Issue #92, Autumn/Winter 2021 www.cartoonists.org.au
ACA Board Patron VANE LINDESAY
President CATHY WILCOX 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: JUDY HORACEK judy@horacek.com.au
NAT KARMICHAEL comicoz@live.com.au
IAN McCALL mccallart@bigpond.com.au
DAVID POPE info@scratch.com.au
DEAN RANKINE deanrankine@gmail.com
National Cartoonists Society
President: Jason Chatfield www.nationalcartoonists.com
Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain Chairman: Richard Skipworth 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: Steve Panozzo
Contributors: David Blumenstein, Peter Broelman, Grant Brown, Jason Chatfield, Queenie Chan, Che Chorley, Gary Clark, Darren Close, David Dale, Julie Ditrich, Christopher Downes, Terry Dunnett, Anton Emdin, Rod Emmerson, Roger Fletcher, Peter Foster, Lindsay Foyle, Jane Gibb, Matt Golding, George Haddon, Caroline Harvey, Paul Harvey, Leigh Hobbs, Judy Horacek, Nat Karmichael, Brian Kogler, Vane Lindesay, Steve Little, Eric Löbbecke, Glenn Lumsden, Matthew Martin, Neil Matterson, Ian McCall, Dillon Naylor, Valerie Parv, Adrian Patterson, Jim Pavlidis, Dean Rankine, Peter Richardson, Glenn Robinson, Alan Rose, Buddy Ross, Seen Photography, Chris Thomas, John Thorby, Peter Viska, Dani Vittz, Tracey Warren and Colin Wicking
Cover Art: Buddy Ross
Inkspot is published quarterly by the Australian Cartoonists’ Association
Deadline for next issue is 14th SEPTEMBER PO Box 5178
SOUTH TURRAMURRA NSW 2074
ABN 19 140 290 841
ISSN 1034-1943
Australia Post Registration PP 533798/0015
And we thought 2020 was bad.
In the time it’s taken to get this belated Inkspot issue from blank pages to the point of publishing, we’ve gone from thinking we were pretty much through the worst of the pandemic, to discovering this nightmare may only just be warming up.
We started the year by visiting Coffs Harbour, celebrating the (re)opening of the National Cartoon Gallery in February; I made another trip there to open the travelling Behind the Lines in March; and in June I flew to Dubbo to open it again. Each trip, I was reminded of the lingering coronavirus, mainly by the protocols for flying, with mask-wearing and such, and the ghost-town airports. But it felt good to get into the air and out of town!
We spent June composing pages of persuasive pitch to convince the government to throw some funding towards a wonderful Stanleys conference and awards night in Coffs Harbour, at the Pacific Bay Resort and the National Cartoon Gallery, with generous support from Destination North Coast NSW. We had only to hope that Victoria would get over its drastic lockdowns, enough people would get vaccinated and everybody would think, “hey, why not
take a road trip to a NSW coastal holiday destination, and catch up with the gang?!”
Especially with the great program the committee was putting together! July, we waited, and watched while the Delta edition began to bubble up. Well, the good news is: we’ve got the funding! The bad news, however... we don’t know if we’ll still be in lockdown then. Still, we sent you the email to say “it’s happening”. And the form to book your accommodation. I’ll remind you that it’s about 3 months away, and you don’t have to pay upfront, so there’s nothing to lose in booking. How lucky are we feeling? For now, we’ll make like it’s going ahead. And if that changes, we’ll notify you by email. Rest assured, we’ll make sure there’s a plan B. For now, here’s a terrific issue of Inkspot to read - lots about artists past and present, including the centenarian Vane Lindesay, who still writes for us. Thanks to all who contributed, and to the tireless Steve who put it all together.
Apologies for the delayed Inkspot, but a funny thing happened... in short, lots of work and both my computers died. Also... there has been a lot of serious work going on behind the scenes at an ACA level (as Cathy will have alluded to) amid a very uncertain Covid climate. That said, there is such wealth in these pages to keep you informed, entertained and, hopefully, inspired.
For many of us, it was a complete shock to hear of Valerie Parv’s sudden passing. I had only just received an email from her (see page 3) and Tracey Warren’s tribute to her dear friend will resonate with many ACA members who knew Valerie. We have a vibrant selection of images from Vane’s epic 100th birthday bash in MelbourneSydney’s lockdown stopped many of us attending, so it’s wonderful to have
this photographic memento. Matthew Martin and David Dale reignite their Sydney Morning Herald partnership to deliver a daily dose of enlightenment on Facebook and we’ve got the inside story. Elsewhere, Julie Ditrich takes on The Ghost Who Walks, 2020’s Ledger of Honour recipient Peter Foster bestows on us more comics wisdom, the legend that is Brian Kogler explains why he dropped out of circulation and - to top it all - Swamp turns 40!
On a personal note, thank you all for being so supportive of my recent solo exhibition in Sydney - a first for me! Here’s hoping there will be many more to come.
Oh, and isn’t Buddy Ross’ cover art amazing?
Congratulations to the incoming ACA committee and thanks for putting your hands up. Also congrats on the latest Summer Inkspot, a credit to everyone behind this monumental issue. The Ian Eddy insert is a gem. The words seem almost prescient in Covid times. Thanks also for letting me share my memoir with you all.
Valerie Parv AM YASS NSW
Nice little story in Inkspot (#91, page 20) on retouching. A nice bit of fun. Back in 1960, Des Condon retouched a photo of a barmaid who was leaving the Kings Head Hotel next to where the Daily Telegraph was. He did a wonderful job and made her look many many years younger.
Soon after the photo had been taken around, mounted on a card for people to sign, he was asked to clean his work off. Nobody could remember her looking that young.
Lindsay Foyle STANMORE NSWIn his otherwise excellent review of Australia’s First Comic Book (Inkspot #91, page 35), Lindsay Foyle suggests that classification of The Sunbeams Book as a ‘comic book’ is questionable because it is “a collection of Us Fellers comic strips from the Sunday Sun in Sydney”.
This statement ignores the fact that the overwhelming majority of pre-1938 American publications classified by Americans as ‘comic books’ were collections of reprinted newspaper comic strips.
Mr. Foyle should be made aware that previous (and, in my opinion, erroneous) Australian denials of a ‘comic book’ classification for the Sunbeams Book have been based on its cover density and not on its contents.
Roger Fletcher MURWILLUMBAH NSW
The Australian Cartoonists’ Association is proud to welcome aboard these new members, and we look forward to reading about your adventures in Inkspot! Your contributions are always welcome. So, it’s a big cheerio to:
Beau Ferret (NSW)
Marnie Giroud (WA)
Peter MacMullin (SA)
Robert Phiddian (SA)
Clark Short (NSW) Adele Thomas (Victoria) and Warren Wood (ACT)
PETER FOSTER explains how readers can be trained to follow the narrative in sequential art - it’s eye opening!
Believe
GARY
cute strip about rats, ducks, toads and dung beetles has been with us that long!
Wow. What an amazing night.
After all the stress of the coronavirus and the strain of the resulting lockdowns, it was fantastic to finally get everyone together to celebrate the 100th birthday of the ACA’s venerable Patron, Vane Lindesay. Delayed for six months by Covid-19 gathering restrictions, George Haddon led an enthusiastic organising team of Paul Harvey, Rolf Heimann, Glenn Robinson, Alan Rose and myself which worked to put the night together, which came to pass on 3rd July at the Emerald Hill Hotel in South Melbourne.
Born in Sydney, Vane grew up in South Melbourne and as a child went to many VFL football games, so he knew and remembered many of the great football players of days gone by. He was a guest on the Coodabeen Champions ABC Radio show on Saturday morning, where he was tested on his recollections. The team was amazed to hear Vane speak with great clarity about the 1933 Grand Final!
That night, Vane arrived at the Hotel at 6:30 to huge applause and a standing ovation from the 59-strong crowd. Once everyone was seated, he was welcomed by Peter De Haan who performed his reworking of the Carly Simon hit, suitably titled You’re So Vane. It was touching to see him thoroughly settle in to enjoy the night. Paul Harvey acted as MC and introduced the events for the night. We then played video messages from ACA President Cathy Wilcox, Steve Panozzo and Lindsay Foyle (who weren’t able to attend due to lockdowns) as well as a slide show of examples from Vane’s extensive career from Harv.
Paul introduced Peter Bedford, a 1970 Brownlow Medal winner for South Melbourne Football Club. He chatted about football and then presented a beautiful old South Melbourne Football jumper with the number 100 stitched to the back. Vane grew up, as he says, a “Son of the Slums” in South Melbourne and has been a mad Swans supporter all his life. His daughter, Helen, told Harv they had to sing the Swan’s theme song instead of Happy Birthday to him when they were growing up. Vane was even wearing his Swannies tie and, by the end of the night, Peter Bedford’s 1970 Brownlow medal. Vane wanted to speak but was so emotional, all he could say was a brief, but heartfelt, “thanks”. Peter De Haan and Alan Rose then played the South Melbourne Football club song, after which things settled down and Vane got his chance to thank everyone properly for the night.
It was a wonderful celebration and a huge thank you is due to everyone who helped make it happen: George and the team for organising the event, Martina Zeitler for setting up the ticketing system to allow everyone to pay beforehand and Roland for printing the amazing table souvenirs. Thanks also due to Robert Black and Jock MacNeish for setting up and running the video otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to see the messages from Sydney ACA members. And
deep appreciation to Peter De Haan and Alan Rose for the deft musical interludes.
“I rang Vane on Sunday afternoon to see how he pulled up,” said George Haddon, “and he said he was wearing his footy jumper, which fits perfectly!”
Ian McCall
Since it’s official opening in 1996, Coffs Harbour’s National Cartoon Gallery has very much been hidden from public view. Being a renovated World War Two operations bunker, it’s lack of a visible profile might have been a useful feature in times of war, but as a workingl gallery, the building’s design had restricted its full appreciation by both locals and tourists. Until now.
The extensions to the National Cartoon Gallery were finally unveiled in February. The brief for the builders, FM Glenn, was for the addition of a new gallery, cafe, cinema, community space and office area spanning over the existing bunker, five metres above the existing floor level. The lower level office and foyer would connect to the old entry. The finished result makes for perhaps the swankiest venue on the Coffs Coast.
The first exhibition to be mounted in the new upstairs space was a Bill Leak retrospective, which opened on 5th February and was very well received by patrons. According to the Gallery’s Chairman, Paul McKeon, the Gallery’s visitor numbers have increased by 300% since the reopening.
The extensions to the National Cartoon Gallery were officially opened on 23rd February by the Deputy Premier of NSW, John Barilaro MP, who had turned the first sod of soil when building works
commenced in 2019. Along for the ride at the opening was Gurmesh Singh MP, Member for Coffs Harbour, and ACA President, Cathy Wilcox.
That evening, the National Cartoon Gallery hosted an official black-tie gala dinner onsite for 120 guests to celebrate the relaunch. Guest speaker was Eric Löbbecke, who created a digital piece of work (below) based on ideas suggested by the audience. Attending on behalf of the ACA were Cathy Wilcox and Steve Panozzo, who were roped in to judge the Best Cartoons Drawn on the Night! There were plenty of prizes, the catering and Two Tails wine were both excellent and it seemed the cream of Coffs Harbour rejoiced in celebration of its new, glittering jewel.
One of the features in the new wing of the National Cartoon Gallery is a beautiful Yamaha upright piano. Donated by local businessman, Peter Richardson (left) the piano has it’s own connection to Australian cartooning.
“My grandfather, Cec Abrams, was a member of the Rotary Club of Coffs Harbour South for many years and was involved in getting the Bunker Cartoon Gallery up and running, volunteering there for quite some time afterwards,” Peter explains.
“Pop also served in the RAAF in WW2 with, among others, Paul Rigby and, for my whole life this cartoon (right) has been on display in either my grandparents’ or my Mum’s home on top of my Uncle Stewart’s beautiful Yamaha upright piano, which he purchased about 40 years ago. Uncle Stewart passed away in 1995 and, as the piano had hardly been used since then, we decided that the National Cartoon Gallery would be a lovely place for it.”
The NT News’ Colin Wicking has donated a collection of more than 10,000 cartoons to the Library and Archives NT.
Wicking has been giving Northern Territory readers his view on local events since the early 1980s after arriving in Darwin for a two-week holiday. Following a stint with the now-defunct Darwin Star, he became the editorial cartoonist for the NT News and Centralian Advocate in 1988, a position he still holds today.
The collection of Wicking’s hand-drawn cartoons represents 30 years of work, created between 1988 and 2018. In 2004, the National Trust declared his collection a cultural heritage icon.
Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Chansey Paech said Wicking’s works hold, “enormous social, cultural and historical significance to the Territory. Wicking is a legendary social commentator who has held people, politicians, crocodiles and even dingoes to account for decades.”
Wicking said the variety of political and social issues hadn’t changed too much over recent decades.
“Things haven’t changed that much. Firstly I like to entertain, but if I can make people think about things as well, that’s all the better,” he said. “What I try to do is not only make it relevant, but also make it reflect on how we live here. I probably do more cartoons on the weather than any other cartoonist in Australia.”
Reproduced by permission from Centralian Advocate
With her plans for world domination curtailed by Covid-19, Judy Horacek seems to have settled on taking over Albury-Wodonga instead!
In a somewhat revolutionary move, the famed Flying Fruit Fly Circus will premiere their new show, Girls With Altitude, at The Cube in Wodonga, NSW on 23rd,
24th and 25th September before taking the show on an Australian tour. The show combines the world-class circus skills of the Fruit Flies with Judy’s animated artworks and political cartoons. The superheroes of our immediate future are female and are changing the world, so how high can we climb when there’s no glass ceiling?
Meanwhile, Judy’s exhibition, Bird’s Eye View, is currently on show at the Albury Library Museum until 24th October. To cap it all off, Judy will be making a personal appearance at Albury Library’s literary festival, Write Around the Murray, between 15th and 19th September.
www.thecubewodonga.com.au
Recently my life came full circle when I was asked to supply some signage and artwork for the front wall of our local takeaway shop, The Hi-Tide Cafe at Avoca Beach on the NSW Central Coast. As it happens, the Hi-Tide is right next door to the cake shop where my first public display of surfing-themed cartoons got tacked to the walls back in the late 1970s.
I was stoked to get the work but creating something that would fill a 1.1m x 3.5m space and be quite dominant in the centre of town was a slightly daunting prospect. It got extra daunting (to say the least) when the initial leisurely eight-week deadline got changed overnight to about five days!
I won’t bore you too much with the details. It’s all a bit of a blur anyway. I think the muscle-memory from all my years of working under tighter-than-tight newspaper deadlines kicked in and away I went. Besides, who needs sleep anyway?
While all the local tradies did their thing at the Hi-Tide like a TV renovation show, I managed to get a new logo, signage and the surf art done in the required time. My mate, Brian Rendall at Signco Erina, then had it prepped and printed in record time and installed before opening day.
If anyone’s interested in the technical details, I did my rough working out in Procreate using my Apple iPad, then jumped over to Photoshop and my trusty old 24HD Wacom Cintiq. The surf art file size finished up at a smidge over 2GB. It had over 130 layers and pushed my tired and temperamental MacBook (and its owner!) to the limit.
The response in town to both the new-look Hi-Tide and the artwork has been great. I wish I’d had more time to tweak a few things, but the important thing is that the new owners, Damo and Narelle, love it.
I hear the local grommets think it’s pretty cool too. So, if you’re ever in sunny Avoca Beach, NSW come and check it out. Oh, and by the way, the food at the Hi-Tide is pretty great as well.
BELOW: Buddy’s finished mural
Back in the days when university teachers could breathe the same air as their students, and “zoom” just meant “move fast”, one of my students submitted a draft article containing this turn of phrase: “By then it was too late – Pandora was out of her box and there was no putting her back”.
Reading my media student’s metaphor, I realised that all of us go around with heads full of myths, images and reference points half-remembered from childhood. For millennia, humans have been repeating these jumbled narratives to their grandchildren. Last year, I decided to pass what I thought would be a few weeks of home isolation by writing down what I remembered of the stories I grew up with and researching the facts behind them.
Each time I wrote one of these fractured fairytales, I would send it to my friend Matthew Martin, who passed his time in lockdown by illuminating my words. I would post the tale and the cartoon on Facebook at 7am the next day, introduced with one of these phrases: “A story a day ‘til the rona’s away” or “Tales to inspire us ‘til we’re done with the virus”.
We started with Pandora. Of course she was never in the box. She was sent to Earth by Zeus to punish humanity for stealing fire from heaven. Told not to open the box, she unleashed all the evils that now plague humanity (including COVID, presumably).
We went on to tackle how King Arthur received his sword Excalibur from the Lady in the Lake, how Goldilocks met the three bears, how Sisyphus was cursed with having to push a rock uphill every day for all eternity, and whether Marie-Antoinette, when told the peasants were revolting over a shortage of bread, really said “let them eat cake”, thus causing The Reign of Terror, wherein thousands of aristocrats were guillotined.
We are still at it, every day. I’ve learnt more in the past 18 months than I’d learnt in the 30 preceding years. Mainly, I’ve realised how humans since ancient times have used storytelling to make sense of the chaos around them and how the human imagination flourishes at times of greatest stress.
David Dale teaches Media at the University of NSW
It’s been a busy year for Darren Close, Publisher and Editor for Oz Comics. First up was a new colour edition of Killeroo: Scars (the origin story), followed quickly by a Kickstarter fundraising campaign for Killeroo: Semper Fidelis – a Predator-style story in the Aussie outback, which generated over $22,000!
In July, another Kickstarter campaign was launched, this time for a book called Young Rufus Adventures - a children’s comic book anthology - telling the stories of Rufus before he grew up to become the Killeroo. This book showcases some of the best comic artists Australia has to offer – including the likes of Andy Isaac, Dean Rankine, Lauren Marshall, Jon Sommariva and Mike Barry and many more. Depending on how successful the campaign is, there may be more comics for kids on the way in 2022.
Rounding out the year, they will visit to the other end of the spectrum, with a new Killeroo one-shot issue called Old Man Rufus, which heads into the future of 2050 and the twilight years of Killeroo’s life. This book is set to be written by Darren Close and illustrated by Ryan Vella, and depicts a bleak and futuristic-looking Australia.
“It’s a bit of a mix of cyberpunk and Mad Max,” says Close, who has been self-publishing Killeroo comics since the early 2000s, working with some of the most talented writers and artists in Australia, many of whom have gone onto become major players in the US market.
info@ozcomics.com.au
Contactless was a collaborative exhibition project between Ballarat-based ‘Sequential Art Storyteller’ (i.e. comic book maker) Dillon Naylor and songwriter/performer Skyscraper Stan, which was completed during 2020 and resulted in 23 pages of A3-sized comic art conceived by Dillon and Stan, with art by Dillon, and soundtrack score provided by Stan.
The exhibition contained a screen that showed the comic as a slideshow acompanied by Stan’s music. It was commissioned as part of the group show called Mutual Realities: Finding Common Ground In Uncertain Times which was exhibited between February and April at The Art Gallery Of Ballarat.
The result was a short, dialogue-free, gloomy mood-piece, full of sub-text and dark humour. It was set in a worst-case scenario world where the Covid-19 hard lockdown had extended for three years and resulted in people being cut-off from the world, going mad. Set entirely in one dark, mazelike apartment, a rodent-like man goes about his bizarre daily routine as he scurries between narrow walls formed out of hoarded goods stacked to the ceiling, watched by his only friend, a house fly.
Originally conceived during the fairly short, first Victorian hard lockdown, we both didn’t realise at the time this would be followed up by the much longer and gruelling second lockdown and the huge impact on the rest of the world that would follow. The final artwork was done under the second lockdown. The project required us both to work a little differently than we normally would as we decided we didn’t want to simply present illustrated lyrics, which was the first obvious approach to the collaboration.
We started with a series of cryptic scenes that allow the viewer to interpret the strange goings-on. We tossed ideas around and went with an idea Stan had for an old man who was piecing together coded messages from the outside world.
Once the basic structure was roughed-out, Stan used music and ‘found sounds’, such as floorboard creaks, dripping taps, a record clicking in the run-out groove, to create a series of rhythms. It’s bound together by a haunting tune that is coming from the record the character plays over and over.
I normally write my own scripts for comics which require very precise planning - a certain number of panels per page, and a certain number of pages per story to suit a publication’s needs. There were no solid parameters in this project which let me creatively wander around and improvise. One drawing would inspire the next and a chain of events grew from that. We then looked it over and got more ideas and changed parts, reordered pages, removed bits and themes started to appear. When working like this, you start to see all sorts of accidental symbolism and reoccurring imagery which we amplified and elaborated on further.
The process I used was:
1. written script to form an initial guide.
2. Very quick A4 thumbnail sketches (I like to do this bit as fast as possible to avoid overthinking. I find my first sketches are always the more expressive ones)
3. Tighter pencil drawings at A3 size.
4. Using a lightboxing, render the pencil drawing onto the final page using brush, ink and marker pens with blue watercolour pencil over the top. No mistakes! This was going to be in an art gallery (there is some small digital enhancement on one panel to create the effect of a TV screen up close, which only appears in the printed comic book version). Stan then isolated the panels and turned them into a slideshow to help time his music and sound.
If you missed Ballarat show, the signed, numbered comic book can be found at:
https://ownaindi.com/shop/comics/contactless
It was a beautiful day trip down to the Victorian township of Queenscliff, situated on the Bellarine Peninsula at the head of Port Philip Bay. It is a good hour-and-a-half from Melbourne, which is where Leigh Hobbs and The Age’s Jim Pavlidis were having the open day for their joint art exhibition on 13th May, 2021. And what a wonderful show it was!
Covid-19 dictated that a maximum of 24 people were allowed in at any one time. There was a large crowd milling around hoping to get in, so, after popping in and out of the gallery, a wander down to the beach on a beautiful day made the compromise easier to handle. Due to popular demand, the show was extended until the end of June. A virtual tour of the exhibition can be found on Queenscliff Gallery’s excellent website: https://qgallery.com.au
Ian McCall
After 36 years as a professional cartoonist and caricaturist, the gathered crowd at Sydney’s historic Fenwick Restaurant on 9th June was astounded to learn that Faces at the Fenwick marked Steve Panozzo’s first solo exhibition.
Esteemed portrait painter and Archibald Prize finalist Nafisa Naomi began the speeches by suggesting that Steve’s subjects tend to walk away with a caricature that makes them look happier and healthier than they really are.
Not to be outdone, guest speaker Patrick Cook delivered a wonderful dissertation on the history of caricature, generously suggesting that Steve is the rightful heir to 2,000 years of the “cult of likeness”, which stretches back to the time of Alexander the Great. That’s when Steve’s famed ancestor, “Early Steve”, had to make do with a sheet of papyrus and stick of lead.
Among the 50-plus well-wishers were fellow scribblers Cathy Wilcox, Matthew Martin, Eric Löbbecke, Jules Faber, John Shakespeare and former Editor-in-Chief at The Australian, David Armstrong. Due to the widespread Covid-19 lockdowns in Sydney, Faces at the Fenwick has been extended. For details:
www.thefenwick.com.au/the-gallery
Feature by JULIE DITRICH
The Phantom is one of the longest-running comic book characters in the world, created in 1936 by Lee Falk and predating Superman by two years. Julie Ditrich recently became the first Australian woman to write for the beloved title. Her 44-page comic book story, The Adventure of the Dragon’s Leg - published in The Treasures of Drakan: The Red Dragon Saga by Frew Publications - makes her only the sixth woman credited with writing for The Phantom globally.
When comics readers view or read stories about their beloved characters, they focus primarily on the narrative but don’t always comprehend what foundations the printed work rests on. As much as the characters have a backstory, so too does the writing process. It’s like watching a theatrical performance but having little or no understanding of the importance of the rehearsal period or the mechanics of stage management behind the scenes.
I recently had the profound honour and privilege of becoming the first official Australian female comic book writer on The Phantom, with the publication of my story The Adventure of the Dragon’s Leg in The Treasures of Drakon: The Red Dragon Saga trade paperback. The story was a 2-issue x 22-page sequel to three Phantom stories published in the 1970s, which featured a cunning and deadly villain called Princess Sin.
Here are 7 insights into the writing process for The Phantom and what I had to keep forefront of my creative brain while scripting:
1. Writing to the publisher’s brief Frew Publications’ co-owner and editor/publisher Glenn Ford and I had an in-depth discussion about Frew’s goal to attract the next generation of Phantom readers. The current “Phans” are traditionally 35+ males. For the franchise to develop and grow, Frew needed to attract younger readers (which was being addressed with Kid Phantom) and to also expand its female audience. To do so, we agreed the title in general needed to subtly modernise in line with prevailing ideals and sensibilities without destroying the legend of the Ghost Who Walks or any of his extraordinary history. This included giving The Phantom a more eco-warrior platform, insofar as protecting the environment and its animals; having strong women characters (both villains and allies) in the story who were active rather than passive; and introducing new technologies into The Phantom’s world.
2. Meeting “Phan” expectation
I was advised there are two types of “Phans” – the traditionalists and the modernists. That is, those who love the vintage stories, and those who are open to seeing a slightly reinvented Phantom without compromising lore and his backstory. I was also informed there was a delicate balance in satisfying both readerships at the same time. This prediction came to pass... some readers liked these new aspects (such as a new Phantom location called the “cliff hangar”, which housed the Phantom’s new mode of transport—a hang glider with the Phantom’s skull motif
emblazoned on it) while others resisted. In the end, new elements can give other writers (as well as me) a larger playground to frolic in and additional flexibility to experiment in future stories. The takeaway was... introduce new nuances at your peril.
3. Writing to update the visual storytelling craft
Vintage The Phantom stories (see above) were oriented to more “word-specific” word-picture combinations, which means that a large proportion of the visual storytelling was text-driven via the captions and dialogue. This kind of approach helped readers bridge time and action quickly and,
on occasion, gave us insight into the characters’ thoughts and points-of-view.
However, modern visual storytelling techniques across many publishers and titles favour the “Interdependent” word-picture combination where the text and the image interlink to convey information that could not be done without one or the other. In addition, the “picture specific” word-picture combination (which places emphasis on image and very little on text) is also strongly utilised in modern comics. The visual narrative has a kind of filmic flow, but this technique also demands more active participation on the part of the reader
because each panel employs “show and don’t tell principles” whereby explanation and exposition in text is abandoned and where elaboration in picture form is embraced. A picture (or a panel in this case) is indeed worth a thousand words!
Show and Don’t Tell Principles: In the final lettered version, I deleted some of the text (“tell”) because the reader can see the plane in the image (“show”) and infer that The Phantom escaped by air (below left).
4. Writing within the tropes of the action-adventure genre Conflict and drama create story. In the action-adventure genre, action drives the story. I learned that each comics issue of The Phantom demanded three action sequences. There wasn’t much of a pause in the action either. Rather, each action sequence segued rapidly into the next. The story progresses swiftly. Not much character development is needed because the Phantom is already established. Indeed, the major editorial note I received from Glenn was to keep amping up the action.
5. Writing to Phantom lore
Honouring The Phantom universe and lore is critical. These are boundaries that can be subtly played with but never crossed. That is why it is essential to work with an editor like Glenn who knows The Phantom inside out, as well as to also seek further editorial support from an expert reader to address any technicalities that might break the world rules. The story needs to remain authentic and credible to its original Falkian ideals and to also entertain the reader.
6. Writing to give the artist the opportunity to shine I love working with artists and - in particular - I LOVED working with Brazilian artist Wendell Cavalcanti on this project. Our mutual mission was to put our egos aside and to create the best work we possibly could and to elevate each other’s contribution. When I scripted the story, I deliberately created opportunities for the then-unknown artist to be inventive and to showcase his or her skills. One way to do that was to include several splash pages so the eventual artist could do more detailed work where warranted.
[Warning: UPCOMING SPOILERS]
Another way was to include interesting locations. I loved the design of the aforementioned cliff hangar, which was conceived differently to the way I imagined it, but completely punched through visually. I also loved the designs for the archipelago in the climax, as well as some of the shipping vessels.
The other moment which was open to Wendell to invent something interesting was with the underwater creature. I had read about marine biologists, visiting Asian fish markets to source marine life they had never seen before. Apparently, global warming was forcing these animals up from the ocean depths to hunt for food and they were getting caught in fishing nets.
In the script, I deliberately didn’t provide much information on the physical nature of the creature in the story, except for some visual reference on the different kinds of shark teeth, as our creature needed to have barracuda style teeth. This approach allowed Wendell to come up with his own take, as
well as to provide mystery. After having spoken to several readers, it’s interesting to comprehend the wide variety of theories and interpretations on the nature of the creature.
7. Writing within the constraints of the comics medium
The page count in a comic story is the major constraint comics writers universally need to confront and it’s no less so for me. We have limited page real estate in which to tell our stories. Rising action takes place on right hand pages and pay offs (including many splash pages) usually take place on left hand pages. In this case, action must stay in the forefront and exposition scenes are played out quickly to keep the focus on the confrontations between the Phantom and human, beast or nature. In-depth talking scenes or character development scenes are secondary to action when it comes to fitting the entire story arc into 44 pages.
The placement of elements and objects in every single panel of a comics story is not arbitrary. Rather, there is a lot of thought that goes into scripting, as well as consultation between the writer and other team members. Ultimately, all components of the comics writing process must have a purpose and writing for The Phantom was no exception.
The Adventure of the Dragon’s Leg was published in February 2021 in The Treasures of Drakon: The Red Dragon Saga trade paperback. It is available from Frew Publications: www.phantomcomic.com.au
Julie Ditrich is a comic book writer, with credits in the USA and Australia and sales of over 270,000 comics to her name, who works predominantly in the fantasy and action-adventure genres.
Comic book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH2_Rvbu5VY
compiled by steve panozzo
thanks to everyone for your amazing contributions!
NEXT ISSUE: Masks!
DEADLINE 14th September
Please send your contributions to: inkspot@cartoonists.org.au
Looking back, one of the funnier moments in my time as Art Director at News Limited was when Lindy Chamberlain was appearing in the Federal Court in Sydney on the charge of murdering her daughter, Azaria, in the Northern Territory.
As it is with court proceedings, no photos can be taken in the courtroom, so it is the custom to send an artist to draw from life. On the first day of the trial, with so much heat around as to whether a dingo took the baby or she murdered the child, I was asked to send an artist to the proceedings. It was pretty early in the morning, and as I only had the less-experienced younger artists to choose from, I selected a cadet who could draw quite well, Craig Stephens.
Sitting behind Craig was a similar-aged artist, Paul Leigh, and they were always playing jokes on each other. I said to Craig, “look decent and meet the journo out the front of the courtroom”. Craig tidied himself up and as he got up to leave for the Federal Court, Paul patted him on the back; Craig put his coat on and left the room. He eventually returned after lunch, quite cranky and abused Paul.
“What was all that about?,” I asked.
It appears Craig took his place near the front in court and proceeded to start drawing Lindy. About halfway through proceedings, the court adjourned for lunch, so Craig took his
coat off and proceeded towards the exit. Behind him was the Crown Solicitor who said, “I suppose you think that’s funny?”
Craig said, “What?”
“That. On your back.”
Craig reached around to the back of his shirt to find a piece of A4 paper that said, “THE DINGO DID IT!”
When I heard the story back at the office, all I could think of was a possible charge of contempt of court and a hefty fine. Fortunately, things didn’t go any further.
An embarrassed Paul thought the gag wouldn’t get past the journo in the staff car, but Craig had it under his coat, so it wasn’t revealed until lunchtime.
A few months later, another trial required a court artist. This one involved bikies and I was in a similar situation, so I sent Paul. As he left, Craig patted him on the back for good luck. Fortunately for Paul the accompanying journo had his wits about him and stopped Paul before he entered the courtroom. The foyer was crowded with hairy, tattooed bikies. “ I wouldn’t go in with that on your back,” said the journo.
Another A4 sheet of paper said, “Comancheros SUX”.
Dean Rankine seems to lurch from high-profile success to success. This time, the one in question is The Riverdale Diaries: Starring Veronica, to be released later in the year by Little Bee Books, distributed by Simon & Shuster.
It’s the second volume in the Riverdale Diaries series, written by Sarah Kuhn in partnership with Archie Comic Publications,
but it’s Dean’s first stab at drawing the characters.
“122 pages in 5 months,” he said.” I did the maths and I thumbnailed, pencilled, inked and coloured a page every 1.2 days... no wonder I’ve been feeling tense.”
Dean Rankine’s latest opus will be released on 16th November, 2021 and available at all discerning book stores. ISBN13: 9781499812152, RRP $18.99
Christopher Downes has been surprised with the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Arts & Letters at Austin Peay University in Tennessee, 29 years after graduating.
“I remember feeling way out of my depth,” he said. “I had absolutely no idea what to expect and I wasn’t even sure I was qualified to be there.”
“I still have those feelings,” Downes said, ”But now I have this award to remind me that I have made progress.”
Earlier this year, Downes released his first picture book, Mona’s Ark. In his “other” job as an attendant at Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), he has been able to observe the reactions of visitors to the various compelling (and sometimes, challenging) pieces on show.
“You can’t turn off the cartoonist brain,” he told The Mercury. “I’d often come up with jokes about the artworks, so this book eventually started forming.”
Mona’s Ark is $20 and available online at: https://shop.mona.net.au/products/monas-ark
On International Women’s Day on 8th March, Queenie Chan’s graphic novel series, Women Who Were Kings was celebrated by women’s empowerment organisation SheSaw at World Square in Sydney’s CBD. Queenie was one of twelve women handpicked to have a commemorative portrait created for the occasion, where she also was interviewed about her series of biographical graphic novels on famous historical queens. More recently, the third volume in the series, covering the life of Elizabeth I, was shortlisted for the 2021 Australian Comic Arts Awards.
Entitled The Dress, the exhibition is centred on a series of paintings with a central theme. The oils on canvas reference the elaborate dresses of high society in the 18th Century, with an added touch of whimsy and fantasy.
With no official opening, Neil celebrated the show with Chief Hanger, Narelle (left), and Jen, who supplied the wine!
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Cartoons were all around me when I was young. Every kid collected and swapped Dell, Golden Key, DC and other American imports. MAD was a strong influence; for single-panel humour there were the double-page spreads in magazines like Pix, People and Post. And for syndicated strip cartoons we had the pull-out comics from several Sunday newspapers. Being as much musical then as I was artistic, I took a fancy to the work of Gerard Hoffnung; I like to think that a little him of can be seen in my cartoons.
Even as a schoolboy I nursed desires of becoming a published cartoonist. Of course I had no idea how to go about it, and neither did my teachers. At that time the schools held “Careers Nights”, which were structured opportunities for students to explore the world of work by chatting with members of many professions. I remember going along one year, aged eleven or so, and looking about the room for the cartoonist.
There was, of course, no such individual, but a journalist came forward to advise me against pursuing a career in cartoons: it was poorly paid and unpredictable. Far better, he said, to become - a journalist! Taking his advice, I put all ideas of cartooning out of my head and went on to complete an Arts degree at Sydney University in 1980, followed by a Diploma in Education.
I had decided to enter teaching. My first posting was to a remote primary school in Sydney’s west; twenty-two of my students had repeated from the previous year. Sadly, it all proved too much for me: I resigned eighteen months later and, oddly enough, the school’s principal resigned on the same day. I used the opportunity to travel around Britain on a push-bike, spending six months in the English countryside, carefree and independent.
While travelling the country lanes I would sometimes draw cartoons, in a half-hearted way, to please the children of certain families I met. On my return to Sydney, and without any money to my name, I began to send single-panel gags to local magazines.
My first published cartoon, now lost, showed two mice beside a mouse trap, one saying indignantly to the other: “Processed cheddar! What are they trying to do - kill us?”
At that time it was a freelancer’s heaven: magazines abounded and editors were still in the old habit of peppering their pages with spot cartoons and illustrations. I began to appear in Pol, Dolly, Forum, Australian MAD and The Australian Women’s Weekly.
It was a lonely trade, beetling away in the front room my Cammeray rental, sending and receiving couriers, chasing up invoices and waiting for the phone to ring. I lived like this for three years before there came a knock at the door.
It was the young cartoonist Mark David, seeking me out after spying some of my work in print. Up to that point I had never met another cartoonist; Mark was a delightful entrée into the world of freelance comic art. Having been at it much longer than I, he encouraged me to approach The Sydney Morning Herald with a portfolio, which I did.
Art Director John Sandeman was good enough to give me a one-week trial in the SMH art room; my first contributions to the paper were very shaky indeed! I did, however, advance into a second week of cartoon illustration, followed
BRIAN KOGLER was at the peak of his career in the early 1990s, winning eight Stanley Awards between 1989 and 1993 - four for Single Gag Artist and another four for Comic Strip Artist - before inexplicably walking away from cartooning. Here’s his story.
by thirteen years of unbroken service. In 1989, my wife and I moved to the NSW Central Coast. At that time the SMH employed very few full-time artists. Under Sandeman’s supervision most were freelance, holding down two or three days a week at their Jones Street desks. At one end of the long room were the “good old boys”, seasoned staff artists who had been with the newspaper for many years and who were feeling underused in the new scheme of things. Those hip young illustrators who came and went like bluebottles were known as “contributors”. It would take years for these two cliques to eventually become friends.
One of the more enlightened art editors of the period was The Bulletin’s Lindsay Foyle. A cartoonist himself, he worked tirelessly to foster cartooning in Sydney via the historic magazine. On Tuesdays, Lindsay would open his office to freelance cartoonists and caricaturists, inviting contributions of any kind; everybody who was anybody streamed in and out all day. In this way I met the best of the cartooning crowd - Bill Leak, Jenny Coopes, Patrick Cook, Alan Moir and Phil Somerville among them.
In the early 1990s, I was approached by the Fairfax art editor, John Moses, who asked if I had anything at hand to fill an opening in The Sun-Herald’s Sunday comics supplement; I did not. I did, however, have an idea that I was developing for a children’s picture book: a story about the antics of a polar bear cub in the bleak Arctic. With no time to spare I seized on it to create the twodeck comic strip Thin Ice, introducing a full cast of characters, including three
snowballs that talked. It ran for about four years and, surprisingly, won me several awards.
In 1985 The Bulletin funded the first Black & White Artists’ Awards Night Dinner at The Sheraton-Wentworth Hotel in Sydney, the first society bash since 1946. Young, scruffy cartoonists had never been fêted like this before. The event continued annually, presenting coveted Stanley Awards to all areas of media illustration. Between 1989 and 1994 I picked up eight awards for either Single Gag Artist or Comic Strip Artist, something that has never really sat well with me, given the mighty range of talent prevailing at the time. Nevertheless, I loved these evenings - the glamour, the celebrities, the guest speakers (Sergio Aragones and Chuck Jones among them) and the food! It was the one time in the year that I felt I had “a proper job”.
The freelancing of cartoons could only bring in a medium level of income. To supplement it I began to deliver cartooning workshops. I fell back on my teacher training to devise a range of classes, from one to three hours duration, which would suit all types of students.
After some success in Community Colleges and libraries, I eventually found an agent who could place me in any venue in the state: schools were popular. Sometimes I would take a plane to a country town and work the district for a week. I must have given over a hundred of these structured sessions during the 1990s. Perhaps they had a part to play in the fatigue which ultimately overcame me.
Towards the end of the 1990s, I began to feel the pressure of having to amuse on demand. I became fussy in my work, was rarely satisfied, and some of the fun disappeared from cartooning. At about this time, Fairfax announced sweeping redundancies; along with many others, I was “let go”. Shortly afterwards, doctors diagnosed anxiety and major depression; I was unable to work in any way for two years.
My recovery would take a full seven years, during which time I visited psychologists and psychiatrists. A sort of rehabilitation began when I decided to retrain at UTS as a teacher in Adult Basic Education. I was immediately employed in the TAFE system and spent fifteen energetic and rewarding years helping adults who had somehow missed out on essential skills - reading, writing, numeracy and computer literacy.
Although quick cartoon sketches proved enormously useful in communicating ideas to foreign students, I have not made a “funny drawing” in twenty years. I sometimes give public talks about my life; occasionally I reprise one of my cartooning workshops. But it’s all behind me now. A huge amount of original artwork never made it back to me from the compositing room; anything sold to magazines, small business or advertising is long in the wind. I keep in contact some practising cartoonists: with Mark David and Reg Lynch (remember the SMH’s Stay in Touch column?), and also with Cathy Wilcox. Until his untimely death in 2017, I would sometimes meet with Bill Leak on the Central Coast. Phil Somerville has remained a firm friend, the last of the “New Yorker” cartoonists on Australian soil.
I continue to live in Koolewong, a watery hamlet between Woy Woy and Gosford. For the past seven years I’ve been engaged in voluntary work: a tutor with the Red Cross Young Parents Program; a busy secondhand book dealer within the shopping precinct of Fairhaven Shopping Village; an ESL teacher leading a weekly conversation class at Gosford Library. My remaining time has been spent in coffee shops, reading quietly or chatting with vintage acquaintances and paying far too much for a poached egg.
Long before I published my first cartoon I was composing “classical” music in an earnest way. I took some classes at the Sydney Conservatorium and invested years in composing vocal rounds; I now have a collection of over 240, six of which were gloriously performed by The Song Company in its 2017 Advent recital. These days I enjoy compiling crosswordshundreds, in fact - not for publication, but for the simple challenge of completing something.
Brian Kogler
Once I got the hang of digital Illustration, it opened up my world of creative possibilities. Every year I try to add a new skill using illustration.
In 2014, I discovered the world of corporate video scribing. The method is where you draw on a flat surface and get filmed from above while drawing. You see my arm whizzing across the screen. The film gets edited with sound and music. You can see a sample here: https://videoscribing.com.au/nex-gen-pharma-promo
Around this time I started collaborating with the hugely talented Alex Kesselaar from Kess Media, who’s a photo, video & web wizard! I develop the storyboards and draw, while Alex films and edits - a perfect collaboration! We both run our own businesses and work together on these videos under the mantle of VideoScribing. We love brainstorming together to look for new ways to use illustrations in these videos. Luckily we have a few clients that love our crazy ideas!
Our latest development is creating animated illustrations instead of hand-drawn ones. I work out the scenes and sequence a storyboard, then begin illustrating on my iPad using Procreate. Alex takes my files, timing it perfectly to the voiceover, then adds music and sound. You still get that cartoony feel for corporate videos.
IBT is one of our clients; they take full advantage of our hand-crafted videos and put them to work. They’re an information technology firm that delivers data integration and analytics for Australian Governments and corporate entities (Qlik and PeopleSoft) and single platform cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) for small-to-medium enterprises (such as Oracle NetSuite). IT can be a bit dull and boring, so
they wanted to use animated illustrations to jazz up their marketing videos.
Alex is also a professional drone operator and IBT used some of his drone videos in their campaigns. These videos were a beautiful blend of my animated illustrations, drone video, drone stills, a great script and a perfect voiceover suited to the target audience. If I get a good script, the ideas just flow! Quick and snappy is the best, so you can let the visuals do their work.
Their Oracle NetSuite campaign started in 2019 with an initial 3-minute explainer video targeted toward regional Australia. The video was on their website and all their social media accounts, linked via an email campaign and appeared in News Corp digital media.
IBT also used stills from the video to continue the branding and in 2020 we developed a short 30-second video for their TV campaigns and agricultural events via VirtuAg’s online promotions.
News Corp did a feature article on IBT and our video is showcased at the end. It’s a major content piece that will help our client connect with more rural and regional businesses and drive more IBT website traffic.
It’s such a buzz when your illustrations pop up across different platforms. My next venture is delving further into animation; my Animate program is sitting there waiting patiently for me!
www.danivittz.com.au
www.videoscribing.com.au
Published by Celadon Books, 2020
Available from booktopia.com.au
$30.95
272 pages
ISBN 9781250262899
Reviewed by Steve Panozzo“I’ve always looked upon cartooning as comedy’s last frontier,” writes Steve Martin in his introduction to A Wealth of Pigeons: A Cartoon Collection. After “losing touch” with comedy writing, he would still see humorous pieces and hilarious cartoons in The New Yorker and began considering jokes (usually at the expense of the family dog) that would make great cartoons. Soon after, Martin was introduced to cartoonist Harry Bliss and this book is the result.
An interesting aspect of their collaboration is that their relationship works both forwards and backwards: either Martin creates gags for Bliss to draw, or Bliss sends Martin what he calls “orphan drawings”, desperately in need of a caption. In the space of a year, they came up with around 150 cartoons.
The cartoons, as you would imagine, proceed from a largely cerebral foundation, mostly stemming from the “what if..?” college of humour in which Martin excels. Bliss’ cartoon style is beautifully illustrative, with lots of soft-lead-pencil-on-textured-paper shading, giving depth and shape to his largely greyscale panels. Wisely, Bliss occasionally breaks into colour (and what beautiful excursions they are!), even turning his hand to sequential strips as he documents his discussions with Martin. Some of the cartoons are shamelessly, wittily selfreferential. You can randomly open this book and find something to laugh at every time.
In simple terms, these cartoons present themselves as a much more intelligent and artistically superior successor to The Far Side, the use of animals as humour conduits begging the comparison. The various musings on humour generation throughout acts as a self-referential commentary on the process. I love it.
Rivalry for newspaper circulation has resulted in some interesting facts. Among them was, for the first time in Australian journalism, a ‘children’s page’. This feature, published in the The Sun in 1921 as a supplement of four pages, was the first of its kind in Australia.
It featured two comic strips, one drawn by David Souter, the other titled Us Fellers, introduced Ginger Meggs to become a sensation for its creator James Charles Bancks, and for reader circulation.
Young readers were invited to contribute original anecdotes, riddles, poems, drawings and photos of their pets. Certificates were awarded to those judged the best. Winners received by post their rewards in an envelope decorated with Ginger Meggs. Initially the illustration was printed in full colour. This changed to one colour, red, a wartime economy. At the end of hostilities in 1946, full colour returned.
The promoting of Ginger Meggs was novel, with the first of a long series of Sunbeams annuals, lapel buttons, bookmarks, blotting papers and birthday greeting postcards mailed to young readers of the various Murdoch state newspaper supplements.
Jimmy Bancks died in 1952, it is said, from overwork. But Ginger lived on, cleverly ‘ghosted’ by the cartoonist Ron Vivian for 21 years. In mid-July, 1985, Australia Post issued a 33 cent postage stamp depicting Ginger Meggs and his two pets Mike and Tony. Ginger could be contemplating on no billy cart, no butting goats, no fighting Eddie Coogan, no playing the wag from schoolno Bradman.
Ar there Ginge, it’s called progress.
On the flipside of cartooning, a series of “bits and bobs” about Australian cartoonists never before recorded
by PETER VISKA
This issue, Peter Viska takes a look at the importance of conceptual art in animation projects, showcasing the stunning work of Kyla May.
Here is another look at the work of concept artists in the visual development of animation concepts and series. In this issue we present the wonderful work of Kyla May, who has successfully created worlds and characters for six animated TV series and over 40 children’s books.
After beginning her career as a photographer, Kyla embarked on a Visual Communication and Graphic Design course, which culminated in her receiving her Bachelor of Arts Degree.
Initially she was influenced by the work of Hanna-Barbera and Mary Blair before graduating to her own style. Her first animation commission was to create a show for Moody Street Kids. It was cartoon about the life of a pre-teen girl, Maddison Marples-Macintosh, who assumes the role of an online advice columnist on her school’s website for a demographic aimed at seven to nine year olds. This led to more work for the same production company on She-Zow, Flea-Bitten, Kuu Kuu
Harajuku and The Day My Butt Went Psycho for Studio Moshi. Designing Kuu Kuu Harajuku toys for Mattel for was also part of her brief. The international success of all of these shows has ensured that her work has been seen around the world.
Kyla usually starts the process with pencil and paper before moving to Adobe Illustrator using her signature linework and black colour. Kyla has a passion for colour palettes and loves creating depth of field using colour hues, de-focusing the foreground and background layers.
Kyla uses her animation skills for book illustration as well. Over the past 3 years since she finished production on Kuu Kuu Harajuku, Kyla has completed several series of books for Scholastic US and Scholastic Australia. Her titles include The Diary of a Pug, The Underdogs and Paris Takes over the World. Kyla is currently drawing the seventh book in the Diary of a Pug book series.
Her approach to book illustration is similar to tackling an animated series but with fewer stakeholders! Simplicity is Kyla’s secret to communication, which comes from an extensive background in advertising and graphic design, where you need to communicate your visual concept to your audience as quickly as possible.
More of Kyla’s stunning work can be found at: kyla-may.myportfolio.com or on her Instagram page: kylamayillustratordesigner
Mount Isa, Queensland is famous for being one of the world’s top ten producers of copper, silver, lead and zinc. It has a population of 23,000 people and, in The North West Star, boasted one of the few remaining regional newspapers in Australia with it’s own cartoonist, Bret Currie. Sadly, Bret passed away suddenly at home on 27th February at the age of 60.
Bret Currie’s memorial service on 15h March at the Mount Isa Xstrata Entertainment Centre was attended by a crowd numbered in the hundreds, a reflection of the esteem with which he was held in the region. Bob Katter, Federal Member for Kennedy, knew Bret for many years, and said he was “one of Australia’s best cartoonists”.
“Bret was an extremely good bloke and he proved that you could be the best at something and still live in Mount Isa,” Mr Katter said, adding that his favourite cartoon was one Bret drew of him based on fantasy TV series, Game of Thrones.
“A classic from Currie depicting me as a Game of Thrones character - which I’m told is popular with the young people - culling crocs and dragons,” Mr Katter said.
Drawing since childhood, Bret was born 12 months to the day after his older brother Steve, who said he had to share his cake every year with his talented younger brother. Steve said Bret lived in Mount Isa for about 40 years after making “the big trip” up from Victoria.
Editor of The North West Star, Derek Barry, said Bret’s cartoons appeared every week - as long as he hadn’t gone fishing.
“Bret drew a cartoon for us every week, though quite often he would disappear for weeks on end; he loved fishing,” Mr Barry laughed. “I was looking through a whole bunch of them when I heard the news; there are some really lovely ones. He managed to say something with a few brushstrokes which I was struggling to do with thousands of words.”
“Talking to him made me realise how much colour and movement were important to understanding news and not just for cartoonists.”
On 3rd. March, on the way home from annual holidays in Eden, NSW, Dave Gibb died of a heart attack at the age of 62. He had been married to Jane for 32 years, was the father of six children and grandfather of five. Winner of a Rotary Cartoon Award in 1998, many ACA members will have met Dave at the 2006 Stanley Awards weekend in Ballarat, where his larger-than-life presence made itself felt on the cricket pitch!
Dave Gibb grew up in rural Tasmania and while he enjoyed drawing as a child, he pursued careers in various fields before returning to his calling - including six years in the army, working as an ambulance driver, a medic, health inspector, factory worker, cleaner and office worker. He opened Familiar Faces in Ballarat in 2004, drawing cartoons, caricatures and teaching cartooning.
He taught cartooning in schools throughout Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania before becoming a youth worker for the Lighthouse Foundation alongside his wife, Jane Gibb.
Dave taught cartooning to 25,000 children throughout Victoria and Tasmania over the last decade, with the workshops structured to promote self-esteem, encouraging the use of each student’s imagination through active participation. Cops and Kids co-founder John Moloney said Dave missed
only one out of the 24 camps that have been run.
“When he moved to Melbourne, it was quite interesting, you’d ring him and the first thing he would say was ‘what dates are they?’ because he wanted to get it in the calendar,” he said. “His enthusiasm was second to none.
“He and his wife Jane would come up and do caricatures of all the children,” he added. “Every year, we have between 60 and 65 children and part of the talks that we do is explain what he does over the day and if we’ve got 65 children there, he ends up doing 95 caricatures.”
The President of the Rotary Club of Ballarat South, Maree Roache, said Dave was a very valued member of the club. “His passing is a great loss to the club and to the greater community,” she said.
Having married the late Paul Parv, and long-considered part of the ACA by association, Valerie Parv never lost her interest in cartooning, despite not being a cartoonist! In fact, Valerie was a multi-award-winning author and novelist, recently releasing her autobiography to great acclaim (see Inkspot #91). Her sudden loss on 25th April, days short of her 70th birthday, has been a shock to many.
Valerie Parv’s first books - nonfiction home and garden DIY guides - were published in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, she began to publish in the genre she was most wellknown for: romance fiction.
Her first romance novel, Love’s Greatest Gamble, was published by Harlequin Mills & Boon in 1982. This was, as Parv noted, a book which “broke a few moulds at the time”, featuring a widowed single mother heroine dealing with the fallout of her late husband’s PTSD-induced gambling addiction.
Romance fiction is often derided as formulaic. This is especially true for category romance fiction, as publisher guidelines can dictate things like length, setting and level of sexual content. Parv, however, firmly rejected this notion.
“All fiction has conventions but formula, hardly,” she wrote earlier this year. “Not when people and their stories are so varied.”
Parv was unafraid to experiment, enjoining aspiring authors to “write dangerously” rather than to satisfy the market, and often hybridised genres in her work. She frequently told an anecdote about her 1987 book The Leopard Tree, which raised the possibility its hero might have arrived by UFO. While she received pushback on this from Mills & Boon, the book was published elsewhere and “became the poster-child for cutting edge romance for some years afterward”.
An enormous part of Valerie’s legacy will be her bestselling guides on the craft of writing, including The Art of Romance Writing (1993), Heart and Craft (2009), and, most recently, her part memoir/part writing advice volume, 34 Million Books: Australia’s Queen of Romance Shares Her Life and Writing Tips (2020), the title of which is a wink to her own prolific success.
Parv was also strongly committed to mentorship. For 20 years, the Valerie Parv Award was run through the Romance Writers of Australia. Winners of the award - fondly referred to by Parv as her “minions” - received a year’s mentorship with Parv. Nearly all of Parv’s minions have gone on to have works published. In 2015, Parv was made a Member of the Order of Australia for “significant service to the arts as a prolific author, and as a role model and mentor to young emerging writers”.
Valerie is survived by two sisters. She was married to her husband, former crocodile hunter, cartoonist and layout artist Paul Parv, for 38 years, until his death in 2008.
I met Valerie Parv when I attended my first-ever Stanley Awards evening at the Australian National Museum, Canberra in November, 2001.
I will always remember how entertaining it was to listen to Valerie and her husband, Paul Parv, sitting at the table, debating which was more difficult: constructing a cage to capture and wrestle crocodiles in Australia’s Top End, or devising a secret lovers’ romantic rendezvous in a steamy Australian outback setting during a social revolution for her next Harlequin romance novel. Paul, who not only loved cartooning himself, was once a crocodile hunter working in Darwin before becoming a layout artist for Nock & Kirby’s hardware chain, which is where they both met, Valerie being an advertising copywriter.
Our wonderful friendship only grew from there. I was a wildlife artist and Illustrator and Valerie was not only a romance novelist, but also an ambassador for the Canberra Zoo and Aquarium. It was as if we were destined to spend the next twenty years working and spending weekends together one way or another, having dinner parties and raising awareness for the welfare and conservation of the world’s wildlife.
Through her contacts and expertise, Valerie arranged an art exhibition which included members of the Australian Cartoonist’s Association and it was incredibly successful. Not only did we shine a light on the plight of the world’s wildlife, but here we were, having a blast displaying our finest work to the public and raising funds for a very worthy cause. The artwork traversed all genres, ranging from pen
and ink to watercolour, acrylic on board, and pencil etchings. The cartoons and satirical masterpieces not only brought a smile to all who came to visit the zoo, but also gladdened the hearts of all animal lovers who enjoyed a chance to meet and greet the artists. A wonderful day was had by all participating ACA members and it is one that I will never forget, thanks to Valerie and her passion for wildlife, her love of art and meeting everything in life with a great sense of humour. She even let me paint her for the Archibald Prize; it was hung in the Salon des Refusés in 2004. That was a hoot and half.
Valerie was quite rightly known as Australia’s “Queen of Romance”. With over 34 million books sold globally and more than 57 romance novels under her belt, published by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin Publishers.
Later came Valerie’s Beacon series of science fiction novels, which she spoke of many times, a subject which filled her with such fascination. This groundbreaking series of books, which she wrote between 2012 and 2016, led Valerie to becoming the only Australian recipient of the Romantic Times Book Reviews Pioneer Award, which honours writers who have stepped out of the square and broken new ground in the development of the romance novel.
As well as running her own writers’ workshops every Monday morning and inspiring others to let a little love into their lives, Valerie was a wonderfully warm and gentle friend, and it was a pleasure to know and to work with her.
First appearing in 1981, Swamp has gone on to become an international success story for GARY CLARK, earning him 14 Stanley Awards and an equal number of Rotary Cartoon Awards. Happy birthday, Swamp!
Well, that came around fast!
I was 19 years old and a recent graduate from commercial art school with a couple of studio jobs behind me and a folio of cartoon strip samples, drawn between jobs, of a cartoon strip feature I called The Swamp. About six years later, now married and working as a self-employed advertising artist, my clever and gifted salesperson wife, Yvonne, took some of these (by now redrawn) samples to a newspaper editor who promptly bought it to run as their latest daily comic feature. That was 1981 and I was now a comic strip artist. Something I had wanted to be after seeing The Wizard of Id comic strip for the first time during my initial week of art school in 1970.
Over the next two years, Yvonne continued to knock on editors’ doors, gaining 49 newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, mostly capital city and regional daily papers. Today, in 2021 (over 12,000 daily and 1,900 Sunday cartoons later), here we are at this special milestone. 40 years ago was a good time to be in the comic strip business. Most Australian capital cities had two or more daily papers and the same for Sunday papers. Newspapers were doing great business.
Some of the highlights of these years were travelling to the United States and gaining a whole new readership in newspapers throughout Sweden and Scandinavia (that’s a story for another time). Another great highlight, not just for me but for many isolated cartoonist like me, was a 1984 gathering in Adelaide of cartoonists from all over Australia - cartoonists who, until then, had worked many years in the industry without meeting other cartoonists. It was inspiring to be amongst so many well-known names and major talents in Australian cartooning. This gathering was the catalyst for the formation
of the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club as a national organisation (now the ACA). Winning the inaugural Stanley Award for Comic Strip Artist in 1985 was a great encouragement. Happily, in the following years, the master artists of this category each rightfully received their own well-deserved award.
I’m very thankful for the cartooning career and the associations and friendships I have made during it. I’m grateful also that Swamp continues to run in Australian daily and Sunday newspapers. Thankyou newspapers, comic strip readers and Swamp fans, inspiring fellow cartoonists, and special thanks to my lovely wife Yvonne, whose support continues to allow me to do what I do. Happy continued reading!
Gary Clark
Last year, the Australian Cartoonists’ Association purchased the full version of virtual meeting software, Zoom, in order to conduct our Annual General Meetings and regular Board meetings. With most parts of Australia playing lockdown “musical chairs” on a regular basis for the past 18 months, the Board decided to schedule some regular catch-up sessions for ACA members across the country, chaired by David Pope and featuring a series of guest speakers.
The first, on 17th March, featured an interview with Cathy Wilcox and the second, on 22nd July, focused on the life and times of Dean Rankine. While attendances have been modest, it’s been fun to meet some new members, some of which live in remote parts of the country. The meeting in July is notable for having all States and both Territories represented - Sydney-based Peter Byrne was spending 2 weeks at Howard Springs Detention Centre before meeting with his son in Darwin, so we had an unexpected, but fascinating, look at the facility from a cartoonist’s point of view! Be sure to check your email (or the ACA’s Facebook page) for details for the next get-together!
