Bob Bond (United Kingdom)
Bob Bond is a veteran comics artist, cartoonist and caricaturist who has worked on numerous books, tracts, magazines and features in the UK and Europe.
Bond was born in 1940 in a little village called Banks, 5 miles outside of Southport, where Frank Hampson, the well-known Dan Dare comics artist, had his studio. During the Second World War the Luftwaffe would fly over his house on the way to bomb Liverpool. "One German plane even came down in our village," he reports.
Bond was inspired to become a comics artist after a visit to the famous Frank Hampson studio where he saw Hampson himself drawing the Dan Dare strip.
In 1960, Bond sold his first pro work in the Lancashire Evening Post and went to work for them as a sports cartoonist, right out of college.
Bond became a Christian at age 23.
He started drawing for Fleetway and D.C. Thomson in 1964, doing soccer comics. "I got 'pigeon-holed' as a football artist," he says.
For the next 15 years Bond did artwork for those companies, as well as freelance for a variety of Christian projects and publishers, including PLUS+ for the Christian Publicity Organisation ("I did my first drawings for them in the '70s, when Alan Bird was the editor"), Kids Alive! for the Salvation Army ("It was called Young Soldier back then"), and Buzz Magazine for Evangelical Christian Publishers.
Bond also created Here Come the Giraffes, a book of Bible "droodles" or doodle riddles. ("I received a letter from a man who led 5 children to Christ at a church camp using my Bible droodles. I still have that letter, and am so thankful to the Lord for it.")
Then, in 1979, God called him to go to work full-time for CPO where he would do a wide variety of cartooning, illustration, and comics projects from that time right up through the present.
From around 1983 to 1985, Bond drew 4 comics titles in the A4 size - The Day that Changed the World, Zero Hour, Follow Me, and Action Man - which were eventually put together into one comic book entitled The Man Who Changed the World (shown at right, above).
Also, around 1984 to 1986, he illustrated 3 of 4 titles in a testimony booklet series: Hellbent (The Story of Brian Greenaway, shown at left), Nightmare in Bangkok (Rita Nightingale), and Out of My Darkness (Tony Ralls). (A fourth booklet, Bullets & Beads, was drawn by artist Tim Charnick.)
Bond also worked on a series of "imitation Chick Tracts" for CPO, which were called "PIP Booklets," for "Preaching in Pictures." ("Two of the four titles I remember were The Snipers and Lennox.")
An excellent title and balloon letterer, Bond has used those skills on comics projects for the British & Foreign Bible Society (Jesus the Victor and Jesus the Galilean) and for Lion Publishing.
When the Where's Waldo? books were popular, Bond was commissioned to do several similar books for the Spot the Spinks series and Where's Sonic?
Bond also drew the comics in Andy Antenna's Airwaves Magazine for FEBA Radio. For PLUS+ he illustrated the Kerygma comic strip briefly before writer Steve Carroll assumed the art duties.
He created 4 titles for a "Doggerel Bible" series, written in rhyming verse, which began publication in 2001. The two best-selling books in this series were When God Created Christmas (shown at above right) and The Man Who Came Back to Life. The other two titles were The Man Nobody Loved, and The Boy Who Brought All the Food.
Bond has taught on the production of comics artwork in India and served on the board of a UK group that was affiliated with the comics ministry COMIX35 in the USA.
In 2006 he completed The Illustrated Christmas Story (a comic strip song book), and he took over as the artist of Steve Carroll's Riddler's Fayre graphic novel series. For several years Bond also maintained a website where fans could purchase his caricatures of well-known footballers on prints and cards.
Bond came out of retirement after the death of his beloved wife Margaret in early 2008. He has two grown sons one of whom is also a professional comics artist. Bond lives in the south of England.
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