Dave Follows (3 October 1941 – 17 October 2003)
was a British
cartoonist
A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comics illustrators/artists in that they produce both the litera ...
best known for his comic strip ''
Creature Feature
A monster movie, monster film, creature feature or giant monster film is a film that focuses on one or more characters struggling to survive attacks by one or more antagonistic monsters, often abnormally large ones. The film may also fall unde ...
''.
Career
Follows was born in
Stafford
Stafford () is a market town and the county town of Staffordshire, England. It is located about south of Stoke-on-Trent, north of Wolverhampton, and northwest of Birmingham. The town had a population of 71,673 at the 2021–2022 United Kingd ...
,
Staffordshire
Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation ''Staffs''.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It borders Cheshire to the north-west, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, ...
, England. His first published cartoon was for the ''Stafford Advertiser'' in 1971.
His animal
comic strip
A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...
''The Creature Feature'' appeared weekly in the ''
Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of N ...
'' supplement, ''
Funday Times'', from 1990 to 2006. ''The Creature Feature'' was also syndicated in over 30 newspapers throughout the world. Follows supplied other strips for newspapers including the
North Staffordshire
The federation of Stoke-on-Trent was the 1910 amalgamation of the six Staffordshire Potteries towns of Burslem, Tunstall, Stoke-upon-Trent, Hanley, Fenton and Longton into the single county borough of Stoke-on-Trent. The federation was one of ...
's ''
The Sentinel'', where his strip ''
May un Mar Lady
''May un Mar Lady'' is a cartoon strip written in Potteries dialect, which first appeared on 8 July 1986 in the ''North Staffordshire Sentinel'' and has been a local institution for over 20 years. Now, the full twenty-year run (7,000 strips) of c ...
'' appeared daily from 8 July 1985 to 3 October 2003. It is republished in that newspaper under the title ''May Un Mar Lady Revisited''.
When the British comic book ''
Eagle
Eagle is the common name for the golden eagle, bald eagle, and other birds of prey in the family of the Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of Genus, genera, some of which are closely related. True eagles comprise the genus ''Aquila ( ...
'' was relaunched in the 1980s, Follows' designed the mascot character, Ernie the Eagle, and produced various weekly ''Ernie'' cartoons.
He drew Wonder Wellies, written by Roy Davis, in the comic ''
Buster'' from 17 September 1983 until August 1985.
Follows was a member of
The Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain.
Personal life
Follow was married to wife Audrey for 38 years at the time of his death from cancer.
The couple had three children, sons Darren, Steve, and Chris.
Steve is the guitarist in the Stafford-based band
Bradbray Apartment.
References
External links
Dave Followsofficial website
Archivedfrom the original on April 22, 2016.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Follows, Dave
British comic strip cartoonists
British comics artists
British comics writers
1941 births
2003 deaths
People from Stafford