Bert Hill

Albert Hill was born on Guernsey in the Channel Islands. He left school at age thirteen to become a projectionist at a cinema. Later on, he took a job in a printing firm, where his employer pushed to present his work to publishers. Soon his cartoons appeared in several penny comics. Bert Hill created his first comic in 1929 for Lark magazine. He became the frontpage artist of Provincial Comics's new Midget Comic weekly in June 1931 with the character 'Sammy Spry'. When the comic changed its format to tabloid and its name to Merry Midget later that year, Hill took on the strip 'Frolics in the Far West'. When Provincial Comics folded in the early 1930s, Hill took on a job as a typesetter.

In 1933 he returned to comics, when former Provincial Comics frontman Louis Diamond started two new comics. Hill became a freelancer and contributed 'Crazy Kink the Goofy Gangster' and 'Willie Wart & Wally Warble' to Rattler and 'Charlie Chuckle' and 'Squirt & Squib' to Dazzler. Soon, Hill worked for other magazines, such as Chuckler, Target, Rocket, Sunshine and Bouncer. He is the creator of numerous characters, such as 'Tommy Trot the Tudor Tramp', 'Harry Coe', 'P.C. Copperclock the Desert Cop' and 'Willie Scribble the Pavement Artist'. When Amalgamated Press bought out these magazines, Hill's comics were cancelled. He then turned to Amalgamated by taking over other artists's work, such as 'The Chimps' from Ray Bailey and 'Will Hay' from Bertie Brown. After World War II, he returned to his comics activities with such slapstick series as 'Inspector Slop the Plain Clothes Cop', 'Mike the Mule' and 'Betty & Brian'.