Bill Ritchie

[Peter Gray]

Great images and the first Toots will put these on my blog with credit to you...

thanks...

[diegotheterrible]

In looking up the Valda strip for another thread I couldn't help but smile at this late Bill Ritchie series in the 2002 Mandy Annual - especially as it made me think of Peter's cards!



...And isn't it nice to see him finally being allowed to initial his work?

- Phil Rushton

Hey that's a nice strip! He continued to draw "Snooty & Scamp" for German Wendy Magazine (http://www.wendy.de), and i had the honor of taking over the strip (until a disagreement with the current editor saw me recently kicked out)... at first cloning his style, then developing something my own overtime.

Before:


After:

[philcom55]

They are really impressive Diego - thanks for showing them! I wish DC Thomson would try out a 'Best of Wendy' Special for the UK market.

- Phil Rushton

[stevezodiac]

As I mentioned elsewhere I recently picked up 241 issues of The Rover some of which had Bill Ritchie covers - here are a few of them - plus one back cover:

[Peter Gray]

Nice to see..if next time could you make the images larger...

Bill sure drew many covers for The Rover..

[stevezodiac]

I'm still trimming and bagging those Rovers (as with all DC Thomson comics some pages protuded and became tatty so I purchased an A3 trimmer last week and have been tidying them up - they look much nicer afterwards) I did think of putting those images on full size but I am always conscious of using up too much webspace, I have this fear the forum will reach full capacity. Some of the Ritchie covers I haven't scanned yet have some nich "bunch of kids" scenes ala Baxendale's Banana Bunch, Lion Street Lot. I'll add them at full size soon.

[Digifiend]

Forum capacity is only a worry with attachments. Those images are externally uploaded to Tinypic, so I don't see any reason to skimp on webspace.

[stevezodiac]

I've put the on again - full size. Now you can appreciate Bill's work in detail. They look bigger than actual size - I think if you preview them and then edit out the borders the scanner enlarges the image to fill all the vacant space.

[Peter Gray]

Thats a lot better I can read it now..

Thanks for redoing them...

[diegotheterrible]

Thanks! Ritchie's work has made a profound impact on my own lately!

Anybody here could post some of Bill's "nursery" comics?

[stevezodiac]

Diego, I put some Bill Ritchie Bimbo covers on here a few years back. They are on page five of the Artists & Writers forum dated 10.10.2008. They are still there.

[Tin Can Tommy]

http://comicsuk.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=127&t=2271

A link to the topic mentioned above.

[diegotheterrible]

Lovely artwork, thanks for sharing!

[philcom55]

Here's Bill's charming back cover for the 1966 Bimbo Annual which I picked up for a quid this morning.



To be honest I don't think he needed to make any major alterations for nursery work as his basic style seemed to appeal equally to children of all ages - not to mention adults!

- Phil Rushton

[stevezodiac]

That image is worth framing and hanging on the wall. Superb. Here are those Ritchie kids covers plus a Christmas cover and an advert for the Beezer Book drawn by Bill: