Bill Ward (British artist)

Born in London he lived almost all his life in the city with exception of a three-year tour in the Army. His publishing career began as a copyboy in newspaper publishing before becoming an art editor for children's comics and then a freelance graphic artist. He worked as a graphic artist for Amalgamated Press and Fleetway on children's comics, notably their Thriller series (November 1951 – May 1963). His influences were Burne Hogarth's Tarzan, Hal Foster's Prince Valiant and Milton Caniff.

There is some evidence Ward had his first erotic drawings published discretely in the British physique magazine Male Classics[1] and also in Physique Pictorial.[2] Unusually these were initialled and credited to him by name. It is possible that he also used the pseudonym Tristano.[3] He did not produce sexually explicit works until he had retired from reliance on mainstream comic work. Homosexual sex and images portraying and encouraging it were illegal in the period before 1967. During the 1970s he was working for the Mansell Collection,[4] a commercial picture archive which was housed at 42 Linden Gardens; he was living there with actor Brian Rawlinson in an outbuilding that served as his own studio. The picture library and the house was owned by Louie Boutroy (1903–1993) and run with her unofficial adopted son and protégée George Anderson and his life partner Harold, who also lived at the house.

Ward began to produce strips (King) for both the British and American magazines from about 1976. In Britain these appeared in Him and Zipper magazines under the editorship of Alex McKenna,[5] as well as Sam and Daddy. It was his work for the American magazines Manifest Reader, Stroke and Drummer that made him well known. Apart from King, his characters included the muscular sexual adventurer Drum, a clueless comic character Zeke and Rogan a space cop, as well as illustrations to John Embry's story The Exchange (writing under the pseudonym Robert Payne). His work features in the same issue of Drummer that includes Robert Mapplethorpe's first commissioned cover (issue 24, September 1978) under the editorship of Jack Fritscher. Collections were published by Alternate Publishing in San Franscisco (The Adventures of Drum, The Fantastic Adventures of Bill Ward) and under the Meat Men imprint[6] of gay comics. The artist was in regular contact with others in the field: he corresponded with Al Shapiro ("A. Jay") arts editor at Drummer, Bill Schmeling ("The Hun") and Harry Bush.[7] The artist Rex met him and was an admirer, owning work by Ward. In the 1990s, now living in Stratford with his then partner Christie's silver expert Stephen Helliwell, both were diagnosed with AIDS and died within a few months of each other in 1996.[8]

• Beefcake magazines
• Gay comics