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Kim Raymond (born 1957) is a British comic book artist and animator. Best known in the UK as a contributor to the Judge Dredd series of comics in the 2000 AD series, newspaper comic strips appearing in the first UK newspaper to be printed in full colour, Today, and The Daily Star. He is also one of the first UK born artists to obtain international recognition for developing commercial Disney art originating from the UK.
Kim Raymond was born in Woking, Surrey to parents Eric, an ex-navy communications engineer working in the domestic television industry and Patricia Raymond, a nurse.
His early love of comics was of home-grown UK titles such as The Beano, Tiger and Lion, and more significantly, TV(Century)21, a spin-off title accompanying the puppet TV series of Gerry Anderson.
British artist Frank Bellamy contributed regularly to TV21 [1] and later drew a daily comic strip for The Mirror newspaper, Garth. This had a major influence on the ambitions of Raymond, along with the growing availability of Marvel comics in the UK such as Spiderman, The Silver Surfer and Thor.
After three years studying animation at art college in Surrey he took his interest to The Walt Disney Company in London, and began as a junior artist in the Character Merchandising Division. But after a year decided to pursue a career in comics, approaching the agent of David Wright, illustrator of the daily newspaper strip Carol Day, through his son Patrick Wright, at the time himself illustrating Modesty Blaise [2] for the London Evening Standard.
Raymond started his comic career working for Dundee-based DC Thomson on girls' titles such as Mandy and Tracy. Later he progressed to boys comics for IPC London, on M.A.S.K., Robo machines, Starcom and then later Tharg's Future Shocks and Judge Dredd in black and white in the early eighties.
His ability to draw women well and with confidence eventually led him to contribute to the exploits of Judge Anderson, Psi Division, in Judge Dredd. He confesses that he was heavily influenced by Jim Holdaway, [3] the first Modesty Blaise artist; Romero, [4] a Spanish artist who took up the mantle on Modesty Blaise after Holdaway’s untimely death, Frank Bellamy, and Ron Smith, who twice helped him with advice and guidance in his early and later comic career. Smith was also a regular Dredd artist and a co-contributor to the City of the Damned epic on which Raymond also worked, illustrating three episodes. His final comic work appeared over several years in the two daily national newspaper strips, Checkout Girl [5] (The Daily Star) and Roy of the Rovers (Today Newspaper). [6]
In the late eighties it became clear to Kim Raymond that the UK comics industry was becoming more ‘licensed properties’ with little room to create new characters, so he returned to the area of work that had a huge legacy for him in terms of drawing quality, the art of Walt Disney.
He worked for several years as a freelance contributor, and then in 1992 created Character Magic Ltd. [7] in order to further develop both the quality of work that he was producing and also service the large licensee base that he was consulted to engage with by Disney. After further masterclass training in both the US and Paris, Raymond became the leading UK Disney Character artist and in 1999 he began working for The Disney Stores Europe as a consultant.
He currently holds the position of Senior Principal Artist working for the U.S. parent company at Disney in London and is responsible for many Disney art successes. [8]
Charles Alfred "Al" Taliaferro, was an American Disney comics artist who produced Disney comic strips for King Features Syndicate. Taliaferro is best known for his work on the Donald Duck comic strip. Many of his strips were written by Bob Karp.
Modesty Blaise is a British comic strip featuring a fictional character of the same name, created by author Peter O'Donnell and illustrator Jim Holdaway in 1963. The strip follows Modesty Blaise, an exceptional young woman with many talents and a criminal past, and her trusty sidekick Willie Garvin. It was adapted into films in 1966, 1982, and 2003, and from 1965 onwards, 11 novels and two short-story collections were written.
Enrique Badía Romero is a Spanish comics artist, best known to English-speaking audiences for his work on Modesty Blaise. He is also the co-creator of the post-apocalyptic science fiction strip AXA, as well as a substantial body of work in his native Spain.
Peter O'Donnell was an English writer of mysteries and of comic strips, best known as the creator of Modesty Blaise, an action heroine/undercover trouble-shooter. He was also an award-winning gothic historical romance novelist who wrote under the female pseudonym Madeleine Brent, in 1978, his novel Merlin's Keep won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association.
John Wagner is an American-born British comics writer. Alongside Pat Mills, he helped revitalise British comics in the 1970s, and continues to be active in the British comics industry, occasionally also working in American comics. He is the co-creator, with artist Carlos Ezquerra, of the character Judge Dredd.
Cobra Trap is the title of a short story collection by Peter O'Donnell featuring his action/adventure heroine Modesty Blaise. The book was published in 1996, and is the thirteenth, and final book in the Modesty Blaise series which began in 1965. Cobra Trap was released 11 years after the previous book in the series, Dead Man's Handle. It was the final book to be written by O'Donnell before his death in 2010.
Pieces of Modesty is a short story collection by Peter O'Donnell featuring his action heroine, Modesty Blaise, first published in 1972. It was O'Donnell's first such collection of stories.
Ronald George Smith was an English comic artist whose career spanned almost fifty years. Primarily producing strips for the two main publishers, DC Thomson and IPC Magazines, Smith was best known for drawing Judge Dredd for 2000 AD and the Daily Star.
John M. Burns is an English comics artist, with a career stretching back to the mid-1960s.
Modesty Blaise is a 1966 British spy-fi comedy film directed by Joseph Losey, produced by Joseph Janni, and loosely based on the popular comic strip Modesty Blaise by Peter O'Donnell, who co-wrote the original story upon which Evan Jones and Harold Pinter based their screenplay. It stars Monica Vitti as "Modesty", opposite Terence Stamp as Willie Garvin and Dirk Bogarde as her nemesis Gabriel. The cast also includes Harry Andrews, Michael Craig, Alexander Knox, Rossella Falk, Clive Revill, and Tina Aumont. The film's music was composed by Johnny Dankworth and the theme song, Modesty, sung by pop duo David and Jonathan. It was Vitti's first English-speaking role.
Jim Holdaway (1927–1970) was a British illustrator, who contributed art for numerous comic strips. His best known work was on the Modesty Blaise comics written by Peter O'Donnell.
Notable events of 1999 in comics. See also List of years in comics.
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Notable events of 2016 in comics. See also List of years in comics. This is a list of comics-related events in 2016. It includes any relevant comics-related events, deaths of notable comics-related people, conventions and first issues by title.
Notable events of 2021 in comics. See also List of years in comics.
Notable events of 2022 in comics. See also List of years in comics.
