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RonClark-s

Nobby Clark in the 1980s

Ronald Albert George "Nobby" Clark was born in Battersea, London, on 23 August 1923, went to art school in Willesden and became a junior draughsman at a glassworks. During the Second World War he served in the RAF, although his only active mission was to drop leaflets in the Netherlands. After the war he joined Gaumont-British Animation, where he wrote storylines for the Musical Box and Animaland cartoons under Ralph Wright and Reg Parlett.

When the studio went out of business in 1949, he teamed up with fellow ex-animator Eric Bradbury to work up some sample comic strips, Clark writing, Bradbury drawing. They submitted them to Arthur Bouchier, editor of Comic Cuts at the Amalgamated Press. Bouchier passed them on to Leonard Matthews, who gave them work on Knock-Out, Sun and other titles. Clark wrote humour strips like "Blossom", "Young Joey" and "The Adventures of Freddie Frog", drawn by Bradbury, Ron Smith and Harry Hargreaves respectively (all former G-B animators). He produced his scripts in the form of sketched layouts, complete with speech balloons, on art boartd.

He soon joined the staff at the AP, and became a prolific writer, scripting "Our Ernie" and "Sporty", adventure serials like "Captain Phantom", "Lucky Logan", "Space Family Rollinson", "Johnnie Wingco" and "Ginger Tom"; and "Tony Hancock" strips for Film Fun. He was involved in the creation of Buster in 1960, and was offered the job of editing the title, but turned it down, preferring to stick to writing - he scripted most of the early strips, including "Buster", "Uppsy Daisy", "Lazy Sprockett", "Dumbell Fumblebee", "Bam, Splat and Blooie", "Cocky Doodle" and "Phantom Force Five". He also wrote "Circus Ballerina" for Princess, "My Chum Yum Yum" for Tina, "Billy Bunter" for Valiant, and his sister "Bessie Bunter" for June, and travelled to Spain to headhunt Spanish artists for the publisher.

He took voluntary redundancy after management changes in 1969, and returned to animation, first for Eiso Toonder in the Netherlands, then working on Asterix versus Caesar (1985), The Forgotten Toys (1985) and Percy the Park Keeper (2000). He died on 28 August 2009.

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