"Musso the Wop" from The Beano, 1940s
Samuel Robert Fair was born in Dundee on 23 March 1909. He was on the ground floor for the launch of The Dandy in 1937, contributing "Magic Mike" and "Wig and Wam", "Meddlesome Matty" (1938-42) and "Wild Man of the Woods". For The Beano he drew "Frosty McNab" (1938-41), "Winken and Blinken" (1940-41), "Tin Can Tommy", "Pansy Potter" and war propaganda strips "Addie and Hermy" (1939-41) and "Musso the Wop" (1940-43), and for The Magic Comic he drew "Boy Biffo the Brave" (1939-40) and "Old Father Time" (1940).
After the war he continued drawing comics, mostly short runs for small publishers, including PM's The Breezy Comic (1946), Children's Press' Meteor (1948), and Valentine's Ace Comics (1948) and Super Bumper (1949). He was a member of Bill McCail's Mallard Studios in Dundee, alongside Len Fullerton, George Blow, Alf Farningham and Sydney Jordan. He illustrated children's books in the 1950s, but continued to work in comics, drawing "Lochy the Wee Monster" in TV Comic (1957), "Cornelius Dimworthy" in the Eagle (1964-66), "Dizzy Dimwit" in Buster (1969-70), "Captain Nemo" in Donald and Mickey (1972), "Noah's Ark" for Lion (1972-73), and "Monkey Trix" in Bonnie (1974). He died in Dundee in 1985.
References[]
- Alan Clark, Dictionary of British Comic Artists, Writers and Editors, The British Library, 1998, p. 57
- Denis Gifford, Encyclopedia of Comic Characters, Longman, 1987
