Comics UK

Thanks to Jenni Scott and David Roach I've just discovered the name of an outstanding British comic artist whose work I'd previously tended to confuse with that of Douglas Perry (an artist with a similarly loose and energetic style, but one that I can now see to be very different in other respects). Though he seems to have drawn almost exclusively for DC Thomson's girls' comics Norman Lee also produced a number of strips during the early 1980s for TV Tops, their answer to Look-In. As with all too many of Thomson's artists there appears to be very little information available about him on the net or in books on British comics so I thought it would be worth starting a thread devoted to him in the hope that people might be able to provide some more details about his career.

To begin with here are two impressive pages from 'Young Sherlock' (based on the popular TV series of the same name).

I learned the name too, Phil - it took David Roach to confirm it, though Marckie had suggested it along with Bert Hill of course. Of course, had I looked at Peace's Girls of Yesterday site under the tag Norman Lee I would have seen enough samples to confirm that possibility:
http://girlscomicsofyesterday.com/tag/norman-lee/

A good collaborative effort!

Norman Lee also drew the covers and Judy & Co strip for Judy comic from around 84 to the end of the comic in 91, apart from the few issues where I got to fill in for him.

Thanks Sean. I don't have too many of the later issues of Judy but I thought this cover looked like his work. The seemingly effortless dynamism of his style is quite breathtaking!

Another of Norman's beautifully composed Judy covers, showing the ability to create an eerie atmosphere that made him such a perfect Spellbound artist.

I was sure we'd mentioned Norman Lee on here before this, but maybe not. Norman's father, also called Norman, was the head of the art dept at Thomson's Bank Street art studio. Norman senior mainly supplied work for Thomson's women's magazines in the period 1920-1960 and similarly, up until the mid 1970's, Norman Jnr did the same particularly for Romeo etc. He then began drawing for Thomson's girl's comics with his first work appearing in the pages of Spellbound.

Thanks Kashgar. It's quite possible Norman Jnr. has been mentioned here before but I must have failed to make the connection with his style. It's interesting to hear that his first art for Thomson's juvenile comics didn't appear before 1976 as I'd been struggling to find any examples of his work before that. On the other hand he seems to have continued drawing for titles like Bunty almost until the end.

Phil, your scans look a lot nicer on here than on Facebook. They are rather gorgeous, aren't they?

Norman Junior certainly hit the ground running with the first issue of Spellbound where, as far as I can tell, he drew the cover as well as the first instalments of "I Don't Want to be a Witch" and 'When the Mummy Walks' (though the UK Comics Wiki unaccountably credits the latter to Esteban Maroto!). That's an impressive total of nine pages - more than a quarter of the entire comic!

Incidentally Kashgar your memory is spot-on as ever - you did indeed refer to Norman's father and the Bank Street art studio a few months ago on a thread about one-time Dandy artist John Mason. After the recent books on the history of Dandy and Beano I can't be the only one who would really love to see a comprehensive history of DC Thomson itself with photos and plans of their various offices and studios, accounts of ALL their publications, and biographies of the key proprietorial, editorial and creative personalities.

While he was clearly an excellent storyteller as well the thing that excites me above anything about Norman's work is his thrilling sense of design. This is not only evident in his many covers but also in his wonderfully dramatic splash pages - as seen in these amazing examples from Spellbound no's 10 and 11.

Oh, that really is lovely stuff.

In 1976 Norman exploded onto the scene of Thomson's comics for young girls with astonishing skill and confidence - but as Kashgar has pointed out this shouldn't have been such a surprise as by then he'd already spent several years producing art for their slightly more sophisticated romance title Romeo. Here's a 1964 cover that looks like his work (as does the interior story) - though it's hard to be 100% sure as there were so many other unknown artists drawing in an equally slick style for Britain's growing selection of popular romance comics during the same period.

Norman went on to illustrate the majority of Spellbound covers (though not all) up to and including the final issue in January 1978, for which he drew the Supercats announcing the 'extra-special-news' of their comic's imminent cancelation and merger with the more conventional girls' title Debbie. Thereafter, although he continued to produce work for a variety of glossy magazines like TV Tops and Jackie, he became increasingly associated with Thomson's mainstream girls' comics such as Judy, Emma and Bunty.

Here's the first episode of one of Norman's most popular Bunty series - 'Invisible Isla', which made its debut in March 1992 behind a cover by (I think) John Armstrong.