Frank S. Pepper

Frank Stuart Pepper (8 February 1910 – 11 December 1988) was a British writer of comics and story papers for Amalgamated Press, best known as the creator of Roy of the Rovers and Captain Condor.

Biography Born in Ilford, North East London, on 8 February 1910, on leaving school he joined the staff of The Children's Newspaper as an office boy in 1926, under editor Arthur Mee. He started by writing captions, then longer pieces, and by 1930 was selling articles to other papers on a freelance basis. He went freelance full-time in 1931, writing for numerous newspapers and magazines. He also created the cover feature for AP's sports comic Tiger, in 1953: editor Derek Birnage requested a more realistic football series than "Danny of the Dazzlers", and Pepper gave him "Roy of the Rovers", illustrated by Joe Colquhoun, who took over writing the strip, from Pepper's outline, after four episodes, using the pseudonym Stewart Colwyn. Other series he wrote scripts for included "Dan Dare" for Eagle, "Jet-Ace Logan" in The Comet and Tiger and "The Spellbinder" for Lion.

He retired from comics in 1983, and started compiling collections of quotations, including Twentieth Century Quotations, Contemporary Biographical Quotations, Dictionary of Biographical Quotations and Twentieth Century Anecdotes. He died in Cornwall on 11 December 1988. He was married and had four children.