Roger Langridge is a comics artist living in the UK. He has several stylistic approaches, all of them idiosyncratic, all of them wonderful.

His styles show influences from early 20th century newspaper comics artists like Cliff Sterrett, Billy DeBeck and Frank Willard to more modern artists like Will Elder, various suspects from 2000A.D, and other divers sources.

Since I first wrote about Langridge back in 2006, he has increased the amount of material available on his website, The Hotel Fred to include more examples of his comics, both those devoted to his own characters like the titular Fred the Clown and Mugwhump the Great, to his unique take on other characters like Doctor Who and The Muppett Show.

Langridge is taking on the writing duties on IDW’s new Popeye series. Langridge knows his early 20th century comics, and I’m happy to say he’s bringing a sensibility from the original E.C Segar strips to the series. Most people don’t realize that the original Popeye was more of a cartoonish and wildly imaginative adventure serial than an episodic slapstick comedy (though the Fleischer Studios animated cartoons, which were somewhere in between, were wonderful).

The other good news is that Langridge has promised to update the blog-like home page of his site more often with drawings, works in progress and other goodies.

The site also features links to lots of his available published work, and there is an Amazon page (U.S. store, go here for U.K.) where you can find many of them as well.

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