"Skit, Skat and the Captain", Mickey Mouse Weekly, 1936-40
Basil Hope Reynolds was born on 22 December 1916 in Islington, London. His father, Sydney Reynolds, was a commercial artist who was best known for his work in advertising, and his grandfather, Warwick Reynolds, was an illustrator and cartoonist who did some work in early comics, as was his uncle, Warwick Reynolds junior.
He was educated at Holloway County School and took art classes in the evening before joing the Adams & Fidier Art Agency, which produced comic strips for newspapers, in 1933. Reynolds drew Our Silly Cinema (1933) for the South Wales Echo, Septimus and his Space Ship (1934) for the Scottish Daily Express, and Billy the Baby Beetle (1935) in the Daily Sketch.
In 1936 he was hired by Wilfred Haughton as a staff artist on Mickey Mouse Weekly, for which he wrote and drew "Skit, Skat and the Captain" (1936-40), "Elmer and Tillie" and "Shuffled Symphonies". During the Second World War he served in the army in the Middle East, before returning to Mickey Mouse Weekly as art editor, as well as drawing strips including "Bongo", "Li'l Wolf and Danny the Lamb", "True Life Adventures" and "Peter Puppet". Later, Reynolds also became art editor of Jack and Jill, Playhour and Tiny Tots.
He went freelance around 1959. In 1962-68 he drew "Bizzy Beaver" for Robin, and from 1971 he drew for the magazine Disneyland. He also designed book jackets, including one for a biography of Walt Disney. He died in East Dorset in June 2001.
References[]
- Alan Clark, Dictionary of British Comic Artists, Writers and Editors, The British Library, 1998, pp. 143-144
- Denis Gifford, Encyclopedia of Comic Characters, Longman, 1987
- Didier Ghez, Walt's People: Talking Disney With the Artists Who Knew Him, Volume 11, Xlibris Corporation, 2011, pp. 60-
