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 starting with the legendary Frank Bellamy, whose extensive background in drawing adventure strips and controversial reinvention of Eagle's Dan Dare strip would make him the perfect artist to illustrate the heroic adventures of the Tracy family.

From Swift to Eagle

Frank Alfred Bellamy was born in May, 1917 in Kettering, Northamptonshire. After an initial career in advertising and movie poster illustration, interrupted by his service in the Royal Artillery during WWII, Bellamy pursued an illustrious freelance career in illustration. Bellamy's earlier comic work included Commando Gibbs versus Dragon Decay in 1952, a series of advertisement strips for Gibbs toothpaste, produced for Eagle. Bellamy would go on to produce some of his most celebrated work with the Eagle, the comic which Alan Fennell would heavily model the eventual TV Century 21 on.

Bellamy's further comic work included illustrating Monty Carstairs and Walt Disney's Living Desert for Micky Mouse Weekly between 1953 and 1954. After these brief spells, he joined the ranks of Marcus Morris' Swift, the junior paper of Eagle, for which Bellamy illustrated a variety of historical adventure strips. These included Swiss Family Robinson (1954-1955), King Arthur and his Knights (1955-56), and Robin Hood and his Merry Men (1956-57).

From there, Bellamy illustrated a series of biographical strips for such real-life figures as Winston Churchill, King David and Marco Polo for Eagle in the late 1950s. In 1959, Bellamy was tasked by Eagle's new owners, Odhams Press, with taking over the hugely popular Dan Dare strip from its creator, Frank Hampson, and drastically overhauling its appearance, much to Bellamy's own chagrin. Nevertheless, this embryonic approach of Bellamy's to science fiction would lay the groundwork for illustrating the adventures of International Rescue a few years later. Bellamy worked from scripts written by Eric Eden and stayed on Dan Dare until July 1960, when the strip was taken over by Don Harley. All three of these artists would become heavily involved in TV Century 21.

Bellamy's passion for African tribal culture would be expressed most fully with his and George Beardmore's Fraser of Africa (1960-61), an adventure strip following game hunter Martin Fraser's efforts to track down a missing Hollywood film star in Tanganyika. Further Eagle work included more real-life historical strips throughout 1962 (Montgomery of Alamein and Only the Brave), but Bellamy's last significant contribution to Eagle was the sword and sorcery adventures of Heros the Spartan, which Bellamy illustrated between 1962 and 1965, alternating artistic duties with Luis Bermejo. Bellamy's cinematic double-page centrespreads would become further groundwork for his Thunderbirds strip, while further dalliances in science fiction with the vivid Boy's Own strip The Ghost World (1963-64) ae visible forerunners of his wildly inventive style for Thunderbirds.

With a hugely impressive body of work already to his name by the mid 1960s, Bellamy captured the attention of many industry colleagues, including Alan Fennell, who was keen for the artist to join a brand new comic that would overtake the Eagle as the definitive boys' adventure paper of the 1960s.  

Bellamy's Fantastic Futures

Bellamy had been Fennell's first choice to illustrate TV Century 21's Stingray strip, but Bellamy's commitments to Eagle would prevent him joining TV Century 21 immediately. By the mid 1960s, Eagle's fortunes were diminishing, the once premier children's adventure comic now greatly suffering from dwindling circulation. TV Century 21 would emerge as its successor, not just because it liberally cherry-picked at many of the artists who had worked on that preceding comic, but also in terms of popularity, backed by the futuristic puppet stars of A.P. Films and other TV heroes. 

Bellamy would become the resident artist on TV Century 21's Thunderbirds strip, illustrating the enthralling adventures of International Rescue in his characteristically spectacular style for a mostly unbroken run between 1966 and 1969. His stylised depictions of the Tracy family and the Thunderbird machines, often playing with sense of perspective and mechanical shape, was worlds away from the strictly photorealist style of Ron Embleton's Stingray or Mike Noble's Fireball XL5. His recognisable figurework injects the characters with a fluid physicality which the puppets always struggled to convey on screen.

Thunderbirds became Bellamy's most sustained approach to science fiction. His knack for designing brilliant futuristic air and spacecraft that were so crucial to the world of Thunderbirds belies his apparent lack of enthusiasm for the science fiction genre. The ferocious cosmic carnage of Solar Danger and impressive mechanical detailing seen in Atlantic Tunnel are just some noteworthy highlights. Away from these futuristic stylings, Bellamy's enthusiasm for tribal culture feeds into several similar stories - Mission to Africa, Visitor from Space, Chain Reaction, and Jungle Adventure. Bellamy's background in adventure strips radiates a sense of visual comfort within Thunderbirds' global scope of danger zone disasters across land, sea, air and outer space. No disaster scenario appeared too fanciful or complex for Bellamy to bring to life with visual awe and drama.

Even as TV Century 21's Thunderbirds strip dragged on into increasingly surreal directions throughout 1967 and 1968, Bellamy's artwork remains a consistent highlight of the strip, no doubt aiding in its ongoing popularity for the comic. Even the strip's eventual switching from its magnificent double-page centrespread to a pair of more traditional single pages doesn't stop Bellamy's evergreen inventiveness. He regularly finds new visual avenues in depicting the Thunderbird machines in thrilling style, his dynamic sense of angling and perspective always a breath of fresh air compared to the TV series' comfortable reliance on the usual two-dimensional stock footage of the Thunderbirds in flight.

Of the 190 issues that Thunderbirds appeared in, Bellamy illustrated a hugely impressive 185 issues' worth of material. Don Harley stepped into illustrate the last five instalments of Solar Danger, allowing Bellamy to provide prop illustrations for The Avengers' episode The Winged Avenger. Bellamy's last instance of illustrating Thunderbirds would be in the newly reformatted TV21 & Joe 90, which combined the flailing TV21 and Joe 90: Top Secret once both comics came under new ownership. He would only draw the first story, the 4-part Seeking Disaster, before John Cooper would take the reigns as the resident artist on Thunderbirds' short-lived revitalisation. 

A palpable sense of change is apparent in this swift, enjoyable final outing involving International Rescue's efforts to extinguish an raging oil inferno triggered by an unscrupulous scientist. Compared to the lavish spreads and unpredictable panel structures that he maintained right until the last issue of TV21, Bellamy's work feels oddly restrained here. His artwork remains splendid as ever, but his page structures are so much more common and uninspired by comparison. He saves one final glorious panel composition for the departing shot of Thunderbirds 1 and 2 leaving the danger zone once the rescue is a success, a note of triumph that ends a near four-year run on one of TV comic's most successful spin-off strips.

A Versatile Legacy

Outside of Thunderbirds, Bellamy also drew several front covers of TV21 between 1968 and 1969, by which time the Captain Scarlet strip had taken over the comic's front page. Bellamy's depiction of Spectrum's indestructible superman offers a tantalising glimpse as to what a fully fledged Captain Scarlet strip illustrated by Frank Bellamy himself might have looked like. Bellamy also illustrated the front cover of Joe 90: Top Secret's debut issue from January 1969.

Following the closure of Century 21 Publishing, the 1970s saw Bellamy pursue further comics, advertising and illustrative work, including work on Look and Learn and Valiant. One of his most extensive work post-TV21 was illustrating the adventure strip Garth in the Daily Mirror from 1971 until his passing in 1976. Bellamy's professional interests across movie illustrations, science fiction, historical topics and adventure stories would find an unexpected combination through his regular contributions to the Radio Times, for which he contributed a sprawling array of illustrative work throughout the 1970s.

His work for the Radio Times ranged from promotional illustrations for Star Trek and Doctor Who, including many memorable depictions of Jon Pertwee's and Tom Baker's takes on the Time Lord, as well as a variety of film and war related pieces. These included profiles for Bette Davis, James Mason and Gregory Peck and historical features based on key events from WWII.

Frank Bellamy died suddenly of a heart attack in July 1976, aged 59. At the time of his passing, he had begun writing and illustrating a Spaghetti Western strip inspired by the films of Sergio Leone, which Bellamy greatly enjoyed. Even though these ambitions went sadly unfulfilled, Bellamy left behind a vast, versatile and innovative portfolio of creative work that remains widely beloved to this day.

Get ready to experience Frank Bellamy's spectacular artwork painstakingly restored in the upcoming Thunderbirds Comic Anthology Volume 1! Pre-orders for our first Thunderbirds comic anthology will open in June. Stand by for comic strip action!

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