Mike Noble (17 September 1930 – 15 November 2018)[1] was a British comic artist and illustrator, best known for drawing strips like Fireball XL5 for TV Century 21.
At the age of 17 he joined an advertising studio but found the meticulous reproduction of every day objects limited him in scope.
In 1949 he was called up for National Service and for 18 months was in the 8th Royal Tank Regiment in North Yorkshire after which he spent three years in the Territorial Army, where his artistic talent came into good use producing graphics of military hardware.
Noble admits to learning a lot from Leslie Caswell, an artist whose figure work in 1950s romance magazines such as Home Notes and weeklies like Everybody's and John Bull, are renowned.
After a short run of other strips he was asked to draw, in black and white, another creation from the Gerry Anderson canon, Space 1999.