Background
Bob was born in South Bank, Middlesbrough, in North Yorkshire on July 7, 1939. Robert"s mother Phylis worked as a housewife while his father worked locally as a steelworker.
Bob was born in South Bank, Middlesbrough, in North Yorkshire on July 7, 1939. 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.
He was the fifth of six children born to Arthur Nixon and Phylis Thompson. 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 District of Columbia Thomson"s of Dundee. In The Beano, he started out drawing Little Plum in the early 1960s after Leo Baxendale left District of Columbia Thomson.
He left District of Columbia Thomson shortly afterwards, and started to work at IPC Magazines (Fleetway), drawing such characters as Kid Kong, Frankie Stein and Gums.
Nixon drew The 12½p Buytonic Boy for Krazy, although Brian Walker frequently deputised when Nixon was on leave. The strip first appeared in issue 1, dated 16 October 1976.
Nixon returned to District of Columbia Thomson in 1984 after being asked to by new Beano editor Euan Kerr, and began drawing Roger the Dodger again, as well as creating Ivy the Terrible in 1985. Nixon"s strips are still being reprinted in The Beano, appearing regularly as recently as 2011.
He would go on to draw Beryl the Peril in The Topper and Korky the Cat in The Dandy later on in the decade, and continue drawing them throughout the 1990s.