Ian Kennedy

Ian Kennedy is a Scottish comics artist who was born in Dundee (home of the cake) in 1932. After leaving secondary school he was employed in 1949 as a trainee illustrator by DC Thomson, an experience he described to The Courier as "like the medieval artist's workshop. You had the Michelangelo or whoever and he had his minions around doing fill-in jobs or whatever. You just sat and sucked all this in. You were learning and you didn't know it. It was just a wonderful place to be and the guys were always very helpful." His first job was filling in the black boxes in the Sunday Post crossword.

Having married a nurse called Gladys whom he met while being treated for an ear infection, Kennedy started working for Knockout in 1953. He went on to work for a huge range of comics, including Thriller Picture Library, Air Ace (he has been a big fan of aeroplanes ever since his childhood during World War Two), Hotspur (he was working freelance for DC Thomson by that time), Buster (on Jeff Craig Detective) and Wizard (on Tiger McTaggart and Typhoon Tennyson).

For renowned sci-fi comic 2000 AD Kennedy has worked on M.A.C.H. One, Invasion (with Gerry Finley-Day), Tharg's Future Shocks and Judge Dredd (with John Wagner and Alan Grant). For its short-lived sister comic Star-Lord he drew two Ro-Busters stories and the cover of issue 20.

Ian Kennedy has also worked for Battle Picture Weekly, Buddy, Blake's 7, Eagle (drawing Dan Dare), M.A.S.K, Victor Summer Special, Wildcat and Commando. His services have not yet been requested by any other crossword.