Tony Weare biography

Tony Weare (1 January 1912 - 2 December 1994; Wincanton, Somerset, UK)

Tony Weare was a British comics artist best known for drawing Matt Marriott, a daily Western strip written by Jim Edgar, which ran in The Evening News from 1955 to 1977.

Tony Weare was born in Somerset and studied drawing at the Bournemouth School of Art but became a trooper in a cavalry regiment where he developed a love of horses. Tony Weare later recalled that he was always “torn between the desire for a life of action and that of artistic dedication”, and, although studying drawing at the Bournemouth School of Art, he soon “chucked it to become a trooper in a cavalry regiment”. As he observed, “in a unit with 500 horses I really learned something about those beautiful creatures.”

Weare eventually bought himself out of the army and returned to drawing, although he also recalled “bouts of timber hauling, farming, and starving.” During the Second World War he served in the army as a wireless operator. After demobilisation Weare drew for magazines including Strand, Pearson's, Windsor, Britannia, Nash's and John Bull. He also drew for the Comet, Cowboy Comics, and the Mickey Mouse Weekly, as well as for The Daily Mirror and The Daily Express.

In 1955 Wear began drawing the “Matt Marriott” strip for the London Evening News, with writer Jim Edgar. He recalled of Edgar that “as soon as we met we clicked”, and their strip “Matt Marriott” proved to be enormously popular, running until 1977. It was unusual among comic strips because Weare drew both Matt and his trail partner “Powder Horn” growing older as the story progressed. In 1974 Weare even sold his home in Devon to buy a camping van and spent two years driving around the American West, still drawing “Matt Marriott” and sending it to London.

As well as Matt Marriott, he also worked at Mickey Mouse Weekly, where he worked on "Billy Brave", "Pride of the Circus", "Savage Splendour", and "Robin Alone". He illustrated "The Colditz Story" for Junior Express and was voted Serious Strip Cartoonist of the Year, 1961. In the 1980s he drew "Rookwood" for Look and Learn magazine and a few sequences in Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta, at the invitation of Lloyd, an admirer of his work.

“Matt Marriott” finished in 1977, when Weare was in hospital. He continued to draw for publications including Tornado and Look and Learn, and also drew a few sequences for Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta, at the invitation of Lloyd, who was an admirer of his work. Unable to face his growing immobility, Weare took his own life by jumping from the pier in Porthleven, Cornwall, on 2 December 1994. He left a farewell cartoon showing his feet sticking out of the water.

David Lloyd wrote about him:

Tony was one of just a very few strip artists here and in the US whose creative identities owed nothing to the heritage of stylisation which influenced many other newspaper adventure strip creators—he was primarily an illustrator who just happened to love drawing strips. . . . He also had a superb command of light and shade, which promoted the impression that he was drawing something he could see in front of him, rather than something he'd built up from his imagination.