Gordon Bell (artist)

Gordon Bell is an artist who lives in the UK. From the 1960s onward he has worked extensively for D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd, publishers of The Beano and The Dandy comics (among others). His sketchy, breezy cartoon style places the emphasis firmly on the foreground characters, with the backgrounds often consisting solely of a blank wall, a townscape silhouette or bleak scrubland. His regular strips over the years have included:

• The Buzzies and the Fuzzies (Buzz)
• Doodlebug (Nutty)
• Jimmy Jinx (Topper)
• Pup Parade (AKA The Bash Street Dogs, Beano)
• Sammy's Scribbles (Buzz)
• Scoopy (Nutty)
• Spoofer McGraw (Sparky)

Pup Parade still makes appearances in The Beano today, still drawn by Bell, who has drawn the strip since it started in 1967. Most of his work involves animals as main characters, although two such exceptions were Jimmy Jinx and Spoofer McGraw. In all his strips he regularly uses quirky comic details and side comments in his strips, such as smaller captions denoting to the reader (who might otherwise miss such details) that Smiffy was not only too lazy to move, but also sitting on a tack.