Phil Gascoine left school at the age of fifteen and began working in a Fleet Street art studio. He returned to the studio after completing his military service but turned to freelancing shortly afterwards. He did artwork for Pearsons' 'Emergency Ward Ten' pocket books and then spent 15 years drawing girls' comics for the D.C. Thomson titles Bunty, School Friend, June and Jinty.
Girl in a bubble (Dutch version: Gevangen in een luchtbel, from Tina #24, 1977)
By the mid-1970s, Gascoine turned to war stories for Battle Picture Weekly and Battle Action, drawing features like 'The Sarge'. At this time, he was also doing sports comics for the Victor.
He also worked for the British side of Marvel, on Blake's 7', 'Thundercats', 'Action Force', 'Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers', 'The Real Ghostbusters'. He remained active for Fleetway though, drawing new girls' stories for Tammy and the 'News Team' feature in Eagle, while also drawing for Look In. Eventually, Phil Gascoine moved on and started doing commissions for the American market. He made the mini-series 'The Unknown Soldier' with Jim Owsley, and 'The Punisher: Die Hard in the Big Easy' for DC Comics, while also inking titles for DC/Vertigo.
Gascoine was one of several cartoonists to make a contribution to 'Spitting Image. The Giant Komic Book' (Pyramid Book Ltd & Octopus Publishing Group, 1988), a comic book based on the satirical puppet TV show 'Spitting Image' by Peter Fluck and Roger Law.
Een golf van angst (from Dutch Tina 24, 1983)
Gascoine worked for Marvel UK again in the 1990s, but now on 'Knights of Pendragon', 'Motormouth' and 'Genetix'. Around this time, he also made a few comic strips based on the TV series 'Young Indiana Jones' with Simon Jowett for the children's supplement of The Daily Telegraph.
Young Indiana Jones and the Mountains of Superstition (The Youth Telegraph, 6 October 1990)
In the final stages of his career, he was working full-time on 'Wendy', a girl's horse story published in Europe through syndication by D.C. Thomson, and on occasional strips for Loaded magazine. He was on the committee of the Society of Strip Illustrators.
