed with Africa, he was the perfect choice to draw it. Bellamy used a monochromatic sepia colour palette to reflect the sun and desert locale, with occasional bursts of bright colour. It was a challenging and unusual approach and Fraser of Africa became the Eagles most popular strip. Bellamy insisted on proper research and even had a reader living in East Africa supplying reference material.
Heros the Spartan, a sword and sorcery adventure set in Roman times was another artistic triumph. Drawn as a two-page spread and usually organized around a complicated splash in the centre of the two pages, Heros was a bravura display of skill. The battle scenes displayed a vividness and complex layout rarely seen in comics and it won Bellamy an award (for 'Best Foreign Artist') from the American Academy of Comic Book Arts in 1972.
TV Century 21
TV Century 21, also known as TV 21, was a weekly British children's comic of the 1960s and early 1970s. It promoted the many television science-fiction puppet series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Century 21 Productions...
, where he drew the centrespread Thunderbirds
Thunderbirds (TV series)
Thunderbirds is a British mid-1960s science fiction television show devised by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and made by AP Films using a form of marionette puppetry dubbed "Supermarionation"...
strip. Rather than faithfully draw puppets, he took the artistic license of rendering the characters as real people for a more exciting strip, as was already being done by the comic's other artists (including Ron Embleton
Ron Embleton
Ronald Sydney Embleton was a British comics artist and illustrator whose work was much admired by fans and editors alike...
and Mike Noble
Mike Noble
Mike Noble was born in Woodford, 17 September 1930, his father being a stockbroker's clerk who had artistic talent himself. During the war he was evacuated, like many children, but returned to London and endured much of the blitz. After school Noble attended South West Essex Technical College art...
) in their strips. Apart from one short break, Bellamy drew Thunderbirds throughout its run in TV Century 21 and TV21, leaving shortly after the comic merged with Joe 90 Top Secret to become TV21 & Joe 90 in 1969. He also drew the colour splash pages for five Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, often referred to as Captain Scarlet, is a 1960s British science-fiction television series produced by the Century 21 Productions company of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, John Read and Reg Hill...
strips.
Bellamy's break from the Thunderbirds strip in the autumn of 1966 enabled him to work on an episode of the British TV series The Avengers
The Avengers (TV series)
The Avengers is a spy-fi British television series set in the 1960s Britain. The Avengers initially focused on Dr. David Keel and his assistant John Steed . Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants...
entitled The Winged Avenger. The story featured a villainous strip cartoonist and Bellamy was asked to create all the illustrations used in the episode. He also designed the artist's studio set and the costume of the Winged Avenger himself. Filmed in December 1966, the episode aired in February 1967.
In June 1971, Bellamy began drawing the newspaper comic strip Garth
Garth (comic strip)
Garth was a comic strip in the British newspaper Daily Mirror from July 24, 1943, to March 22, 1997. The strip belonged to the action-adventure genre and recounted the exploits of the title character, an immensely strong hero who battled various villains throughout the world and many different...
which appeared in the Daily Mirror. This was the period in which intense competition with the new tabloid The Sun
The Sun (newspaper)
The Sun is a daily national tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation. Sister editions are published in Glasgow and Dublin...
encouraged large helpings of nudity to be seen in British tabloids, and the strip reflected this. Bellamy's style was much more vivid than that of the original artist John Allard, and he was probably brought in to spice up the strip. Jim Edgar had been writing the strip since 1966 and shared the by-line credit with Bellamy. Bellamy applied all the graphic tricks in his arsenal from stippling and crosshatching to chiaroscuro inking to create a modern and eye-catching look for Garth unlike anything else appearing in newspapers at the time.
Bellamy worked continuously on Garth for the next five years, although drawing in black and white rather than colour gave him time to maintain a number of other regular commissions. During this period he drew the first comic strips The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
had ever run in its magazine as non-fiction journalism. He also regularly produced illustrations for the BBC's Radio Times
Radio Times
Radio Times is a UK weekly television and radio programme listings magazine, owned by the BBC. It has been published since 1923 by BBC Magazines, which also provides an on-line listings service under the same title...
television listings magazine, in particular for the Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
television programme.
Frank Bellamy died suddenly in 1976, at the height of his powers. He had plans for many projects including a western strip he was to write himself, inspired by the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, but none of that work survives.
Comic strips drawn by Frank Bellamy
Eagle:- The Happy Warrior (biography of Winston Churchill) (1957/58)
- Montgomery of Alamein (1958)
- The Shepherd King (the story of David) (1958/59)
- The Travels of Marco Polo (1959)
- Dan Dare (1959/60)
- Fraser of AfricaFraser of AfricaFraser of Africa is a comic strip that ran one page a week in full colour in the British comic Eagle in 1960-61, written by George Beardmore and illustrated by Frank Bellamy...
(1960/61) - Heros the Spartan (1962/63)
TV21:
- Thunderbirds (1966–69)
- Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1968)
Joe 90 Top Secret:
- Joe 90 (1969)
Garth:
- Sundance (75 of 87 instalments drawn by Bellamy) (July - 11 October 1971)
- The Cloud of Balthus (12 October 1971 - 27 January 1972)
- The Orb of Trimandias (28 January - 22 May 1972)
- Wolf Man of Ausensee (23 May - 6 September 1972)
- People of the Abyss (7 September - 23 December 1972)
- The Women of Galba (27 December 1972 - 10 April 1973)
- Ghost Town (11 April - 12 July 1973)
- The Mask of Atacama (13 July - 25 October 1973)
- The Wreckers (26 October 1973 - 18 February 1974)
- The Beast of Ultor (19 February - 5 June 1974)
- Freak Out to Fear (6 June - 27 September 1974)
- Bride of Jenghiz Khan (28 September 1974 - 14 January 1975)
- The Angels of Hell Gap (15 January - 2 May 1975)
- The Doomsmen (3 May - 15 August 1975)
- The Bubble Man (16 August - 28 November 1975)
- The Beautiful People (29 November 1975 - 16 March 1976)
- The Spanish Lady (17 March - 7 August 1976)
Books
- Century 21: Classic Comic Strips from the Worlds of Gerry Anderson - Volume 2 (Reynolds & Hearn, 2009) ISBN 978-1-905287-949 (paperback) / ISBN 978-1-905287-321 (hardback)
- Century 21: Classic Comic Strips from the Worlds of Gerry Anderson - Volume 1 (Reynolds & Hearn, 2009) ISBN 978-1-905287-932 (paperback) / ISBN 978-1-905287-192 (hardback)
- Dan Dare Deluxe Collector's Edition Volume 10 - PROJECT NIMBUS (Hawk Books, 1994)
- Eagle Classics: Fraser of Africa. (Hawk Books, 1990) ISBN 0-948248-32-7
- Timeview - The complete Doctor Who Illustrations of Frank Bellamy ( Who Dares Publishing, 1985) ISBN 0-948487-03-8 (paperback) / ISBN 0-948487-02-X (hardback)
- Garth. Book 2: The Women of Galba (with Jim Edgar). (Titan Books, 1985) ISBN 0-907610-49-8
- Garth. Book 1: The Cloud of Balthus (with Jim Edgar). (Titan Books, 1984) ISBN 0-907610-34-X
- High Command: The Stories of Sir Winston Churchill and General Montgomery (Dragon's Dream, 1981) ISBN 90-6332-851-6
- The Daily Mirror Book of Garth 1976 (with Jim Edgar). (IPC Magazines, 1975)
- The Daily Mirror Book of Garth 1975 (with Jim Edgar). (IPC Magazines, 1974)
- "A Cowboy Story" in Bert Fegg's Nasty Book for Boys and GirlsBert Fegg's Nasty Book for Boys and GirlsBert Fegg's Nasty Book For Boys And Girls is a humorous book first published by Methuen in 1974 which purports to have been written by a psychopathic character, Dr. Fegg. In fact, the book is the work of Terry Jones and Michael Palin, who adapted a range of material from scripts written for the...
(with Terry JonesTerry JonesTerence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....
& Michael PalinMichael PalinMichael Edward Palin, CBE FRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries....
). (Methuen 1974) ISBN 0-413-32740-X
External links
- The Frank Bellamy website
- The Frank Bellamy Reference
- The Gerry Anderson Complete Comic History covering the first part of Bellamy's Thunderbirds
- Biography and work on Captain Scarlet
- The Gerry Anderson Complete Comic History covering Bellamy's first appearances on Captain Scarlet
- Gallery of Frank Bellamy's Dalek illustrations for the Radio Times