Danger Trail (Original)
Medium: Mixed Media on Board
Size: 22" x 12" (560mm x 300mm)
Date: 1968
Code: CampionAmbush
This is the unique original Mixed Media art by Geoff Campion.
Lovely use of tone and texture in this painting by Geoff Campion. Feel the tension of the moment! Prospectors head for the Funeral Mountains and Death Valley beyond. They did not know that the Palute Indians were watching and waiting.
Used to illustrate the feature The Treasure Hunters - Death Valley Gold published in Look and Learn issue 463, 28th November 1968.
- Artist BiographyArthur Geoffrey Campion (19 November 1916 - 18 December 1997; Coventry, England)
Arthur Geoffrey Campion was a British comics artist who drew adventure strips for Amalgamated Press/IPC.
He started out as a tax inspector. As a staff officer in the British Indian Army in World War II he began drawing cartoons for the forces' magazine, Jambo. Returning to England, he responded to an ad from the Amalgamated Press looking for artists in 1948. He was hired by editor Leonard Matthews to draw humour strips like Professor Bloop in Knock-Out, and filled in on a variety of strips for AP artist Hugh McNeill, including a Thunderbolt Jaxon comic for publication in Australia in 1949.
Geoff Campion brought real punch and vigour into British adventure comics. His characters would charge straight at the reader on horseback or throw an enemy bodily at him. All through the 1950s and 1960s, it was the policy at Fleetway House that their action artists based their styles on the work of Campion. As one editor put it: "When I get a prospective artist in here, I give him a handful of Campion's strips and tell him to draw it exactly like that and you've got it made." But no one could do it quite like Campion could.
Geoff Campion was one of Leonard Matthews' major discoveries. In 1948, he answered an advertisement for new comic artists and, after a short spell of drawing humorous cartoon strips for Knockout, was soon "bagged", as he said, by Leonard Matthews for a new series of comics to be known as Cowboy Comics Library. When Matthews told him he wanted him to try his hand at Westerns, Geoff replied that he couldn't draw horses. Matthews' reply has gone into adventure strip folklore: "Bloody well learn then!" Campion learnt.
As Campion said, "It was advice I've been extremely grateful for ever since." He became one of the country's finest horse artists, and one of the great exponents of the Western genre. Campion was never really at home with other historical periods, however, and his American Civil War saga, Stonewall Jackson Wins His Spurs (no.147) seems far superior to Quo Vadis (no.19), however accurate his portrayal of the film actors involved, and The Last of the Mohicans (no.15) more authentic than Robin Hood's Jest (no. 10). Although Campion was only responsible for one Robin Hood strip, he drew two Dick Turpin strips: his first for the Knockout Fun Book 1954, and the other for Sun, the only Turpin strip printed in the comic in full colour. He also drew a little-known strip featuring a highwaywoman, Black Velvet, for Poppet, the short-lived girl's comic.
Born in Coventry, England and mainly self-taught as an artist, Geoff began his working life as a tax inspector but, during the War as a staff officer in the East India Command, he contributed cartoons to the forces' magazine, Jambo, and, in 1948, successfully answered an advertisement put out by the Amalgamated Press for new artists. For a period during the 1950s, Campion drew the majority of covers for Comet and Sun, as well as most of the long strips, Strongbow the Mohawk, Buffalo Bill, Billy the Kid and Battler Britton. He drew the opening episodes for all these series and the artists who later worked on the series were required to follow his lead. Campion's work was used as a "template", and was continually sent out to artists as examples of what was required. In the 1960s he became a stalwart of Lion, drawing Spellbinder, his own favourite strip, and in the 1970s, his work could be found in Battle Action, as forceful as ever.
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