Yaroslav Horak | Artist

Yaroslav Horak was an Australian artist, born in 1927 in Manchuria to a Czech engineer father and Russian mother. In 1966 he took over from John McLusky as illustrator on the James Bond Daily Express comic strips.

In 1939, Yaroslav’s family migrated to Sydney, Australia following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, where he took evening art classes at the Sydney Technical College. Yaroslav first worked as a portrait painter before segueing into the world of publishing and becoming one of Australia’s most prolific cartoonists. He moved to the UK in 1962 and illustrated adventure stories for D.C. Thompson of Scotland. Four years later he took the lead on the 007 comic strips series, forming a partnership with writer Jim Lawrence to bring five of Ian Fleming’s original novels and short stories to life.

Yaroslav returned to Australia in 1975 but continued to work with Lawrence on James Bond until 1984, even when the series moved to the Daily Star and Sunday Express in 1977. In 2018 he was awarded the Ledger of Honour and inducted into the Australian Comics Hall of Fame for his extensive contributions to the nation’s comics. Yaroslav died in 2020, aged 93. He is remembered for his work on 33 James Bond strip sequences.