Arthur Geoffrey Campion brought real punch and vigour into British adventure comics. His characters would charge straight at the reader on horseback or throw an enemy bodily at him. All through the 1950s and 1960s, it was the policy at Fleetway House that their action artists based their styles on the work of Campion. As one editor put it: "When I get a prospective artist in here, I give him a handful of Campion's strips and tell him to draw it exactly like that and you've got it made." But no one could do it quite like Campion could. Geoff Campion was one of Leonard Matthews' major discoveries. In 1948, he answered an advertisement for new comic artists and, after a short spell of drawing humorous cartoon strips for Knockout, was soon "bagged", as he said, by Leonard Matthews for a new series of comics to be known as Cowboy Comics Library. When Matthews told him he wanted him to try his hand at Westerns, Geoff replied that he couldn't draw horses. Matthews' reply has gone into adventure strip folklore: "Bloody well learn then!" Campion learnt.
As Campion said, "It was advice I've been extremely grateful for ever since." He became one of the country's finest horse artists, and one of the great exponents of the Western genre. Campion was never really at home with other historical periods, however, and his American Civil War saga, Stonewall Jackson Wins His Spurs (no.147) seems far superior to Quo Vadis (no.19), however accurate his portrayal of the film actors involved, and The Last of the Mohicans (no.15) more authentic than Robin Hood's Jest (no. 10). Although Campion was only responsible for one Robin Hood strip, he drew two Dick Turpin strips: his first for the Knockout Fun Book 1954, and the other for Sun, the only Turpin strip printed in the comic in full colour. He also drew a little-known strip featuring a highwaywoman, Black Velvet, for Poppet, the short-lived girl's comic.
Arthur Geoffrey Campion was born in Coventry and was mainly self-taught as an artist. He began his working life as a tax inspector but, during the War when a staff officer in the East India Command, he contributed cartoons to the forces' magazine, Jambo, and, in 1948, successfully answered an advertisement put out by the Amalgamated Press for new artists. For a period during the 1950s, Campion drew the majority of covers for Comet and Sun, as well as most of the long strips, Strongbow the Mohawk, Buffalo Bill, Billy the Kid and Battler Britton. He drew the opening episodes for all these series and the artists who later worked on the series were required to follow his lead. Campion's work was used as a "template", and was continually sent out to artists as examples of what was required. In the '60s he became a stalwart of Lion, drawing Spellbinder, his own favourite strip, and in the '70s, his work could be found in Battle Action, as forceful as ever.

Biography extract courtesy of David Ashford and Norman Wright.