Enric Badía Romero (24 April 1930 - 15 February 2024; Barcelona, Spain)
Enrique Badía Romero (who signed his work simply Romero) was a Spanish comics artist, best known to English-speaking audiences for his work on Modesty Blaise, the long running syndicated newspaper strip of Peter O'Donnell's adventurous sexy heroine. He was also famous for his full colour and pen and ink illustrations of the post-apocalyptic scantily clad heroine Axa, as well as a substantial body of work in his native Spain.

Romero's career began at the age of 15 when he was taken on as an apprentice of the artist Emilio Freixas. After contributing to the publication Susy in 1949, he went on to produce artwork for several series under the signature "Badia". He launched the magazine Alex in 1952 and two years later founded the publishing firm Ruiz Romero for which he produced the series Cromos, Hombres de Lucha and Historia de la Guerra.

More clients followed, and by the early 1950s, Romero was working for publishers like Toray ('Hazañas del Oeste'), Simbolo ('Heroes Biblicos', 'Cobalto'), Soriano ('Colleccion Trovador') and Marco (Rin Tin Tin). He worked together with his brother Jorge Badía Romero (Jobaro) (1938–1984) on several projects, such as the six issue collection 'Kit Carson' for Cliper, which they used to sign under the collective name 'Hnos. Badía' (Badía Bros).

Romero began his long association with the Modesty Blaise strip in 1970 when he was called in to finish the storyline The War-Lords of Phoenix due to artist Jim Holdaway's unexpected death. Initially, Romero intentionally imitated Holdaway's style in order to make the changeover less noticeable, but soon established his own take on the character of Modesty Blaise, portraying her in a more exotic and voluptuous style than Holdaway did.

Romero drew the Modesty Blaise strip until 1978, longer than any other artist. While doing episodes of André Chéret's Rahan for the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Pif gadget from 1976, and beginning in 1978, Romero collaborated with Donne Avenell to create the science fiction series Axa for the English tabloid newspaper The Sun.

In 1986 Romero returned to Modesty Blaise and remained with the strip until O'Donnell retired in 2001. In 2002, Romero was commissioned to draw a graphic novel adaptation of the Modesty Blaise short story "The Dark Angels"; this work was initially published exclusively in Scandinavia but was later reprinted in a special issue of Comics Revue in the United States. Romero's entire run on the Modesty Blaise strip is continually reprinted in an ongoing series of compilation volumes published by the UK company Titan Books since 2005, while Comics Revue in the USA has reprinted all of his post-1986 work on the strip.

In the 2000s and on, Romero worked on Durham Red, and other projects for the magazines 2000 AD and Judge Dredd Megazine, as Enric Romero, and in 2011 he drew for the Italian market some short stories of Djustine, the horror-western character created by Enrico Teodorani.

He died on 15 February 2024 in Barcelona, at the age of 93.