Frank Roy Davis was born in Fulham, London, on 9 October 1921, and studied at West Kensington Central School, expecting to follow a clerical career. However, his talent for drawing took him in another direction. His first job was as a studio artist with the wallpaper designers Arthur Sanderson & Sons in 1938. His first published cartoon was in Answers in 1939.
He served in the RAF in Britain, France, Holland, Germany, India and Java from 1940 to 1946, before returning briefly to Sandersons, but soon left to join the Gaumont British Animation studio in Berkshire, where he worked as a "storyman", devising scripts for the Animaland animated films. When the studio closed in 1950 he moved to Eastwood in Essex, where he launched a career as a freelance cartoonist. His cartoons, influenced by Heath Robinson and Rowland Emett, were published in newspapers and magazines like Punch, Tatler, Tit-Bits, London Opinion, the Daily Sketch, the Daily Mirror and Sporting Record.
He also wrote and drew comic strips for titles including The Sun ("55 BC"), The Comet ("Private Tich"), Mickey Mouse Weekly ("Whacko the Wizard") and Sunny Stories.
In 1964 he joined the staff of IPC, where he wrote scripts for Lion ("The Backwoods Boys", "Drake Ahoy"), TV21 ("Kid King"), Princess Tina ("The Trolls"), Whizzer and Chips ("Sid's Snake", "Joker", "Odd Ball" etc) and Buster ("Vampire Brats", drawn by Lew Stringer) among many others. He co-created "Faceache" for Jet with Ken Reid, which later appeared in Buster. He left IPC's staff in 1974, but continued to work for them as a freelancer until he retired in 1992.
He was a founder of the Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain, and a member of the British Cartoonists' Association. He also made sculptures out of scrap metal, which he displayed twice on the BBC TV programme Vision On. He died in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, on 11 November 2004.
References[]
- Mark Bryan, Obituary: Roy Davis, cartoonist, The Independent, 25 November 2004
- Alan Clark, Dictionary of British Comic Artists, Writers and Editors, The British Library, 1998, p. 49