| Robert Nixon | |
 | |
| Full Name | Robert T. Nixon |
| Gender | Male |
| Born | 7 July 1939 |
| Died | 22 October 2002 |
| Job | Artist |
| Strips Drawn | Various, including Roger the Dodger & Ivy the Terrible |
Robert Nixon (7 July 1939 – 22 October 2002) was an artist who worked on several British comics, including The Beano.
Robert was born in South Bank, Middlesbrough, in North Yorkshire on July 7, 1939. He was the fifth of six children born to Arthur Nixon and Phylis Thompson. Robert's mother Phylis worked as a housewife while his father worked locally as a steelworker. As a child, Robert spent much of his time drawing and sketching, and his artistic skills were recognised when he was seven years old by teachers at Cromwell Road School which he attended in South Bank. During his early years as an artist, and supported by teachers at the Central Secondary Modern School (Victoria Street, Southbank), Robert won several art competitions and a scholarship to Middlesbrough art college in 1955 when he was sixteen. Although his time at art college was cut short by the death of his father, Bob gained employment locally as a lithographic artist and left in 1965 to pursue his career as a full-time cartoonist, initially for DC Thomson's of Dundee. During this transition Robert met and married Rita Kelly and after living in Middlesbrough for several years they moved to Guisborough in Cleveland where they raised their four children - Paul, Tony, Wendy and Catherine.
Nixon's first work for The Beano was Little Plum, which he briefly drew in the early 1960s after Leo Baxendale left DC Thomson. He then replaced Ken Reid as regular artist for Roger the Dodger in 1964 before taking over Lord Snooty from Dudley D. Watkins later in the same decade and reviving another Ken Reid creation, Grandpa, in 1971. Nixon would stop drawing all three strips when he left DC Thomson in 1973 to join IPC Magazines (Fleetway). Nixon returned to The Beano after Euan Kerr became editor to create another long-running strip, Ivy the Terrible, which made its debut in the comic in 1985. The following year, Nixon returned to drawing Roger The Dodger, which was expanded to a two-page strip at the same time. Nixon drew the strip in a style which differed significantly not only from previous artist Frank McDiarmid but also his own earlier work on the strip. Ivy The Terrible would also later expand to two pages in 1998. Nixon also went on to create Vic Volcano, who would win a 1995 poll asking Beano readers to vote for which new strip they wanted to be added to the comic. He would continue to provide artwork for Roger and Ivy until his death in October 2002, with the replacement artists (Barrie Appleby and Tony O'Donnell, respectively) retaining Nixon's style and character designs.
In his latter spell working for The Beano, Nixon would regularly sign his work with his initials 'R.N.' or later 'R.T. Nixon'. Nixon himself appeared in The Beano Annual 2003 as part of a strip in which he attempted to teach Ivy The Terrible how to draw. His work has been praised by former Beano editor Alan Digby, who cited his artwork as a major reason for success of Ivy The Terrible.