Modesty Blaise - The Puppet Master
Enrique Badía Romero (also written als Enric Badía i Romero) is a Spanish agency artist who is best known for drawing the British 'Modesty Blaise' strip for many years. Born in Barcelona, Romero is a self-taught artist with influences by Alex Raymond, Hal Foster and Emilio Freixas. At age 17, he sold his first comic strip to the publishing house German Plaza, and several of his stories were published in El Coyote and Almanaque El Coyote in 1947. He then made 'Susy' for Bruguera, who sold the strip to foreign publications in 1949.
More clients followed, and by the early 1950s, Romero was working for publishers like Toray ('Hazañas del Oeste'), Simbolo ('Heroes Biblicos', 'Cobalto', a.o.), Soriano ('Colleccion Trovador') and Marco (Rin Tin Tin). He worked together with his brother Jorge Badía Romero (Jobaro) on several projects, such as the six issue collection 'Kit Carson' for Cliper, which they used to sign Hnos. Badía (Badía Bros). He launched the short-lived comic magazine Alex, in cooperation with Editorial Simbolo, in 1952.
He illustrated collections of trading cards like 'Hombres de Lucha' and 'Historia de la Guerra' for publisher Ruiz Romero. With Pedro Garcia Llorente and Ramon Monzon, he also developed one of the first Spanish correspondence courses for comic artists, called Estudios Alex. Romero and Monzon also joined forces in the production of several projects for Casulleras and Indedi.
Modesty Blaise - Death of A Jester
He started working as a freelance artist in 1955, and turned to agency work in 1957 through Bruguera's Bardon Art. He initially made a lot of work for Fleetway in the UK, such as the features 'Cathy and Wendy' and 'Cassius Clay'. Throughout the 1960s, he additionally worked on the series 'Lilian, Azafata del Aire' ('Air Hostess Lilian') for Ibero Mundial in Spain. He showed a specialization in comics for a female audience, and worked on projects like 'Isometrics for the Office Girl' by Vic Obeck for The Daily Express. In 1969 he was asked to succeed Jim Holdaway as the artist of the British newspaper comic 'Modesty Blaise' by Peter O'Donnell.
Axa - The Donor
Romero drew this espionage strip for The Evening Standard until 1978, and then again from 1986 until the end of its run in April 2001. In the period 1978-1985 he worked on his own newspaper comic starring the sexy heroin 'Axa', that was published with scripts by Done Avenell in The Sun. Romero also produced a long story in full color which was serialized in the Spanish magazine Creepy in 1983-1984. All 'Axa' stories have been collected in trade paperbacks by Ken Pierce Books.
Axa - The Escapist
Between 1976 and 1987, he also made stories starring the caveman 'Rahan' for the French magazine Pif Gadget under the guidance of the original artist André Chéret. After 20000, Romero has worked on features like 'Durham Red' for the British magazines 2000AD and Judge Dredd Megazine. In 2011 he drew some short stories with the horror-western character 'Djustine' for the Italian market.
Rahan