Baby Crockett by Bill Ritchie

Scottish comic artist Bill Ritchie worked for most of D.C. Thomson's humour comics since the 1950s. He was born in Glasgow, where he also attended the Glasgow School of Art. However, he learned the finer points of the cartooning profession from local artists like Jack Lindsay, Bud Neill, Jimmy Malcolm, Harry Smith and Bill Tait.

He contributed his first cartoons to D.C. Thomson's publication The Weekly News, while serving in the army in Korea. His first comic strip was 'Clumsy Claude' in The Beano in 1955. In the following year he created his long running series 'Baby Crockett', that ran until 1990 in The Beezer, but was also present in Bimbo and Little Star.

Other series he created include 'Toots' (Mandy, 1958-86), 'Pip the Penguin' (Bimbo/Little Star, 1961-76), 'The Moonsters' (Sparky, 1965), 'Smiffy' (Beezer, 1967), 'Barney Bulldog' (Sparky, 1968), 'The Twitz of the Ritz' (Buzz, 1973-75), 'Simple Spyman' (Cracker, 1975) and 'Sweet Sue' (Beano, 1978). After his retirement in 1990, his comics were continued by several ghost artists.

He was even still working at the age of 78, drawing cartoons for Thomson's newspaper The Weekly News and illustrating children's books for GWPublishing as Willie Ritchie. He also did another comic strip through D.C. Thomson, which was 'Lord und Lauser' for the German girl's magazine Wendy.

Barney Bulldog by Bill Ritchie
Barney Bulldog

Series and books by Bill Ritchie in stock in the Lambiek Webshop:

