Whatever happened to Bill Ritchie?

[Big Simon]

Now I guess the answer to this is that he either died, or retired...

I loved his 'Baby Crockett' strips for The Beezer. The earlier ones have a 'Ronald Searle' quality about them... very detailed, sometimes quite grotesque.

Anybody know anything about Bill? I know he was still drawing Baby in the late 90s.

[Steve Bright]

Simon, Bill is still very much with us, and has only just recently retired from contributing a regular feature to the Cartoonists Club of Great Britain's in-house mag, The Jester. I'm not sure how much published work he's doing these days, but he remains one of the most knowledgeable cartoonists in the business, as well as one of the nicest.

[Kashgar]

As Steve says Bill Ritchie is a really nice guy and very knowledgable on the work of his fellow artists and, in fact, one of my most treasured possessions is a piece of original artwork that he drew specifically for me. At a time when I used to pester him for details of the DC Thomson art dept on a regular basis, one day, out of the blue, arrived this piece of artwork which featured most of his Bill's Thomson creations gathered around a copy of a comic pondering the question 'I wonder who drew that?' It's been framed and in pride of place on the desk in my 'comic room' for many a long year.

[stevezodiac]

Bill Ritchie still has single 'gag' style cartoons published most weeks in the Weekly News (published by DC Thomson of course). The Weekly News has about 25 cartoons in it each week and you usually see one and sometimes two by Ritchie. Although having said that i just checked this week's issue (out today) and he doesn't have one in it - but its still a great read! I wrote to him a few years ago and he sent a nice reply along with a piece of original art for me. He mentioned Giles as being an influence on him and if you look at his early work you can see a little grannie like Giles'.