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Mike Noble - not a name I was at all familiar with when I originally started reading comics. Even when I re-discovered comics a few years ago, although I knew and recognised the style, I couldn't put a name to it. I now know that Mike Noble has to be one of the finest comic book artists there has ever been. Even some of the modern artists on Batman/Superman/Dredd and so on have a hard time competing with him. His ability to portray machines, backgrounds, and people is uncanny. I always remember studying the see-through plastic spacesuits that Steve Zodiac and crew wore, and wondered how he managed to make them look to "real". (I CANNOT draw.)
Mike Noble was born in South Woodford, London in 1930. After a formal education, he attended the then School of Art S.W.Technical College in Walthamstow, London in 1946 and moved into advertising at a studio in Holborn during the latter part of the forties. After National Service in 1949 (where he served in the 8th Royal Tank Regiment in their drawing office illustrating armoured vehicles), he was demobbed and found himself at a Chelsea studio before moving to Cooper Studios in Oxford Street, London in 1952. Here, he trained to do magazine illustration with the artist Leslie Gaswell with work that included such popular publications and publishers as Woman's Own, Woman, John Bull, the Birmingham Weekly Post and Odhams.

In 1953, he moved to the medium he would become renowned for and started his own comic strip for Robin (then the younger version of the famous Eagle comic) for Hulton Press. His success allowed him to go freelance in 1956 and he worked from home ever since then. Work for the long running TV Comic led to Noble becoming one of several 'resident' artists on the new TV Century 21 comic that was produced by Gerry Anderson's publishing arm to exploit the TV producer's series. He began with work on Fireball Xl5 and progressed to Zero X and Captain Scarlet & the Mysterons. He even managed to illustrate an early Star Trek strip for the Joe 90 title in 1970 before the series became the cult success it is known as today.
With the gradual dismantling of TV21 and its move away from the Gerry Anderson fold, Noble moved onto a new title being produced by Independent Television Publications as a junior TV Times. This was Look-in and Noble's work appeared regularly in the magazine virtually until the publication's demise in the late 80s.

E-mail me at martin@martinpaul.co.uk