His work was innovative in its graphic effects and sophisticated use of colour, and in the dynamic manner in which it broke out of the then-traditional grid system.

Bellamy met his wife Nancy whilst he was stationed near Bishop Auckland during World War II and was married in 1942.

Shortly after he moved to Swift where his work included Swiss Family Robinson, King Arthur and Robin Hood.

In 1957, he moved to Eagle and began working in colour on their back page biography strips: The Happy Warrior (the life of Winston Churchill), The Shepherd King (the life of the biblical King David), and The Travels of Marco Polo for which Bellamy only did eight episodes before moving to Dan Dare.

It was an awkward set-up: the new owners of Eagle thought the strip looked dated, so gave Bellamy the brief of redesigning everything, from the costumes and spacecraft to the page layouts.

Bellamy insisted on proper research and even had a reader living in East Africa supplying reference material.

Drawn as a two-page spread and usually organized around a complicated splash in the centre of the two pages, Heros was a bravura display of skill.

In November 1965, Bellamy left the fading Eagle to work for TV Century 21, where he drew the centrespread Thunderbirds strip.

Bellamy applied all the graphic tricks in his arsenal from stippling and cross-hatching to chiaroscuro inking to create a modern and eye-catching look for Garth unlike anything else appearing in newspapers at the time.

Bellamy worked continuously on Garth for the next five years, although drawing in black and white rather than colour gave him time to maintain a number of other regular commissions.