Harry McAvinchey

Harry McAvinchey is an underground cartoonist originally from Armagh. In the mid to late 1960s he was one of the first supporters of Tony Roche's Merry Marvel Fanzine [ the first comic fanzine in the UK and Ireland ] and contributed to Tony's follow-up fanzine Heroes Unlimited.

In the early 1970s he moved to Leeds and studied art at the Jacob Kramer College of Art, followed by Fine Art at Manchester.He began drawing single-page "Captain Whimsy" and "Paddy Kool" strips in a variety of magazines and fanzines, after producing his own comic adventures referencing "On the Road" style hitch-hiking sorties in Europe. Troolife Comix (aka Troolife Funnies),were finished in 1974; the second in 1976.

Later , in the 1970's, other publications featuring his artwork or comic work included Fantasy Trader, Comics Unlimited, Crom , Masters of Infinity,Graphic Sense, BEM, Vertigo, the Whiz Kids, and Worlds Collide among others.Other work included comic-related posters for rock and jazz concerts, dances, discos and the occasional cartoon or advertising illustration for the local press.

When Mal Burns published his Comix Index [the Directory of Alternative British Graphic Magazines 1966-1977] the full page strip Desktop Antix Comics was included alongside work by Hunt Emerson and Bryan Talbot. With writer John Dakin, he developed Paddy Kool as a daily newspaper strip, which failed to get syndicated but eventually saw print in the Society of Strip Illustrators magazine.