Iron Outlaw

Someone on Facebook made a comment to me about Oi Oi Oi! recently. It got me thinking. I have many comic projects that I would like to work on. And during COVID-19 I have been doing absolutely none. Sure, I have been 'tidying' up my room (and have catalogued almost 6000 comics), but my enthusiasm for publishing of late has been sorely lacking. Personally, I'm a little jaded with the Committee of the Australian Cartoonists' Association: I've made (what I believe to be) perfectly sensible suggestions for advancing the collective, but I feel I am working with group members who don't share my enthusiasm, which in turn dampens my joy. Sure, I have given up the Editorship of the Inkspot magazine; something I don't really regret. I'd been churning out a magazine quarterly for quite some years in a row (whether that magazine or Oi Oi Oi!) and needed the break. I've come to feel that perhaps I work best alone, without having to answer to a Committee. Or perhaps it's just me at this moment.

One week's episode. In all, I have found about half of the original pages.

I was given a lovely package of Peter Foster's work just before Christmas last year (from Peter), and I have not had the decency to ring him to thank him. I've been meaning to call Fysh Rutherford, one of the co-creators of the Iron Outlaw comic (pictured) for months. I've wanted to tell him of the find of most of the original artwork of his comic, published in the Nation Review and Sunday Observer about fifty years ago. And yet I haven't. There are projects I  ordinarily would be working on (I won't list them here) or at the very least would be starting. But I am feeling flat and down in the dumps with it all. So I thought in the meantime, while I wait for my mojo to return, I'd share some of the original pages to Iron Outlaw for you to enjoy. 

Original artwork (detail).

Anyway, without boring you, I just wanted to say that someone's comments on Facebook have got me thinking. In a good way. What about, I may tell you in the next posting....