Geoff Campion

Geoff Campion, born Arthur Geoffrey Campion on 19 November 1916, was a British comics artist whose steady hand defined the adventure strip for Amalgamated Press and its successor, IPC. He died on 18 December 1997. Before comics, Campion worked as a tax inspector; during World War II, serving as a staff officer in the British Indian Army, he began drawing cartoons for the forces' magazine *Jambo*. Returning to England, he answered an ad from Amalgamated Press in 1948 and was hired by editor Leonard Matthews. Initially assigned humour strips like *Professor Bloop* in *Knock-Out*, he soon took over westerns for *Cowboy Comics Library*—after famously protesting he couldn't draw horses, Matthews told him to learn. Campion did, and became one of the company's leading adventure artists. His signature style, developed through the 1950s and '60s, became the house look for AP/Fleetway adventure comics. He drew westerns (*Strongbow the Mohawk*, *Buffalo Bill*), the WWII aviation strip *Battler Britton*, historicals like *Dick Turpin*, and the highwaywoman strip *Black Velvet* for *Poppet*. In the 1960s, he worked on *Lion* (*Captain Condor*, *Typhoon Tracy*, *The Spellbinder*) and *Valiant* (*Captain Hurricane*); in the 1970s, for *Battle Picture Weekly* (*D-Day Dawson*, *The Eagle*, *Action Force*). Later in life, in 1988, he created large tableau boards for the National Trust illustrating the history of The Needles Old Battery on the Isle of Wight, which remain on display there.