Mike Western
British comics artist (1925-2008)

Mike Western (b. Southampton, 4 February 1925; d. 13 May 2008) was a British comics artist. He worked as a clean-up artist for GB Animation after military service in the Second World War, and later at Halas and Batchelor on their 1954 film adaptation of Animal Farm. In the early 1950s he joined fellow former GB Animation artists Ron ''Nobby'' Clark and Eric Bradbury at Amalgamated Press, drawing adventure strips for Knock-Out, including the western Lucky Logan and the aviation series Johnnie Wingco.
In 1960 he moved to TV Express, where he drew TV tie-ins No Hiding Place and Biggles, the latter in colour. In 1962 he began drawing for Buster, including The Leopard from Lime Street, on which his pencils were inked by Bradbury, When Britain Froze, World in Peril, and The Star of Fortune. The same year he joined the newly launched Valiant, a title he would be associated with for the next thirteen years. One of his most notable strips there was The Wild Wonders (which ran 1968–1973), written by Tom Tully, about a pair of wild boys, brought up by animals, who turn out to be fantastic athletes, for which he used a semi-cartoony style which was much imitated. Other strips Western worked on included Jack O' Justice and The Duke of Dry Gulch.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Mike Western” as british comics artist (1925-2008). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as british comics artist (1925-2008). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3313581. VIAF identifies the subject as 19938063. The Library of Congress control number is n2011050287. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1925, 2008, 1954 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mike Western” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.