Mike Butterworth is primarily known in comic circles as the writer of The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire, but had previously written Battler Briton and Buffalo Bill strips for Comet, for Sun he wrote Max Bravo, The Happy Hussar and Billy the Kid (which was drawn by, amongst others, Don Lawrence). The Trigan Empire began in 1965 in Ranger, and continued when Ranger was absorbed into Look and Learn where it continued to be published through to 1982. From 1967 he also wrote crime novels under his full name, John Michael Butterworth, and gothic romances under the pseudonyms of Carola Salisbury and Sarah Kemp.

José Ortiz Moya’s sixty plus year career began after he won a contest which ran in the Spanish magazine Chicos. In the 1950s he worked on many digest strips for Editorial Maga, including Capitan Don Nadie, Pantera Negra and Jungla. Agency work saw him produce several strips for foreign publishers, particularly in Britain where he illustrated Caroline Barker, Barrister at Law for the Daily Express, Smokeman and UFO Agent for Eagle magazine and the Phantom Viking in Lion. In the seventies and eighties Ortiz worked on several British popular strips including The Tower King and House of Daemon for the new Eagle, Rogue Trooper and Judge Dredd for 2000 AD and The Thirteenth Floor for Scream!, which he co-created with John Wagner and Alan Grant. Whilst doing all of this work on UK kid’s comics, in the US Ortiz was also working on and is arguably best known for illustrating several stories for Warren’s horror titles, including Eerie and Vampirella.