Inkspot 84

Inkspot

Number 84, Summer 2018/19

DAVID ROWE CARTOONIST

OF THE

YEAR plus

FULL STANLEYS

WEEKEND COVERAGE

BUDDEN

MILLER

PICKERING SOMERVILLE

SOUTER

KNIGHT REFLECTS on

SERENAGATE

Inkspot Issue #84, Summer 2018/19 www.cartoonists.org.au

ACA Board Patron VANE LINDESAY President JULES FABER president@cartoonists.org.au Deputy President DAVID BLUMENSTEIN david@experienceillustration.com Secretary STEVE PANOZZO steve@noz.com.au Treasurer MARTINA ZEITLER treasurer@cartoonists.org.au Membership Secretary PETER BROELMAN peter@broelman.com.au Committee: ROBERT BLACK robert@robertblack.com.au NAT KARMICHAEL comicoz@live.com.au IAN McCALL mccallart@bigpond.com.au JUDY NADIN judynadin@optusnet.com.au CATHY WILCOX cwilcox@fairfaxmedia.com.au

Affiliated Organisations National Cartoonists Society President: Bill Morrison www.reuben.org Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain Chairman: Noel Ford www.ccgb.org.uk

FECO President-General: Peter Nieuwendijk www.fecocartoon.org Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation (PCO) Chairman: Clive Goddard www.procartoonists.org

Your Inkspot Team Editor: Nat Karmichael Editorial Team: Phil Judd & Steve Panozzo Contributors: Robert Black, David Blumenstein, Peter Broelman, Grant Brown, Christina Budden, Paul Caggegi, Margaret Cameron, Phil Day, Christopher Downes, Anton Emdin, Jules Faber, Mary Faber, Lindsay Foyle, Van Howell, Ian Jones, Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki, Mark Knight, Glen Le Lievre, Vane Lindesay, Tony Lopes, Carol Marriott, Ian McCall, Judy Nadin, Al Rose, David Rowe, Phil Somerville, Cathy Wilcox and Danny Zemp Cover Art: David Rowe portrait by Paul Harvey

Inkspot is produced four times a year by the Australian Cartoonists’ Association in January, April, July and November.

Deadline for next issue is 14th MARCH

PO Box 5178 SOUTH TURRAMURRA NSW 2074 ABN 19 140 290 841 ISSN 1034-1943 Australia Post Registration PP 533798/0015

Presidential Palaver As I enter into my fifth term as ACA President, I’ve come to see things through a lens that doesn’t always show a pretty picture of us as an organisation and I think it’s about time we seriously addressed it.

The ACA is a constantly evolving organisation, yet we can be seen as outdated and old-fashioned in this new century of shifting goalposts and new media.

One thing that will never change, however, is our commitment to the ACA’s two core principles – the freedom of speech and the immutable rights of cartoonists everywhere.

So how do we face this brave new world in the 21st Century when our association, founded way back in 1924, has such a long and nostalgic history?

We do it the same way cartoonists have always done it – we adapt. When the ACA began, cartoons were printed in newspapers or in pulp comics pamphlets. We were seen as making incisive statements regarding the politics of the day or at the opposite end of the spectrum – as laffs for kids. However, nearly a hundred years later, we find ourselves making comments on everything for everyone, from infants to children and teenagers to young adults, the middleaged and the elderly.

Cartoons are everywhere – in comics, film, print media, corporate communications, all over the internet and just about anywhere else you can name.

Once used because photography didn’t exist, then continued because photographs didn’t print well, now we’re not only surviving the printing and digital revolutions but continuing to evolve.

That’s what cartoonists do – ride the zeitgeist and adapt to our circumstances.

So why are we seen as so archaic by some when we’re seemingly always at the forefront? Why is the ACA seen as an irredeemable “boys’ club”? The answer is in the question, sadly. Our membership is predominantly male. I know we welcome the equal brilliance of women cartoonists but how do we get that message across, especially to younger cartoonists who perceive us as a bunch of ‘old white males’?

I get that cartooning hasn’t always been a traditional pursuit for women, but then it’s not exactly a traditional

career path for anyone, really. I also get, from my own experience at events like Supanova and Oz ComicCon, that there are plenty of female cartoonists and comic artists out there – so why haven’t they considered joining us? Or worse, have they considered joining us and been turned off by what appears to be this culture of “old white guys”? The days of handfuls of blokes all hanging around the Art Department telling (dirty) jokes ended long ago. Old stories describing the ACA’s former wealth (we owned a building!) being essentially drunk away to near bankruptcy are horrifying. Yet the apparent ghost of these incidents still haunts the halls of stately ACA Manor.

I have never seen anything at our events even remotely resembling those days and I’m actually rather grateful for that as I have no interest in us being seen that way.

The challenge for us now is to stop looking backwards, and steadfastly look forward – to an ACA that is welcoming, inclusive and continually adapting to a changing society. We can do this at events like the aforementioned Supanova, by encouraging people from a much broader spectrum, at workshops and demonstrations, public talks and at any ACA events. Cartoonists, in my experience, are overwhelmingly inclusive and friendly, tolerant and forgiving. Our Association should reflect that at all times.

Currently our new committee is researching ways to change this outdated perception. Frankly, it’s long overdue.

It is time to focus wholeheartedly on the future. Sure, we can look back on the past with affection, but if we wish to remain relevant to a new generation of cartoonists (and there are more out there than ever; diverse, self-driven and literate in geek culture and the internet), we need to abandon the perception that the old days were glorious (they were different) and openly extol a future where everyone is welcome. It’s one thing to say it, as we have, but it’s entirely another to show it. And show it we must.

This will not only grow our membership but also grow our association’s culture - it’s hard to be seen as a boys’ club if we represent our diverse society. It will

MARY FABER

contents CONFERENCE RUNDOWN

4 7 also grow support for cartooning in this country – something that is alive and vibrant in Australia already, but something we can help to grow further.

I want to see us as a group of cartoonists promoting and growing the art form we love so much.

Cartoonists have always ridden the zeitgeist, from the time of cave folk who invented the art form. Cartooning was the very first written language. It’s not too late to remind ourselves of how important that is, who we are and what we believe.

Freedom of speech.

The rights of cartoonists.

So let’s not forget to include: Diversity.

It’s a big world out there and it changes every day. We must too.

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So... are chocolates and coffee good for us? If you don’t know, you weren’t there. Lucky for you, CATHY WILCOX and nine happy snappers were!

The Herald-Sun’s MARK KNIGHT reflects on his annus horribilis and what lessons Serenagate has taught him

PHIL SOMERVILLE

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He lives in the Blue Mountains, rides a bike and he’s been around for a million years - but how much do we really know about PHIL SOMERVILLE?

PICKERING AND BUDDEN

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Two more award-winning cartoonists have left our ranks. We say our farewells with the help of LINDSAY FOYLE and CHRISTINA BUDDEN

D.H. SOUTER

Stanley Awards a Square Stand-Out for Emcee

24 REGULAR FEATURES

Dear ACA friends!

Dr Karl CAMPERDOWN NSW

THE 2018 STANLEY AWARDS!

TAKING A KNIGHT OFF

Letters Just a quick note to say that while I’ve attended many scientific and other types of events in the past, the Stanley Awards was a real stand-out for me. I learned a lot about cartoonists seeing them outside their natural habitat.

Who said what? More importantly, who got their photo taken with GEORGE MILLER? All this and more from our dual correspondents, CATHY WILCOX and DANNY ZEMP!

VANE LINDESAY explains that there was more to D.H. SOUTER than just cats!

12 Your View On... Christmas!

11 News The Bunker Gets an Upgrade!

16 Where Are They Now? Ian McCall chats with Vane

26 Reviews Spooner, Trump, Lynch & Reid!

27 The Last Word Phil May throws a curve ball

Letters for inclusion in Inkspot are always welcome. Please email your views to comicoz@live.com.au Inkspot SUMMER 2018

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2018 Stanley Awards Weekend For the first time since 1991, the Stanley Awards Weekend has been staged at the same venue two years in a row - this time, it was the prestigious and historic Old Parliament House in Canberra. The result of a unique collaboration between the Australian Cartoonists’ Association and the Museum of Australian Democracy’s annual Behind the Lines exhibition, the weekend was a well-orchestrated three-day experience: a grand exhibition opening, followed by a two-day conference and highlighted by the 34th Stanley Awards.

Our intrepid reporters, CATHY WILCOX and DANNY ZEMP, were there.

Photos by ROBERT BLACK, GRANT BROWN, PAUL CAGGEGI, MARGARET CAMERON, LINDSAY FOYLE, NAT KARMICHAEL, CAROL MARRIOTT, STEVE PANOZZO and ALAN ROSE

Sammy J warms up the crowd at Behind the Lines

Daryl Karp announces Matt Golding as MoAD’s Political Cartoonist of the Year

Friday DANNY ZEMP Friday starts with a casual breakfast, before we join the launch of Behind the Lines. Now we really have all the cartoonists in the house. The ABC’s Sammy J entertains us with anecdotes and song.

CATHY WILCOX The weekend began with Friday morning’s opening of The Museum of Australian Democracy’s annual Behind the Lines exhibition – the year’s best political cartoons as selected by their curator. The museum’s director, Daryl Karp, awarded Matt Golding ( from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald) as MoAD’s “Political Cartoonist of the Year” for his stellar work. Matt has been prolific in turning out daily pocket cartoons, very much filling the void left by the late Ron Tandberg, as well as regular editorial cartoons. Given his wings at last, he has soared!

At 3pm, we head to the courtyard: music and laughter fill the air. We chat, draw and exchange stories.

The Australian Cartoonists’ Association’s attendees were welcomed in the afternoon by our hosts with drinks in the courtyard – a good chance to be reacquainted with fellow ACA members from near and far - before getting down to business, which began bright and early on Saturday morning with the AGM. Where we waited... and waited... for the entire, strictly-limited duration of the meeting... to hear the results of voting for the President and the committee.

Nat Karmichael and Ian McCall are devastated to discover they’re out of bubbly

Saturday: Conference Day One We get a presentation from Peter Large, CEO OF Books in Homes. Each term, each child in their programme is given up to three personally-labelled books of choice in their own personally-labelled book-bag. Impressive!

Mal Briggs, from Canberra’s Impact Comics talks - at very short notice - about how comics are now appealing to all demographics, when Glenn Ford from Frew Publications cannot attend [Ed note: He was getting engaged!]

Dr. Brian Yecies from the University of Wollongong talks about webcomics. It is fun. He gives some recommendations: Siren’s Lament, Space Boy and Blue Chair.

George Miller and Mark Sexton, his storyboard artist, gave us fascinating insights into the symbiosis between writer/ director, and the artist who helps visualise his ideas. We were impressed by Miller’s generosity of spirit and lack of

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egotism, for whom a storyboard is a means of keeping the whole cast and crew informed and prepared for the day’s production. He spoke of how this communication put everyone at ease, as they had a coherent sense of what they were doing. From such a position of preparation, he said, creative moments could still spring. He described an alternative method: the egotistical maestro (a la Werner Herzog), who must work as the inspiration moves him, often leaving his crew tense, confused and attendant to his whims.

Cathy Wilcox and Martina Zeitler multi-tasking

Mal Briggs

Some of George’s memorable quotes: “Animation is a quieter life than the helter-skelter of making a movie” “Strive for something great” “Storyboards are an incredibly powerful tool” “I grew up in the Watermelon Capital of Australia [Chinchilla, Queensland] so I shared stories with my brother; we were without television - comics were banned, so were hidden”

Jeff Keane

Jeff Keane from The Family Circus adds an American accent to the mix.. At the end of the day, he is handing out signed calendars for free!

We were then treated to a private showing of First Dog on the Moon’s Guide to Living Through the Impending Apocalypse - a satirical talk with pictures, sending up both the “preppers” - the kinds of conspiracy-theory-believing people who hoard tinned food in underground bunkers (especially American) - and the disastrously real state of the world we live in, with his characteristic boastful self-mockery.

The political cartoonists’ panel ended the weekend with a bang. Hosted by Mike Bowers, Guardian photographer of Talking Pictures fame, it featured seven cartoonists (including me) talking about some of our best or most noteworthy cartoons/sources of inspiration for the year (and what a year!).

The parliamentary press gallery itself drew flak from First Dog for being self-serving and too “embedded” to be properly critical. Mike defended it fiercely – the journos and the politicians alike – and refused to condemn all for the deeds of some.

Time ran out, although there was so much more we needed to talk about! I don’t know about you, but I can’t WAIT for next year’s conference!

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Jeff Keane was our international guest, son of Bil Keane, the American artist of comic strip The Family Circus.

This was very much a history of Bil and how the strip came into being (and still, remarkably, carries on). It was quaint (to my thinking) to observe a world of homely (and rather corny) cartoons which had seemingly remained untouched by the modern world – of mobile phones, street-wise kids, cultural diversity or families other than white, middle-class Christian ones. Even outside the sphere of political cartooning, I thought, Australian readers expect more “edge” to their comics than these. Even Ginger Meggs had to modernise!

Other highlights of the weekend included watching Christopher Downes drawing live – a real treat! And hearing from Stuart McMillen and Alan Moir about the tricks and pitfalls of working under a crowd-funding model. Stuart is a shining example of making this work from scratch, and Alan made us feel just how hard it is to sell yourself to the public when you’ve had a lifetime of being paid well by a newspaper just to do the thing you do best: draw cartoons. Either way, we learned that crowd-funding is no sure path to making a fortune!

Peter Large

Dr. Brian Yecies

Mark Sexton and George Miller at their wildly popular conference session

Sunday: Conference Day Two Inkspot SUMMER 2018

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LEFT: Robert Black - Roadie For Hire - assists Christopher Downes as he does a live demonstration of his drawing technique, and the finished result; ABOVE: Stuart McMillen points out the exits while discussing the highlights and pitfalls of crowd-funding BELOW LEFT: Alan Moir, both pensive and amused, awaits his turn to be inducted into the ACA Hall of Fame BELOW: Justin Wedd discusses his late father’s work with Nat Karmichael as they launch ComicOz’s Bold Ben Hall BOTTOM: Scenes from Sunday afternoon’s political cartoonists’ panel

Fiona Katauskas

Cathy Wilcox, Fiona Katauskas and First Dog

Cathy and Fiona in action

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Mike Bowers isn’t sure about any of this

David Pope, Christopher Downes and David Rowe consider the evidence

This looks serious...

Lunch on the verandah at Old Parliament House... it all looks so civilised!

Time to Dress Up Nice!

by CATHY WILCOX

For the second year in a row, the Stanley Awards presentation dinner was held in the dining room of Canberra’s Old Parliament House. It’s a grand room and gives our big night an air of gravitas and charm.

Even as a committee member, I must admit to not knowing how much of the magic happens – the running order, the AV that shows the work of nominees and recipients, the organising of VIPs to present the awards...

No caption... it’s just cute

I did of course know who the guest MC was, having been present when Jules’ coup of Dr Karl was announced to the committee. It’s always terrific to hear that someone has not only said yes to the invitation, they’ve said they’d LOVE to do it and that they’re a BIG FAN of cartoonists!

In this spirit, Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki was our host, kicking off proceedings with what felt like an entertaining university science lecture, complete with PowerPoint, about caffeine, chocolate and alcohol. Key lessons were about how coffee and chocolate are a perfect combination of drugs for cartoonists; and how if you’re going to choose low sugar mixers for your liquor, you’re more likely to get done for DUI. The awarding of our cartoonists, comic book artists, animators etc. proceeded, with many awards going to not-the usual-suspects, which is great to see. There were even a few surprises, with one award (Comic Book Artist) ending in a tie between the sadly absent Roger Fletcher and the dapper Stuart Hipwell!

George Miller attended both days of the Conference

When the term, “day off” isn’t in your Editor’s vocabulary

It’s easy to pick someone whose work you see daily and with whose body of work you’re well-familiar; it takes paying attention to the voting book to choose an artist whose work you’ve never seen before, but which stands out for its originality, skill and professionalism. The big names, with some newcomers and sometimes, the stayers who have worked their way to the top of the pile, makes for a good mix on the night.

There was perhaps particular notice given to Mark Knight claiming Editorial/Political Cartoonist, defying the elephant in the room, after an undeniably controversial year. Clearly a majority of ACA members chose to recognise his work overall in spite of a few intense moments of global disapproval via social media.

Be that as it may, I do believe the controversy brought up issues we need to examine and discuss within the organisation. It can be easy to dismiss criticism Inkspot SUMMER 2018

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as “the PC brigade going nuts”, but we all need to accept that we can have blind spots, thanks to our own particular privilege, and that perhaps we are not always the best judges of what is offensive to others.

Kerry-Ann Brown (centre) with Megan and Stuart Hipwell

Jeff Keane getting in the groove with Nat Karmichael

Paul Harvey (left) with Levent Efe

Dr. Karl will see you now!

Three of our esteemed elder states-cartoonists were inducted into our Hall of Fame (infamy?) on the big night. None were present to accept the honour – two (Syd Miller and George Sprod) for reasons of being deceased, and one (Alan Moir) who is very much alive but just hadn’t turned up yet. Lindsay Foyle, the man with ALL the history, stood to pay tribute to them all, which was fascinating. I look forward, however, to a time when we can celebrate the cartooning profession’s greats and their work without needing to acknowledge their “legendary” drinking exploits. Time to grow up, folks?

Still, it was a great night, and a delight to see our special conference guests attend and enjoy it.

Oh, one last thing, about the magic of the night: much of it is quietly magicked by Peter Broelman and his trusty offsider Jules Faber. Broels is the man with “the knowledge” (wavy hand gesture). On this occasion, Broels was unable to attend at the very last minute and Jules, in full panic, had to step up and glean the knowledge. Somehow, readers, he did it and it went - seemingly - without a hitch!

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Magic!

Danny Zemp after successfully crashtackling a wine waiter

THE FINALISTS! (recipients denoted with *)

ANIMATION CARTOONIST Matt Bissett-Johnson* Robert Black & Jock Macneish Harry Gold Mark Sheard Tony Thorne EDITORIAL/POLITICAL CARTOONIST Peter Broelman Pat Campbell Mark Knight* Glen le Lievre David Pope David Rowe COMIC STRIP ARTIST Gary Clark Ian Jones Glen Le Lievre Tony Lopes Peter Player* ILLUSTRATOR Christopher Downes Levent Efe Anton Emdin* Glen Le Lievre David Rowe SINGLE GAG CARTOONIST Jason Chatfield Matt Golding Tony Lopes Peter Player* Cathy Wilcox CARICATURIST Anton Edin Paul Harvey* Judy Nadin David Pope Simon Schneider COMIC BOOK ARTIST Roger Fletcher* Eleri Harris Stuart Hipwell* Glenn Lumsden Dean Rankine BOOK ILLUSTRATOR Jules Faber George Haddon Buddy Ross* Gavin Aung Than Andrew Weldon CARTOONIST OF THE YEAR Gary Clark Christopher Downes Mark Knight Glen Le Lievre Peter Player David Pope David Rowe* Cathy Wilcox BEST CARTOON DRAWN ON THE NIGHT Danny Zemp JIM RUSSELL AWARD FOR SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTION TO AUSTRALIAN CARTOONING National Cartoon Gallery @ The Bunker

George Miller enjoyed being part of the crowd

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Nat Karmichael selfies Jim Bridges

AUSTRALIAN CARTOONING HALL OF FAME Syd Miller, George Sprod, Alan Moir

Jeff Keane and another kind of circus altogether

Joe Panozzo, Tania Elizabeth, Steve Panozzo and Jeanette Panozzo

The Stanley Steamers and their groupies... er, “roadies”!

Grant and Kerry-Ann Brown

Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki - scientist, fashion icon, nerd - about to try his hand as MC for a bunch of cartoonist

Buddy Ross and his well-earned statuette Matt Bissett-Johnson with his second Stanley Award for Animation Cartoonist

Official scrutineers (Dr. Karl, Mary Faber and Jules Faber) are called in after Clementine Downes wanted to declare her Dad the winner of everything

After an undeniably tough year, it’s all smiles for Mark Knight

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A surprised David Rowe scores Cartoonist of the Year from Jeff Keane

Peter Player (left) and Anton Emdin - twins?

The Stanley Steamers in action...

Bill Young

... and Pete de Hahn

Alan Rose

Monica and Phil Judd help Margaret Cameron celebrate the Bunker’ Gallery’s Jim Russell Award for their outstanding contribution to Australian cartooning

Ian Jones and Judy Nadin

Lindsay Foyle inducts Syd Miller, George Sprod and Alan Moir into the Australian Cartoonists’ Hall of Fame

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Danny Zemp gets intimate with his prizes for Best Cartoon Drawn on the Night LEFT: Danny’s cartoon on the theme, “Dr. Karl in Kanberra”

The Class of 2018: Mark Knight. Buddy Ross, Stuart Hipwell, Margaret Cameron, Rosemary Harrison (George Sprod’s niece), Matt Bissett-Johnson, Paul Harvey, David Rowe, Danny Zemp, Peter Player, Anton Emdin (missing: Roger Fletcher)

the bunker gets a makeover !

The newly-rebranded National Cartoon Gallery @ The Bunker Coffs Harbour recently received some uplifting news.

If being awarded the Jim Russell Award wasn’t enough, Margaret, Paul and the team have just received approval from the NSW State Government for $2.6m worth of proposed additions to the Gallery. This means they are a GIANT step closer to realising a long-held plan to extend and promote the Gallery in a way that hasn’t been possible in the past.

As seen from the artists’ impression (below right), the new building will present a great aspect for passers-by, plus it will add significant space to enable the Gallery to expand its scope. The plan, to include an exhibition of Australia’s last 120 years as seen through the eyes of our cartoonists, will provide a unique contribution to cartooning and is expected to attract national and international interest. The plans also include a kitchen and café, a small theatre and a community/workshop room.

ABOVE: Paul McKeon (Chairman of the Board), John Barilaro (Deputy Premier of NSW), Andrew Fraser (MP for Coffs Harbour) and Margaret Cameron (Manager, NCG) after receiving the good news BELOW: An artist’s impression of the proposed new building

Thanks are extended to the many cartoonists who supported our team’s efforts by providing testimonial letters, backing up the Gallery’s application.

Margaret Cameron

Exhibition a Howelling Success!

Toowoomba Art Society recently presented an exhibition of drawings

by Queensland cartoonist and illustrator, Van Howell, which ran throughout November.

“Van Howell is a consummate draughtsman and significant illustrator who includes some of his best work in a mini-retrospective. His pen & ink takes on mythology, caricatures of literary and artistic luminaries, and writhing ironbarks have a ferocious energy,” said the Society’s Allan Bruce.

Much of the work in Van’s show was from the book, Proust for Beginners by Steve Bachmann, which Van illustrated.

Van now has his eyes set on a show at the Poetry Society in London, set for mid-April.

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CHRISTPHER DOWNES (Tasmania) PHIL DAY (Queensland)

IAN JONES (Queensland)

your view on...

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TONY LOPES (NSW)

CATHY WILCOX (NSW) PHIL SOMERVILLE (NSW)

ABOVE: GLEN LE LIEVRE (NSW) RIGHT: ANTON EMDIN (NSW)

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compiled by phil judd next issue’s theme:

“Pollution and the Environment” Deadline for entries is 14th March.

Send your cartoons to inkspot@comic-express.com

DAVID ROWE (NSW)

PHIL JUDD (Queensland)

RIGHT: LINDSAY FOYLE (NSW)

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SERENA THE CHINK IN KNIGHT’S AMOUR

by MARK KNIGHT Having drawn Serena Williams several times before, the reaction to my cartoon was a surprise. I love to draw Serena; she is a cartoonist’s dream. Those cartoons in the past were positive in nature, commenting on her power and strength, with one depicting young white Australian girls wanting to emulate her.

The cartoon on her US Open meltdown was published in the Herald-Sun on a Monday to no reaction. It was passed by the Editor without fuss. We had a quick chat about the extraordinary events at the tennis and left it at that. The next day it was published in hundreds of thousands of newspapers and on our website. Our reader helpline records no calls of complaint. Sometimes when I draw a cartoon that is challenging, it will be talked about that morning on radio, television, or social media. Nothing. I post my cartoons on Twitter and Facebook after they have appeared in print, so that night the cartoon went up on social media, as usual.

That is when the proverbial hit the fan.

The cartoon landed in the US where racial tensions between African-Americans and conservative white populations have been elevated under the Trump regime.

I’d become familiar with the struggle of African-Americans to achieve equality in my travels there. Journalist Michael Gordon and I went on a road trip there in 1988 - we sat in on church services in the South, we talked to people in poor communities and successful people of colour in the big cities.

Michael wrote, I drew. But all that counted for nought.

My Serena cartoon was appropriated by social justice advocates. Big celebrities, such as JK Rowling, hated the cartoon so much they re-tweeted it many times. My caricature of Serena was criticised - I had apparently drawn her “ape-like” and conjured up racist imagery from the slavery era. The women’s lobby piled on - I was now a misogynist, too. My phone began spinning like a poker

machine reel as the commentary rolled in.

I picked up followers on social media, as many as 10,000 on Twitter in a few hours, as a battle raged between those who were indignant and those who agreed with the cartoon.

It was like standing on a hill, watching two armies; originally you were in the thick of it, the instigator, but then it went on without you as the two groups began fighting over

“They traced my wife, daughter and sons through social media and trolled them unmercifully.

It took a toll on all of us, particularly my wife” you and what you were trying to say gets discarded, distorted and trampled into the mud on the battleground. It became the disembowelment of reputations and character, with the cartoon re-imagined, re-badged, and sent back to Australia with the tag of racism and misogyny stamped all over it.

What I had seen when I drew the cartoon was a champion tennis player having a temper tantrum on court. A dummy spit.

There was a sense of entitlement by Serena that pervaded the match, as she attempted to rub out her opponent who was winning the contest. I wanted to capture that act of petulance in all its humour, an adult acting like a child who isn’t getting it’s own way.

The cartoon’s punchline, “Can’t you just let her win?”, would have been recognised by many parents as a technique of last resort to quell a youngster’s fit of temper in a public place.

Serena Williams is a rich and powerful

woman. She has a legion of followers and supporters. But because she is an AfricanAmerican, she is seen to be marginalised, a downtrodden minority. You cannot criticise her behaviour, as appalling as it was, during the US Open Women’s Final. She is untouchable.

I have noted that many people cannot recall the name of Serena’s opponent who won the match. The glory of victory was taken away from Naomi Osaka by the world’s most powerful female athlete. This was Naomi’s first Grand Slam victory, and the first for a Japanese athlete. A big occasion. I dislike bullies, and I was standing up for someone who had had her moment in the spotlight snatched from her.

In the past I have always replied to readers of the Herald-Sun who write me letters concerning my cartoons. But when faced with a tsunami of comments and accusations it’s impossible to reply. The first tweet I saw was from US sports journalist, Jane diCaro, who shouted, “he wouldn’t draw male tennis players smashing racquets and behaving badly on court!” I replied with a copy of my cartoon, drawn four days earlier, of Aussie tennis star Nick Kyrgios acting like a brat on centre court. But like in court, the truth is no defence. Faced with this sort of interpretation, I turned the phone off.

I did media all day that day explaining myself to the world. As a cartoonist there’s nothing worse than having to explain a cartoon. The vivisection of what is a momentary piece of visual comedy is painful. I did it because I didn’t want to be accused of hiding from my detractors. I believed in the integrity of the cartoon, my greater body of work, knowing who I was and what I stood for.

But when you’re the number one trending topic in the world it can daunting. All the (continued on page 26)

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where are they now?

The fourth in a series of “catch-ups” with hard-to-find cartoonists as they sit down and have a chat over a cuppa with IAN McCALL. This issue: VANE LINDESAY When I first started collecting cartoons back in 1985, I bought a copy of The Inked-In Image by Vane Lindesay. It was my bible, a valuable resource of Australian cartooning history. I went to visit the Vane at his home and we established our relationship as collectors.

As a young man, Vane enlisted in World War II. He was first posted to Darwin, then returned to Melbourne and started his cartooning career. He worked for the Army Education Service in Melbourne, as the Head Artist for SALT [Sea Air Land Troops] magazine, which was distributed to troops to keep them up-to-date about the status of the war.

After the war, Vane began a career as a graphic designer, working briefly with The Herald. In 1951, he went overseas by ship, travelling to England and throughout Europe for about three years. He undertook a few small advertising jobs, before returning to Melbourne in 1954 to start work at The Argus newspaper.

The Argus also produced Australasian Post, so Vane contributed to that magazine too. He was Head Artist at The Argus until it closed in 1957, continuing to contribute a cartoon or illustration for every edi16

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tion of Australasian Post, for a total of 44 years, until it closed in 2002. Whilst illustrating for the Post he worked with many authors, included Alan Marshall and Bill Wannan.

Vane has illustrated and assisted with the graphic layout of many books, and has written and published 13 of his own. Some of those include The Way We Were: Australian Popular Magazines 1856 – 1969 (1983) and The Inked-In Image (1979).

Vane was curious to know about Australian cartoonists, researching and publishing what is now regarded as a definitive work on the subject.

In 1994, he was commissioned to write Drawing from Life,

Vane was presented with the silver Stanley Award for Contribution to Australian Black and White Art in 1988 (now the Jim Russell Award), and was inducted into the ACA’s Hall of Fame in 2015.

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I revisited Vane recently, with the aim of keeping everyone up to date. Vane had just celebrated his 98th birthday.

He was born in Sydney in 1920, moving to Melbourne in 1925. As a child, Vane was highly influenced by cartoons when his dad brought home a copy of Smith’s Weekly. The newspaper was filled with jokes, cartoons and comic strips drawn by cartoonists such as Cecil Hartt, George Finey, Stan Cross, Joe Jonsson, Jim Russell, Frank Dunne, Mollie Horseman and Joan Morrison. The work that these artists drew inspired Vane, and he said that he was lucky enough to meet many of these later in his life through the Black and White Artists’ Club.

a history of the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club, to commemorate the Club’s 70th anniversary. Vane is currently contributing articles to the State Library of Victoria’s La Trobe Journal on some of Australia’s classical cartoonists such as David Low, Stan Cross, Will Dyson and Hugh McCrae. Through his thorough work in the illustration and cartoon world, Vane has won several awards, including the Transfield Prize for book design (1976) and Award of Honour (1991). Vane’s work has been published in America, Canada, England, Sweden and Japan.

ABOVE LEFT: One of Vane’s famed Australiasian Post cartoons BELOW LEFT: Portrait of Vane by Bill Leak (1988) BELOW CENTRE: Vane’s first SALT cover: 21st. December, 1942 BELOW RIGHT: Two of Vane’s scholarly books, The Inked-In Image (1979) and Stop Laughing: This is Serious - The Life and Work of Stan Cross (2001)

PHIL SOMERVILLE Questionnaire by PHIL JUDD

When did you first start drawing/cartooning? Do you have a first memory?

I drew from an early age like any normal human indulging a bit of brain development. My Dad kept a biro drawing I did of a clock face, copied from life but which displayed 13 numbers. Probably channeling George Orwell. I was 3 years old.

Technically the first cartoon I remember doing was a 2-page strip of a character I concocted called Billy the Bunny. Not a lot of scope for dark narrative there. I was about 6 or 7 and executed this with butcher’s paper and Derwent pencils. I mostly drew while staying at my grandmother’s in Burwood through school holidays because she was very encouraging of such flip expressionism. I remember vividly when she told me one morning that she thought cartoonists were not just clever people but noble... that sentiment really galvanised me to thinking of it as a serious vocation.

What was your first break in the business?

My first cartoon sale was to Nation Review, the great iconoclastic weekly of the 70s. It was a spot gag cartoon involving the moon and a McDonald’s franchise. It took 3 years to get the fee which was $25. But it was indeed printed and to see myself in the full

light of ink was a seminal thrill. My first real break however was wandering into the office of a specialist bi-monthly magazine about bicycling. It was called Freewheeling and was a one man Editor/Publisher operation and that man looked exhausted. He cast an open minded eye my slim ‘folio and signed me on to do one cartoon per issue, every issue.

Whatever I thought up, as long as it had a bicycle in it. It was my first regular freelance paid job and lasted many years. It served as my self-chartered apprenticeship and I improved markedly. My first break into a wide audience exposure was in 1986, doing one night a week at the Sydney Morning Herald on the old Stay in Touch column after its founding editor, David Dale, had moved on. I drew for a man called Luis Garcia. He was a Cuban exile and hated Communism and casual dress. He had an unsure grasp of Australian humour and often asked me if the cartoon I had just done was funny. Curiously, I always answered in the affirmative and thus he approved it.

What category of cartooning does your work cover? What formats do you use?

As a permanent freelancer I had to say yes to all jobs. Thus, I initially aspired to only so-called gag cartooning for newspapers and magazines. In time I learned the craft of illustrating an author’s manuscript with Inkspot SUMMER 2018

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pertinent lightly humorous cartoons. These were book jobs that covered a vast range of topics, though I paid my dues laboring in the vineyards of many self-help tomes. I also did page illos for articles in the SMH, then eventually got a chance to do editorial content. I found to my surprise that I had a decent level of political nous in my marrow and improved at this sort of work, though initially at glacial pace. As magazines such as The Bulletin evaporated, gag cartooning lessened, and I polished my political and social commentary stuff more and more. In terms of formats, I like to let the idea dictate the layout or approach. Thus, I do single drawings, multiple-panel cartoons (sometimes 8-to-12 panels if it works). I have incorporated photography into a drawing but only when it enhances the idea and its impact. I work in b&w, full colour, spot colour... pencil or pen/ink. My favoured colour or mono toning is via watercolours. I am self-taught with this and so it is quite idiosyncratic and full of blasphemous technique, but I make it work for the drawing generally. I still love to draw on paper stock by hand then scan and tweak if needed. I tweak minimally; I have a sort of Catholic guilt about not getting colour right or whatever at the drawing stage. My old priest once told me that over-dependence on Photoshop leads to drugs.

How do you creaate your ideas?

Bertrand Russell wrote a book in the 1930s called The Importance of Idleness which espoused more or less that daydreaming is an undervalued sport. I read a lot of stuff: biography, commentary, essays and political discourse, social analysis and long-form journalism on any topic. I have a mesmerised love of cinema. This is all the quiet daily stoking of the furnace. When I need to work, I lie on a couch which imparts a feeling of being in a rowboat after slipping the rope. Notions and things just shuffle around mentally, waiting for connections, and in time one connection will often ring a clear bell. If that happens, I pursue it until there’s a form and a solid internal logic. Some ideas are gentle for their own sake, others are bitter, almost sardonic. It depends on how good breakfast was that day! I try to avoid cliché constructions and tropes but that is not always easy. Historical reference is often 18

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a fertile path to surveying human folly and conjuring a strong idea.

What comes first - the drawing or the writing?

It varies. Many of my political or social cartoons are multiplepanel and require a flowing “dialogue”, in which case I toil with the writing first. Other cartoons evolve from a “napkin sketch” done in that rowboat. I enjoy writing as much as drawing. I revere language, words are precious, and I try to use them, so each has it’s own glint in the sun. Lenny Bruce said that words were more important to him than heroin.

What materials, technology and methods do you currently use to create your work? Any favourites?

I’m an analogue lover. I enjoy the lyrical fingerprint of ink and paint directly to paper. I use all sorts of pens including a crowquill dip pen, but mostly a range of nylon tip waterproof markers from 0.2 to 0.8 mm in size. I like old cartridge or smooth surface watercolour papers. I favour washes in watercolour. If an idea suits, I work it up in glazes to get some reflective depth... all for the noble goal of mood. I use Photoshop to do the slightest of tweakings or assembly of multi-panel things. I’ve always been beguiled by greytone washes on a line drawing... probably the legacy of a misspent childhood watching old noir films on TV. Have you ever won any awards for your work?

No. None. It’s a virginity I hold dear. I suppose I am somewhat introverted when it comes to actually entering for any. I’m not sure why.

What’s the best thing that has happened so far in your cartooning career?

I did a cartoon on the death of South Australian Labor Premier, Don Dunstan, in 1999 for the Sydney Morning Herald.

They used to be owned by an obscure publisher called Fairfax. Someone rang up to enquire about purchasing the

www.thecartoonfactory.com.au

original and left a number. I called back, and a voice answered, “Hello. Mr Whitlam’s office...” I took a train the next day with artwork in hand, on the off-chance I might meet the great man. I waited in the anteroom for a while and eventually heard heavy footsteps garnished with occasional profanity. In He strode with a lower leg bound in bandages. He fixed upon me and said, “I’ve had to have something infected and ugly removed from my foot.” I replied, “John Kerr?” He responded, “Comrade, why don’t you step into my den for a small chat and coffee.” We spent about two and a half hours rabbiting on. It was all very easy and relaxed as I came to see that he was so much like my father. He had a fascination with the cartoonist’s psyche. He claimed we were the modern counterpart of the Greek philosophers and I agreed with him insomuch as the income bracket. My great fortune was having a lazy Wednesday afternoon getting a glimpse of the real man beneath the looming iconography. His intellect was up on Mount Parnassus. But his humour could certainly be down at the wharves.

Any advice, tips or insights you could offer your fellow cartoonists or those aspiring to be?

I’m self-taught, which means years of observing other cartoonists’ work and many circuitous paths to those precious leaps forward. It was 20 years before I feel I found my own voice visually and my own attitudes thematically. I would encourage anyone to take some formal learning regarding drawing, painting and the art of looking and seeing. Acquiring visual rules means you can then break them intelligently. For the younger cartoonist the digital epoch means unprecedented reach and opportunities. However, I suspect the intense saturation of the cyber-world has undercut the sense of novelty of our skill and the cultural value of what we produce. The result is lower potential fees and earning. Image “agencies” have also added to the crowdedness. I made a fulltime living for better than three decades starting in the early1980s. Many did. I don’t see that as much now. The internet is a mystery hidden in a whirlpool wrapped in a mirage.

And I for one do not yet know the secret of unbridled success within it.

Do you have any favourite Australian cartoonists?

Leunig for his sheer longevity, seminal originality and humanism. John Spooner, because of his elegant line and caricature that is expressive, intelligent and an uncut ribbon to a previous classic age in European and American draftsmanship. Nik Scott has a beautiful pared line that swaddles smart and crisp ideas and wit. There are so many. Cathy Wilcox, Jenny Coopes. Peter Nicholson, who blossomed via the midwifery of Nation Review, is a fantastic sculptor on top of everything else... I near swooned at his litany of castings of Australian Prime Ministers which I first saw a few years ago in a park in Ballarat... Alan Moir is a sovereign state unto himself, whose style is quintessentially Australasian laconic and is built upon a cornucopaeia of original and witty symbolism.

Who would you say are your five favourite cartoonists that inspire you?

There are dozens but here’s five: The earliest was Charles Shultz. Peanuts calmly revolutionised the strip cartoon. He

recast it with pared modernism and elevated dialogue to a new primacy. Its first two decades were a seamless meditation on solitude and vulnerability and human contradiction.

When first published in the 1950s, that strip was the in-thing amongst jazz musicians. As a kid, I forced myself to draw all the characters and background stylings like repetitive piano lessons. Jules Feiffer jumped from this same springboard but through a glass Jewishly. He explored personal angst and delusion with prolific wit. In turn, I think Gary Trudeau climbed upon Feiffer’s shoulders and expanded the world of dry verbal satire a hundredfold. As a teenager, and taking newspaper journalism more seriously, it was Bruce Petty’s feverish drawings that jumped off the page and into my frontal lobes. Bruce really kicked down the exit door from the Menzies era of cartooning and into a new frenetic universe of the infinite possibility of hypocrisy. He is global and yet true to an Australian gaze. His longevity and output are eye-swivelling and unmatched. And there’s the sophistication of Edward Sorel, a New Yorker marinated in Roosevelt liberalism, who hustled political cartoons through the 60s and 70s, scraping a living and is now a revered grey eminence whose work hangs in galleries and on the pages of esteemed magazines. He is Inkspot SUMMER 2018

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the best freehand caricaturist working in America still and brilliant with words. His impro linework is exciting and also a direct bridge to the great 18th- and 19th-Century cartoonists.

A sixth that goes without saying is the very elegant Sempe.

What are your favourite five comic strips, books or films that have inspired and motivated you?

I loved Nuts by Gahan Wilson which appeared in the early National Lampoon. Also, Doonesbury, Peanuts and early BC

by Johnny Hart for its extraordinary visual gags and optical absurdism. The modern extension of course is the re-born graphic novel which has spawned a multitude of brilliant drawer/writers...mentioning just a few: Lynda Barry, Adrian Tomine, Daniel Clowes, Anya Ullnich, Chris Ware. Pat Grant, an Australian cartoonist who published Blue, is excellent. My earliest lessons in humour came from books by Mark Twain, Thurber, E B White, Ambrose Bierce and Miles Kington in Punch. Currently, David Sedaris’ diary volumes are a source of observational wonder to me. I love a wide variety of film, but the fountainhead has always been Buster Keaton. He created perfect cinema compositions of visual beauty and modern understatement way ahead of his time. He occupied the film frame as an everyman confronting the remorseless laws of physics and getting around them somehow. In the process I think he wrote so many of the modern cartoon’s groundrules.

Any obscure cartoonists you can suggest checking out?

John Glashan, although he may no longer be that obscure.

Joost Swarte is a champion of the clear line and has that obtuse Dutch humour and observational power. Very prolific

but no longer unknown since appearing in The New Yorker regularly. Another wonderful Netherlandic political penpusher with a quirky spare line and mordant wit was Stefan Verwey. I have no idea if he is still going... a friend brought me anthologies of his social satire from the 1970s that is virtually wordless and timeless.

Where does your current work appear?

The last of my regular spots in a print magazine dried up last year. I now produce a paid subscription cartoon under the title, Line of Thought. It’s a topical cartoon that I try putting a lot of thought into, one that has a bit more overview of themes than the immediacy of a daily editorial spot. This model goes directly against the current of the ‘net, reflected in the small but loyal number of subscribers. I try to be my own terse Editor in weeding out flaccid ideas. However, I do enjoy the absence of a conservative Editor’s handbrake.

Where can we find out more about you, your business and your work?

Most of that info, including subscribing to Line of Thought, is on my website, www.somervillecartoons.com (or just do an internet search under my name).

What are you currently reading, cartooning or general-wise?

Right now I’m reading a nice bio of French film-maker, Jacques Tati. Also, a book by an academic friend on gender and Australian jazz. My father was a jazz pianist by trade and I grew up with live music in our family home. I am also enjoying a very funny anthology of comedian, Steve Martin’s, short humour pieces from The New Yorker. Just finished a memoir, My Life in Art, by Ludwig Bemelmans, who created the French Madeleine children’s books.

Regarding cartooning, a local indie cinema here in the Blue Mountains has commissioned some cartoons for their website and for projected “slides” prior to the film, asking people to turn off mobiles and please stop chatting during the movie. I would have done that job for free anyway.

What music do you enjoy? Do you listen to anything whilst working?

Jazz is prime for me, it’s in my bloodstream. As I said, I grew up with it as both my parents played.

Since I was 5 or 6, I felt this was the music that was the most emotionally freeing and put wind to my sails. If I play anything while drawing it would be American, Australian or Polish modern jazz. However, I usually work in silence, just hearing the metronome of a ticking deadline.

Do you have any other special talents besides cartooning? Or talents you’d like to have?

I uncork the pent-up adrenaline from work by bicycling. The bicycle is one of the more flawless pearls of human design... a quiet, efficient machine, nicely propellant to daydreaming. I have cycled

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thousands of kms on tours overseas and in Victoria over the years. I stopped learning an instrument when a kid because my father’s vast talent cast too dense a shadow. This is a source of regret. I’d like to take that up again. I am told I am a good orator at weddings and funerals. I also MC at the Blue Mountains Music Festival each year. It’s an annual folk/blues event and the organisers have banned jazz, so I am morally conflicted. I think I have been a reasonable father to my daughters, a decent listener with them. Certainly, there has been no litigation from them so far.

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Vale

Larry Pickering (1942-2018)

by LINDSAY FOYLE

Herald, but nothing happened; eventually, he moved to The SMH in 1974.

Whilst there, he also contributed to The National Times; his 1976 Walkley Award was for a cartoon which appeared in that paper.

Larry Pickering was born in Melbourne in 1942, leaving Caulfield Technical School when he was 14. He worked at a number of jobs including biscuit packer, rural worker, insurance salesman and truck driver.

Eventually, whilst employed as a proofreader at The Canberra Times, he decided to try his hand at cartooning and started drawing five cartoons every day. It was two years before he got one published. He had taken to hanging his cartoons in the men’s toilet in the hope the Editor would notice them; eventually he was offered a regular spot, for which he was paid $1.90 per cartoon, minus 30 cents taxation.

In 1972 there was talk of Pickering leaving The Canberra Times and joining either The Bulletin or The Sydney Morning

In 1976 he asked for his salary to be paid into his company bank account to simplify his taxation payments. When Fairfax refused, he left to work for News Limited, contributing to The Australian. Soon after he arrived, Bruce Petty resigned and joined The Age. It was the year Pickering started producing his (in)famous calendars. In 1980, when he knew his contract was not to be renewed, Pickering announced he was giving up cartooning to concentrate on farming. He was relaced by Bill Mitchell, who was at the time working on The Daily Telegraph in Sydney.

Pickering made a number of returns to cartooning. The first was in Brisbane, contributing to The Daily Sun when it was first published in 1982. He departed after about a year. In 1985 Kerry Packer paid him to contribute to The Bulletin; after a while he just stopped sending in cartoons. Packer repeated his offer six years later; again, Pickering struggled to meet deadlines and, after a while, just stopped contributing.

Pickering returned to cartooning in 2011 and established his own website, The Pickering Post, on which he published his own cartoons and political observations on Australian politics.

Included in the content was a series of merciless attacks on then-Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who described Pickering as a “misogynist” and the content on his website as “vile and sexist”.

Pickering continued his vile cartooning of Gillard after she left politics, and turned his attention to supporting farright political activities. He was happy to say nobody was going to sue him because he had no money.

Journalist Michael Pascoe was not among his fans. “Pickering is commonly known as a cartoonist,” he wrote in 2012 for Fairfax Media, “but he’s also an inveterate liar, a bankrupt conman with a seedy history of fleecing the gullible of millions of dollars while not paying his own bills.”

Pickering ran a high-pressure cold-call racket which promised punters computer software that would pick winners at the racetrack. It never worked, but who would have expected it to have? He was declared an undischarged bankrupt in 2010 after becoming involved in a failed betting software company.

For many years, Pickering lived on the Gold Coast with his partner and their young daughter and son, who are among the 11 children who survive him. He apparently spent his last years relying on a pension and child support payments, as well as income from The Pickering Post.

The Canberra Times, 1973

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“Hey George! Come and have a look at this!”

Pickering died on 20 November 2018 after spending some years fighting lung cancer. While some will mourn his death, many more will not be sorry to see him go.

Vale

Earl Budden was a country boy. He was born in Tingha, NSW on 15th November, 1928 to Mabel and Christopher and spent his youth in Papua New Guinea, before returning to Tingha with his parents and siblings, Garth and Denise.

Upon finishing high school, he was awarded a scholarship from the National Art School in Sydney. It was here that his talent shone and later achieved great success throughout his career.

TOP: Earl receives his Stanley Award from Prime Minister Bob Hawke in 1986 ABOVE: Earl gets “smocked” in 1998

Kicking up a storm at the 2011 Stanley Awards with (from left ro right) son David, former ACA Pressident and News Limited Art Director John Thorby and Peter Byrne

Earl Budden (1928-2018)

by CHRISTINA BUDDEN When Earl and Pamela met and later married, he was working in advertising and this led him working on several major international campaigns. It was during this time, in the early to late 1960s, that they lived in Hong Kong.

Their eldest daughter Anne was born there. Later they returned to Australia and welcomed the arrival of two more ABOVE: Earl Budden’s award-winning illustration of Margaret Thatcher from 1990 children, David and Christina. Earl’s children remember would create an illustration for a scihim for his various “Dad-style” antics, ence article and within the next couple including dressing up as the theatrical of pages of the newspaper there would “Old Man from the Hills”. This included a be one of his political cartoons. This led knock at the door; as the door opened, to several nominations and winning a Earl appeared dressed as a hobo, comWalkley Award for Best Cartoon in 1990 plete with boot polish as makeup. He and receiving Stanley Awards in 1986 performed this at his children’s birthday and 1991. parties much to the delight of their friends. Also included in his party reper- Earl was a complete egalitarian. He toire was a drawing of a crazy cartoon took a great interest in people, enjoydonkey, ready for a lucky child (who ing good conversation and an ale. won the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey His colleagues often talk about Earl’s party game) to claim as a prize. good cheer and idiosynchratic turns of phrase, such as, “heading over the road Earl loved his work and loved to work. for a snort” when going for a beer.

He could switch from being a cartoonist to illustrator and did both so well. He He adored his family, was chivalrous worked for two decades for The Sunday and incredibly humble. Earl never said a Telegraph in Sydney; one minute he bad word about anyone - unless it was the coach of his favorite (losing) footbal team... and even then, he only referred to them as a knuckle-head!

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Earl died on 21st November, 2018, almost a week after his 90th birthday.

His late wife Pamela use to laugh and tell her children, “everyone loves your father!” And it’s so true - not too many people in this world were as well-liked as Earl. The number of ex-colleagues, friends and acquaintances who have offered condolences since his passing would have left him speechless. He was one of a kind and will be sorely missed.

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Beyond Their Pens This is the third in a series of articles on Australian cartoonists who have written published books, composed stage plays or have made a significant cultural contribution.

by Vane Lindesay

This issue: D.H. SOUTER Among the many migrants to settle in Australia and to make a social contribution was a young Scotsman, David Henry Souter. He arrived in Australia during 1886 from Aberdeen, Scotland, where he was born in 1862, the son of David Henry Souter, an engineer, and his wife Ann Smith.

Souter started his long art career in Australia during 1892 with his first contribution to the popular journal The Bulletin. He was welcomed to membership of the Art Society of New South Wales to become the President during 1901-1902.

Souter became rapidly known as a cartoonist, principally from the pages of The Bulletin, later in his career in Punch. For both magazines, Souter’s joke drawings were never other than domestic in theme but always in “High Fashion”: elegant women dressed in the height of fashion, the gentlemen in dinner jackets and bow ties, all distinctly, and curiously, at odds with the street larrikins, hairy-chested ‘cocky’ farmers, stockmen, and indigenous station hands that were staple themes for Bulletin artists.

Souter’s beautiful decorative pen work always demonstrated his early influence of Art Nouveau, a style sinuous and flowing that originated in Belgium and England, which was designed to break with previous decorative custom. Souter was to later integrate in his fashion the Art Deco vogue to include powerful black areas, and his stylised cat. Later on and at his peak with The Bulletin, Souter designed a series of stylish cats for decorative ceramics.

On 21st September 1907, The Sydney Morning Herald announced, under the heading on page four, “Music and Drama”: A new Japanese opera, The Grey Kinoma will be produced at the Adelaide Theatre Royal next Saturday by a special juvenile company of some fifty children… The new opera presents a Japanese love story from the pen of Mr D. H. Souter, whose allegorical and fantastical water colour drawings give interest to the annual exhibition.

In February 1909 Souter lamented, in a long essay published in The Lone Hand, the lack of interest in 24

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Australian stage drama by theatrical management. In part it read: Last year [1907] Meynell and Gunn staged The Grey Kinoma, a one act opera played by the Tin Can Band … It ran for nearly two months amid universal approval. I did not get any money out of it. Neither, I believe, did Meynell or Gunn.

Curiously, without any explanation the essay states that ‘By the time this is published the Pollard Opera Company will have produced The Grey Kinoma in two acts in Adelaide’. This obviously suggests two stagings and by two different companies. Elsewhere, Souter refers to the titles of other plays he had written, however it seems none of them were ever performed.

Together with the staging of Souter’s comic opera The Grey Kinoma and the publication of Bush Babs (above), the only fiction he wrote and illustrated was published in 1988 - fifty-three years after his death - when his first and only novel, The Ticket in Tatts, was published by Penguin Australia. Ruth Park said of it, “A queer old novel, all knobs and knarls like rustic garden furniture, but jumping with joy and genial humour.”

We have no record of when Souter finished writing this novel. What we do have are some details of when Louis Stone (1871-1934), a contemporary of

Souter, published his novel Jonah, a minor classic about early 20th Century slum life in Sydney. There is a parallel with Souter’s novel and Jonah – the locale, living conditions, a shared poverty and both works have a strong, work-weary character in Mum. Stone’s Mum, Mrs Yabsley was, with David Souter’s Mrs Keeby, key characters in the two novels and both authors were surely Australian pioneers of what the literary critics termed “kitchen sink” writing, which manifested in theatre, film-making and in literature.

It is to be noted “kitchen sink” is, by no means derogatory.

Two years before Souter’s death in 1935, the founder and the man who named the Endeavour Press, Norman Lindsay, published Bush Babs, a collection of verse to amuse his children, with each jingle superbly illustrated, many depicting the Souter cat. Bush Babs (1933) was Souter’s last book and saw a reversal in drawing style to highly decorative Art Nouveau. By this date he had adopted the new art movement, Deco, continuing to draw in this style for The Bulletin.

David Henry Souter - fine art painter, creator of newspaper comics, editorial cartoonist for the Stock and Station journal during the 1914-1918 conflict, originator of stage plays, rhymes and fiction, author of a The Ticket in Tatts - died in on 22nd. September, 1935 at the age of seventy-three.

He had enjoyed a long creative career, producing many admirable pen and brush drawings and many Inkspot SUMMER 2018

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MARK KNIGHT (from page 15)

news - TV media, radio and print - came through my studio to hear me say it was a cartoon about bad behaviour, not racism.

The comments and threats escalated, although I didn’t read most of them.

When celebrities began rallying the Twitter mob with cries of “Knight’s a racist arsehole!”, things can quickly get out of control. Threats of violence - not only to me, but my family - came down the pipe.

They traced my wife, daughter and sons through social media and trolled them unmercifully. It took a toll on all of us, particularly my wife. She encouraged me to forego social media, which I did.

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fine art works, beginning at the age of five years when he sold his first picture, a flower study in a blue pot, drawn on the lid of a draper box.

The Herald-Sun and News Corp had my back. Following on from Bill Leak’s treatment, they stood behind me and were a great support, caring greatly about me and my family’s personal welfare. Calls from Editors and management all around the country were welcomed. The HeraldSun editor Damon Johnston wanted to reply to my critics, so a front page was designed with all my caricatures of politicians and people on the cover, with a headline saying that the art of cartooning and satire was under threat by the echo chamber of identity politics.

Some saw this show of support, not as an employer standing up for one of their staff, but just more News Corp belligerence.

This fury was illustrated by Canberra Times cartoonist David Pope who imitated my Serena cartoon, but replaced the tennis champion with Rupert Murdoch throwing the tantrum. I know the support of editorial management is a difficult concept for my colleagues at Fairfax to grasp. It may be an even more distant prospect now that they’re under the rule of Channel 9.

During the height of the Serena cartoon outrage, it was decided by the Herald-Sun that we should learn the lessons of attacks on cartoonists that has become a sad reality of our modern world. Security guards stood sentry for a week at our farm, all of them young migrant men: Chinese, Turks, a Croat and an Indian, all working two jobs to get ahead. As I brought the Sikh lad a cup of tea at dawn, we chatted and then he asked me: “So you’re a cartoonist?” He was confused. “Why do you need security?” I asked myself that very same question...

Has it changed my way of doing things?

I would be lying if I said no, but I hope it doesn’t. I have learned that opinions are universal, and people have a right to express them. If only they could do so without so much invective. I now have greater respect for the power of an image, how it is interpreted so differently and its effect.

That is the wonderment of our art form. I love what I do and have had some success at it. But things have changed. Where once I was unknown in appearance, people now stare, sometimes they will stop me in the street to talk about the cartoon. You can’t go into a chemist shop without folk giving you their opinion. Most people have been very kind. It makes you wonder what dimension social media exists on. That tumult of spittle-soaked rage exists, but who does it serve? Is it an echo chamber of like-minded unleashed opinionators that, when challenged, eat their tormentors? Maybe.

Finally, my Editors, those people who protect cartoonists from themselves, still give me free reign. I think they were scared that this experience would destroy me and crush my creativity. As my editorial cartoonist colleagues will agree, being a daily political cartoonist is challenging enough without trying to second-guess what the reaction may be. So, I don’t.

I, like the art of political cartooning, will attempt to endure.

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The Australian Cartoonists’ Association’s Committee tried to offer support, which I appreciated, but I understand a motion at board level couldn’t get everyone to agree and it failed. Even though I was a former board member and long-time member of the fraternity, I was too hot a potato for some. As compensation, the Stanley Awards in November gave the greater membership of the club a say and I was

voted Editorial/Political Cartoonist of the Year.

ACA WELCOMES NEW COMMITTEE MEMBERS! At the ACA’s Annual General Meeting on 17th November, the result of Committee Elections resulted in most of the previous officers returned (albeit with some in different roles) and heralded the arrival of two new faces!

David Blumenstein, from Melbourne, is the ACA’s new Deputy President.

He heads up Squishface Studio in Brunswick and is presently working on longform comics and a kids’ book.

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Inkspot SUMMER 2018

Judy Nadin is a multi-award winning freelance caricaturist, illustrator and portrait artist from Newcastle. She joins the Committee after being an ACA member for 14 years.

The Australian Cartoonists’ Association sincerely thanks outgoing Committee members Andrew Marlton (First Dog on the Moon) and the remarkable Grant Brown, who has served on the ACA Committee for 12 years.

Reviews Searching Out Syd Miller

by NAT KARMICHAEL At the 2018 Stanley Awards, three cartoonists were inducted into our hallowed Cartoonists’ Hall of Fame: Alan Moir, George Sprod and Syd Miller.

While Moir was personally able to collect his trophy and Sprod’s niece was able to attend the Stanley Awards, no repreentative for Miller’s family was able to be located for the presentation.

those items. When found, I discovered a letter from Robin I had long forgotten.

Dated 18th January 1991, Robin had suggested in the letter that I contact Syd’s half-sister, “Ms Sommerlad” who was “12 years younger [and] very close and devoted to [Syd]”. Fortunately, as it turned out, whilst there was no phone number, I had been given an address.

Sydney (“Syd”) Leon Miller was born on 24th December, 1901 and was one of Australia’s finest artists (at least, certainly, the most underrated). His achievements in the area of Australian cartooning have largely been forgotten. Listing just some should rectify this anomaly.

After a Google search of the surname and town, I came across the mobile number of a Michael Sommerlad in nearby Warwick. I sent Michael a text, only to discover his grandmother, Gwyneth, was Syd’s half-sister! Sadly, Gwyneth (born 1913) had passed away in 2003, but Michael put me in touch with his Uncle John “who knew the whole family tree”.

In 1924, he was a founding member of what is now the Australian Cartoonists’ Association. He was co-creator of the most successful advertising comic strip in Australia - Chesty Bond - in 1936. Syd created Molo the Mighty, the first major superhero to appear in Australian comics (1943), and Rod Craig, the first local adventure strip to be adapted as a radio serial (in 1946). In 1957, he was one of the first Australian artists to venture in to television animation, fifty years after he had helped produce some of the first animated commercials in this country.

I was so enamoured with Syd’s work, that in 1990 I sought to write a book on his life and achievements (I still have all the rejection slips!). Still, I was able to share the idea with his daughter, Robin, when we met in 1991. While the project did not eventually proceed, she provided me with a wealth of material about her father.

After the Stanley Awards weekend (and a holiday in Victoria), I decided to look through my filing cabinet to locate

I was able to talk at length with John.

Sadly, both of Syd’s children, Robin (born 1928) and Peter (born 1931) have passed away. John couldn’t put me in touch with any of Robin’s four children, but had contacts for Harriet, Austin and Gyles (Peter’s children and Syd’s grandchildren).

John gave me a brief history of Syd’s family, including new information: his mother was a journalist and came from New Zealand; his father was a gambler and the reason his mother left and remarried. Michael, John and Harriet all spoke glowingly of Syd. The illustration on the back page of this issue of Inkspot was designed for the Christmas edition of a periodical or newspaper (name and year unknown).

John relayed the story that Syd was informed at 11 o’clock that the editor was short a page and so was contemplating dropping three pages (to ensure the page count was divisible by four). To allow all pages to run, Syd stayed up all night and “in a couple of hours” finished this fabulous artwork!

I plan to write a more detailed article on Syd Miller for a future edition of Inkspot.

His contribution to art in this country needs greater recognition, and he is a welcome and deserving addition to our Cartoonists’ Hall of Fame.

Hah?!: Number One Edited by Dillon Naylor Available from: ownaindi.com/creator/dillon-naylor With the advent of digital print on demand, and marketplaces like Supanova, the rise of the independent comic has been growing larger and wider in Australia. This hasn’t always been rewarding with no gatekeepers to keep things in check, however this is not the case with Hah?! Produced by Aussie comics legend Dillon Naylor (Da’n’Dill, Batrisha) and featuring a who’s-who of local talent including Ben Hutchings, Samantha Boyd, Bruce Mutard, Scarlette Baccini and Owen Heitmann, it’s plenty of fun. It’s possibly not quite suitable for the youngsters at your place, but it’s definitely pretty to look at in full-colour throughout. Overall, this hearty mash-up of MAD-style articles, underground comix and old-school comstrips is the next generation of Australian subversive comics – and a welcome addition it is. 4/5 Jules Faber

Also available...

Best Australian Political Cartoons 2018 Edited by Russ Radcliffe Scribe Publications, $29.99 Behind the Lines: The Year’s Best Political Cartoons 2018 Museum of Australian Democracy $20 Briefly, each is distinct enough to warrant buying both! Essential.

SP Inkspot SUMMER 2018

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Artwork by Syd Miller

The Australian Cartoonists’ Association wishes to extend grateful thanks to our generous sponsors for their continued support for Australian cartooning