Additional information
by John Burns (Illustrator), Les Lilly (Author)
The Seekers is a British comic strip that ran in the Daily Sketch from 1966 to 1971. The main characters, Susanne Dove and Jacob Benedick, are two top secret agents employed by Una Frost, director of"the Seekers', an elite agency that focuses on finding missing persons. MURDER IN THE BONEYARD, originally serialized as THE BONEYARD CLUB was the first installment of the popular British series as written by Les Lilley and illustrated by John Burns. The strip bears some resemblance to another strip Burns later drew for a brief period, MODESTY BLAISE. The female characters were consistently drawn in an enticing manner, indicating Burns evident intent to challenge the limits of the daily British newspaper strip conventions of the times. LUCKY COMIX has painstakingly cleaned up the original dailies and reformatted them into a graphic novelette that will be sure to please fans of classic comic strips as well as those who just enjoy a cracking good mystery with very pretty girls. We hope you'll enjoy Susanne and Jacob's first outing as THE SEEKERS.
Author Biography
Leslie Alfred Joseph Lilley Les Lilley was born in Dartford, Kent 29 November 1924 and died in London 18 October 1998. Lilley was admired and respected within the realm of newspaper and comic strip art, not only for his work as a scriptwriter of literally thousands of strip cartoons and gags, but as a man who spent many years of his life endeavoring to promote the Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain. Not only did he initiate the Club and chair it efficiently for many years, he became President of the Federation of European Cartoonists' Organizations, a thriving multi-cultural body representing humorous artists of many nationalities. Noted strips included "Jane", "Tiffany Jones", "Scarth" and our very own "The Seekers". As Lilley wrote of himself in the 1993 edition of the Cartoonists' Club Handbook, "Hopes to write the definitive novel, occasionally draws a cartoon, and regularly draws his old age pension". John M. Burns john Burns initial work was as an illustrator for Junior Express and School Friend. During the 1960s, Burns worked on TV Century 21 and its sister magazines, including the Space Family Robinson series in "Lady Penelope". For a while he drew daily comics strips for newspapers The Daily Sketch, The Daily Mirror and The Sun, including The Seekers, Danielle and, for a period succeeding Enrique Romero during 1978-79, Modesty Blaise. He moved on to illustrate TV tie-in strips for now-defunct title Look-in, always scripted by Angus P. Allan, Burns was already well known by the start of the 1980s. He also worked on the title story for Countdown. It was when he made the crossover to 2000 AD, along with fellow Look-in alumni Jim Baikie and Arthur Ranson, that his position in British comics was cemented. Burns began by working on Judge Dredd, a strip to which he continues to contribute to this day. By his own admission (in a 2004 interview with David Bishop in the Judge Dredd Megazine), Burns does not enjoy drawing science fiction strips, and the look of Judge Dredd is one that he finds particularly unpleasant to draw. In 2007, Burns began working on the Nikolai Dante strip. He has also co-created (with Robbie Morrison) a contemporary adventure strip, The Bendatti Vendetta, for the Megazine, this is unique for the title in having no science fiction or fantasy elements at all. Burns is still very active as a painterly type of illustrator today.
