Frank Pepper

Frank S. Pepper (the 'S' stood for Stuart) was a comics writer born in Ilford, North London on February 8th 1910. Originally working for newspapers and magazines, he began selling stories to the various boys story papers in the 1930's, including Rockfist Rogan in Champion, which he created (under the pseudonym Hal wilton) in 1937 and wrote for the next 22 years (other pseudonyms used by Pepper included John Marshall, Mark Grimshaw, John Morion and Rupert Hall). He also worked for Knockout and The Comet. In 1952, Pepper created Captain Condor for Lion as a rival for Hulton Press's popular character Dan Dare, working on the strip for twelve years. He also worked on Tiger, co-creating Roy of the Rovers with artist Joe Colquhoun (as a replacement for his own previous football themed series Danny of the Dazzlers). Other strips he wrote included Dan Dare for Eagle, Jet-Ace Logan in both The Comet and Tiger, and The Spellbinder for Lion. He retired from comics in 1983 and started compiling dictionaries of quotations. He died in Cornwall on 11th December 1988.