PANEL BY PANEL: Part Two -- Comic Books

CHAPTER NINE THE EARLY DAYS

 

Up until the mid-’thirties, sales of comics and boys’ papers in Australia were totally dominated by material from the United Kingdom. Local readers were just as familiar with Chips, Funny Wonder, Sparkler, Rainbow, Tiger Tim’s Weekly, Bubbles, Playbox, Puck, Film Fun, Joker, Jingles, Tip Top and the likes as their English counterparts. They delighted in the antics of Weary Willie and Tired Tim, Airy Alf and Bouncing Billy, The Bruin Boys, Alfie the Air Tramp, and Basil and Bert as they ran, jumped, danced, swam, flew through the pages of the 1/2d..,1d., 1 1/2d., and 2d. comics. They admired the delightful comic styles of Tom Browne, Bertie Brown, Herbert Foxwell, John Jukes, Roy Wilson, and George Wakefield - but only a few of the artists were known by name. Like the Disney artists Carl Barks and Floyd Gottfredson, many an English cartoonist of outstanding talent laboured anonymously until writers like Dennis Gifford began revealing their identities in the ’sixties.

  England was still thought of affectionately as The Mother Country and readers were happy to have these regular messages from home. They were puzzled by many of the references and all of the snow that accompanied the special Xmas numbers seemed out of place in our climate - but they filled a need.

  The older boys preferred the boys’ papers - Chums, Boy’s Own Paper, Gem, Magnet, Nelson Lee, Union Jack, Modern Boy etc. - where they could follow the tales of Billy Bunter and the boys at Greyfriars, the crew at St Jim’s, Sexton Blake, and Biggies. Against such formidable opposition it seemed unlikely that any local publisher would tackle the field - but in January 1908 an Australian boys’ paper was published. Vumps, with the sub-title of Pure Australian Fun, was a 16-page paper that sold for Id. and selected Joe Vumps as their mascot as representing the typical Australian boy. The cover and interior cartoons of Vumps were the work of Claude Marquet who also drew the back-page comic, Borrowed Plumes. With text set beneath each frame, the six-panel comic featured an interlude with Marmyduke Miffles and Snoofter McSnickle during the time of the visit by the US fleet. Both the style of comic and the characters could have come from any one of a number of English comics but the theme was reflective of some Australian attitudes. Vumps only lasted one issue. Apparently the cheeky young colonial upstart was no match for the paper heroes of the Old Country.

  The first local comic does not appear to have been published until after Nicholls had been dismissed from the Sun. Fatty Finn’s Weekly contained eight tabloid pages of comics and text, sold for Id., and was first published on 20 May 1934. In format and general presentation the comic resembled its English counterpart but the contents were clearly Australian. Apart from Fatty Finn, the comic contained Basso the Bear and Pam and Popsy Penguin by ‘Hotpoint’ and Ossie by George

Little, which was later replaced by Eyre Jr’s Smiffy. Two-thirds of the centre spread was given over to another Nicholls comic, The Forest of Fear. While there was text below each frame, the panels contained word balloons helping to make the comic one of the first adventure comics to be published in this country. At last, Nicholls had found an outlet for his interest in the continuity strip. The Forest of Fear detailed a search by Tim Terence and his Uncle for a lost white tribe in South America and their encounters with man-eating plants, tigers, gorillas, a demented seaman, and other impediments to their goal. In later years, Nicholls was to call upon many of the characters and situations from this comic for use in The Phantom Pirate. Four pages of the comic were devoted to competitions, jokes, and text stories by Bartlett Adamson, Peter Harvey, Hal Valentine, William S. Howard and, even, George Little.

  With the ninth issue the comic began running a series of coupons - three of which made the sender a member of Fatty Finn’s Club, complete with membership certificate and badge. These coupons were an indication that, after an encouraging start, the sales of the comic were not going as well as expected. When the position did not improve, Nicholls approached Frank Packer who agreed to take over the comic in November. Under Packer, the comic was increased to 16 pages, a red tint was added to the covers and centrespread, and the price doubled to 2d.

  Fatty Finn remained on the front page but the comic line-up was changed to include Will Mahony’s Slurk’s Circus, Ron Bennett’s Pete on the Farm, Betty Patterson’s The Merry McGraws, Eyre’s Smiffy and the US strip Brick Bradford. The latter strip appeared to have some fascination for Packer as he used it, later, as an attraction in both the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph. The comic was also a bone of contention between Packer and Nicholls and the cause of many heated arguments. Nicholls did not want it in Fatty Finn’s Weekly which he had devised as a vehicle for Australian material only. Packer saw the comic simply as a business venture. The comic struggled on until early 1935 before folding. Packer appeared to have erred, when doubling the size of the comic, in not increasing the volume of comic strips. Most of the additional space was taken up by text which did not appeal to the comic readers and the text readers were not attracted by the comics.

  In 1936, the Melbourne Herald approached Joshua B. Powers and asked him to package a comic for resale in Australia. Powers had served as United Press’ manager in Buenos Aires and about 1933 decided to form his own company, Editors Press Service. This company translated comics and other features for Latin America as well as printing colour comic supplements. In due course, Editors Press Service spread to many countries including Australia. The weekly comic that Powers designed for the Herald was called Wags.

  Containing 16 tabloid pages in colour, the first issue of Wags was released on 8 September 1936 with a cover price of 2d. For the first 12 months the comic only contained reprints of US newspaper strips - but the strips selected represented some of the most outstanding comics available. These comics included Tarzan (first by Hal Foster and then Burne Hogarth), Ally Oop, Terry and the Pirates, Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, Moon Mullins, Bronco Bill, Myra North, Smilin’ Jack, Freckles and his Friends, Tailspin Tommy, Smokey Stover and others. An additional eight pages of black and white comics were added in August 1937, most of them being devoted to original material that had been created by Editors Press Service. Will Eisner, who was to become an outstanding influence on the direction of comics in the US, contributed his seafaring classic, Hawks of the Seas', Bob Kane drew Peter Pupp; George Brenner drew his masked hero who operated outside of the Law, The Clock Strikes; Mort Meskin and, later, Bob Powell handled Sheena - Queen of the Jungle; and there were comics by Vernon Henkel, Ed Cronin and others who played an important part in the history of US comic books. Also included in the new pages was an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. The early pages were drawn by Jack Kirby under the name Jack Curtiss while the bulk of the story was drawn by the outstanding comic draftsman Lou Fine, under the name Jack Cortez.

  The appearance of many of these characters in Wags, along with Eisner’s Yarko the Great, meant that most of these comics were seen by Australian readers before they appeared in US comic books. Wags was an outstanding success and continued its weekly publication up until the middle of 1940 when wartime cuts in the supply of newsprint from Canada curtailed its production. After the price had increased to 3d. early in 1940 the Herald obtained additional revenue for the comic when four returned/undistributed copies were stapled into a soft cover and sold for Is. Apart from being a success as a business proposition, Wags exposed many Australian artists to the top American cartoonists’ work on a regular basis and was responsible for major influences in the work of many Australian comic artists for the next 20 years. The idea of importing a coloured comic section was not lost on Frank Packer.

  The New Idea magazine first published Buck Rogers on 17 April 1936. The comic continued to run until September 1941 when it was dropped due to restrictions on U.S. imports. This reasoning is a little difficult to fathom when it is considered that Buck Rogers was followed by Tailspin Tommy, Don Dixon, and then Red Ryder which ran up until the late ’forties. The introduction of Buck Rogers meant that the three most popular comics in Australia were introduced through women’s magazines as Mandrake had appeared in the Woman’s Weekly and The Phantom in the Woman’s Mirror.

  In November 1936, Fitchett Brothers of Melbourne published the first issue of The Adventures of Buck Rogers. The second issue appeared in June 1937; the third in November 1937; and with the fourth issue in April 1938, the comic book adopted a monthly schedule. As a comic book, Buck Rogers lasted 181 issues before finishing in January 1953. There were two series of Buck Rogers Special comics containing at least nine issues in the first series (1938-42) and 15 issues in the second series (1948-52), as well as four Buck Rogers Annuals published during the 1938-41 period. Covering the work of Dick Calkins, Russell Keaton, Rick Yager, Murphy Anderson, and Leonard Dworkins, this series of comics represents the most extensive collection of Buck Rogers strips to be published anywhere in the world.

  With the success of this comic, Fitchett Brothers added Hurricane Hawk and Felix the Cat. When Felix was affected by restrictions it was replaced by Red Ryder which, along with Hurricane Hawk continued to be published up until the early ’50s. The only local artistic contribution to these comics was the covers - the majority of which were drawn by Ed Smith.

  At the same time as Wags and Buck Rogers were getting under way, the smaller format American comic was starting to gain acceptance by local readers and increasing quantities were coming into the country. While books containing reprints of newspaper strips had been published in the US since the early part of this century, there was no comic industry comparable with that in England. Dell Publishing Company had experimented with a coloured tabloid comic, The Funnies, in 1929 but it had folded after thirteen issues. America did not see its first regularly published comic book in the modem format until 1934 when Famous Funnies emerged. This 64-page comic contained coloured reprints of newspaper strips and marked the beginning of a new industry that would spread to all continents.

  By the late 1930s, as well as Famous Funnies, there was a number of reprint comic titles available in Australia -Ace, Comics on Parade, Cracker jack, The Funnies (a new version), King, Magic, Popular, and Tip Top. Also available were many titles which contained comic material that had been especially created for these books. These titles included Action, Adventure, All-American, Amazing Man, Amazing Mystery Funnies, Blue Ribbon, Detective, Fantastic, Funny Pages, Jumbo, Keen Detective Funnies, Marvel Mystery, More Fun, Mystery Men, Silver Streak, Smash, Speed, Top Notch and Wonderworld.

  As far as the comics industry was concerned, the most significant of these titles was Action Comics which introduced Jerry Siegel’s and Joe Shuster’s Superman in June 1938. The first of the comic book super-heroes, Superman made Action Comics a best-seller almost overnight. The character spawned a legion of imitators with garish costumes and unusual names including Amazing Man, Angel, Batman, Blue Beetle, Captain Marvel, Crimson Avenger, Daredevil, Dollman, The Flame, The Flash, Green Lantern, Hourman, Human Torch, Masked Marvel, The Owl, The Ray, Samson, Sandman, Shock Gibson, Silver Streak, The Spectre, Starman, Steel Sterling, Sub-Mariner, The Wizard, and Wonder Woman.

 

All of the US comic books were published each month and sold for 6d. each - unless you encountered back issues at special chain store sales where titles could be purchased at three for Is.

International Comics began to appear in Australia in the late ’thirties and sold for 4d. Their soft cover was wrapped around 32 tabloid pages of comic sections from US Sunday newspapers and later issues carried a legend on their covers ‘Compiled from previously published comic papers’. Usually, the comic contained two 16-page sections from a variety of papers such as the New York American, Chicago Sunday Times, New York Sunday Mirror, Newark Sunday Ledger, Sunday Standard Times. They were a strange mixture of sections having been printed in the 1935-8 period and, despite the fact that International Comics were numbered, there was no continuity.

In December 1939, Senator D. Cameron presented the parliament with a detailed rundown on the plight of Australian writers, artists and printers and stated that in the previous few months ‘three steamers, the Yomachi, the Tampa and Mahout, had discharged no fewer than 305 200 copies of back-date American magazines in Sydney. At a conservative estimate, for every current copy landed from America, three back-date numbers are landed in this country.’

Apparently, the firm responsible was The Great Eastern Packing and Stock Paper Corporation of Boston. In one of their circulars they advised that bulk supplies of back-date issues of National Geographic Magazine, with a cover price of 50 cents, were available for 12 cents (US) per copy. They also gave details of their Selection No. 9:

‘We are also able to furnish the large size Coloured Comics printed in English which are similar in size to the regular American large size daily newspapers which are sold by the pound. Price 7 cents per pound. Out terms quoted below:

One set of Comics consists of eight complete pages; 144 sets of eight complete pages consists of one gross; one gross weighs 16 pounds; total cost of one gross of 16 pounds at 7 cents per pound equals 1.12 dollars, making the average cost about 78 cents per each 100 sets.

When we had our branches in England there was a large volume of business done through young boy hawkers. There, it was customary with the various dealers to send a group of boys out to sell those copies at one penny (2 cents) per set of eight pages. It was surprising how many each boy was able to sell on a commission basis. We are giving you this information for the purpose of trying to help you increase your sale of these comics, which we will be glad to sell you.’

Senator Cameron pointed out that the dumping could be stopped by using the Australian Industries Preservation Act 1906-1937 and the Customs Tariff (Industries Preservation Act) 1901-1936 by treating the imported magazines and books as a commodity being dumped and sold at prices much below its price in its country of origin. When the Senator’s time expired a motion to grant an extension was defeated.

As Australia moved towards its involvement in World War II, the choice of comics lay between imported English comics, imported US ones, imported Wags, imported International Comics, imported back-date comics dumped on the market, and Fitchett Brothers reprints of US strips. Fortunately for the local market, the government began enforcing the Import Licensing regulation in 1939 which controlled the amount of US dollars that could be spent as these dollars had to be purchased from England. From July 1940 the importation of US comic material was banned, both in published form and syndicated proofs and it was these restrictions that led to the birth of the Australian comic book industry. And in the light of the circumstances that existed both before and after the war it can be fairly said that had there not been a war there would never have been a local comic book industry.

 

 

CHAPTER TEN A CAPTIVE MARKET

 

The enforcement of Import Licensing restrictions amounted to a total ban on all US publications and provided the local publishers with an opportunity to enter the popular reading market. Over the years, they had made sporadic attempts to capture a share of this highly rewarding market but, for the mostpart, these attempts had failed. The local product seldom compared favourably with the imported product that was dumped on the Australian market. While talent was available to produce a quality product, the country lacked the necessary population and export market to support the large print runs required to produce a publication that could compete on equal terms with the imported product. But with the effective elimination of US publications and a reduction in both the quantity and content of English publications it became a different story. Through the first half of 1940 the publishers watched with anticipation as transit supplies of US publications dried-up. They were being handed a captive market - but gearing up to take advantage of it was not without its problems, particularly in the area of comics.

  Because there was no established indigenous comic book industry, there were no skilled comic book personnel in the country. In the US, apart from individual comic artists, there were many comic shops that specialized in packaging complete comics for various publishers. Each of the shops of Lloyd Jacquet, Harry A. Chesler, Jack Binder, and S. M. Iger-Will Eisner employed dozens of cartoonists and between them were responsible for the bulk of the US comic books produced during the ’thirties and ’forties. Most of these shops produced comics on a production line basis with one man writing the scripts, another laying out the page, another pencilling the comic, another inking it, and another man lettering. At times, a number of artists would work on the pencilling and inking of a single page - each man working on his particular speciality of either figures, heads, backgrounds, machinery etc. Although it allowed little in the way of creative satisfaction it was an effective way of producing comics.

  With no knowledge of comic shops, the local publishers had to rely upon individual artists and in doing so established a precedent followed by most Australian comic publishers - that the artist was responsible for the entire comic. They had to become one-man production units handling all phases of the comic including, in most cases, the cover. Artists were recruited by word of mouth and almost anyone, regardless of their artistic ability or knowledge of the medium, was given a trial.

  Apart from finding artists, the publishers faced another problem. Under the wartime regulation governing the release of newsprint, no new continuing publications were permitted. Existing publications were allowed to continue and newsprint could be made available for single (one-shot) publications. This meant that Fitchett Bros with their line of reprints {Buck Rogers, Hurricane Hawk etc.) were assured of a share of the expanding comic market and, for a period, it looked as if other aspiring comic book publishers would be left out in the cold. But the answer to their problem was simple. They would not publish continuing titles - they would only produce one-shots. This was achieved by giving each new issue a different title despite the fact that, as many comic lines unfurled, many of the stories continued from issue to issue. This obligatory title change and the total absence of publication details has presented comic historians with an almost impossible task in attempting to accurately date these early comics.

  With their own network of bookstalls to supply it is, perhaps, not surprising that the first company into the field of publishing original Australian comic books appears to have been NSW Bookstall Co. Pty Limited. Their first comic was Jimmy Rodney on Secret Service which, despite the absence of a cover price, sold for 4d. It was drawn by Tony Rafty who went on to establish himself in the field of caricature, particularly in the area of sporting personalities. The comic was published late in 1940 and the plot concerned the efforts of Jimmy Rodney tracking down an enemy submarine operating off the coast of NSW and, eventually, being instrumental in having it destroyed. Considering his youth, Rafty made a passable attempt at coming to grips with the new medium but, like many local pioneers in the field, he had no idea of presenting panel-to-panel continuity in a dramatic fashion - nor did he understand the integration of words and pictures which is the outstanding characteristic of the medium.

  While Rafty’s contribution cannot be ignored, the real pioneers of Australian comic books were Will Donald and Terry Powis. Between them, they were responsible for all but a handful of the first two dozen comics published by NSW Bookstall. Will Donald came from a long career of cartooning for magazines and newspapers and had been involved at the birth of newspaper comic strips. The simplistic outline style of cartooning that he established in the early ’twenties altered very little during the rest of his career. While quite acceptable on humorous strips, this style did nothing to set the tone for an adventure strip - and most of his comic book stories were of the adventure variety. For NSW Bookstall he created Captain Katseye, Island of Amazement, Mystery Island, Skelt Dorgan’s Treasure, Special Messenger, Rod the Reckless and others before moving on to another publisher. Donald’s cast of characters was severely limited and the same faces kept appearing in different comics under different names. Wherever possible, Donald avoided using anything other than a medium-shot panel, giving a bland sameness to each page. Yet Donald had an ability to produce eye-catching covers - covers which promised far more than the contents of the comic could deliver. Restricted to two and three colours, these covers were quite dramatic and were often accompanied by such legends as All Picture Story of Mystery & Invention, A Thrilling Picture Story Adventure and Thrilling Picture Story of a Race for Riches. Donald’s lack of familiarity with the comic book market and, perhaps, his uncertainty as to the sales potential of these new comics is reflected in his avoidance of the term comics (with its original connotation of funny/humorous) and his need to advise the potential reader of the type of contents behind the cover.

  Donald needn’t have worried about the comics not selling. Provided sufficient newsprint could be obtained, the wartime market was a publisher’s paradise. Never before had they been able to think in terms of such large print runs and not be overly concerned if the finished product left something to be desired. Nor did they have to concern themselves about the return of any unsold publications. Everything readable was pounced upon by the starved readers and even the not-so-readable would disappear from the bookstalls if left on display long enough.

  Powis shared Donald’s ability to produce dramatic covers but if there was a gap between the promise of Donald’s covers and their contents it was even more accentuated in the work of Powis. He specialized in comics with a war background and drew such titles as Spy No. 13, The Terror, The Silver Bullet, Mac of the Mounties, The Ghost Plane, The Death Ray, Tigers of Tobruk, King of the Kittyhawks, Trapped and others before joining Donald to drawcomics for Offset Printing Company. While his sombre renderings may have reflected the mood of the wartime years the effects were negated by his use of text boxes to describe the action in the panels and his minimum use of speech balloons. It was a welcome relief for readers when Brodie-Mack arrived on the scene.

  Edward (Ted) Brodie-Mack was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1897. At the age of 18 he spent a year working as a cartoonist on the New Zealand Freelance before becoming a youthful theatrical executive in both Australia and New Zealand. In 1919 he resumed cartooning contributing to The Bulletin and Smith’s Weekly. He became a political and sporting cartoonist for the Sydney Truth and Sun before joining the new Consolidated Press where he remained for the next 26 years. It was during his stint with Consolidated Press that he began drawing comics for NSW Bookstall.

  Apart from an odd assortment of comic pages, verse, cartoons, and text collected under the title Gigglywinks, Brodie-Mack’s major contribution to the comic book field was his series of comics based on the adventures of Kazanda. He blended his natural humorous style with that of the Flash Gordon artist, Alex Raymond, and the resultant

hybrid style was ideal for the comic book page. Brodie-Mack was the first Australian artist to recognize the special requirements of the new medium, consequently his comics flowed in a manner that could not be matched by any of his contemporaries. Such Kazanda stories as The Wild Girl of the Lost Continent, The Forbidden Kingdom, Among the Winged Women, Kazanda Again and The Captives of Capri were a mixture of science fiction and fantasy, each 30 pages long, that provided ideal escapism from the gloomy war situation. Kazanda was a beautiful psychic girl who loved the cruel Sylf, King and Mind-Master of the Lost Continent, and who often found herself on the opposite side to her lover. The basic design of the early pages suggest that the series was originally created with the idea of selling it to newspapers as a Sunday page. The storylines, which were far removed from the comic book stories of the period, were the work of Peter Amos.

  Peter Amos was the nom-de-plume of Archie E. Martin who had been writing since the early part of the century when he had been on the staff of C. J. Dennis’ The Critic. He had contributed some humorous items to The Gadfly from the first issue in 1906 and in 1907, at the age of 17, took over the editorship of that magazine. Later in his career, Martin went to the US where he gained a reputation as a novel writer. The standard of the Kazanda stories was such that in 1945 the collaborators were able to sell the first story to the Fiction House group (publishers of Jumbo, Jungle, Planet, Fight etc.) in New York where it was serialized through five issues of Rangers Comics. It was a unique breakthrough to get into the highly competitive US market and this success was not repeated until the early ’seventies when Stanley Pitt was invited to draw a series of American-scripted stories.

  Noel Cook was another contributor to NSW Bookstall and, basically he continued the sf/fantasy theme that he had established with his newspaper strip, Peter, in 1929. With such titles as Pirate Planet and Peril Planet his art was derivative of Alex Raymond and Borne Hogarth - the derivative sources of many Australian comic artists during the 1940s. Most of his stories were set in the then far-off 1960s and 1970s where he saw the world constantly under threat from either Martian invaders or a mad scientist and where space travellers were dressed like deep sea divers. Cook did not restrict his efforts to one company, contributing work to Offset Printing Company, Frank Johnson, K. G. Murray and a number of smaller companies. More than once, he was able to re-work old stories by changing the names of the characters and re-positioning some of the panels. Apparently, such re-working was acceptable to publishers or went unnoticed.

  While NSW Bookstall published many comics, one title bears reference. Dr Mensana was the work of Tom Hubble and was inspired by the name of a popular biscuit of the period. Mensana was a mysterious character who when he swallowed a ‘S + ’ pill, became a ‘Sampson of Science’. His skinny body would swell to Mr Universe proportions and his physical powers were ‘increased to an almost unbelievable degree’ for a period of one hour. By taking the ‘M+’ pill his head would swell as all the body’s energy was concentrated in his brain, giving him telepathic powers. The basic idea was innovative but the execution was lamentable. More at home with humorous strips, Hubble did not have the technique of understanding of the comic page to handle an adventure theme. The comic is noteworthy as one of the earliest attempts at a super-hero and for its excessive wordiness.

  Late in 1940, Ayers and James entered the comic book field but restricted their production to reprints of US newspaper strips. They specialized in such strips as Don Winslow, Sgt Stony Craig, Alley Oop, Wash Tubs/Captain Easy, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

Like all other publishers, Ayers and James had to change their title with each issue but were astute enough to select the word Yank as a constant factor giving them such titles as Yank Adventure Comics, Gripping Yank Comics, Crackajack Yank Comics, Famous Yank Comics etc. Not only did this give them the advantage of some continuity of title but it assisted in their attempts to foster the idea that they were, in fact, American comics. This ploy was reinforced by the addition of the words ‘Price in Australia’, prominently displayed near the 6d. cover price sign. It is doubtful if anyone was fooled by these devices, particularly those who had grown up with American comics.

  In the scramble for a slice of the market, Offset Printing Company was close on the heels of the other two companies. Publishing up to a dozen titles each month, OPC (‘The House of Offset’) waged a constant battle to obtain sufficient supplies of newsprint. Once they had used their standard newsprint allocation they were forced to use paper from any source - much of it not intended for printing purposes. The resultant comics were printed on grey, blue, green and a variety of off-white backgrounds that tested the eyesight of even the keenest reader. Ink supplies also posed a problem and it was not unusual to find brown, blue and green inks used as a black substitute.

  Generally, OPC did not follow the NSW Bookstall practice of devoting the entire comic (32 pages including covers) to one story. Instead, they preferred to follow the pattern of the American comic books and use a variety of features - and they regularly used the word ‘comics’ on their covers. Under such titles as Zip, Scoop, Mammoth, Explosion, Sparkler and Thrill they covered war, reporters, inventors, cowboys, detectives, humour and most other themes.

  Jim Colt specialized in drawing adventure tales with a war content. With RedTex, Lofty Regan, Commando Conn, South Sea Sam, Gus of the Gulf and Black Hawk, Colt continually showed that the Allies were far more intelligent and resourceful than the enemy. The Nazis were usually depicted as having a square head, crew cut and a monocle and against Colt’s heroes they could only respond with an Ach!, Blitzen! or Himmel!. The Japs appeared as some form of sub-human species who spoke in script. A translation of what they were saying probably formed the basis for a Chinese menu or a scale of charges from a Chinese laundry as it is doubtful if Colt or any of our other comic artists were fluent in Japanese. Colt had a bold, open style of drawing that was both simple and effective. His layouts and containment of text/dialogue demonstrated that he had a better understanding of the medium than many of his more experienced fellow-artists.

  Noel Cook became a prolific producer of comics for OPC due, basically, to the reprinting of his former newspaper strips Dick Dean, Star Reporter, Bobby and Betty and Peter. By virtue of their two and a half years run in the Daily Telegraph, Bobby and Betty appeared in comic books longer than any of Cook’s other strips up until the time he created Kokey Koala.

  Will Donald continued to pump out comics for OPC right through the war years and his output was only matched by Hal English. English’s realistic style of illustrating with heavy black shadows and considerable hatching was almost the opposite of Donald’s - yet, more often than not, the two men found themselves sharing the contents of a full comic. They worked in double-harness inside such titles as The Secret Formula, Enemy Agent, Murder in the Night, The Swinging $.? Death, The Black Ape, The Rubber Foot Mystery and Saboteurs. Among others, Donald created a trouble-shooting detective called Shado McGraw. Donald’s concession to the wartime mood was to give many of his villains foreign-sounding names with a distinct leaning towards the Italians (e.g. Zaroli, Calligoni, Matalini, Largossi, Kardoni etc.). In most cases, all of the villains looked the same with only their names, like the name of the comic, being changed.

  After drawing The Man in the Scarlet Mask, Special Agents Revenge and Sabotage, English hit on a successful character in the form of Red Steele . . . British Agent. Red Steele made his debut in a comic titled The Cobra Woman which was an experiment in formats by OPC. Most comics measured approximately 24 cm high by 17.5 cm wide, with coloured outer covers and black and white interior pages. The Cobra Woman was half of the normal size while red and blue overlays were added to the interior pages. Either the experiment proved too costly or the publishers found that readers were not prepared to pay 6d. for a miniature comic and, within a few issues, the comic was back to normal size.

  The stories of Red Steele covered all facets of Secret Service activities and while there was a tendency to use text to describe action they were well scripted and among the better written comics of the period. English used large areas of black and white for contrast in giving his pages a mood of mystery and the effect was often heightened by his experiments with charcoal and grease pencil. Another important contribution that English made to OPC was his cover work. This was the first time that painted covers had been used instead of line drawings and often the same illustration was used on both front and back covers. These garish, action-packed renderings by English remain some of the best cover work to appear on comics in this country and must have attracted many buyers.

  Geoff Litchfield was one of the more talented artists to work for OPC. However, either because he was moonlighting or felt there was a stigma attached to drawing comics, he hid his activities behind the signatures ‘Gosh’ and ‘Golly’. While he drew a number of series, his realistic style and careful attention to detail was seen to its best advantage in Okaie - Master of the Jungle. This strip featured such pre-historic animals as the sabre-tooth tiger, dinosaurs and battle scenes that would not have been out of place in Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant. Whether in the outback of Australia or some more exotic locale, Litchfield’s storylines usually contained more substance than the average comic and it is regrettable that the volume of his comic work was so small.

  Others who contributed to OPC included George Little, the mysterious ‘Theo’, Butler, Kilgreen and many unidentified artists. And if there were no comics on hand at deadline time they would run up to 10 pages of text stories rather than delay the printing. A busy, bustling company OPC supplied a large slice of the wartime production.

  Possibly the best remembered comics of the war years were those produced by Frank Johnson Publications. Their first comic was titled Amazing and was released in July 1941. They continued to release a new comic each week and, in order, there followed Star, Marvel, Magic, Thrilling, Super, Mighty, Master, Victory, Winner, Conquer, Hero, Hot Shot, Crash, Thunder, Terrific, Ace, Bullet, Corker, Startling, Modern and Monster. And so they continued to change the title week after week with the editor keeping his fingers crossed that they would not duplicate their own titles or that of their opposition. They did both but it is doubtful if anyone noticed or cared. When they had exhausted their supply of titles they re-used the old titles by adding the prefix ‘New’ {New Crash, New Magic, etc.).

  FJP were, in fact, publishing four different comics each month and releasing one each week. Thus the stories in Amazing carried on in Thrilling, Victory and Hot Shot; the stories in Star continued in Super, Winner, Crash and so on. It was all very confusing for the reader interested in following the adventures of a particular group of characters and even more confusing for the comic historian who arrived on the scene a quarter of a century later.

  The line-up of artists who worked for FJP was very imposing. It included artists from The Bulletin, Smith’s Weekly and other newspapers as well as many who were to go on and establish themselves in various fields of art. Unk White, Les Dixon, Norm Rice, Dan Russell, Bruce Cousins, Dick Alderton, Carl Lyon, Noel Cook, Frank Jessup, Rhys Williams, Newton S. Hedstrom and Ron Broadley were all contributors in the early years and, later, were joined or replaced by the likes of Phil Belbin, Stanley Pitt, Gerard Lants, Moira Bertram, John Jensen, Peter Chapman, Lloyd Piper, Ralph and Norren Shelley and everyone’s favourite, Emile Mercier.

  Most of the regular FJP artists were paid thirty shillings per page and were guaranteed four to six pages each week. For some, this represented a full week’s wages; for those who were moonlighting it represented additional income and there were many artists who made more money, relatively, during this period than at any other time in their career.

  While some artists handled their own storylines, the bulk of the early comics were written by A. C. Headley - better known as Chuck or Alf. After an artist had brought in his pages from the previous week he would confer with Headley who would type a synopsis of the new story on the spot. The artist was then left to break down the story and supply or modify the dialogue as he saw fit. Three decades later the Marvel Comics Group, under Stan Lee, came up with a variation on this method to assist the speeding-up of comic production. Although he had no previous experience in scripting comics, Headley sensed that the medium required stories with plenty of action and, where suitable, a little morale-boosting propaganda. Writing so many different stories for so many different (and some not so different) characters, it was not surprising that he often duplicated situations and punchlines.

  Apart from drawing the cover for the first FJP comic, Unk White was responsible for the first adventure strip, 'Blue’ Hardy and the Diamond Eyed Pygmies which had, also, appeared briefly in Pix Magazine. The story was set in the outback and covered the attempts of Blue, his girlfriend Kit, and their blacktracker Jacky, to locate the famous Pettigrew Lost Gold Reef. This was obviously inspired by the stories of the Lasseter Reef and the unsuccessful expedition of 1930. On their journey the trio encountered pygmies, quicksand, vultures, the Fangmen (tall, powerful, hairy black men with long, protruding eye-teeth), a mysterious bowman and all of the other likely ingredients required to present an adventurous comic tale. While it was obvious that White did not take the same care with his comic work as he did with his newspaper and magazine work the skill of this talented artist was still evident.

  Cecil White was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1900. He is said to have acquired the nickname ‘Unk’ as a result of his scribbled drawings as a small child. Quoting Rudyard Kipling, his uncle said, ‘Ung was a maker of pictures who fashioned an image of snow’ - and promptly dubbed his nephew ‘Ung’. White’s baby sister had difficulty pronouncing it with the result that Unk emerged in its place. On leaving school, the only work he could find that was related to drawing was in the ticket-writing room of an Auckland Drapers, Milne and Choice. While boring and repetitive, the ticket-writing taught White the elements of speedy drawing and when he started the Auckland Sketch Club, along with George Finey and Robert Johnson, he would often produce 30 or more sketches in an afternoon.

  In 1922, he came to Australia with Finey and Frank Lynch, the sculptor, and despite an almost complete lack of training was able to support himself. Most of his early sales were to Aussie, a magazine •that had come out of the trenches of the First World War. During his early days in Sydney, he shared a bare room with Noel Cook (another New Zealander) and other artists, drinking from empty jam tins and using extra wheatsacks on his bed to keep out the cold. It was during this period that he became part of the Bohemian group of wild boys which includes the likes of Phil Lindsay, Joe Lynch, Mervyn O’Hara, Mick Paul, Syd Nicholls, Jack Quayle, George Finey, Jack Waring and Lance Driffield.

Soon, his bold use of black and white attracted the larger papers and journals and his work appeared regularly in The Bulletin, Smith’s Weekly and Beckett’s Budget. He went to Paris in 1927, defraying some of his costs by sketching his impressions of various ports and sending them back to Australia. He then moved on to London where he sold his work to The Bystander, Tatler and similar magazines and established a healthy demand for his material. But the weather was not to his liking and he returned to Australia where he created his newspaper strip, Freckles.

White intended to go to Spain in 1936 but had only reached England when the Spanish Civil War broke out. Instead, he went to Panama and then on to Costa Rica before returning home a year later. He brought back with him a collection of pictures which were exhibited at Farmers and of which Norman Lindsay wrote : ‘These travel sketches of Unk White’s are the most brilliant of their sort I have ever seen. They have the precise drawing of careful study and at the same time the movement and vitality of a thing seen and jotted down in passing’.

During the war years, White did many outstanding action sketches of servicemen including the book Diggers, published in 1943, and FJP published a number of collections of his cartoons from The Bulletin during the ’forties. Through the ’sixties and early ’seventies his sketchbooks of various historical buildings and landmarks were highly praised.

Like most artists at FJP, White was assigned a different story character for each weekly issue. The Lost Country, which made its debut in Magic Comics in August, 1941, was similar in both theme and presentation to the Blue Hardy tale. Dr Evil and the Robot Man and Don Taylor and Wix were both variations on the ‘evil doctor’ theme and done in the best tradition of the, then, popular Saturday afternoon movie serial. Later, a number of chapters of the Dr Evil strip were collected and reprinted as a one-shot comic. The reprinting of previously published comics was quite a common practice with FJP.

As well as alternating on the covers with Unk White, Dan Russell’s stable of characters consisted of a rover scout, Terry Lawson; a roving adventurer, Val Blake, Ventriloquist', a lady reporter, Wanda Dare', and a world boxing champion, Jimmy Dale. While there was plenty of scope for variety in Russell’s comics they suffered, as did most of the early FJP stories, from being too short. It was rare to find a story that ran longer than four pages and some of Russell’s stories were restricted to three pages.

Born in 1906 at Millers Point, Dan Russell is the brother of Jim Russell. Although he began his working life as a clerk he was soon studying at night in the art schools of Julian Ashton and Wattie Watkins. In 1928-29 he was secretary for the Australian Black and White Artists and in 1937 became the treasurer for the re-formed Black and White Artists’ Club. He worked in advertising and commercial art for a few years prior to World War II until the introduction of the FJP line gave him the opportunity to break into cartooning. After the war he travelled in the US, Mexico and Canada studying cartoon techniques and methods returning in time to join the Allied Authors and Artists publishing group. In 1952 he was a staff artist on the Daily Mirror and Truth before becoming involved in AM Magazine. He joined the Adelaide Advertiser in 1953 as a political cartoonist then moved on to the Adelaide News and Sunday Mail in 1955. As well as creating Darky, the Kid from Snowy River for this group he served as an illustrator, sporting cartoonist and general topical humour cartoonist until his retirement in 1970.

Les Dixon, who was employed on Smith’s Weekly at the time, drew Terry McBride - Sea Scout, Airspeed Holland, Roley Slade of the Customs, Judd Barton - Pearler, and a number of filler pages. Dixon’s forte, both in style and outlook, was humour - and his work on these comics exhibited his discomfort with the adventure strip. But to Dixon, like a number of other artists at FJP, these comics represented an additional £.6-8 per week on top of their regular earnings. For that sort of money, artists were prepared to draw in any style and ignore the discomforts it caused.

Norm Rice drew such strips as Dr Darbill, Steele Carewe and Nick Carver of the Circus; Bruce Cousins guided the adventures of Greg Bartlett, Steve Monson, Johnny Fraser and The Masked Archer; while Dick Alderton (creator of the Daily Mirror’s Nursie panel) drew Koko & Katie, Wise Child and even the odd adventure strip like Tug Boat Toby and Ken Bailey. Frank Jessup continued the gentle fantasy theme introduced with his Marmaduke with the whimsical adventures of Professor Darwin, Captain Spadger and the ‘Nancy Belle’, Barbara and filler pages such as Mulga Mick, Pete and Molly and Gran pop. Ron Broadley’s contribution was in the form of one-page fillers of Dabs, Jonesy, Slipstream Sam, Junior and an unusual character in Shadowman. By and large, Australian comic artists did not embrace the super-hero concept that had taken over the pages of the US comic book - but Shadowman, with his powers of invisibility, certainly fell into that category, as did Powerman drawn by Norm Rice and, later, John Delaney.

  The balance of the humorous pages, in the early years, were made up by Eric Porter’s Willie Wombat, Wombat Flats and Bear Facts; Harry Eyre Jr’s Little Ossie', Alex Edington’s Fat Fred; and Tom Hubble’s Kookakomics.

  As Australia had no tradition of adventure strip artists, the majority of those employed by FJP were schooled in and preferred the humorous approach to cartooning. However, there were a few ‘straight’ artists who handled various adventure tales. Anthony White drew a brief series of Dave Carson tales while Litchfield did an equally brief number of The Masked Archer. Rhys Williams went on to make a name for himself in the wider world of art but in the early ’forties he was drawing Terror Island, The House of Fear, Ice Adventure and a number of other strips. Except for the odd panel containing a figure study there was nothing exceptional about his comics except an obvious understanding of basic drawing. However, Williams drew a series based on Aborigine legends with such titles as The Laughing Frog, Thugine the Great Serpent, and The Sacred Bullroarer which were clearly superior to his other comic book work. The series also represented the first attempt to portray such legends in comic books.

  Another artist who established his reputation for ‘straight’ strips was Carl Lyon. Carl Raymond Lyon was born at Forest Lodge, NSW in 1903. After leaving school he attended Ultimo Technical College and was another of the many students of Jack Watkins. Lyon spent some years as a theatrical scenery painter before deciding to try and avoid the impact of the Depression by going to Queensland as a cane cutter in 1929. Thinking the Depression would be over, he returned to Sydney in 1931 and was happy to accept any kind of freelance art to try and earn a living. He had work published by Smith’s Weekly, The Bulletin and as well as doing covers for Humour created that magazine’s first comic strip, Tootles, in June 1936. Like most other artists that came to FJP, Lyon’s background was in humorous cartooning but he never had the opportunity to ply his chosen trade. Instead, he commenced working on adventure strips and remained with them until he became associated with Stan Cross in drawing Wally and the Major in 1957 and taking over that strip when Cross retired in 1970. The experience he gained at FJP was instrumental in his having two adventure strips accepted by newspapers in later years. His stable of characters for FJP included K-27, Detective Milt Grey, Barty Malone - Taxi Driver, The Phantom Trooper, PD 4967 and a super-hero, The Eagle.

  Noel Cook contributed irregular adventure strips, including Boris of Mars, but towards the latter stages of the war had a regular strip in Hawk Larse - In the Year 2000 AD. Newton Hedstrom’s strips were usually one-shots with no continuing characters.

  As the war progressed and artists went into the services or moved on to other jobs there were new artists to take their places. The teenagers Moira Bertram, Len Lawson and Stanley Pitt all found work at FJP. Bertram transferred her defunct newspaper strip, Jo, to the comic book pages where it was far better suited; Lawson drew a flying adventurer, Bob Brady, Pitt collaborated with Frank Ashley on Captain Justice, Dr Vulcan and Universal Conquest. A privately drawn, hand coloured version of the latter strip was instrumental in Pitt being asked to create his newspaper strip, Silver Starr in the Flameworld.

  But of all the artists who worked on comics for FJP, none made a greater impact or is remembered with greater affection than Emile Mercier. The son of a French baker, Emile Alfred Mercier was born in New Caledonia in 1901. He came to Australia in 1919 and took a clerical position with a commercial house doing a little translation during the day and spending his evenings absorbing art at Julian Ashton’s school. On the strength of selling a drawing to a Sydney newspaper in the early ’twenties, the translator-clerk resigned to make his living from drawing. He didn’t sell another drawing for six months. Limited by his command of the language, Mercier took whatever jobs came to hand - office boy, work on coastal ships, a spruiker at the Royal Easter Show, bit parts in stage melodramas. Freelance sales to Melbourne Punch, Smith’s Weekly, The Bulletin and many smaller publications helped him survive. Eventually he obtained regular freelance work with Truth and Daily Mirror in 1940 and for Truth created two comic strips, News Splashes and Week Spots. In 1941 his Fen Pushers strip commenced in the ABC Weekly and soon after he linked up with Frank Johnson Publications.

  It wasn’t until 1949 that Mercier achieved his lifelong ambition of a full-time job with a newspaper when he joined the Sydney Sun. His daily topical cartoons were filled with odd-ball characters who bounced around on springs or stilts; many dogs and battle-scarred cats; grog artists from all levels of society; hilarious signs and posters in the background with outrageous names (‘Fearless Fwyp’, ‘Quincy J Erpnewt’, ‘Higglemoat’s Hair Hormones’, ‘Bruhl’s Brew’, ‘The Muckadilla Milk Money Thief, etc.) and regular use of the words ‘gravy’, ‘shrdlu’ and ‘yak’. By the time he officially retired from the Sun in 1968, Mercier had become one of the most widely read and best loved cartoonists in the country.

  But the public who ‘discovered’ Mercier’s zany and rib-tickling humour in newspapers were a long way behind the comic book readers who had been enjoying his unique talent since the early ’forties. For FJP, Mercier created a series of parodies which delighted readers both young and old. Over three decades later, these comics remain as testimony as to what can be done with the comic book medium to make us laugh. Secret Agent XXX13 aimed its shots at Secret Agent X-9, created by Alex Raymond and Dasheill Hammett; Mudrake the Magician (with Lophar and Princess Narka) gestured hypnotically at Mandrake; Speed Umplestoop satirized Speed Gordon; Supa Dupa Man (‘The Big Twist’) leaped over the king of the US comic books in a single bound; Tripalong Hoppitty and Three-Gun Ferdie (The Pride of the Prairie) were cowboys who left the West gasping and the readers holding their sides; and Wocko the Beaut, in his singlet, swim trunks and bowler hat was the true spirit of comic book super-heroes, emerging from the pages of a comic book when his name was evoked. Apart from poking fun at the comics field, Mercier drew many other strips including Doc McSwiggle, Bowyang Bill and the Snifter Princess, The Case of the Haunted Piecrust (a Sherlock Holmes parody) and the delightfully titled Search for the Gnu-Gnah. It was clear that Mercier enjoyed his work and his exuberance was imparted to his clever scripts and drawings. While many of his strips were reprinted in one-shot titles it is to be regretted that examples of the major portion of Mercier’s comic book work survive only in the hands of private collectors.

  Another early publisher into the field was Syd Miller. In 1940 he gathered together experienced writers and cartoonists and started publishing one-shot titles (e.g. Zip-Action, Sizzling). While contributing odd pages of reprints of Fatty Finn, Nicholls took the opportunity to introduce his new character, The Phantom Piratex which allowed Nicholls to pursue his love of the sea, sailing ships, and lusty pirate adventures. Eric Jolliffe drew Trent of the Territory, a forerunner of his Tom Flynn strip; Syd Miller handled Red Grainger; Les Such drew a science fiction tale, Sting Lasky and the Fish People', and Stan Clements drew Tom Dunne - Scientific Detective and Jim and Jill in Giantland, the latter being aimed at very young readers. In terms of the ability of the people concerned, these comics represented some of the best of the war years. Unfortunately, very few issues were published due to the artists being committed in other areas and the constant battle for a non-established publisher to obtain supplies of precious newsprint.

  Up until 1943, with the exception of the reprint comics from Fitchett Bros in Melbourne, all of the Australian comics were being published in Sydney. In the middle of that year a new company entered the field - but this time from Adelaide. Henry Edward Hoffmann was born at Birkenhead, South Australia in 1899. At the age of 16 he enlisted in the AIF and became a signaller. He was gassed in France and after a period on convalescence in England returned home in 1919. He joined the staff of Smith Channon & Co, customs and forwarding agents, in 1921 and became a partner in that company in 1945. Ill health forced his retirement as an active member of the company in 1961 and he died in 1972.

  In 1943, Hoffmann was approached by Phillip Weame, a 17-year-old student artist who had drawn a science fiction comic which he wanted published. When another art student, Max Judd, produced sufficient additional pages to fill out the issue, Hoffmann agreed to publish the comic. It was titled after Weame’s strip, The Legion of Space, and contained four pages of Judd’s continuing series, Sky Police. The comic sold well and Hoffmann asked Weame to produce another comic and to see if other art students were interested in drawing comics. Weame approached another student, Doug Maxted, who jumped at the opportunity to earn additional money. In November, Weame’s second story, The Space Legionnaires, was published along with more of Judd’s work and three pages of Maxted’s Uncle Si. At this stage Weame went into the army and Hoffmann asked Maxted to continue drawing Uncle Si as well as creating new characters to fill out the comics. Maxted agreed and the Hoffmann line was under way.

  April 1944 saw the publication of 3 Star Comics which was followed at regular intervals by Real, Modern, Crack, Extra, Click, Champion, Adventure, Super, Slick and Victory Comics. They continued with the ever-changing titles until April 1947 when they adopted as their continuing title Dick Weston Popular Comic. This title recognized the fact that Dick Weston, Star Reporter (who first appeared in 3 Star Comics along with another Maxted character, Big Rick Roland) had become the most popular character of the line. Although his early work lacked confidence, Maxted’s stories moved at a fast clip and contained plenty of twists. The first Dick Weston tale, which ran through three issues, followed the hero as he solved the mystery behind a series of robberies and murders committed by monstrous-looking ‘beast men’. A hair-raising tale that covered the transformation of ordinary citizens into beast men and involved torture, shootings and stabbings - the comic escaped the eyes of those who are usually up in arms about such presentations.

  Douglas Francis Maxted was bom in London in 1920 and as a small child settled with his family in Adelaide. While studying art under Milward Grey he met Weame and Judd and started contributing to Hoffmann’s comic books. For Maxted, who was working as a machine operator with a refrigerator manufacturer, drawing comics presented him with an opportunity to earn more money than through his normal occupation. Hoffmann offered a page rate of £4 10s. which was almost equal to the weekly basic wage. As Maxted soon became capable of drawing up to six pages each week, the payment represented unexpected riches. He added to his range of characters by creating The Family Next Door, Pirate Pete, Rollo of the Big Top, and many filler pages.

  Towards the end of 1947, Maxted decided to publish his own comics in addition to his work for Hoffmann. He produced a dummy of Ben Barbary Bushranger Comics and Gordon and Gotch placed an order for 60 000 copies of a 32-page comic book to sell at 6d. Maxted was paid £750 of which some £400 went towards printing costs. As well as Ben Barbary, the comic contained Vesta the Vesuvian, Captain Carver, Little Bosco, and Peter Dragon of Scotland Yard. Maxted also introduced the Cobbers Page which attracted mail from all over Australia as well as New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore. After nine issues, he decided to introduce another comic, Triggo Sparks, but his timing was poor. The cost of newsprint was continuing to rise and the competition from US reprints was beginning to place the publishers of local material under pressure. Hoffmann left the field in 1949 and Maxted followed soon after. Gordon and Gotch had introduced a ‘sale or return’ condition on publications and when he found his garage beginning to fill with unsold books he arranged for a New Zealand firm to buy his returns and quit the field.

  Maxted worked for various advertising agencies and during this period produced two Lee Saxon comic books, which were used as promotional material by the hypnotist. After a period as art editor at Rigby he left for a working holiday in England in 1962. He has remained there ever since, working almost exclusively for Fleetway Publications/International Publishing Corporation contributing to such comics as Hotspur, Valiant, Wizard, Buster, and Scorcher. He currently draws The Hard Man which appears in Roy of the Rovers each week.

  Maxted and Hoffmann combined to produce comics which added variety to the local comic book field during the 1943-9 period and, temporarily at least, broke the Sydney-Melbourne stranglehold on the market. Hoffmann also encouraged such artists as Leonard Miatke/Starr, John Egan and Jim Stapleton by publishing their early efforts. He was an entrepreneur who shared his profits with his artists in the form of high page rates and as such deserves to be remembered.

  In 1943 Syd Miller introduced an entirely new character in The Coming of Molo the Mighty. With bulging muscles beneath his skin-tight costume, Molo was a massive man whose great strength and ability to fly was closely linked with his mysterious headband. The narrator of the first story said of him, ‘Where he came from nobody knows, it might have been from Mars or the Moon . . . all I am certain of is that he is not of this earth’. Wherever he came from, Molo was the first major super-hero to appear in Australian comics and was an extension of Chesty Bond which Miller was drawing at that time. His companion was a small Aborigine boy who had been abandoned and who taught Molo pidgin. Together they survived angry mobs and bushfires as they thwarted a gang of cattle duffers. While he had a tendency to describe the action in text boxes, Miller’s illustrative technique combined with considerable panel variation and plenty of action made Molo a visually impressive comic.

  Miller continued to use the work of Clements (Tom Dunne), Such (Sting Lashy) and Mercier as well as reprinting a collection of Jolliffe’s Trent of the Territory. But in publishing the work of his longtime associates, Miller did not forget the aspiring artists. He ran art competitions to encourage those under eighteen years and his encouragement bore fruit. The work of John Egan, aged 15, appeared in a Red Gregory comic while the work of Len Lawson, 15, and Albert De Vine, 16, appeared in The Return of Molo. Miller published De Vine’s comic, The Council of Four, in September 1944 and all of the fledgling artists were to become regular comic book contributors in the post war years.

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN THE POST-WAR BOOM

 

Despite the restrictions on newsprint Miller, with the aid of a helpful printer, was able to introduce a continuing title when he published Monster Comics No. 1 in January 1945. While this was a breach of the regulations officialdom probably had their minds on other things or were prepared to ignore it as the war progressed favourably. For expediency, Monster was published as a tabloid size comic giving it a physical appearance in keeping with its name. As well as carrying Miller’s Pete and Pinky, the comic contained Peter Jury and Jimmy Allan by Lawson, The New Chum by Carl Lyon, and Goofy Gadgets, Sprat & Baldy, and Dizzy’s Lizzie by Mercier. But the largest portion of the comic, by far, was devoted to text stories by Frank Clune, Barlett Adamson, Jack*Heming and others as well as competitions, riddles, jokes, crossword puzzles and educational features contributed by Miller. Basically, the comic was in the tradition of the English comic papers and continued the trend that was followed by Fatty Finn’s Weekly a decade before.

  Through Monster Comics, Miller continued the local cartoonists’ never-ending battle against imported syndicated material. In the fourth issue, in response to a letter from a Lismore reader, he listed those Australian strips being published in newspapers and comic books, aimed a few barbs at imported material; and finished with, ‘Your idea of a regulation covering reprinted stuff compelling that type of publication to carry on the covers a label Cheap second-hand material used as in the other products, is quite revolutionary. Wonder what the publishers would think of it?’ The publishers of the material in question remained unmoved as did those in government who might have been responsible for such a revolutionary move. Monster Comics only lasted six issues when Miller, attracted by the prospects of high returns from a syndicated newspaper strip, joined the staff of the Herald and Weekly Times Limited.

  The gap created by Miller’s departure from the field was filled by Syd Nicholls when he published Fatty Finn’s Comics No. 1 in November 1945. This comic, which was to be the flagship of Nicholls’ comic line, was similar in content to the comics Miller had published earlier in the war years. It contained more reprints of Fatty Finn and The Phantom Pirate as well as Clements’ Matt Marcus, Such’s Buster Braddock, Aria’s Bertie, text stories by Adamson and Heming, and a regular page devoted to the activities and personalities at radio station 2GB.

  The new comic prospered and Nicholls was encouraged to introduce a new title, Middy Malone’s Magazine, early in 1947. This comic allowed Nicholls to reprint his Middy Malone stories which had previously only been seen in book form. In all, four full-colour books were published - Middy Malone, A Book of Pirates (1941), MM and the South Sea Pirates (1942), The Further Adventures of MM (1944), MM and the Lost World, as well as a book of The Phantom Pirate (1943). Middy was an orphan boy who in the company of Mollie and Captain McFlintlock, Taters and Captain Vice romped through a series of swashbuckling adventures that were unique in Australian comic books. At various stages, other artists made brief forays into this genre but soon retreated due to their inability to match Nicholls’ skills in this area.

  Middy Malone’s Magazine opened up opportunities for the younger artists. Under the pen name of Keith Leonard, Len Lawson drew a flying detective, Johnnie Justice; John Parkinson concentrated on a speedcar driver, Flash Feene; Monty Wedd drew Sword and Sabre for a short period before creating his best-known character, Captain Justice; while Larry Horak drew Bob Arlen, Ripon - The man from Outer Space, and Ray Thorpe. As well as providing his usual filler material and illustrating the stories of Heming, Clements drew an educational feature, Conquest.

  Before the year was out, Nicholls’ comic line almost came to a halt due to the shortage of newsprint. In the eighth issue, under the heading ‘American Dollars Threaten Middy Malone’s Magazine’, Nicholls editorialized on the situation, again, pointing the finger at the US syndicated comics.

  ‘During the war period this magazine was planned, but publication was withheld until a return to peaceful pursuits. Repeated overtures have been made to the Commonwealth Government for a supply of paper for this purpose. All approaches have met the same fate: complete rejection of our request to continue publishing an All-Australian Magazine, while they have allowed, and are allowing, valuable paper stocks to be squandered indiscriminately by publishers of cheap, rehashed matter from America. Only by the good graces of our printers have we been able to carry on temporarily. But that meagre supply of paper is now almost exhausted.

  ‘It is in the power of the Government to see that this All-Australian Magazine carries on.

  ‘By their disregard of this situation and at the same time allowing dollar currency newsprint to be absorbed in the production of American Syndicated Comics, which always project an Un-Australian sentiment and frequently use themes entirely unwholesome, they are threatening the continued publication of Middy Malone’s Magazine and its All-Australian Comics kindred titles Fatty Finn’s Comics, Rupert Rabbit’s Comics and Tex Morton Comics.’

  The editorial concluded with Nicholls urging readers to write to their Federal Member of Parliament and protest ‘at such Un- Australian action’. It is unlikely that readers wrote to their members - at least, not in the numbers that would make any impact. It is uncertain as to how the matter was resolved but the comic continued to be published, with the page count reduced from 32 to 28.

  Throughout the post-war period, the Australian Journalists’ Association and the Black and White Artists’ Club continued their agitation against imported material. Representations were made and petitions presented to Parliament while questions were asked in both Houses on the subject. There appeared little that the Government, whatever their political persuasion, could do about the situation. The importation of comic strips had been prohibited in July 1940 and with one exception no new licences had been granted. The exception was to allow Felix the Cat Enterprises to obtain a small quantity of art pulls of its copyright comic strip, subject to the condition that no currency exchange was involved and that the comic would not be released to any other publishing firm or any newspaper.

 

However, Australian publishers were able to arrange to reprint various US comics and pay the royalties into blocked accounts which were used to pay for various Australian outgoings of the US company or simply held against the day when it would be possible to transfer the funds to the US. Further, it was claimed that comic material obtained through the United Kingdom or other Sterling Area countries was not subject to import licensing and quantities of US material were obtained through the United Kingdom. In theory, non-sterling comic material could not be imported into the country - but it was. In part of his answer to the house of Representatives on 22 June 1950, the Hon. Philip McBride (representing the Minister for Trade and Customs) said,

‘Art material for comic strips is imported through the post in the form of pulls, proofs, photographs, newspaper clippings and tear sheets from newspapers and is very difficult to detect on outside examination. To close the avenue of importation would require a compete examination of first-class mail matter, which is impracticable.’

He also added that the Commonwealth Government had no power to prohibit the publication of comic strips and the like in Australia.

There was little the Government could do short of introducing major legislation that would be tantamount to telling newspaper proprietors and other publishers what they could print. Successive governments, while paying lip service to protecting the livelihood of local journalists and artists obviously viewed the problem as a storm in a teacup with the electoral strength of those complaining being far less than that of the publishers.

Though some issues dropped behind schedule, Nicholls’ comic line continued and, briefly, expanded. Late in 1949, Cooee Comics was introduced and featured the work of Jolliffe (Trent of the Territory), Keith Chatto (The Glamour Girl), Parkinson {‘Steel’ Barr - Flying Detective), Horak (Red Brayton), Don Badior (Thunderbolt) and a text story by Heming. It varied from the typical Nicholls formula of comics which were designed, despite claims that they were produced for both boys and girls, for boys. Chatto’s strip followed the career of Barby Westcott, a beautiful young usherette who is discovered by a textile magnate and promoted to a modelling career. The strip was notable for the fact that it actually attempted to cater for girls and for the use of such film stars as William Powell and Ella Raines as models for some of the leading characters.

But Cooee Comics was fated to have a short career. Increasing newsprint cost and general higher overheads allied with the continued increase of overseas reprints saw Nicholls fold his entire comic line in late 1950. Nicholls’ minimum rate ofpay to his artists was £3 per page when Frank Johnson Publications was paying just half that figure. Some artists were paid £3 3s. per page while those whose work appeared in Fatty Finn’s Comic (the largest seller in the line) were paid the top rates of £4 4s. per page. Nicholls was not prepared to reduce his payment to the artists and, following eleventh-hour discussions with Frank Packer, he left the field.

Closely related to Nicholls’ publications was a line of comics published by Allied Authors and Artists. Like Nicholls, the purpose of this group was to publish and promote the work of local writers and cartoonists. Their first venture into the comic field was Rupert Rabbit Comics which appeared in January 1947. It was the first local, continuing title to be aimed at younger children. Edited by Ron Alfonso, most of the strips were drawn by Keith Urquhart. In his simple outline style, Urquhart drew the title character as well as Peter and Peggy, Terry and his Toy Car, and Chatta and his Jungle Pals.

Les Dixon drew Boots - The Little Sundowner while most of the text stories were by Alfonso.

At the same time as Nicholls decided to go forward with his Middy Malone’s Magazine, the AAA group was planning to introduce another title, Tex Morton’s Wild West Comics. While each group was entirely autonomous, they decided to merge into a kindred association under the name of All-Australasian Comics, wherein each group promoted the others material. The A-AC logo that appeared on all comic covers, from that point onwards, was designed by Chatto. The eventual combined total of six titles made the A-AC the biggest publishers of all-Australian material at the one time, in the post-war years.

The Tex Morton comic was an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the hillbilly singer. He was always featured in a fictional lead-off story along with his mates Jacky, Shorty and Slim and the strip was always drawn by Dan Russell. Russell experimented with a number of techniques and, along with Chatto and Dixon, was responsible for an interesting issue that was produced by offset using wash drawings. He was virtually the editor of the comic doing The Bunkhouse Page, running the Tex Morton Club (‘A club lapel badge, a handsome Certificate of Membership and an autographed photo of Tex Morton - all for a One Shilling postal note!’), handling the song exchange, drawing the covers etc.

For the first two years of the comic, the companion features were Chatto’s Bunny Allen, Dixon’s Alfie the Jackeroo and a series of bush yarns by Heming, while the first seventeen issues contained a serialization of Beau Sheil’s and Colin Simpson’s book, Caesar of the Skies - the life story of Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith.

  Early in 1949, AAA added another title to the group, Kanga’s KO Comic. It was similar in concept to Rupert Rabbit Comics but with the title character being drawn by ‘Mick Newton’. This was really Jim Russell who was a director of the company and who used the same nom de plume on a revived version of Wanda Dare that appeared in later issues of Tex Moreton Comics. Other features were Bobby Sox and Hep Katz by Doug Albion and Little Bits by Dixon who was the only artist to draw for all titles in the line. In the middle of 1950, the AAA line ran into financial problems related to increased costs. Publication was delayed on some issues and the line folded at the end of the year.

  On the surface, economics appear to have been the underlying factor behind the failure of the kindred All-Australian Comics group - yet a contributing factor could have been their insistence on sticking to an outdated format. They appeared to believe that the types of comic that had entertained them in their youth would be equally acceptable to their readers. They weren’t. For the most part, the readers wanted to read comics and not text. Some had discovered the all-comic comic book prior to the war, others’ had grown-up on the all-comic comic books of the war years and others, again, were discovering them with the post-war local books and reprints. Many were discovering that for the same money they could buy a comic book in full colour. It may well have been that, because of the rates they paid, the higher cost of using only comics may have sent the group to the wall earlier. On the other hand, as their existing comics were well-drawn and entertaining, the extra comic material may have provided the extra buyers to keep their operations viable. Certainly, no locally produced comic containing a fair proportion of text has ever proved very successful in this country.

  The first issue of Action Comics was published in October 1946 and was to lay the foundation for the largest single line of locally drawn comics to be published in Australia. This first issue contained a science fiction and a detective strip, all drawn by Len Lawson, and gave no hint that it would develop into one of the largest and somewhat controversial comic titles. However, it did establish the pattern of using the splash page of the first comic as the cover. This was to become a trademark of the title. The second issue of Action Comics contained the introduction of The Lone Avenger - Lawson’s masked cowboy in the mould of Fran Striker’s The Lone Ranger. Lawson’s character soon took over the cover spot which he retained in a run lasting almost 13 years and, during later years, he took over the entire comic. It was inevitable that as the Action Comics logo grew smaller the name of the lead character grew larger and the comic was always referred to as The Lone Avenger.

  Henry John Edwards was born at Kensington, Victoria in April 1913. He joined Ken Murray in 1936 as Business Manager and was involved in the birth of Man, ManJr, and. Cavalcade. In August 1944 he formed a partnership to start his own publishing company, Peter Huston Publishing, and dissolved the partnership in 1947 to run his own company, H. John Edwards. Using Action Comics as the basis he built up a large line of original Australian comics; reprints of the Archie, Fiction House and Standard lines of comics; trade magazines; paperbacks and hard covers featuring such Australian writers as F. J. Thwaites and Eileen Finlay; and hard cover editions of best-selling US authors, for which he had purchased the British Empire Rights.

  Set in the American West of the 1870s, The Lone Avenger had nothing to say about the Australian experience but was, obviously, the type of comic that readers wanted as sales soared. Initially, the masked cowboy roamed the West dispensing rough justice but as the series progressed he became more settled and spent most of his career as the sheriff of Redrock. A Junior Lone Avenger Club was formed and in 1949 a series of The Lone Avenger Special comics was commenced. Also, to capitalize on the comics’ popularity, Edwards had Lawson draw an imitation in the form of The Hooded Rider which, while never reaching the popularity of The Lone Avenger, sold well.

  With the sales of Lawson’s comic climbing and a chance visit by John Dixon, Edwards decided to add another title to his range. The first issue of Tim Valour appeared early in 1948 and in three different series managed to notch up over 100 issues. It took Dixon a few issues to find direction for his character but soon he became Tim Valour - Defender of the Peace, working as a trouble-shooter for National Security. The designation gave Dixon the freedom to allow his character to roam far and wide in the quest for slam-bang adventures. And he found them as he disposed of such villains as The Vulture, The Scar, The Ghost, The Red Skull, The Mongol, Dr Drisco and sundry others. But while TV was the nominal star of the comic, the real stars were the aeroplanes, submarines, ships and other weaponry. With a keen eye for detail and a love of ’planes in particular, Dixon was able to give his stories an added dimension with his skilful drawings in these areas. Dixon was quick to learn that to sell comics, in the first instance you had to have an attractive cover and the symbolic covers of the Tim Valour Comics of the early years are an outstanding example of how to produce eye-catching covers for adventure comics.

  Tim Valour proved to be another top-seller for Edwards and he wasted no time in getting Dixon to create another character. The Crimson Comet, with a tight-fitting red costume and real wings, made its debut five months after Tim Valour and was the first regularly published comic that came close to the traditional US super-hero. After seven issues, Dixon passed the comic onto Albert De Vine who continued the comic until the mid-’fifties when Dixon returned to the strip.

  Back-up features for these comics were provided by Cliff Barnes, with his well-drawn seafaring adventures of Roger Farr; Les Such drew a pirate/slave-trade yam set in the West Indies, Rip Weston; Larry Horak supplied a mysterious, costumed flyer, The Skyman; Jeff Wilkinson drew Dusty Malone ; and Phil Crouch supplied the humour with Fearless Ferdie.

  The K. G. Murray Publishing Company was next to enter the comics field. Kenneth G. Murray was a young advertising man who had been publishing two trade journals when he decided to enter the popular reading market. In December 1936, Murray published the first issue of the now defunct A/an Magazine. Measuring 27.5cm x 21cm, the 96 pages plus covers sold for two shillings a copy. At the time, the price was considered suicidal. But Man proved to be a success and in 1937 he introduced the pocket-size Man Junior. This was followed by Cavalcade and Insider and Murray went on to establish the first successful chain of magazines in Australia.

  Early in 1946, Murray began publishing various one-shot titles such as Vernon Hayles’ Man of Space, Noel Cook’s The Red Ray, Moira Bertram’s Flameman, The Lost Patrol and Climax All-Australian Comics. The latter two comics introduced the work of Hart Amos, a very skilful, clean-cut line artist whose work was to appear in most Murray publications until he became associated wither Hawk and the Flying Doctor in 1970.

  Hartley Vincent Amos was born at Lindfield, NSW in 1916, the son of an insurance company manager. After leaving North Sydney Boys High School he joined the brewing firm of Tooth & Co. in 1932 as a clerk. He enrolled at East Sydney Technical College in 1933 where he studied life drawing and oil painting until the end of 1937. His close friends were a cousin who aspired to be a writer and a thin, unhappy youngster who wanted to become an actor. His cousin was Paul Brickhill who went on to write six best-sellers, including The Dam Busters, Reach for the Sky, and The Great Escape. The would-be actor was the late Peter Finch who distinguished himself in the field and won the first posthumous Academy Award for Best Actor.

Because of the shortage of work, Amos followed the lead of many others and joined the army in 1938. By the time he was discharged in 1945 he had attained the rank of Lieutenant and had served in New Guinea and Borneo. Still wanting a career in the art field he was soon selling cartoons to Rydges and Quiz, before starting work as a freelance for K. G. Murray.

Although he had never drawn a comic strip, Amos’ first assignment for Murray was to draw a full comic book, The Lost Patrol. Not surprisingly, it dealt with Australian soldiers fighting the Japanese in New Guinea and Amos was able to call upon first-hand experience. A further series of comics, including The Moon Mirror and Stark, The Stoneage Man, saw Amos offered the job of illustrating the Devil Doone comic which appeared in Man Junior. Written by Ron Carson-Gold, Devil Doone was a soldier-of-fortune strip that had been handled for a very brief period by June Mendoza and Carl Lyon. While Lyon remained connected with comics Mendoza turned to illustrating and then made her reputation as a portrait painter. Amos took over the strip with the August 1946 issue and continued to draw the strip, each month, until he left in the middle of 1969. During that period he saw the strip reprinted in comic book form running into 44 issues.

In the middle of 1947, K. G. Murray introduced full colour to the interior pages of Australian comics for the first time. Under the title of Climax Comics (‘Every page in COLOUR’) Murray presented Australian adventure strip artists with a rare opportunity to show their wares to the best advantage. The first issue contained Kidnap Cavern by Amos, a tale of modem day cattle rustling, and Vernon Hayle’s Swords in Spain, a spy story from the Elizabethan period. The issue was an immediate success and paved the way for further issues which contained Pirates Gold, The Runaway Rocket, and The Red Prince by Moira Betram; Peril on Venus by Phil Belbin; Red Carr by Rich Cocks; Peter Fury by Len Lawson; Queen of the Green Men and Hurricane Hardy by Amos; and Fort Zero by Hayles. It was an outstanding series of comic books both in terms of stories and art and proved that local artists were more than capable of producing material of standards comparable with their US counterparts.

Murray’s move to colour caused concern within the industry, particularly when he released his back-up colour books. He had obtained the rights to reprint Superman and other characters from the National Periodical Publications Inc. line as well as Captain Triumph and other characters from the Quality Comics Group. Released in the latter part of 1947, Superman was soon setting new sales records for the company and, at its peak, was selling 150 000 copies per issue - a remarkable figure for a locally produced comic. Many issues of the issues of Superman and Captain Triumph provided additional opportunities for local artists to draw coloured back-up features. Keith Chatto drew Lost Island, Peter Chapman handled Derek Prentice while filler material was provided by Lloyd Piper, Jim Borella-Swan, Horak, Lawson, Hayles and Amos.

While the colour experiment was instrumental in establishing Murray as a major comic publisher as well as putting severe pressure on its competitors it was a costly operation. Apart from the increased costs of colour printing there was an increase in the rates for the locally drawn material. With odd exceptions, the standard rate in the industry was between £1 10s and £2 per page. For coloured comics, Murray were paying £4 per page and up to £8 8s per cover. While the sales of Climax Comics had been very good by local standards, they were not sufficient to support such high overheads - particularly when the rights to reprint overseas material could be purchased at a fraction of the cost. And so a little over 12 months after it had made such a promising debut the all-Australian, all-colour comic faded from the scene.

  Its place was taken by black and white reprints of Batman, Green Arrow, Superboy, Johnny Quick, Taxi O’Hara (altered from the US original, Hack O’Hara), Cosmo Cat and many others. There was a brief surge of life when Amos produced a series of Magicat Comics, a feline super-hero, but this anthropomorphous animal could not stave off the inevitable. Apart from odd filler pages and comic book covers drawn by Amos, Murray eliminated the Australian contents from their comics until the late ’fifties and went on to dominate the comic reprint field. Once again, the local artist had suffered at the hands of cheaper syndicated material.

  Following the introduction of Superman and its obvious success, Atlas Publications entered the coloured comic field from Melbourne. The directors of this company were all prominent in the field of journalism - George Wamecke, Clive Turnbull and Jack Ballieu. They decided to try and cash in on the super-hero trend and in January 1948 the first issue of Captain Atom appeared in full colour. Drawn in a crude but fascinating style by Arthur Mather, the character combined the ‘magic word’ (Exenor!) gimmick from Captain Marvel and the twin brothers ploy from Murray’s Captain Triumph and shrouded it with the mystique of the atom bomb explosion of Bikini Atoll, still fresh in people’s minds. The first dozen or so scripts were by Ballieu who used the non-de-plume ‘John Welles’ then passed on the writing chores to Mather. The coloured issues of this comic were very popular with sales approaching 100 000 copies per issue and Mather was paid £6 per page and £10 per cover. Back up stories were supplied by Michael Trueman who drew Crackajack, and Stanley Pitt with Jim Atlas and Dr Peril.

  Captain Atom stayed in colour for less than two dozen issues but it was long enough to establish the loyalty of readers so that when it became a black and white comic it remained a viable proposition. During the ’fifties the Captain Atom Club boasted ‘over 75 000 members’ and for one shilling they received their official membership badge - a Captain Atom Ring that glowed in the dark! By the late 1950s the price of the ring (with no membership) had increased to 2s 6d.

  Atlas introduced reprints of Jimpy, Belinda, Garth, Buck Ryan and others to their range and in June 1949 asked Keith Chatto to submit a character for publication. Chatto responded with The Lone Wolf, a western outlaw who often masquerades as ‘The Night Rider’ in righting wrongs and who is continuously dogged by Marshall Mack. It was this series that showed Chatto’s potential as a writer as well as an artist. The Lone Wolf was to run for six years with some of the latter stories being drawn by Horak.

  Ronald Keith Chatto was born at Kogarah, NSW in 1924, the son of an accountancy clerk. Educated at Sydney Boys High and Sydney Grammar School, Chatto’s schooldays were interspersed with constant bouts of sickness and he often relieved the boredom by sketching. His father, then working as an accountant for Smith’s Weekly, showed his work to the art staff and Jim Russell encouraged Chatto by inviting him to attend the weekly art classes held in Smith’s attic studio. On leaving school he worked in the art department of Greater Union Theatres, then drawing recognition charts for the Air  Training Corps before joining the RAAF. Within a week of being demobilized in the middle of 1946 he had sold an adventure comic strip, Destiny Scott, to the Sydney Morning Herald for use in their midweek Playtime section. When the strip ended he became involved with All-Australian Comics group, contributing such strips as Bunny Allen, The Glamour Girl and The Buccaneer. In 1949 he created The Lone Wolf for Atlas Publications and in 1954 became associated with Larry S. Cleland in producing the controversial Steven Carlisle before moving on to produce covers for both H. John Edwards and Cleveland Press.

  While at Cleveland he drew The Twilight Ranger and El Lobo before the bottom fell out of the market with the advent of television. Chatto joined the ‘enemy’ and became a freelance cinecameraman and film producer and has remained in the field. He has, however, continued to be associated with the comics field on a part-time basis, drawing comic book covers for Page Publications and a series of Skippy comics. He originated Flame and Ash for Flame Magazine and Randy and Cee Cee for Fury in 1972. In the middle of 1977 he began drawing the Sunday version of Air Hawk and the Flying Doctor having previously ghosted the daily strip for a short period in 1972. Throughout his career, Chatto’s work has been characterized by his attention to detail; his penchant for drawing sexy women; and his strong storylines. He has an outstanding reputation in the fields of films and publishing for reliability and when new projects are mooted Chatto is usually one of the first people approached.

  Ezra Norton’s Invincible Press had published various one-shot titles during the war years and, with the relaxation on supplies of newsprint, decided to make a play for the comic book market. In December 1946 he published Blake of the Northern Mounted and The Legion of Space. The latter series reprinted the first two stories that Weame had created for Hoffmann as well as two new stories, the last one not appearing until 1950. To his existing reprints of the Boofhead and Bluey and Curley newspaper strips he added Carl Lyon’s Tim O’Hara, Candy, Barney Baxter, Buzz Sawyer, Tim Tyler and other US strips. Invincible Press even joined the colour experiment when it produced Corker Comics featuring Barney Baxter. Apparently, Barney Baxter did not have the same appeal as KGM’s Superman as it only lasted for one issue.

  Pat Sullivan, a nephew of the creator of Felix the Cat, had been able to persuade the government that he should be allowed to import proofs of his uncle’s strip on which he held the copyright. In company with Jack Bruce, Sullivan wanted to publish a line of comics to add to the limited number of story magazines that Elmsdale Publications had been producing. However, they needed to publish more than justified and, once again, Fate took a hand when it steered George Needham in their direction.

  George Needham was born in London in 1903 and came to Australia with his parents in 1915. After attending Prahran Technical College from an early age he obtained a position with the art department of Union Theatres doing artwork for motion picture advertising. At the age of 20 he became head artist of Victory Publicity, concentrating on lithographic and silk screen illustrations. In 1925 he started to attend drawing classes at the Victorian National Gallery and became interested in Max Meldrum’s theory of tonal realism and was, later, influenced by the more modem approach of George Bell. In the late ’twenties, he contributed a comic strip, The Dwight Family, to Table Talk as well as drawing some of the first cartoons for the Melbourne Age in the mid-’thirties. In 1938, after a successful one man exhibition of oil paintings at Margaret McClean’s Gallery, he came to Sydney as the manager of Victory Publicity.

  During the war he was involved in the production of various government posters for propaganda, war loans etc. and when the war ended returned to advertising agencies. In 1946 he developed a series of self-contained strips, called The Bosun and Choclit, with a view to selling it as a newspaper strip. When Elmsdale Publications saw the samples they suggested the strips be converted to a comic book format and that it be published each month on a profit sharing basis. Needham accepted but because of his background in fine art, was embarrassed by the thought of drawing comic books - so the early issues were signed ‘George Robb’, a variation on his wife’s name.

  During its eight year run, The Bosun and Choclit was particularly popular and Needham became one of the few local artists who could afford to employ an assistant artist and a secretary to reply to all the mail received. The Bosun was a big, bluff Cockney whose bull-at-a-gate approach often landed the pair in hot water. Choclit was a small negro boy who, although he spoke in the best tradition of Little Black Sambo, was nobody’s fool and played the role of the more intelligent of the unusual pair. In the late ’fifties, Magazine Management commissioned Needham to draw another three issues of the comic which were published in colour but Choclit and his friends were no match for television.

  Needham was given the job of preparing the Felix comics but as this meant redrawing the entire comic from proofs supplied, most of this work was handled by his assistant, John Leahy. Leahy did such a tradesmanlike job on the redrawing that few realized that the strip was not reprinted from the original proofs.

  Late in 1947 Elmsdale introduced another title, Kokey Koala and his Magic Button, drawn by the prolific Noel Cook. One of the very few local comic books to be devoted to anthropomorphic animals, the comic followed the exploits of a koala bear whose magic button allowed him to do almost anything. It proved very popular with the younger readers and settled into a long run as a companion feature to The Bosun and Choclit. The company increased its reprints when it added a monthly Prince Valiant comic.

  Offset Publishing Company commenced their regular title, Hurricane Comics, in 1946 and settled on a format that contained both text and comics. The title soon became the home for Rich Cock’s Kid Gloves, an Australian boxer destined to become the Heavyweight Champion of the World. The comic also featured Lloyd Piper’s Steel Barr - Jungle Law-Man; Des Conrade’s Peter Fate series; John Egan’s Jim Dent - Ace Cameraman; and filler comics by Will Donald and Art Barton. Hurricane Comics continued the company’s tradition of running painted covers, both front and back, but the title only lasted about two years.

  Gem Comics was the title that Frank Johnson Publications chose as their continuing title, late in 1946. By this time many of the old guard had moved onto other fields and younger, less experienced artists had moved in to replace them. There was still Supa Dupa Man and Wocko the Beaut from Mercier, Shadowman from Broadley, and N. M., Sherlock (‘Lock’) contributed one-page fillers of his long-running navy character, Prendergast - but, broadly, Gem Comics belonged to the newer cartoonists.

  Peter Chapman, who was to become another prolific producer of comics, came to FJP soon after the war. In conjunction with his brother, Ross, he had contributed such comics as Jungle Patrol and Steve Conrad before attempting Rocky Ned on his own. All of the comics showed his inexperience. Eventually, Chapman settled on the character of Captain Jerry Winter, an independent cargo ship operator. When the character made the transition to Gem Comics the theme changed to science fiction and the series was spread through some two dozen issues. Chapman also drew The Vampire, a curvaceous costumed heroine for Gem Comics No. 16. When remainder copies of this comic were found in some Xmas stockings in 1949, it was cited in the Melbourne press as being typical of the ‘horror’ comics that were ‘luridly illustrated’. The report was typical of the sensational, short-lived outbursts against comics that surface in the press from time to time. In this case, it must have been a slow news day as one of the comics cited was Mercier’s The Case of the Haunted Piecrust!

  Chapman’s work improved as he drew Diana Hastings as well as covers for later issues of Gem Comics. It was Chapman who introduced Phil Belbin to the FJP ranks where Belbin polished his natural talents as a comic artist and became a regular contributor.

  Phillip Bertram Johnstone Belbin was born at Beecroft, NSW in 1925. As a small boy he showed a talent for art and drew many comics for his own amusement using the established comic characters from the newspapers. His first published work was a calendar for a metallurgist, drawn when he was thirteen years old. He spent two years at East Sydney Technical College and a year in the art department of the Sydney Sun before joining the Air Force in 1943. After serving overseas he returned to civilian life in March 1946 and began contributing to FJP five months later. While drawing comics for FJP he illustrated the H. C. Bryant editions of Treasure Island, Little Women and others before commencing a 30 year association with K. G. Murray. For this company he drew Peril on Venus for Climax Comics; illustrations for most of the KGM publications; the Jimmy Smart and Flash Cain comics for their pocket magazines; and many hundreds of cartoons. Some years after joining KGM Belbin stopped signing his work - and all of his cartoons appeared under a variety of pseudonyms including ‘Humph’ and ‘Duke’.

  As well as working for KGM he freelanced to other publishers and advertising agencies. Belbin became the first Australian artist to be commissioned to do illustrations for the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books and in 1974 his work received a Citation for Merit from the New York Society of Illustrators. Between acting as Art Editor for Gredown Pty Ltd and painting covers for many of their comics, he continues to freelance and, when time permits, devotes time to his passenger hauling railway that runs around the perimeter of his home.

  Belbin is another of the many artists with the desire and ability to draw comics who cannot accept the economics of the field. In 1969 he toyed with the idea of entering the newspaper strip field and produced five weeks of an adventure comic, The Earlybirds. The strip dealt with a team of flying, female troubleshooters and showed Belbin’s affinity for the medium. Most of the artwork from this comic eventually appeared as part of an Air Hawk adventure.

  Belbin’s best-known work for FJP was The Raven, a mysterious flyer ‘whose name strikes terror into the hearts of criminals all over the world’. The Raven made its first appearance in Triumph Comics in September 1946. Like many comic artists of the period, Belbin’s early work exhibited the influence of Raymond and Hogarth. Belbin drew Ace Bradley for the first issue of Gem Comics but this character soon gave way to additional stories of The Raven. By the time Gem Comics had ceased publication, early in 1950, Belbin had developed his own very distinctive style which stamped him as one of the more skilful adventure comic artists the field has produced.

  Gem Comics also contained The Adventures of Grant Butler by

Gerrard Lants; Skip Dolan by Jon Hill; Spencer and Kings of Speed by Angus Orchard; Kra, an unusual strip about an island savage by Bill Gill; as well as a strip by Lloyd Piper and Ian Alison. In 1947 another title, True Pirate Comics, was added to the FJP line. The comic purported to look at the ‘true’ stories behind Henry Morgan, Captain Kidd, William Dampier, and others. The artwork on this comic was shared by Belbin, Gill, Chapman, Orchard, and Alison. In essence, the comic was designed as competition to Middy Malone’s Magazine. A third title was added late in 1949 with the introduction of New Adventure Comics. The comic included First Light Fraser drawn by Chapman - an adaptation of a popular wartime radio serial. The comic had a short life as the entire line folded with the death of Frank Johnson.

  Walter A. Grainger became the licensing representative in Australia of Walt Disney Productions, Character Merchandising Division, in 1946. W. G. Publications published the first issue of Walt Disney Comics in October the same year and has continued to be published up until the present time, adding many other Disney titles along the way. The popularity of the Disney comics was such that in October 1952, with issue No. 73, coloured pages were introduced and the line remains the only local one in full colour.

  Ayers and James consolidated their comics under the titles Famous Yank Comics and Popular Yank Comics and, as well as their newspaper reprints, began using such comic book reprints as The Spirit, Kid Eternity and The Doll Man. Fitchett Brothers had become Southdown Press and added reprints of Kevin the Bold, Don Dixon, Drago and Freckles and his Friends to their range of titles.

  Larry S. Cleland was another who entered the comics field in 1946 with his reprints of the Fawcett line of comics. In the following years, Cleland reprinted all of the Fawcett titles but the star of his stable was Captain Marvel. Cleland arrived on the scene at a time when the industry was going through one of its phases of experimenting with comic formats, in an effort to reduce costs. The early issues of Whiz and Wow were 16 pages in a tabloid format with up to 24 panels per page. While the Cleland line adopted the standard comic book format at various stages, the company had more format changes than any other line. Apart from the Superman and Walt Disney comics, Captain Marvel and his crew were possibly the most popular comics in the country. Certainly, the robust sales gave Cleland no indication of what was in store for his company in the early ’fifties.

  Adelaide made another brief contribution to the field at the beginning of 1947. Pacific Pictorial Comics was published quarterly by A. Lyall Lush, a commercial artist. Lush was intent on producing a comic with a high moral tone ‘without introducing slangy stories inculcating wrong attitudes to crime, war, and people’. The lead feature was the didactic Discovery which examined the history of the peoples of the Pacific Ocean by means of text set below each comic frame. It was illustrated by a number of artists including Maxted and Lush. Rosamond Stokes drew Fun at Cockatoo Island, an animal tale set in the North Island ofNew Zealand, and Pogl and Namja, a story of ‘two copper skinned children’ who lived on a mission station in Central Australia. Stokes had an appealing way of drawing animals and Aborigine children but the storylines were too simplistic and below the interest of the average reader. Des Conrades, whose style was similar to that of the young Len Lawson, drew Professor Bluntbrain and Bobby Brent - The News Boy which were closer to the average comic, both in theme and execution. Pacific Pictorial survived for two years but at the finish was down to 20 pages including covers. Lush also attempted another moralistic-style comic, Capers - but like Pacific Pictorial, it had a short life.

  Also from Adelaide was The Atomic Cricket Ball - a one-shot title drawn by Frank Lee, a well-known sporting cartoonist. The comic was a humorous account of the 1946-47 Test Cricket series in which Lee caricatured prominent cricketers. A comic book with a sporting theme was a rarity.

  Late in 1947, Meteor Publications introduced Radio Comics. It was the first local comic to devote itself to the theme of radio and featured single-page comics about personalities such as Hal Lashwood, Roy Rene (‘Mo’), George Foster, George Wallace, Harry Moss and others. Based on the English Radio Fun, a potentially good idea was spoiled by bland artwork. Most of the early comics were by Jeff Wilkinson (‘Wilky’) and Royce Bradford (‘Brad’) whose humorous styles were very similar. When the artwork was assumed by Cyril Tighe the quality of the comic dropped dramatically - yet the title survived into its second year. Its companion publications were Film Comics and The Phantom Knight. The latter was a super-hero comic. Originally drawn by Tighe, it passed into the hands of Don Ryan after a handful of issues. Film Comics presented adaptations of current films but was not in the same class as the short-lived Trailer Comics, published by Allied Authors and Artists. While some of the artists involved produced higher quality work for other publishers, the comics from Meteor Publications were among the poorest published in this country.

  Pyramid Publications entered the field in 1948 and published a mixture of local and overseas material. Their early Manhunter Comics contained reprints of The Spirit, Rusty Ryan, Betty Bates and Swing Sisson but found space for comics by John Jensen and Peter James. James drew a number of stories about Panther Man, which used large feature panels to highlight various pages. Artistically, the series represented some of the best of James’ comic work. Later the Manhunter strip was redrawn by an unknown local artist and the companion features included a Pete Christie series by Horak.

  For Pyramid, Horak created a costumed hero, Jet Fury, who looked like his Skyman character. Jet Fury had originally appeared as a back-up feature in Michael Chance Comics but soon took over the title and the numbering sequence. The company published Black X and Scorchy Smith as well as reprinting many of Will Donald’s old comics from NSW Bookstall. With so many companies publishing comics and magazines, NSW Bookstall had plenty of material to fill their outlets and left the area of comic publishing.

  Frew Publications produced the first issue of The Phantom in September 1948. Published in landscape format, the comic was subtitled Enter the Phantom and was not numbered - in fact, numbering did not commence until the third issue. For the first seven years the comic was published monthly, then it went through a convoluted tri-weekly/monthly schedule before becoming a fortnightly publication early in 1960. From that time The Phantom has continued to appear every two weeks, amassing an astronomical number of issues. Frew published Popeye in March 1949 an& in October that year added its first local title, The Phantom Ranger. The concept was a blatant steal from The Lone Ranger. The first 19 issues were the work of Wilkinson after which Chapman took over the art and continued to draw the character until the early ’sixties. The Phantom Ranger became a radio serial in 1952; cowboy suits bearing the character’s name were sold through large department stores in most states; and the comic was reprinted in South America. The popularity of the comic was to be responsible for Frew introducing other locally drawn comics over the next few years.

  Yarmak - The Jungle King was first published by Young’s Merchandising in November 1949. A Tarzan imitation, the comic was pencilled by Stan Pitt and inked at various stages by Frank and Jimmy Ashley and Paul Wheelahan - while the stories were written by Frank Ashley or Reg Pitt. With so many people involved in its production it is not surprising that the quality of the comic varied from issue to issue. The comic hit its peak late in 1951 when Reg Pitt wrote a trilogy of stories based on the pyramids erected by Harkuf of Elephantine, with two of the stories being inked by Pitt. While the first issue contained a Silver Starr story, the regular back-up feature was another tree-swinger, Chandor, drawn by Horak. Yarmak ran until June 1952 and immediately went into reprints for some years.

  There is no way of knowing the exact number of comic titles that were available at the end of the ’forties. Locally drawn comics would have totalled about 30 titles; there were dozens of English titles; and even one from New Zealand, Supreme Feature Comics. But most titles were reprints of US material. According to figures of the Australian Journalists Association quoted in Parliament there had been four syndicated comic titles published in 1945; by 1947 the number had risen to 23; and by 1948 there were some 37-8 such titles. With a conservative estimate of 25-30 comic titles coming onto the market each week, it was clear that the supply exceeded the demand.

 

 

CHAPTER TWELVE THE UPTIGHT 'FIFTIES

 

Ten years after the beginnings of the indigenous comic book industry the pioneer companies were missing - NSW Bookstall, Frank Johnson Publications, Offset Printing Company and Hoffmann had all left or were in the process of leaving the field. The stands were packed with reprint titles with new comics being added almost every month. Everyone, it seemed, wanted a share of this market including John Fairfax and Sons who printed some coloured comics containing Tom Flynn and Billy Koala from the Sunday Herald. Comic annuals of Bluey and Curley and Wally and the Major were published in most states. Apparently the State Rights covering newspaper reproduction of these strips also covered comic book reprint rights. And while the cover for each comic was the same in each state both the format and the contents varied.

  The industry encountered its first major economic problem in 1951 when the soaring cost of newsprint forced most publishers to increase their cover price by 25 per cent to 8d. Newsprint prices had climbed steadily since the end of the war and the industry had tried to retain the same selling price by searching for cheaper production methods and reducing page counts. But they were putting off the inevitable so that when the increase was forced on them it was substantial. By 1954 most companies had increased their price to 9d. and by 1956 it had reached 1s. An increase of 100 per cent in five years.

  Invincible Press gained from the closure of Smith’s Weekly when it was able to sign Virgil Reilly to draw comic books for them. Virgil, as he usually signed his work, had been one of the outstanding cartoonists at Smith’s where he had gained some fame for his Virgil Girl - a local equivalent of the Gibson Girl. Virgil’s first comic, Silver Flash and his Frogmen, was released in June 1950 and continued to appear monthly until the middle ’fifties when it transferred to Calvert Publishing, appearing as Captain Silver Flash. Silver Flash was a science fiction tale with a modem day setting. The hero, along with his friend Guns, Frogface, and Tadpole fought the forces of evil from their submarine, The Sea Wolf, based in the Sargasso Sea. During their adventures they encountered the villainous Vulcan, Queen of the Lizardmen, Dr Clytron, Captain Menace, Ho Fang, sabre-tooth tigers, invaders from outer space, and other hazards. Later, when Silver Flash had proved its popularity, Invincible Press published a series of Dan Eagle Comics by Moira Bertram.

  At the same time as he was starting on Silver Flash, Virgil created another character for Ayers and James, The Invisible Avenger - an unseen villain who menaces civilization. Though it contained some of his best comic art, Virgil was forced to relinquish the title to Peter Chapman, due to pressure of work. Starting in November 1950, Virgil must have become one of the busiest and most prolific comic artists in the country. As well as drawing Silver Flash he commenced drawing ‘Punch’ Perkins of the Fighting Fleet for Ayers and James Red Circle Series. The comic went through a series of name changes (e.g. Rocket Squadron, Navy Combat) but ran up until 1954 - which meant that Virgil was drawing up to 48 pages of comic per month. The ‘Punch’ Perkins stories looked at Australia being attacked by the strato- platform of Admiral Mong, leader of the Mongoloid invasion fleet. The threat of the Yellow Peril was still alive and well. When ‘Punch’ Perkins dropped out of the series, Virgil began illustrating wartime naval tales - The Battle of the Coral Sea, The Jervis Bay Goes Down etc. Whichever way you looked at it, the comics were re-fighting World War II (particularly those battles against Japan) with an eye towards capitalizing on the Korean war.

  Young’s Merchandising published Lloyd Piper’s Steel Barr and The Phantom Man comic in the middle of 1950. As with its appearance in Hurricane Comics, the comic covered the adventures of a district commissioner in the jungle. In the same comic was a back-up feature. Char Chapman - The Phantom of the East drawn by Kevan Hardacre. Patterned on Lee Falk’s The Phantom, Char Chapman was slickly drawn and full of action and its popularity saw the character given his own comic book in 1951. Char Chapman lasted less than two dozen issues but during that time Hardacre showed a keen understanding of the mechanics of comics. Hardacre had previously drawn a few Trig Matson comics for Calvert in the late ’forties when that character had been given his own comic book after appearing in Kayo Comics.

  Following the success of The Phantom Ranger Frew Publications introduced The Shadow in May 1950 and continued to publish the title until the middle ’sixties. In portraying Jimmy Gray as a seemingly bored millionaire who is really The Shadow, the comic vied with The Phantom Ranger for its lack of originality. Again, Wilkinson drew the early issues but Chapman handled the art chores after the first dozen issues. In August 1954, the company published their most blatant copy of an existing character in the form of Sir Falcon. It used every aspect of The Phantom except the name - but as Frew were also the publishers of The Phantom there was no chance of any plagiarism suit.

  As well as drawing three of Frew’s main titles, Chapman also drew a number of short-lived titles which included The Green Skeleton, Suicide Squad, Scoop Scott and Go-Bal - King of the Jungle. Wilkinson handled such titles as Planetman and Kid Champion while Piper drew Kalar the Cave-Man for Super Yank Comics. The standard of Frew’s local comics improved dramatically late in 1958 when they retained John Dixon to produce 12 issues of Catman Comics. Originally an American comic book character dating back to 1940, Catman had been drawn under licence and published by Frew in their Super Yank title during 1951-2. With superior artwork and stronger storylines, Dixon moulded the character into Frew’s best comic publication. Page Publications (Yaffa Syndicate) reprinted the Dixon version of Catman in the late ’sixties.

  New Century Press started their range of comics by publishing Monty Wedd’s Captain Justice in December 1950. Captain Justice had been shanghaied aboard a sailing ship in the last series that appeared in Fatty Finn’s Comics and this new series covered his adventures in America as he roamed the Santa Fe Trail, Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Tombstone. This series ran for 23 issues and was the last time the character was seen with a full mask covering his face. When the censorship board of Gordon and Gotch came into operation in 1954, they imposed severe restrictions on locally published comics and insisted that Captain Justice’s mask be modified. The character made his first appearance in a Zorro-like mask when Calvert Publishing decided to reprint the New Century Press series in 1955.

  Southdown Press became briefly involved with locally produced comics during the 1952-4 period. Sky Demons No. 1 resulted from a comic offered to Southdown on approval by the 24-year-old Norman Clifford. Featuring a Korean war theme, the sales of the comic surprised the publishers. On comic books they normally had a print run of 33 000 copies and allowed for about one-third returns. The returns on Clifford’s comic was 7 per cent. He was quickly signed up to produce more comics at the rate of £100 per 28-page comic and £10 per cover. At the time, Clifford had been earning £19 per week. His other titles for Southdown included Dare Devil Comics, Billy Battle, and Thrilling Space Adventures. With his war comics, Clifford paid a great deal of attention to details on planes, tanks, guns and when the stories called for German soldiers to converse they spoke in German. Also drawing comics for Southdown was Terry Murphy whose work appeared in Sky Hawk and Wonder Wings. Murphy’s work was quite innovative combining the use of half tones with the feature panels that had been favoured by Peter James. Southdown’s local titles lingered briefly after Buck Rogers had finished and then the entire comic line was dropped.

  The Korean War had a decided effect on the contents of local comics. During World War II only a small percentage of comic pages were devoted to war stories with more emphasis being placed on escapist reading. With the Korean war and the McCarthy era, local comics were full of anti-communist stories. Many of these comics were reprints of US comic books - but a fair share of locally drawn comics reflected the same attitudes as well as devoting a lot of space to war stories. Both Tim Valour (who was then Commander of the Tigerhawk Squadron) and The Crimson Comet, for example, spent a lot of time fighting the ‘Reds’.

  Published by Beaconsfield Productions, the first issue of The Silver Jacket appeared in October 1953. The magazine, with its striking coloured covers edged in silver, was an attempt to rekindle interest in a boys’ paper-style of publication with the result that the bulk of its contents was text stories or features. The first issue contained the beginning of Captain W. E. Johns’ Biggies Works It Out and the start of a series of Carcroft School yams written by Frank Richards. It was apparent that the stories were really about Greyfriars though Richards could not use them for copyright reasons. Silver Jacket's editor and publisher, Arthur Gorfain, was a great admirer of Richards’ school stories and travelled to England especially to get Richards to write the series. Other articles, many written by Michael Hervey, told of the sinking of the Titanic, the Marie Celeste, the Rosetta Stone, ‘Pelorus Jack’ and other facets of popular history. The magazine also contained poetry by Lawson, Dennis, Patterson and Mackellar; a Trading Post section; how-to-do-it pages; jokes and competition pages.

  The bulk of Silver Jacket's, comic work was drawn by John L. Curtis who also painted most of the covers. A few years earlier, Curtis had drawn a series of Edgar Wallace Comics and Larry Kent (I Hate Crime) comics for Young’s Merchandising but he had saved his best work for Silver Jacket. Mainly restricted to two-page stories, Curtis seldom had the opportunity to use speech balloons as he covered such factual subjects as the Bengal Lancers, Alexander the Great, the Pony Express, Custer’s Last Stand, and the Eureka Stockade. They were didactic comics - but particularly well done. The only genuine comic came from George Roots who drew the humorous adventures of a seaman, Muscles Cockle, which was a great favourite with the readers.

  In an early editorial, Gorfain advised readers that he had received ‘over 2000 letters within the first three weeks of Silver Jacket going on

sale’. After an encouraging beginning sales began to level out. The magazine encountered some distribution problems and the Is. cover price, in a period when comics were 8d. and 9d., must have been something of an impediment to sales. In January 1956 the magazine went to a fortnightly schedule; reprints of the US comics Red Eagle and Gabby Hayes were introduced. In February the magazine was reduced from 32 to 24 pages. With the issue of 21 May 1956 (Vol. 4, No. 38), Gorfain announced that Silver Jacket was finished - there weren’t enough buyers to keep the magazine viable. At its peak, Silver Jacket was selling 35 000 copies per issue in Australia and 7000 through an English distributor.

  Arthur Gorfain was born at Sydney in 1912 and educated at Tamworth and Quirindi. He spent the first few years of his working life in country movie theatres where he learned the first rudiments of syndication, noting how films went from town to town making money for the distributor and the producer. Gorfain went to Sydney in 1933 and worked for seven years in the offices of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, booking films all over the country. He joined the Air Force in 1940 and emerged as a Flying Officer. Late in 1945 he started Press Feature Service Pty Ltd, selling crosswords, columns, short stories, photo stories and comics. He travelled overseas and collected a number of agencies - The Daily Express, The Daily Mail, London Punch, Curtis Brown - and became the Australian representative for many overseas firms.

  In the early ’sixties Gorfain syndicated Bob Raymond’s very successful Frontiers of Science which appeared all over Australia, in Europe, South America, and in 120 US newspapers. Initially drawn by Andrea Bresciani, the feature started as a normal comic strip but within weeks adopted the illustrated text-book format, which takes it outside of the concern of this book. Press Feature Service employed George Roots, John Curtis, Royce Bradford and other artists as well as handling freelance material by Stan Pitt and ‘Camac’. It was for this syndicate that Roots created his Wilbur strip which ran in a number of papers, including the Brisbane Telegraph, as well as appearing in comic books. Bradford devised Cole Steele as a newspaper adventure strip but had to be contented to see it published as a comic book by Wollumbin Press, who also published Fredric Bates’ Speck Ryan Adventure Comic. After Silver Jacket, Gorfain continued in the syndication business until 1963 when he sold the company to Alan Foley Pty Ltd - the company which handles the overseas distribution of Air Hawk. Gorfain went into the motel business where he built up a large chain of motels around the country.

  In its hey-day, Silver Jacket was an excellent magazine and is remembered with considerable affection by its readers of the time. Yet there is no escaping the fact that it used a format that had become anachronistic. Like most of the English boys’ papers of the period, the publishers of Silver Jacket must have sensed that the day of the all-text paper had passed and made some concessions towards the inclusion of comics - but not enough.

  Similar in format to Silver Jacket was The Australian Chucklers’ Weekly which first appeared in April 1954. Chucklers’ Weekly was a spin-off from the popularity of the children’s magazine section in the Sunday Telegraph's comic section run by Charlie Chuckles. Commencing at 6d. and gradually increasing to Is. per copy over its six year run, the magazine devoted most of its pages to fiction stories, articles, puzzles, pin-ups, record reviews and jokes. It averaged 12 pages of comics each issue but the majority of these pages used imported material. However, there were contributions by two Australian comic artists of note. During 1957 Eric Jolliffe contributed his delightful Callaghan’s Kids in a series of two-page comics. The comic combined the humour of Saltbush Bill and Witchetty’s Tribe as the misadventures of the Callaghans were played out against the distinctive Jolliffe backdrops of Aborigines, gnarled gums, bark humpies, lean-to shanties, crocodiles and mangy dogs. As well as contributing a two-page series of the perennial Captain Justice, Monty Wedd also drew another double-page series, King Comet, a space adventure.

  Through June 1954 the comics industry found itself under public scrutiny as newspapers carried accounts of the trial of Len Lawson for rape and the judge’s subsequent sentence of death. The newspapers highlighted the fact that Lawson was a comic artist who drew comics containing violence that ‘frequently depicted bosomy heroines’. The newly formed Queensland Literature Board of Review promptly banned The Lone Avenger in August - which seemed to be an emotional reaction to Lawson’s crime rather than anything inherent in the comic.

  After Lawson’s sentence was commuted to 14 years imprisonment, he asked to be allowed to continue to draw comics from prison to support his wife and children. When the request was denied the comic was passed on to Les Such.

  The censorship imposed by Gordon and Gotch was similar to moves which saw the establishment of the Comics Code Authority in the US. While the distributors had no desire to act as censors or dictate what could or could not be published, the step was a matter of economics. During the first nine months of its operation, bans by the Queensland body stopped the distribution of some 45 publications. About one-third of those publications were comics which included such titles as Famous Yank, Love Illustrated, Fight, War Heroes, Atomic Attack, The United States Marines, Soldier and Anti-Crime Squad (Kerry Drake). Also, the distributors were worried about noises being made by other states about proceeding along the same lines as Queensland. The censorship was instituted as a means of self-preservation.

  As 1953 commenced, Larry S. Cleland was sitting on top of the world with his reprint line of the Fawcett super-heroes and the western comics including Monte Hale, Rocky Land and Gabby Hayes. Before the year was out the bottom had fallen out of his business. Since the early ’forties, Fawcett had been fighting a protracted law suit brought by National Periodical Publications on the grounds that Captain

Marvel was a copy of Superman. During 1953, because they felt that the super-hero boom had run its course, Fawcett decided that as part of an out of court settlement they would cease publishing Captain Marvel and his offspring and closed their comic line. If Cleland was to stay in the comic business he had no real alternative but to seek other comic book characters. In retrospect, he could have adopted the approach used by L. Miller and Sons, the English publisher of the Fawcett line of comics. When the Fawcett decision became known they simply arranged for the comics to be drawn in England; changed the name of Captain Marvel to Marvelman; altered the magic word from ‘Shazam!’ to ‘Kimota!’; and continued to publish the comic (along with Young Marvelman) until 1963.

  Cleland decided to look for local material and one comic that eventuated was Little Trimmer Comics, a small 25cm x 22cm, 28-page book that sold for 6d. The comic contained Avian Tempest, a flying adventurer; Lieutenant Lew Mason, a spaceman; Marcus Varius, a centurion in the days of Julius Caesar; and humorous filler strips including Wacky Potter and LouBlue - The Blunder Bloke. The comic was designed to look like one of the Fawcett group and while none of the strips were signed most of the realistic strips appear to have been produced by the Eric Porter Studio. Eventually, Little Trimmer expanded its dimensions, reduced its page count, increased its price to 8d. and featured individual characters, such as Avian Tempest, for the whole comic.

  Atlas published Horak’s The Mask - The Man of Many Faces early in 1954. The mysterious figure that emerged from nowhere to strike fear into the hearts of criminals only lasted a handful of issues. It was banned in Queensland at the same time as The Lone Avenger.

  Later in 1954, Cleland produced the first issue of Steven Carlisle - a comic completely drawn in half tone by Keith Chatto. Steven Carlisle was a famous novelist who had dedicated his private life to fighting crime. Possibly the first adult comic produced in Australia, the virile storylines and realistic drawings (particularly those featuring girls with ample cleavage or posing semi-nude) soon brought the comic under fire from the protectors of public morals. Gordon and Gotch were concerned that a story on the evils of drug running might be banned in Queensland - but it wasn’t. When Chatto was forced to redraw sections and alter the storylines of the last two issues, he decided he would drop the comic rather than reduce it to a run-of-the-mill strip. Cleland agreed.

  Judged by present day standards, Steven Carlisle was comparatively tame fare - but in the ’fifties it was a comic ahead of its time. It tried to expand the technical horizons of the medium by going beyond line drawings; it aimed at an audience older than the average comic reader; and it tried to reflect life in a straight forward manner. Like many innovative ideas, it was stifled in its infancy. Cleland Publishing did not contribute a great deal towards encouraging locally drawn comics but they deserve to be remembered for their part in the Steven Carlisle experiment.

  Monty Wedd encountered his first problems with the censors when he created The Scorpion for Alstan Publications (formerly Elmsdale). The comic made its first appearance in September 1954 and was an immediate best-seller. Its sales approached 100 000 copies per issue which was outstanding for a locally drawn comic and even more surprising at a time when local titles were receiving a severe buffeting from the reprints. The Scorpion (‘Master Criminal and Escapologist’) was a likable rogue involved in a series of worldwide adventures. While he always managed to escape the clutches of justice in the last few panels, the broad theme was that crime did not pay. Obviously, it was a formula that appealed to many readers.

  The comic first encountered censorship problems in the sixth issue. From a page showing The Scorpion being attacked by a knife- wielding assailant the knife was painted out of the attacker’s hand. This affected six out of the seven panels and left the hero in the embarrassing position of only being menaced by a clenched fist! Starting in 1954, other comics had the guns painted out of the cowboys’ hands - and Indians were dropping in their tracks because the cowboys were pointing fingers at them. On one occasion, Stan Pitt was forced to replace a panel in his Silver Starr comic for Cleveland Press because the censor felt that the villain was holding the heroine in a much too suggestive and provocative manner.

  The biggest problem for The Scorpion came in March 1955 when it was banned in Queensland. In the ninth issue, the editor devoted a full page to the banning - complaining that no reason had been given; no police action had been taken; and that to discover the reason he would have to take the matter to court. He also announced that there would be no further issues as, while the ban only covered Queensland, Gordon and Gotch had refused to distribute it in other states.

  In December 1955, Young’s Merchandising published Paul Wheelahan’s Davy Crocket - Frontier Scout, which ran for two years. Initially, the comic was on a profit-sharing basis and Wheelahan received £250 for the first issue. Ultimately, he accepted £100 per 23-page comic, paid on delivery rather than waiting many months for final accounting. Wheelahan’s best-known comic, The Panther, commenced in May 1957 and lasted till June 1963 after 73 issues. At the finish, it was the only locally drawn comic being published monthly - Frew’s local comics having gone to reprints.

  The Panther was another comic that capitalized on the immense popularity of The Phantom with Australian readers. As a small boy, The Panther was left abandoned in the Congo after his parents had been killed by Mayzak warriors. He was adopted by a band of panthers and as he grew to manhood he was initiated into a native tribe. Because his pale skin hindered him in hunting and stalking, he took to wearing a fitted suit of panther skins to make him as dark as his fellow tribesmen. While the early stories were set in the Congo, the character soon became involved in adventures all over the world.

  Paul Wheelahan was born at Bombala, NSW in 1930, the son of a mounted policeman. He completed his education in Goulburn and Muswellbrook and came to Sydney in 1947 to find work and locate Stan Pitt. Wheelahan had been entranced by Pitt’s Silver Starr and wanted to meet the creator. The pair became friends and during 1949-50 Pitt gave Wheelahan work in inking sections of Yarmak and Captain Power. Around the same period he began doing various art jobs for H. John Edwards including covers for the Fiction House line of reprints and filler comics.

  Unable to earn a full-time living from art, Wheelahan went to Armidale to work as a powder monkey. During his absence, Edwards published a 10-page Steve Ashley comic that Wheelahan had drawn much earlier. Seeing the work in print re-awakened his artistic ambitions and in 1954 he returned to Sydney to work as a foundry labourer and process worker while doing freelance covers for Edwards along with another two Steve Ashley comics. In 1955 he went to Young’s Merchandising and started his career as a full-time comic artist. As well as Davy Crocket and The Panther, he drew 10 issues of The Raven commencing in July 1962. Wheelahan was developing an interesting Cain vs Abel theme in The Raven when, after the death of Charles Young, the company was closed.

  Wheelahan produced his best comic art for two issues of Rex Strong, a space patrol commander who looked very much like the film actor John Derek, published by Magazine Management (a successor to Ayers and James) in 1960. The following year he developed both daily and Sunday versions of a newspaper strip based on Arthur Upfield’s Napoleon Bonaparte but the strip failed to be syndicated.

  A self-taught artist, Wheelahan’s style was sparse, devoid of un-needed detail and similar to the US comic artist Steve Ditko. The strength of Wheelahan’s comics lay in his storylines. When Young’s Merchandising folded, Wheelahan went to Cleveland Press as a writer of western novels where, under such names as ‘Brett McKinley’ and ‘Emerson Dodge’, he has written some 500 novels.

  Cleveland Press were publishers of western, detective, and romance paperbacks when they decided to enter the comic publishing field late in 1955. Against the advice of his fellow publishers the owner of Cleveland Press, Jack Atkins, was determined to have a comic on the market bearing his company’s name. He acquired the rights to a radio serial, The Twilight Ranger, which had been written by Michael Noonan and then asked Chatto to illustrate it. The first issue of the comic appeared in October bearing a full-colour half tone cover illustration and costing 9d. The comic was tied in with a series of competitions that offered such prizes as interstate air trips, bicycles, cameras and tennis racquets. It was an impressive debut for the masked cowboy who was derivative of a number of US comics. Because of the high overheads, the comic did not make money and Atkins gambled with the seventh issue by increasing the price to Is. and making it full-colour throughout. The comic failed, though an eighth story was published at a later date.

  Determined to stay in the comics field, Atkins asked Chatto to create another character which resulted in another cowboy comic, El Lobo - The Man from Nowhere. Again with a full-colour half tone cover, El Lobo first appeared late in 1956 and ran through 23 issues. The comic was also responsible for introducing the Cleveland trademark, King Size Comics. Also in the late ’sixties Cleveland published Clancy of the Overflow drawn by Hal English. Although the lively outback adventures of Clancy showed English at his best, the title lasted less than half a dozen issues. Deciding to use reprint material, Cleveland introduced their 100-page King Size Comics in 1956. As well as reprinting such material as Frank Frazetta’s Johnny Comet, there were comics from the E. C. New Direction list, Yager’s Buck Rogers and a number of local comics. New Silver Starr comics were drawn to add to the reprints of those that had been previously published by Young’s Merchandising as well as a mixture of new stories and reprints of Twilight Ranger, Clancy, and El Lobo. King Size Comics lasted until late in 1959.

  Cleveland Press also published a pocketbook-size Silhouette series of western, romance and war comics. Many of the covers were drawn by Pitt and the bulk of the comics were drawn by Chatto, English and Wilkinson. One of the last major publishers to attempt to foster original comics, the odds were against Cleveland Press from the beginning. They entered the field just prior to the advent of television and only a few years before the lifting of Import Restrictions would see the market swamped with US comic books.

  Horwitz Publications had reprinted US comics from the early ’fifties but produced very little in the way of local comics until late in the decade. Following similar moves in the US and, perhaps, sensing the Queensland problem, Horwitz issued a Code of Publishing Ethics to all their editors, artists and authors in March 1954. The Code had a particular reference to comics and spelled out the details of what could not be done. Plots were to be told simply in a way not to confuse even the youngest reader as to motive; sex was out in any shape or form; grammar had to be faultless; blasphemy, reference to the Deity, and

profanity or suggested profanity was forbidden (e.g. ‘What the    ?’

and ‘Holy Cow!’); at no time could a hero break any law, no matter how minor. Like its US counterparts, Horwitz’s Code was aimed at producing pap for the lowest common denominator - but obviously the US Code wasn’t tight enough for Queensland which banned all issues of Horwitz’s reprint, T-Man, in June 1956.

  Horwitz were large publishers of war, western, and crime comics, including Navy Combat, Navy Action, Frogman, Fast Gun, Wyatt Earp and Buffalo Bill. Most of the covers were the work of Maurice Bramley who also contributed filler comics to the war and western titles. A former staff artist with Associated Press, Bramley was a meticulous draftsman whose detailed pen work and realistic drawings were a cut above many of the illustrators in the field. In February 1958, Horwitz published the first Carter Brown Comics drawn by C. E. Drury. Ranging between 56 and 64 pages and selling for 2s. the comics were adaptations of the popular Carter Brown novels which were also published by Horwitz. Six of these novels were banned in Queensland in 1960 and another in 1961. At a time when reprint comics contained 100 pages for 2sCarter Brown Comics didn’t last very long despite being well-illustrated. Another of their novel adaptations, Marc Brody, had a similar fate. The comic was the work of Royce Bradford who also drew The Cloak stories for Tales of Mystery Comics.

  Early in 1959, John Dixon created The Phantom Commando series for Horwitz but had to abandon the character after three issues to concentrate on Air Hawk. With Dixon’s blessings the comic was taken over by Bramley who continued to draw it on an irregular schedule until 1965. Bramley soon took the character away from the adventure style background conceived by Dixon and brought the comic into line with the real-life wars and battles being featured in other Horwitz war comics. Again, Bramley excelled with his pen portraits of prominent war personalities.

  Horwitz’s next venture into the field of locally-drawn comics appears to have been Don Christy of the RAN which was first published in November 1959. Don Christy, which was signed ‘REG’, lasted until 1961. Commencing in June 1962 the company published three reprints of Air Hawk and followed that in January 1963 with the first of five Captain Justice comics - reprints of the material that had appeared in Woman’s Day. Horwitz continued with their war titles, commenced a series of reprints of the Marvel characters in 1965, and left the field the following year.

  By the late ’fifties many publishers of original material had left the field, and others followed when Import Restrictions were lifted in 1959. Many of the publishers of reprint material that had forced most of the local comics off the market now found themselves under threat: other companies were importing the original comics and magazines from the US. In the case of comics, the buyer had a choice of an Australian comic in black and white, reprinting stories some years old for the price of Is. or the more recent US comics in full-colour with slick covers for the same price. It was an unequal race.

  The ’fifties was the most troublesome period the local comics industry encountered in its short history. With the Consumer Price Index increasing by 75 per cent between 1949 and 1959, the industry had to face up to enormous increases in costs. The Lawson affair along with newspaper reports on the more sensational aspects of some US comics gave the industry a bad press and the bannings and introduction of censorship boards that followed also set local publishers back on their heels. They had hardly come to grips with the problems when they encountered the effects of television on reading habits. And while they were battling for survival the doors were thrown open to imported material. Some companies held on - but the simple fact was that the locally-drawn comic industry was dead. Perhaps it wasn’t quite ready to lie down - but it had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana skin. It was just a matter of time.

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN RUNNING HARD TO STAND STILL

 

Possibly the only new comic of the ’sixties was the K. G. Murray version of Smoky Dawson, which ran for about a year. Albert De Vine had originally drawn Smoky Dawson as a daily strip for the Sydney Sun in the late ’fifties and, when the comic finished, transferred the character to the comic books. Later issues were drawn by Andrea Bresciani who had come from Italy, where he had gained a reputation for his work on the Tony Falco comic in 1948-9.

  What was left of the local industry only lingered for a short time. The Panther, urging readers not to miss the next issue containing Voyage to Damara, finished in 1963. The last original issue of The Phantom Commando appeared in 1965 and then went into reprints - and with it went the link to the chain of 25 years continuous publication of comics featuring local material. Other indigenous titles published in the years that followed were sporadic and usually only lasted a few issues.

  Magazine Management obtained the rights to the Fauna Production television series, Skippy, and approached Keith Chatto to draw a comic series. After Chatto had spent considerable time photographing on location, the first issue appeared in April 1970. It was a particularly well-done adaptation - but after the sixth issue, drawn by A. Cubi, appeared in July 1971 the comic was halted. The publishers had made a mistake in not marketing such a comic a few years earlier when Skippy was at its peak in popularity, instead waiting until it was about to join the re-runs.

  Strange Tales was a tabloid-size comic released in December 1974 which featured as its leading character an amoral pig called Captain Goodvibes. Drawn by Tony Edwards, the grass-smoking, antiestablishment Good vibes had first appeared in a surfing magazine, Tracks, in 1973 and had become something of a cult figure, Although Goodvibes contained considerably more lines and cross hatching than the American Wonder Warthog, it was very much from the same mould as Gilbert Shelton’s character.

  Late in 1975, Gerald Carr published the first issue of his Vampire! comics. With all of its 52 pages drawn by Carr, the comic follows the trend in horror tales set in vogue by Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. Because of his irregular publication schedule, it is difficult to know if his super-hero title, Brainmaster & Vixen, is a regular publication. As the only publisher of local material it is to be hoped that he will encourage local contributors rather than reprinting overseas material like his competitors.

  The influx of US comic books was responsible for involving many Australian readers in various facets of a loose-knit movement known as comics fandom. This group of enthusiasts emerged following the revival of comic heroes from the ’forties in the comics of National Periodical Publications (usually referred to as ‘DC’) from 1957 onwards. The letter sections of the comics made it clear that many adults were still interested in comics, though much of their interest was based on nostalgia. Borrowing on the traditions and jargon of the well-established science fiction fandom, two comic fans published a comics fanzine in March 1961. The editors of Alter Ego were Dr Jerry Bails of Michigan University and a young schoolteacher, Roy Thomas, who was later to become a writer, editor, and creative force at Marvel Comics. In March Don Thompson published the first issue of Comic Art; in September Bails published The Comicollector, a fanzine devoted to buying, selling, and trading comics; and in October Bails sent out the first issue of On The Drawing Board (later The Comic Reader) which gave background details on forthcoming comic releases.

  By the end of 1962 there were many comic fanzines available including the first from outside the US - The Komix, published by John Wright in South Africa. The letter pages of DC and Marvel, in particular, were responsible for bringing together many fans throughout the world. The first Australian ‘comiczine’, Down Under, was published in Sydney by John Ryan in December 1964. In the 40-page, spirit-duplicated publication, Ryan was assisted by John Brosnan of Perth and Chris Collier of Brisbane. In the early years, comic fans tended to be separated by large distances and most contacts were carried out by mail. Gradually, other low-circulation fanzines followed, including Gary Mason’s Bramston, Noel Kerr’s Somerset Gazette (comics and science fiction) and, more recently, John and Stephen Corneille’s The Australian Comic Collector. Commencing in 1977, Colin Wilson published Strips from New Zealand. A very professionally presented publication, Strips examines the comic field in Australasia, Europe and America as well as publishing the work of aspiring comic strip artists from Australia and New Zealand.

  As comics fandom has grown, so the interests have diversified. Some fans have a general interest in comic books while others specialise in certain periods or titles; others are interested only in newspaper strips or comics from foreign countries; still others prefer to contribute to, or publish, fanzines - often with an eye towards a career in comics. And since Roy Thomas broke into the professional ranks the comics industry has drawn many of its artists and writers from fandom.

  The Franco-Belgian group represents the major comic book industry outside of the US and has been responsible for producing some of the most innovative comics of the last decade. Such titles as Spirou, Pilote, Pif, Tin Tin were designed to appeal to adults as well as younger readers. Some, like Metal Hurlant are designed exclusively for adults and this title is reprinted in the US as Heavy Metal by the publishers of National Lampoon. The stylish renderings of the cartoonists from this group have made an impact on US artists and publishers and result from their development proceeding with a minimum of outside influence since 1949. That year a law on publications for young people limited imports of American comic strips and provided the French creators with an opportunity to express themselves. As an example of the success of the home-grown French comic, one does not have to look beyond Rene Goscinny’s and Albert Uderzo’s Asterix. The first 24 albums of this character have sold over 100 million copies and have been translated into something like 20 languages.

  The future for Australian drawn comic books continues to look bleak. Only Carr’s line of comics presents even the glimmer of a hope but, to date, the only local work he has published has been his own. Any revival of a local comics industry would seem to depend on some sort of legislation restricting the amount of imported material or the emergence of a publisher with an adventurous spirit and substantial financial backing. The past record of government aid suggest that it is highly unlikely that any assistance would be forthcoming.

  An outright ban on imported comic material is neither feasible nor desirable - but consideration should be given to a quota system that will allow for the development of locally-drawn comics. The system which guarantees an increasing percentage of locally produced television programmes (whatever its deficiencies) has not only provided work for Australian artists and technicians but has increased the quality of the product, reflected something of the Australian experience, and made the industry less dependent on outside sources. A similar arrangement could assist in rejuvenating the local comic industry and provide an excellent training ground for our black and white artists of the future. A glance at those who participated in the comic book field during the ’forties and ’fifties clearly shows that many artists used comic books to learn the basics of their craft and as a stepping stone to move into other areas of art. If we are to retain our worldwide reputation of producing outstanding black and white artists, some thought must be given to providing a practical training ground for replacement artists.

  Over the years, it has been impossible to obtain accurate figures on the quantities of comics distributed in Australia in a given period. Most publishers and distributors have shown a reluctance or inability to provide such details even though it is difficult to imagine that some form of bulk figures are not available. In 1973 one comic reseller claimed to be selling 400 comics per week while Magazine Management were importing more than 5 million comics each year from America and Europe. Whatever the total figure it would be substantial and indicative of a continuing (and maybe increasing?) interest in comics by readers of all ages.

  The much-maligned comic book has survived its many detractors and is attracting more artists, writers, and editors interested in presenting work not geared to the lowest common denominator. The industry has survived the onslaught of television and seen the beginnings of specialised comic publishing in the form of graphic stories in expensive, hardcover editions. The characters from comic books have become the source of inspiration for plays, musical comedy, television, and films. Until the middle ’sixties there was only a handful of books on comics of any type - now there are dozens, along with learned papers from academics on the subject. Let’s face it - comics have become respectable. And not before time, either.

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A book of this nature is not possible without the help of others and I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the following people who provided information and material: Ian Atkinson, Ken Bull, John Clements, Gary Mason, Noel Kerr, Terry King, Marcie Muir, David Mulligan, Sol Shifrin, John Snowden, Dennis Stocks, Mike Stone, Allan Tompkins, Maureen Walsh, and Colin Williams. I am particularly indebted to Graeme Atkinson, Chris Collier, Neil Newnham, Vane Lindgsay, John Melloy, and Alex Soboslay who were always available when I needed special assistance. I am also grateful for the encouragement and assistance provided by my US friends Jerry Bails, R. C. Harvey, Howard Siegel, and A1 Williamson.

The author and publisher would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce illustrations. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but advice of any omissions would be appreciated:

Geoff Augustine, The Estate of the late J. C. Bancks, Theo Batten, Ira Berk (Qld) Pty Ltd, Kate Blanche, Bonds Coats Patons Limited, Gerald Carr, Bob Daley, H. John Edwards, Ken Emerson, Express Newspapers Limited, John Fairfax & Sons Ltd, Max Foley, May Gibbs Estate, Arthur Gorfain, The Herald and Weekly Times Limited, Reg Hicks, Mrs Gladys Hoffmann, Yaroslav Horak, Arthur Homer, Eric Jolliffe, Hartmut Lahm, Gerry Lants, Donald Langmead, Carl Lyon, Will Mahoney, John McGilvray, K. G. Murray Publishing Company Pty Limited, Syd Miller, George Needham, News Limited, Syd Nicholls, Ralph Peverill, Phoenix Features, Inc., Stanley Pitt, Jack Quayle, Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd, Dan Russell, Stephen Stanley, Allan Salisbury, Max Sutch, David Syme & Co. Limited, Monty Wedd, West Australian Newspapers Limited. Chesty Bond © Bond’s Coats Patons Limited, James Bond © Express Newspapers Limited, Ginger Meggs © The Estate of the late J. C. Bancks, Bib & Bub © May Gibbs Estate care of Curtis Brown (Aust.) Pty Ltd. Finally, I must thank my wife, Jan, and my children, Fiona and Sean, for being understanding about the amount of time I spent locked away in my study and the interstate trips I had to take without them. I hope this book will serve as some form of appreciation of their support.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

There are no specific reference books on the subject of Australian comics. However, anyone making further examinations of the field will profit, as I have, from reading the following:

 

Blaikie, George., Remember Smith’s Weekly, Rigby, Adelaide 1966.

Lindesay, Vane, The Inked-In Image, Heinemann, Melbourne 1970. Muir, Marcie, Australian Children’s Book Illustrators, Sun Books, Melbourne 1977.

Whitington, R. S., Sir Frank, Cassell Australia, Sydney 1971.

 

As one cannot look at the local field of comics in isolation, the following books dealing with comics overseas should prove helpful: Gifford, Dennis, Stop Me! The British Newspaper Strip, Shire Publications, Aylesbury 1971.

Gifford, Dennis, Victorian Comics, George Allen & Unwin, London 1976.

Horn, Maurice (ed.), The World Encyclopedia of Comics, Chelsea House, New York 1976.

Lupoff, Richard, and Donald Thompson (eds), All in Color for a Dime, Arlington House, New Rochelle 1970.

Perry, George, and Alan Aldridge, The Penguin Book of Comics, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1967 (revised 1971).

Steranko, James (ed.), The Steranko History of Comics, Super- graphics (2 vols), Reading 1970, 1972.

White, David Manning, and Robert H. Abel (eds), The Funnies: An American Idiom, Free Press, New York 1963.

Waugh, Coulton, The Comics, Macmillan, New York 1947 (paperback edition, Luna Press, New York 1974).