Dick Millington
I'm sorry to hear that the cartoonist Dick Millington passed away on Wednesday 4th February after an illness. He was 81. Mr.Millington's work will be known to many of us because of his long running Mighty Moth strip in TV Comic. The man vs moth premise of the strip was simple but highly entertaining as every week 'Dad' would concoct a new scheme to get rid of Mighty Moth which would invariably backfire. Yet the heart of the strip was that the characters had a love/hate relationship. Dad needed Moth. Moth needed Dad.
One of the earliest Mighty Moth strips, from 1959, is shown above. Mr.Millington was also the writer of the popular strip which ran until the end of TV Comic in 1984.
In 1966 Dick Millington became the editor of TV Comic, overseeing a very fondly remembered period for the weekly. He later worked for the Daily Mail on their Guiness Book of Records feature and the I Don't Believe It strip.
My sincere condolences to the family and friends of Mr.Millington for their sad loss. His distinctive artwork and charmingly funny scripts were truly a joy to read.
More at the Daily Mail website:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2943513/Daily-Mail-cartoonist-Dick-Millington-dies-aged-81.html
His entry at Lambiek:
http://www.lambiek.net/artists/m/millington_dick.htm
A nice tribute Lew, I still have TV Comic annuals from the the 1970s which feature some lovely double spreads by Dick. A very talented man.
ReplyDeleteI remember Dick for his work on Happy Families (not that I can ever remember the name of original artist!), Lolly Pop (taking over from Sid Burgon after the merger of Whoopee with Wow and changing from a miserly businessman always in search of a way to save money to just a plain miser) and of course as who I consider to be the definitive Chalky artist, taking over from Arthur Martin.
ReplyDeleteI have a notion from memory that he didn’t always do his own lettering, but he certainly did it very frequently.
Thanks Anon.
ReplyDeleteI'd forgotten he drew Chalky for a while, Andy!
Another name to an artist, unfortunately. I remember Happy Families most, but I do recall Mighty Moth too, and I dont know why, I am pretty sure I never seen TV comic for sale here. Nice tribute Lew.
ReplyDeleteThere were a couple of Mighty Moth holiday specials so perhaps they made it over to Ireland even if TV Comic wasn't well distributed there?
ReplyDeleteI've just seen this now while looking up Mighty Moth... Sad news about an inventive man.
ReplyDeleteThe Cartoon Museum recently received a donation of original comic artwork by Dick Millington's family including a few very nice Mighty Moth pages and some of his other characters. Sadly like many artists, only a fraction of the original artwork was returned to him.
ReplyDeleteIt's so sad that artwork is either destroyed or stolen, or left forgotten somewhere.
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