Terence H. Bave was born in Bristol in 1931. He left school at the age of fourteen and joined the Post Office Savings Bank as a clerical assistant, while studying one day a week at a continuation school. At the school he met Shiela Newton, who he would later marry in 1952.
He joined the Civil Service as a trainee cartographer, and sold his first cartoon to the Colonial Survey Department's in-house magazine. After two years' National Service he returned to the department in 1951, but stepped up his freelance cartooning in a variety of magazines. In the late 50s he left the civil service for a commercial cartography company, then joined a packaging firm as a designer.
"Odd-Ball" from Whizzer and Chips
In 1967 he submitted his first comics work to Odhams Press' Wham!, and was given the strip "Sammy Shrink" to draw. He later created "Baby Whamster" and "Baby Smasher", and ghosted "The Dolls of St. Dominics" and "Grimly Feendish" for Leo Baxendale. When Odhams merged into IPC, Bave began to work for their humour titles, including Whizzer and Chips ("My and My Shadow", 1969; "Odd-Ball", 1973), Cor!! ("Donovan's Dad", 1970; "The Slimms"), Shiver and Shake ("Webster", "The Desert Fox"), Whoopee! ("Toy Boy", 1974; "Calculator Kid"; "Blabbermouth"; "Willy Worry"), Monster Fun ("Draculass", 1975), Wow! ("Barney's Badges"), Jackpot ("Richie Wraggs", "Full O'Beans"), Krazy ("Scaredy Cat", 1976) and Buster ("Pete's Pop-Up Book", 1984; "Good Guy", 1986), many of the scripts being written by his wife Shiela.
In the 90s he drew for DC Thomson's humour titles, including "Rats" in The Beezer and Topper.
It was reported in Crikey! magazine in 2007 that he had died, but this turned out to be not the case.
On 11 January 2013 he published his autobiography, Cartoons and Comic Strips:
- Working at the heart of English cartooning Terry had a long, successful career as an artist working on children's comics, such as Whizzer and Chips, Cor!!, Buster, Whoopee, Dandy and Beano. From the heyday of the sixties and seventies, Terry saw the rise, and eventual decline, of creative cartooning for children's comics. His story is not just a tale of one artist, working in creative partnership with his wife Shiela, but the story of comics themselves.
The book can be purchased from Lulu.
Terry passed away peacefully on December 11, 2018, aged 87.
External links[]
References[]
- Alan Clark, Dictionary of British Comic Artists, Writers and Editors, The British Library, 1998, p. 11
