Donne Avenell’s career in comics started before the outbreak of World War II when he was an assistant editor with Amalgamated Press working on Radio Fun. After serving in the navy, he returned to the company, now as an editor on an architecture magazine, while also writing radio dramas and romance stories.
In the 1950’s Avenell was a prolific writer on War Picture Library and then Lion, penning such classic strips as The Spider, The Phantom Viking, Adam Eterno and Dr. Mesmer’s Revenge. By the 1970’s he was working on a number of projects including co-writing Powerman (the Nigerian superhero comic illustrated by Dave Gibbons
and Brian Bolland) and The Sun newspaper strip Axa. In the same decade, Avenell also found work in the television industry, where he wrote scripts for popular spy programme The Saint. Later he would work with artist John Burns on both an official comic book adaption of Prince Charles and Lady Diana’s wedding, and a newspaper strip called Eartha which ran in the News of the World.
