Before entering the comic industry Edward George Cowan (also known as Ted Cowan) worked as a lab assistant at Shell-Mex then enlisted into the RAF as WWII broke out. Forced to re-enlist with the army after a crash, he became a dispatch rider, but another accident saw an end to his career in the services. After picking up a comic and being unimpressed by the writing inside, Cowan wrote to Stan Boddington, then editor of Champion. Boddington gave him a chance and Cowan started on Ginger Nutt – a successful strip about a young Australian boy, which ran for almost seven years. Cowan’s next strip - The Jungle Robot – appeared in the first issue of Lion. Many adventures featuring Robot Archie were to follow. While working for Lion, Cowan scripted many popular strips including Paddy Payne, Adam Eterno and of course The Spider which he co-created and wrote the first two complete stories for. Francisco Solano López hailed from Argentina, but created many memorable and popular British comic book strips such as Kelly’s Eye (Knockout), Janus Stark (Smash!), Nipper (Score ‘n’ Roar), Pete’s Pocket Army (Buster) and Master of the Marsh (Smash!). He contributed art to Adam Eterno (Thunder & Lion) and many Picture Library stories for Fleetway (including a Battler Britton story for Thriller Picture Library). In Argentina he was known for Ernie Pike (with Hugo Pratt and José Muñoz), and most famously The Eternaut (written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld). He died in 2011. Over the past 50-odd years Christopher Lowder has used maybe a dozen or more pseudonyms, and had a few more foisted on him. He’s written SF, westerns, men’s adventure (for paperback carousels in the rust belt), weird tales, war fiction (WW1,WW2, Vietnam),comicbook scripts (including Dan Dare,Judge Dredd, Adam Eterno and Kids Rule, O.K.), private eye stories, horror and fantasy. He’s edited upwards of 40 mystery/weird anthologies, including a dozen or so posh ones for Oxford University Press. He’s written for the Literary Review, the Times Literary Supplement, and for nearly two decades he was a regular obituarist for the late and very much lamented Independent newspaper. Eric Bradbury began his comic career at Knockout, working on such humour strips as Blossom and Our Ernie. He moved onto the adventure western, Lucky Logan, sharing art chores with Mike Western (Bradbury would go on to ink Western’s pencils on The Leopard from Lime Street). High profile work on Mytek the Mighty (Valiant & Vulcan), the House of Dolmann (Valiant), Von Hoffman’s Invasion *(Jet!), *Death Squad (Battle), Hook Jaw (Action) and Doomlord (The Eagle) followed. Bradbury has been described as an ‘unsung hero’ of 2000 AD, having contributed to many popular strips in the long-running sci-fi comic. His credits in the ‘Galaxy’s Greatest comic’ include Rogue Trooper, Tharg the Mighty, Invasion and The Mean Arena.
