2025 marks 60 years of TV Century 21! To mark the occasion, we're bringing you a series of artist biographies of many classic and obscure creative talents who drew the likes of Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Stingray and more for the newspaper of the future.

We're diving into the story of Mike Noble, who was responsible for illustrating a massive variety of TV characters across TV Century 21 and Look-in, among them many familiar sci-fi heroes from the worlds of Gerry Anderson.

Noble Beginnings

Born in September 1930, Mike Noble came from an artistically inclined family. His father and brother were keen artists, and many childhood hours were spent by the Noble brothers filling up drawing books. Mike later attended the South West Essex Technical College after leaving traditional education behind and began pursuing life drawing and commercial illustration. This led to a job as an in-house illustrator at an advertising studio in High Holburn. 

In 1947, he became an office boy for Chelsea Studios, performing various dogsbody errands. More fortuitous were the opportunities that came when he was called up for National Service. After initially becoming a member of the 8th Royal Tank Regiment, he later managed to secure a position in the Regimental Drawing Office, in which his extensive illustrations of military hardware would become invaluable for TV Century 21.

By this time in the early 1950s, Mike returned to advertising following his military career, but his comics career that he'd become best known for would flourish. Like many other TV Century 21 artistic alumni, Mike's earliest comics efforts were for Marcus Morris' family of boys and girls adventure papers. Noble illustrated Simon and Sally for the younger orientated Robin throughout 1953-58 and Christine, Student Nurse for Girl in 1954. Noble still worked in advertising during the early 1950s, honing his distinctively eloquent figurework for a variety of publications.

Noble transitioned to illustrating the more action-driven cowboy strips towards the late 1950s. He illustrated The Lone Ranger and Tonto for Express Weekly, which later became simply The Lone Ranger and transitioned homes to TV Comic. Noble's other significant cowboy strip in TV Comic was Range Rider, which he drew for an extensive run between 1961 and 1964. During this time, Mike also drew Popeye and Beetle Bailey in TV Comic (1964-65) and Little Miss Lonely for Princess (1963-64).

Space, Rock Snakes & Spectrum

Mike Noble's lengthily association with the worlds of Gerry Anderson began in the early days of TV Century 21. Graham Coton had initially illustrated Fireball XL5's debut storyline, but Noble swiftly took over from the second story, The Vengeance of Saharis (#6 - #14). Noble would become Fireball XL5's first resident artist. His artistic flourishes proved instrumental in elevating Fireball XL5 to become a darkly superior depiction of the adventures of the World Space Patrol's flagship compared to the archaic black-and-white TV series. His run was briefly interrupted on the storyline Emergency Landing, which was illustrated by Dan Dare creator Frank Hampson. Noble would return to illustrate the strip's golden period between November 1965 and December 1966, in which his style notably broadens in maturity. He employs darker colour schemes, more intricate mechanical detailing and wilder panel compositions than those seen during his earlier storylines. He particularly favoured lighting his characters by computer screens, capturing a futuristically cutting edge vibe to Fireball XL5's techno-driven sense of space adventure.

Noble's last full-length Fireball XL5 storyline would be Planet of Fire, with Eric Eden filling in the stories before and after this one. Noble's tenure on Fireball XL5 would come to an end with illustrating the first four instalments of Architects of Peace. Around this time, Zero X would transfer from the stumbling box office performance of Thunderbirds Are Go to be revitalised as the hottest new space-age adventure epic in TV Century 21. Zero X launched in issue #105, the same issue as Architects of Peace. Readers were lucky enough to savour three full-colour pages from Noble across two different strips, but evidently, the workload would prove too much. With Zero X the hot new product and Fireball XL5 by now consigned to TV Century 21's back page in replacement of The Daleks, Don Lawrence would take over illustrating Fireball XL5, allowing Noble to concentrate his efforts on the exploits of Zero X.

The similarities in premises between Zero X and Fireball XL5 made Noble the obvious artist to become that strip's first resident artist. Compared to the mostly humanoid threats faced by Steve Zodiac however, Captain Paul Travers and company would grapple with a far more outlandish rogues gallery of imaginative cosmic menaces that let Noble's talents sparkle in depicting surreal alien creatures and scenarios. Noble illustrated the first year's worth of Zero X adventures, drawing and colouring eight adventures across 50 issues. By this time, late 1967, another new hero now occupied TV21's front page - Captain Scarlet. Ron Embleton had initially illustrated the first handful of storylines in a glorious centrespread, but with the dawn of 1968, TV21 underwent one of its many reinventions, now with the Captain Scarlet strip at the centre. The comic strip now formed part of the comic's front page, with Noble illustrating Captain Scarlet's 4-pages - one colour front page, two black and whites, and a fourth one also in colour. The strip was apparently desired to be drawn with all four pages in colour, but this was an unrealistic expectation of Noble's workload.

Like many other artists on the Captain Scarlet strip, Noble's contributions were oddly scattershot, illustrating handfuls of storylines in-between other artists' efforts. Noble's tenure at first stretched between issues #158 and #166, with Jim Watson by now taking over the Zero X strip. Noble illustrated a variety of Captain Scarlet stories up until 1968, sharing duties with Don Harley, Keith Watson, Frank Bellamy and Jim Watson. Noble's extensive background in advertising that allowed him to finesse his figurework is employed to engaging effect in Captain Scarlet's character-driven storylines compared to the outer space hardware action of Fireball XL5 and Zero X.

Noble returned to resident artist duties on the Zero X strip following his time on Captain Scarlet. Amusingly, he and Jim Watson effectively swapped strips, with Watson now mostly taking over the Captain Scarlet strip. Noble would continue to illustrate the wildly surreal alien threats faced by Zero X, producing many classic stories during this time, including Planet of Bones, Prisoner of the Eye Leaves and Picture Language. Noble continued illustrating Zero X right up until the comic's end in September of 1969.

Looking in

Noble briefly drew TV21 & Joe 90's Star Trek strip during 1970 before becoming one of the most prolific artists on the junior TV Times - Look-in. Reunited with editor Alan Fennell, Noble drew an eclectic variety of material for the magazine throughout the 1970s and 1980s, including Robin of Sherwood, The Adventures of Black Beauty, The Famous Five and Worzel Gummidge, each strip showcasing his knack for meticulous character likenesses. Sci-fi material was never far, including Timeslip and Star Fleet, but his last significant leap into the worlds of Gerry Anderson took place when he drew the magazine's Space: 1999 strip.

Taking over from fellow TV21 alumni John Burns, who drew the first three storylines, Noble's starkly monochromatic depiction of the perilous adventures of Moonbase Alpha between 1976 and 1977 brought many memorably surreal adventures for the Alphans, including Operation Exodus mutinies, images of Earth's ancient history conjured up when passing near a black sun, and Moonbase Alpha becoming a hostile war zone against alien invaders.

Noble retired from regular comic strip work following his time on Look-in, but Fennell roped him back into Gerry's retrofuture worlds in the early 1990s, producing a variety of covers, vehicle and character portraits for Fleetway's line-up of Anderson comics. Mike Noble passed away in November 2018, aged 88. With his astounding attention to detail and capabilities of dramatic page compositions, his contributions to the comic book worlds of Gerry Anderson and many other cult TV characters enshrine him as a revered talent in British comics.

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