Eric Robert Parker (7 September 1898 - 21 March 1974; born Stoke Newington, London, UK)
Eric Parker is probably best known as the Sexton Blake artist, being responsible for hundreds of full-colour covers for the Sexton Blake Library as well as countless covers and interior black and white illustrations for Union Jack and Detective Weekly.

He was a consummate draughtsman, at home illustrating any period of history, and the few strip stories he drew for Thriller Comics Library are amongst the best in the entire series. With the exception of The Children of New Forest (no. 38), which was mainly a reprint of his 1945 Knockout strip with some new material added, and The Secret of Monte Cristo (no. 14), which originated as a superb Parker Sexton Blake strip in Knockout but which for the Thriller Comics Library version was so extensively re-drawn by Reg Bunn that it could scarcely be classified as a Parker strip at all, Parker's contributions were all especially drawn for the Library.

His artistic ability was discovered early on and the young Eric had an article about his talent and the scholarship it had won for him, together with his photograph, in the Boy's Own Paper in 1913. From the outset of his career in illustration, he was prolific and his work can be seen in a wide variety of publications throughout the 1920s and 1930s. His first strip work was for Knockout, starting with whimsical fantasy strips such as The Queer Adventures of Patsy and Tim, before going onto a Western strip, The Adventures of Bear Cub. This was followed by a long series of excellent adaptations of adventure classics including Gulliver's Travels (1942-3), Kidnapped (1945-6), The Black Arrow (1948) and The Three Musketeers (1946).

In the late 1940s and 50s he also drew five newspaper strips: Pepys' Diary for The Evening News, Making a Film and Paula for the Daily Express, Elizabethan strip An Age of Greatness for the Daily Globe, and Our Gang for The Sunday Pictorial.

He also drew "Tommy Walls", a series of adverts in comic strip form for Wall's ice cream in the Eagle, full colour political advertisements for the Conservative Party, and illustrations and covers for The Soldier, official magazine of the British Army.

In 1960 Parker was appointed art director for educational magazine Look and Learn, which involved laying out comic strips for other artists to draw. He also contributed to Ranger, including a full colour feature called Scrapbook of the British Soldier, which he wrote as well as illustrated based on his knowledge of military history, beginning in 1966. The "Scrapbook" moved to Look and Learn when Ranger merged into it, and was followed by Scrapbook of the British Sailor, and For Valour", on the history of medals.

The work of Parker can be seen in many publications other than those of the Amalgamated Press and Look and Learn, notably the evocative historical illustrations, painted in two-tone colour, for the Daily Mail Annual for Boys and Girls.

At the time of his death he left the full-colour artwork for an uncompleted series he had created called A Thousand Years of Spying. An unfinished Napoleonic strip of excellent quality was also never published.
Source: David Ashford and Norman Wright; Wikipedia