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.
24 Facts About Frank Bellamy
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Frank Bellamy drew Thunderbirds in a dramatic two-page format for the weekly comic TV Century 21 and drew the newspaper strip Garth for the Daily Mirror from 1971 until his death.
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Frank Bellamy's 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.
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Frank Bellamy worked freelance from home from the time he left Norfolk Studios in 1953.
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Whilst in the army, Frank Bellamy had a weekly illustration published by the Kettering Evening Telegraph.
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In 1957, he moved to Eagle and began working in colour on their back page biography strips: The Happy Warrior, The Shepherd King, and The Travels of Marco Polo for which Frank Bellamy only did eight episodes before moving to Dan Dare.
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Frank Bellamy was left to draw the title page unaided, while two of Hampson's former assistants, Keith Watson and Don Harley, had to do the second page.
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Frank 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.
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Frank Bellamy then went on to draw two of his most celebrated strips, Fraser of Africa and Heros the Spartan.
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Frank Bellamy drew Montgomery of Alamein and did some work for Look and Learn.
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Frank Bellamy used a monochromatic sepia colour palette to reflect the sun and desert locale, with occasional bursts of bright colour.
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Frank Bellamy insisted on proper research and even had a reader living in East Africa supplying reference material.
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In November 1965, Frank Bellamy left the fading Eagle to work for TV Century 21, where he drew the centrespread Thunderbirds strip.
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Frank Bellamy drew the colour splash pages for five Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons strips in the original run of "TV21".
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Frank Bellamy continued drawing two colour pages until the final issue of the "TV21".
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The story featured a villainous strip cartoonist and Frank Bellamy was asked to create all the illustrations used in the episode.
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Frank Bellamy designed all art used in the artist's studio set and the costume of the Winged Avenger himself.
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In June 1971, Frank Bellamy began drawing the newspaper comic strip Garth which appeared in the Daily Mirror.
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Frank 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.
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Frank Bellamy applied all the graphic tricks in his arsenal from stippling and cross-hatching to chiaroscuro inking to create a modern and eye-catching look for Garth unlike anything else appearing in newspapers at the time.
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Frank 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.
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Frank Bellamy regularly produced illustrations for the BBC's Radio Times television listings magazine, in particular for the Doctor Who television programme.
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Frank Bellamy died suddenly in 1976, at the height of his powers.
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Frank Bellamy had plans for many projects, including a Western strip he was to write himself, inspired by the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, three silent pages of which appeared in issue 1 of the Denis Gifford-edited "Ally Sloper" comics magazine, but no others were completed.