Hugh McNeill (13 December 1910 - 22 November 1979; Moss Side, Manchester, UK)
Hugh McNeill was a British comic book artist who worked for the titles of Amalgamated Press and is best known as the creator of 'Pansy Potter, the Strong Man's Daughter' and an artist on 'Deed-a-day Danny', 'Our Ernie' and 'Harold Hare'.

Born in Manchester and apprenticed at an Art studio, the Kayebon Press, McNeill attended evening classes at the Manchester School of Art. Hugh was a brilliant "funnies" artist for Knockout and his "straight" strips are a delight and his Dick Turpin work is amongst his best.

McNeill was an artist for DC Thomson's comic book The Beano from its first issue in 1938. In that same year, he created 'Pansy Potter the Strong Man's Daughter' for the magazine's Christmas edition. The strip ran until the late 1980s, but her corkscrew curls and Popeye arms have been drawn by many different cartoonists who took over from McNeill. The most notable of these successors were Basil Blackaller and Harry Hargreaves.

McNeill left DC Thomson shortly after debuting 'Pansy Potter' and went to work for the Amalgamated Press instead, where he began a steady collaboration with editor Leonard Matthews. He published 'Professor P. Nutts' in Jolly Comic until joining Knock-Out from the first issue in March 1939 with serials like 'Deed-a-Day Danny', 'Simon the Simple Sleuth' and 'Our Ernie'.

McNeill was chosen by Leonard Matthews to start off the long series of Dick Turpin strips, which were to appear on the back page of the original large-page format Sun. Called "Highway Days", the strip introduced a new companion for Turpin - a girl comrade, Moll Moonlight (a character created by Leonard Matthews).

These strips were originally light-hearted affairs but soon after the format of the comic changed, so too did the Turpin stories. The readers were suddenly plunged into the Gothic horror genre of the "penny bloods" and Turpin and Moll Moonlight found themselves in a series of adventures set in haunted manor houses where weird happenings were very much the order of the day and the chief villain was the splendidly evil master criminal "Creepy" Crawley.

During World War II, McNeill was in the Royal Army Service Corps and Royal Engineers. He served as a cartographer in North Africa and traveled around with General Montgomery in his tent, drawing maps. He continued to draw 'Deed-a-day Danny' and 'Our Ernie' while in the army. He continued his collaboration with Knock-Out after the war and also began drawing adventure comics, especially for Sun, for which he drew a 'Dick Turpin' comic, among other things.

McNeill based his Dick Turpin on the actor Richard Greene (whom he had portrayed earlier in his strip version of the film The Fighting O'Flynn for Sun), and the 'gothic' Turpin adventures had an atmosphere akin to that in the 1953 Richard Greene film, "The Black Castle". McNeill was given examples of Derek Eyles work to help him in drawing horses and the occasional frame of a horseman shows clearly how big a debt he owed to Eyles.

In the early 1960s, McNeill drew the title comic of the magazine Buster, which he took over from Bill Titcombe. He made the front page comic called 'The Daydreams of Buster' and also the spin-off, 'Buster's Good Deeds'. By then, McNeill trained an assistant called Pamela Cooper to do the inking chores. This gave him time to do the double page spread 'Our Village' in Jack and Jill, as well as 'The Funny Adventures of Nutty Noddle' for Robin.

McNeill dropped the 'Buster' comic in 1962 (leaving it to Angel Nadal) and created 'Tim & Vicky, the TV Twins' for the comic. His other 1960s features include 'Life with Uncle Lionel' in Princess and 'The Trolls' and 'Willy the Wily Wolf' in Tina. McNeill continued to draw 'Harold Hare' into the 1970s as well as creating the occasional new strip such as 'Giggles Galore' and 'Gussie the Girl Guide' for Pixie and 'Meet the Beans' in Bonnie, which was his final creation. A stroke left him unable to draw in 1976 and the artist died in his home in Sussex in November 1979.
Source: David Ashford and Norman Wright; Lambiek; Illustration Art Gallery