October 1971, McLoughlin illustrated "Fury's Family" about a boy and his menagerie for Lion. McLoughlin then took about two years off from comics to finish the compilation of Wild & Woolly, his encyclopaedia of the American West published by Doubleday in 1974. Although McLoughlin had been promised that he would be able to return to IPC, no stories were made available after the book project was finished. D.C. Thomson and Co., Ltd. After sending art samples, McLoughlin found stories to illustrate for the Scottish publishing firm D.C. Thomson and Co., Ltd., in 1974. He has been working for them ever since and contributed to just about all of their adventure titles (all of which are now defunct) including Wizard, Victor, Buddy, Crunch, Bullet, and Scoop. Primarily, however, McLoughlin's work appeared in Wizard. At his height with the company (22 October 1977), five McLoughlin stories graced the pages of two Thomson titles, Wizard and Bullet. Perhaps the best regarded of McLoughlin's strips for Thomson were "Sign of the Shark" featuring x-agent Jake Jeffords, "The Green Lizard" which was a science fiction tale, and "The Shark" featuring the crew of a German E-Boat during World War II. Unfortunately, the days of the traditional British comic story paper were already numbered by the late-1970s and by 1983, most ceased publication. Denis drew two western features for the 1983 Look and Learn Annual before beginning his monthly stint for Thomson's Commando, a 64-page war comic digest which sees four issues released twice a month (96 issues a year). McLoughlin produced about one issue of Commando a month until his death on 22 April 2002. Death Exactly a week after his 84th birthday and while in good health, Denis McLoughlin committed suicide. He used a Colt revolver that had been part of his reference collection for years and that friends and family thought was non-functioning. The cause of Denis' death was not immediately revealed in the British press. Exactly why he chose to end his life can never be known. However, he had survived all of the persons dearest to him including his wife, Dorothy, and brother, Colin. Denis and Dorothy had no children. Like many others who devoted their life to commercial art in the first half of the 20th century, Denis McLoughlin was never paid a great deal for his work. Many pieces of his artwork, the Boardman book covers in particular, which