Ben-Hur

 During the 1950s and 1960s the Italian Ruggero Giovannini became one of the UK's top comic artists, specialising in rugged historical adventure strips - though not without a certain amount of ambivalence. As a native of Rome he was particularly well suited to series set in the ancient world like Wulf the Briton, Olac the Gladiator and Ben-Hur (seen here in a page from Look & Learn). In his autobiography King's Reach John Sanders, the head of IPC's comics division, describes a visit to Rome in when he observed Ruggero addressing a group of artists in a park, during the course of which he "looked up, saw me in the distance, and launched into a monologue to his audience on the perils of selling out to Mammon in the shape of the approaching ogre from London"!