Legend Bike Co — BMX History Project · Riders & Builders

Damian Fulton

Damian Fulton is an American artist and illustrator best known as the creator of Radical Rick, the comic strip that ran in BMX Plus! magazine from January 1980 through 1993 and became, for a generation of riders, the cartoon face of the sport. His career outside BMX runs through Ocean Pacific surf posters, Ogilvy & Mather advertising, Marvel Productions animation, Disney design work, and award-winning virtual-reality direction. He still paints and still draws Rick.

Early years and education

Fulton grew up in Southern California in the era when BMX was being invented in vacant lots and orange groves by riders like Scot Breithaupt. He attended California State University, Fullerton, and started his working life as a cartoonist and illustrator. He painted a poster for the OP Pro Surf Contest and went on to do a string of paintings for Ocean Pacific, including the 1982 acrylic-on-board piece "Contrasts."

Two of his earliest published comic strips would shape what came next. One was The Shred Brothers, a snowboard strip about triplets separated at birth. The other was the one BMX riders remember.

Radical Rick — November 1979

Rick was drawn at Fulton's parents' house in Irvine, California, in November 1979. The first strips were black-and-white one-pagers that hit newsstands the following month, in the January 1980 issue of BMX Plus! magazine. By the time Fulton closed the book on Rick in 1993, the strip had grown into a full-color two-page spread and had run for 13 years across roughly 150 episodes.

The cast was small and worked hard. Rick was the fearless lead. MX Mug was the cowardly but loyal sidekick. Spike Speedwrench was the mechanic figure. Skuzzer Switchblade was the bad guy. For a lot of riders who came up in the early to mid-1980s, the back-of-magazine Radical Rick page was the first thing they flipped to before the race coverage of Stu Thomsen, Greg Hill, Mike Miranda, Perry Kramer, Tommy Brackens and Pete Loncarevich, or the freestyle pages of Eddie Fiola, RL Osborn and Todd Anderson.

A note on which magazine: Rick lived in BMX Plus!, not the Bob Osborn-published BMX Action. The two titles competed for the same readers through the same years, and the difference matters when you sort the history out.

Rick was a comic, but he wasn't only a comic. His likeness ended up on race plates, pad sets, t-shirts, stickers, and the side panels of countless garage-built bikes. He gave BMX an in-jokey visual identity that belonged to the sport rather than to a single brand. That mattered at a time when riders rolled up to start gates on bikes from Redline, Torker, Mongoose, CW, JMC, Hutch, GT, Diamond Back, Haro, Skyway, Schwinn and Webco, racing in the colors of the NBA, NBL and ABA — all answering, eventually, to what is now USA BMX.

Advertising — Ogilvy & Mather, 1984

In 1984 Fulton moved to Los Angeles to work at Ogilvy & Mather. He stayed in advertising for years and rose to Senior Partner / Creative Director. The brand list reads like a tour of 1980s and 1990s American consumer life: Hot Wheels, Barbie, He-Man, Kraft, BP, Hilton, Chevron, Pepsi, Carl's Jr., Toyota. He won a Cannes Lion, a D&AD pencil, and a Gold Pencil for the work.

What's worth saying about this run is that he was drawing Radical Rick the entire time.

Marvel Productions and Disney

Advertising work led to animation. Fulton took a position at Marvel Productions as VP / Head of Creative Development. He went on to work as a senior designer at Disney, including commemorative items for Disneyland's 50th anniversary in 2005.

Spinifex Group and the Elton John VR film

Fulton became Executive Creative Director at Spinifex Group. In 2018 the studio created Farewell Yellow Brick Road: The Legacy, a six-minute stereo VR360 film used to announce Elton John's final tour. Fulton served as Live Action Director. The piece won industry recognition including Cannes Lion attention.

The return to gallery painting

Roughly a decade ago Fulton stopped making art only for clients and started making it for himself. He lives in El Segundo and paints the place where the city meets the water: pickup trucks at the curb, surfers walking under power lines, palm trees against industrial buildings, waves breaking next to the refinery. The work has been called urban surf art.

His paintings show at La Luz de Jesus and have traveled to Tokyo, New York, France, Germany, Canada, Spain, Hawaii and Brazil. In 2014 La Luz de Jesus mounted "Rad!" — a Fulton show that included the largest collection of original Radical Rick artwork ever assembled in one room.

Radical Rick today

Rick never fully went away. The complete BMX Plus! run has been collected as Radical Rick: The Complete Episodes, a softcover that gathers every published strip with new material added. Haro released a Radical Rick cruiser line in 24, 26, and 29-inch sizes with hand-drawn Fulton graphics. Flite produces Radical Rick pad sets in the original screen-printed style.

Fulton has also taken Rick on the road. The Radical Rick 45th Radiversary Tour put him at old-school BMX races and reunions across the country.

Why Fulton matters to BMX

BMX has a habit of remembering the riders and forgetting the people who drew the world the riders rode in. Fulton is the exception. He gave BMX a character that outlived a magazine, outlived a decade, outlived the original bike brands that ran ads next to him, and is still being printed on number plates in 2026. That is rare in any sport. In BMX it is close to unique.

Sources

1. Radical Rick official site — "Who the heck is RADICAL RICK?" and "The Book" (origin date, BMX Plus! publication, 13-year run).
2. BMX Union — "Through The Lens: Creative Minds — The Creator of Radical Rick."
3. El Segundo Art Walk — Damian Fulton profile.
4. Surfer Magazine — "Damian Fulton: Urban Surf Artist."
5. Club of the Waves — Damian Fulton interview.
6. La Luz de Jesus Gallery — Brad Parker & Damian Fulton show page.
7. Damian Fulton Fine Art — artist website (damianfultonart.com).
8. IMDb — Damian X. Fulton director credits.
9. MediaPost and Adweek — Spinifex Group / Farewell Yellow Brick Road coverage.
10. BMX Union — Haro Radical Rick bike coverage.
11. Flite BMX — Radical Rick pad set collection.
12. Sugar Cayne and DIG BMX — Radical Rick complete-episodes book coverage.