Neville Maurice Colvin (17 December 1918 - 1 September 1991; born Dunedin, New Zealand)
Neville Colvin was born in New Zealand and began his career as a cartoonist in 1936 working for the Wellington Evening Post doing political and sports cartoons for a decade.

In 1956, Colvin emigrated to England, having become 'increasingly frustrated with criticism of his work by senior staff at the Evening Post' and, more generally, with the stifling environment of 1950s New Zealand.

He soon found work on Fleet Street, working for the News Chronicle, Daily Telegraph, News of the World, the Daily Sketch, the Daily Express, and the Sunday Express. He branched out into serialized newspaper strips in the 1960s, working on a number of titles before, most famously, working on the comic strip Modesty Blaise. Between 1980 and 1986, he drew the daily Modesty Blaise strip, drawing approximately 1902 strips.

He then decided to expand his scope to serialized newspaper strips drawing Ginger & Co. for Swift Weekly from 1960-62.

Colvin briefly drew the James Bond strip 1976-77, providing an ending to the story 'Ape of Diamonds' for syndication whilst author Jim Lawrence and artist Yaroslav Horak concentrated on a new series for the Sunday Express. Colvin drew episodes 3384-3437 for the Daily Express, the strip ending on 22 January 1977.

Between 1977 and 1980, Colvin worked on a number of projects, including a Sunday strip featuring Modesty Blaise written by Peter O'Donnell, but the idea was dropped after Colvin had drawn seven episodes. Colvin subsequently replaced Romero on the daily strip on 27 May 1980 with the story 'Dossier on Pluto'.

He went on to draw 1,902 episodes - only slightly fewer than Jim Holdaway, the first artist on the Modesty Blaise strip- and his last strip appearing on 15 September 1986. One story, 'The Scarlet Maiden' (published in 1982), was the completion of the Sunday strip tryout from some years earlier.

Neville Colvin died in Camden, London, UK in 1991.
Source: Illustration Art Gallery; Bear Alley; http://nevillecolvin.com/; Wikipedia