Eric Parker

Who was Eric Parker?

Eric Robert Parker was a prolific British illustrator and comics artist best known for illustrating the adventures of Sexton Blake in various periodicals.

Born at Stoke Newington, North London, on 7 September 1898, he was awarded a special scholarship to the Central School of Arts and Crafts at the age of 15. A photo of him appeared in the Boy's Own Paper celebrating his achievement.

During the First World War he served with the Royal Buckinghamshire Hussars and in military intelligence MI 7b alongside Captain Bruce Bairnsfather, producing propaganda directed at the Home Front - See "MI 7b - the discovery of a lost propaganda archive from the Great War". After the war he became a freelance illustrator, contributing to periodicals including The Strand Magazine. He joined the Amalgamated Press as a staff artist in 1922, where Harold Twyman, editor of the story paper Union Jack, was looking to give detective character Sexton Blake a new direction and a more identifiable look. Parker drew him as a tall, lean pipe-smoker with receding hair, an interpretation that became definitive. Throughout the 1930s he illustrated Blake's adventures in Union Jack, Detective Weekly and the Sexton Blake Library, for which he painted all the covers until 1953, and continued illustrating the character until 1955 when a new editor decided on another revamp. At the same time, he was providing illustrations for Chums, The Strand Magazine, Pearsons, The Scout, Wide World, Wild West Weekly and others.