The Open Parachute: Tom Bird Where Are You Now?

Thursday 28 May 2015

Tom Bird Where Are You Now?

T. Bird, T. W. Bird, Tom Bird and finally Thomas Bird are all the ways in which the same artist labelled himself in the

early 1970's.

There are very few pages of his art out there and what there is can be hard to find. He contributed to the fourth issue of Promethean Enterprises, The Berkley Con Booklet and Underground Comics too : Spaced Out, Yellow Dog #21, Barbarians #2 and a complete issue of Barbarian Killer Funnies.

Other than those examples, I have no idea of who he was or why, after showing some promise, he simply disappeared from the scene. The work is competent and well executed, generally of a higher standard than many of the, relatively unknown, cartoonists with whom he shared space in the anthology titles.

It would be interesting to know if he was, as many were at that time, an art school student, or perhaps a working commercial artist who moon-lighted as an underground cartoonist.

In some respects, his contribution to the undergrounds and fanzines of the day, place him in the company of another personal favourite, Robert (Bob) Kline.

The biggest difference is that I know what happened to Bob, he went into animation and earned a living at it.

Here are a couple of samples of T. Bird's art and one or two of Bob Kline's.