Nixon had started out at D. C. in 1964, most notably drawing Roger the Dodger amongst several other characters, but in 1972 he departed to work for rival publishers Fleetway, where he specialised in comedy-horror stories such as Frankie Stein, Hire a Horror and Jaws parody Gums, but also lighter fare including Kid King and Six Million Dollar Man spoof The 12 1/2p Buytonic Boy. When Kerr first became Beano editor in late 1984, he contacted Nixon about the possibility of returning to some of his old D. C. stories whilst also continuing to work for Fleetway -- an arrangement which became very familiar over the next decade as the amount of new material published by Fleetway shrank, but did not appeal to Nixon.
A week after he turned Kerr down, though, Nixon learned he was to be moved off of several of his current Fleetway strips,1 and -- perhaps guessing what the next few years would bring for the publisher -- decided to return to D. C. (although he continued to draw for Fleetway until early 1986), where he would resume drawing Roger the Dodger and also take over big hitters such as Korky the Cat and Beryl the Peril, but this new character would be the first of several he originated on his second time round, by far the best-loved,2 and Nixon's personal favourite of all the stories he drew for D. C.
Nixon’s early designs for the character (modelled on Alan Digby’s daughter Jane) went down a storm, and just over three months after he was first sent the details of what she should look like, Ivy the Terrible made her debut in the 4th May, 1985 issue of the comic.
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| This scan rescued, via the Internet Archive, from the sadly now-defunct old Beano website. |