Inkspot 94

Inkspot

LUMSDEN: PUNCHING UP!

BEHIND THE LINES SUBMARINES! THE TOWN WITHOUT TV plus

Inkspot Presidential Palaver

Issue #94, Summer 2021/2022 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

Affiliated Organisations

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: Daniel Best, Roy Bisson, Peter Broelman, David Bromley, Warren Brown, Harry Bruce, Alex Carr, Jason Chatfield, Jed Dunstan, Chris Durham, Jules Faber, John Farmer, Lindsay Foyle, Matt Golding, George Haddon, Dave Heinrich, Leigh Hobbs, Judy Horacek, Dee Horne, Mick Horne, Phil Judd, Daryl Karp, Rik Kemp, Helen Kemsley, Mark Knight, John Kolm, Glen Le Lievre, Brett Lethbridge, Peter Lewis, Vane Lindesay, Glenn Lumsden, Simon Marshall, Ian McCall, Paul McKeon, Stuart McMillen, Bruce Mutard, Phil Norrie, Peter Player, Alan Rose, David Rowe, John Thorby, Chris Thomas, Hayley Ward and Tracey Warren

Cover Art: Glenn Lumsden

(with grateful thanks to Frew Publications)

Inkspot is published quarterly by the Australian Cartoonists’ Association

Deadline for next issue is 18th MARCH PO Box 5178

SOUTH TURRAMURRA NSW 2074

ABN 19 140 290 841

ISSN 1034-1943

Australia Post Registration PP 533798/0015

Things were obviously looking a little too much like normal, with Omicron peaking and falling, booster shots in arms and some of us, like clownfish, daring to swim out from the shelter of isolation and enter the open waters of social interaction.

SO normal, that various postponed awards nights boldly took place (all on the same weekend), and we saw each other, whole and un-cropped by the little windows on the zoom screen! Clearly that was TOO normal for the zeitgeist, which had other ideas. So, hot on the heels of bushfire, flood, pandemic, mouse plague, more pandemic, we now have more bushfires (in WA), a bigger flood (on the east coast) and… A WAR… No, really. And - oh - are we more afraid of China, or Russia, or vaccines, or climate change, or…?

My son, some-time scholar of History, wisely pointed out that the world has more often been in crisis than in calm. Those glorious few decades of “progress” and rising wealth?* That was the glitch. Still, the artists and cartoonists of the world are not here to observe nothing happening. We have a role to play in observing, recording and commenting on events, the better to make sense of them. This may involve challenging

Editorial Notes

It’s OK. I’ll wait for you to catch your breath. You’ll need that after seeing Glenn Lumsden’s sensational cover illustration. The last one he drew for Inkspot was waaay back in 1996 (issue number 27, no less!), when he was spending a lot of time in both the Skull Cave and the Batcave, a topic covered in Daniel Best’s compelling 2-part interview, starting on page 20.

Some of us are a still a little dizzy after a combined Rotary Cartoon Awards + Stanley Awards + Walkley Awards weekend, resulting in Cathy Wilcox scoring the Gold Stanley for Cartoonist of the Year, David Rowe winning Rotary Cartoon of the Year and David Pope nailing the Walkley Award for Best Cartoon. You’ll be able to read all about it next issue, coming to you sooner than you think!

our own assumptions, (hint: don’t ever believe you’ve worked it all out) but if it adds to the sum of our common understanding then I believe it’s worth it. Others among us will find even stronger, the need to escape into fiction and fantasy, as respite from the horrific daily doom-scroll. If that’s where you find your sanity then go for it! (My current addiction/escape is the various Alone series on SBS on Demand!) Phantom comics, anyone? And some, like our good friend (and ex-president) Jules Faber, have rediscovered the meditative benefits of just drawing, honing his craft, getting better at something, letting the art take over.

But if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s to appreciate the good things, the precious moments and the company of people we love. And to spend time doing the things we love doing. We little clownfish might be well-advised to swim back into the weeds and get on with drawing the hell out of 2022!

One thing we can celebrate this issue is the crowning of Glen Le Lievre as MoAD’s Behind the Lines Political Cartoonist of the Year (page 4), despite running the risk of Inkspot becoming slightly Glen(n)-Centric.

Your View On... goes under the waves this issue. The next Federal Election is now only weeks away, and we need cartoons on the topic of ELECTIONS, so please send them in by 18th March!

With Putin currently doing his best to pummel Ukraine into submission, and a crazy weather cel doing much the same to Australia’s east coast, it’s sometimes hard to stay optimistic, but I hope this issue of Inkspot may help.

*From the perspective of the global rise of the middle class - obviously not shared by all.

Phil Writes Again

My wife, Belinda Vivian, would like to thank you very much for your 8-page layout of the article about her father, Ron Vivian. You did a great job and we both are very happy with the result. Do you want an article about my thesis with Richard Scully about the portrayal of women in cartoons during WW2 – if so how many words can I have please – the more the merrier?

Phil Norrie AVALON NSW

ED: Yes, please Phil! We welcome all contributions.

By George,

It’s a Cracker!

Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed Inkspot number 93 - it was unputdownable! Excellent cover. I loved all the Ginger Meggs history - stories, cartoonists, pics, old comic strips etc. - bliss on a stick. So much other interesting stuff … Vane’s contribution, always interesting and the old Jimmy Banks ‘Exclusive Cocktails’ illustrations were gems. Good to catch up with Kaz Cooke, a fellow Ronald Searle enthusiast (who isn’t?), Nat’s preview of his Emile Mercier book (I’ll have one)... David Pope’s posters (stunning)... The Ledgers... etc. All up a bonzer read (that’ll date me). Tough gig, thanks.

George Haddon ALBERT PARK VICTORIA

No Emdin Sight

Hey Inkspot Team - I’ve been MIA in the wilderness and off socials, but just wanted to jump in and say “thanks” for another cracker issue! Appreciate the work that goes into putting it together and sending it out. I’d also like to echo the comments in the letters regarding the Brian Kogler interview in the previous issue. He was my favourite Aussie cartoonist back in the day, and I’ve been wondering where he’d ended up. Mystery solved!

Anton Emdin MARRICKVILLE NSW

Bleak Review

We just received the Inkspot – really enjoyed Lindsay Foyle’s review of the Bill Leak book – very fair and balanced.

Mick and Dee Horne

SAFETY BAY WA

A Fandooglie From Maryville

Goodonya, Steve and all at Inkspot! Overjoyed, honoured and humbled by the Roycee’s Rotten Christmas Tail three-page spread in the current issue. Being recognised by my peers along with sharing the magazine with legends Bancks, Mercier, Kemsley and a host of other luminaries is like winning the lottery. A super dooper issue of Inkspot. But then, I’m somewhat biased. Bombora,

Roy Bisson

MARYVILLE NSW

BEHIND LE LIEVRES

GLEN LE LIEVRE is MoAD’s Political Cartoonist of the Year - what did he make of 2021?

WORLD-CLASS ROWE

For DAVID ROWE, DONALD TRUMP is the gift that keeps giving - this time it’s a nice World Press Cartoon trophy

KNEES-UP MISTER LEWIS

PETER LEWIS puts his feet up as his world comes crashing down, all thanks to some tropical fish

NO TELEVISION FOR STU

STUART McMILLEN’s latest comic book tells the story of a fascinating social study - a town without television!

JULES IN A CROW ZONE

Soaring high above his comfort zone, JULES FABER spreads his wings and goes on an avian adventure

LIFE IN THE SKULL CAVE

DANIEL BEST talks to GLENN LUMSDEN and DAVE HEINRICH about their part in Marvel’s 1996 Phantom incursion

REGULAR FEATURES

ACA WELCOMES NEW MEMBERS!

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 hello to:

Ken Best (Qld)

Peter Cranage (ACT)

Gavin Ryan (Qld)

Rakesh Kumar Sahgal (NSW)

Shane Syddall (Qld)

2021 BEHIND THE LINES

Words by LINDSAY FOYLE

From vaccines to submarines, some of Australia’s bestknown cartoonists have offered their take on recent events in the 2021 Behind the Lines exhibition, which was launched in mid-December 2021 at the Museum of Australian Democracy (MoAD), in Old Parliament House, Canberra.

Sydney-based cartoonist Glen Le Lievre was named the MoAD Political Cartoonist of the Year, becoming the first crowd-funded cartoonist to receive the award. In 2020, he was the first artist to present his cartoons as digitally-animated GIFs at the annual exhibition and has done so again in the current show.

“It was a surprise, frankly. I’m quite used to dancing like no one is watching,” Le Lievre told The Canberra Weekly. “Despite the circumstances, as you can see on the walls, a lot of artists cartooned out of their skin this year.”

Le Lievre was unanimously voted as the winner by the panel of judges, which was made-up of epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws, Director of Indigenous Engagement at the National Library of Australia, Marcus Hughes, ABC News journalist Casey Briggs, academic Lucien Leon and comedian Steph Tisdell.

Glen Le Lievre: 2021 was a turducken of bin fires

Holly Williams and Daryl Karp: Looking forward to a less crazy year

Le Lievre’s cartoons and illustrations have appeared in The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, MAD, Private Eye, Reader’s Digest, The New Yorker, Time and The Wall Street Journal. He now produces two cartoons per week for an online audience via the subscription platform, Patreon, receiving praise for his innovative use of technology and entrepreneurial flair.

“It just provides a reason for artists to keep going when they’re too stubborn or too stupid to quit or have no actual alternative,” he smiled.

Behind the Lines had its genesis in 1997, when the National Museum of Australia held an exhibition of political cartooning, Bringing the House Down. It was the result of much hard work by curator Guy Hansen, who said that “cartooning is one of the most popular and accessible forms of political commentary in Australia.” 25 years down the track, this exhibition is the final commission for current curator Holly Williams, who has presided over the largest iteration of the annual show, featuring 126 cartoons from 42 artists, all bound by a central theme: Prophecy and Chance. The 2021 collection sourced cartoons not necessarily published by the big news houses.

“The world of political cartooning is evolving,” she said, “with artists producing really innovative and provocative works on social media rather than for major newspapers.”

The exhibition is expected to be on show at Old Parliament House for most of 2022. Museum director Daryl Karp said that the curators drew inspiration for the exhibition’s theme from the “obsession” we developed last year with forecasts and predictions, expressing the hope that the exhibition would provide some light relief after what was “another crazy year”. When Le Lievre was asked by ABC News about how he would describe 2021, he was characteristically blunt.

“It’s like a turducken of bin fires,” he said. “It’s like a bin fire, inside a bin fire, inside a bin fire. And then garbage and a flaming bag of poo inside the successive three bin fires.”

A portentous choice of words when you consider the doors to the Museum of Democracy were set on fire on 30th December. Officials running the building had agreed to a small smoking ceremony taking place as part of a peaceful protest, but said it got “a little bit out of hand”. The fire caused potentially irreparable damage and the building will now remain closed until repairs can be completed.

Karp says the damage may be unfixable, saying, “discovering the extent of the damage was devastating”. The building’s iconic front entrance, where political history unfolded throughout last century, “will never be the same”, she said.

The massive doors were set alight twice in December by protesters who had varied grievances, such as opposition to mandates and vaccines. The second fire, on December 30, severely damaged the building’s doors, front steps, facade and interiors. Smoke and soot seeped into many parts of the building and caused the building’s sprinkler system to go off, damaging original flooring.

Karp said the repairs would take “many months” and initial insurance estimates suggested a cost of over $4 million. A 30 year old man from Gippsland, Victoria was charged over the incident, later attempting to skip bail.

Another Wilcox Win!

Judy’s Got a New Exhibition

Judy Horacek’s new exhibition, Joys: Spontaneous and Contrived, opens at Canberra’s Beaver Galleries on 24th March. The exhibition will feature Judy’s watercolours and monoprints.

“The aim is to make work that is as happy as possible,” she said of preparing for the new show, “as a partial antidote to the angst of the past two years.

“The ‘spontaneous joys’ of the title are the pure ones that just bubble up, the contrived joys are those deliberate things we did in order to be able to keep going.”

www.beavergalleries.com.au

The Kennedys were presented at Royal Randwick Racecouse on 11th November. Named in honour of revered Fairfax journalist Les Kennedy , the awards celebrate outstanding achievements in Australian journalism while raising funds and awareness for Australia’s media charity, The Kennedy Foundation, which supports colleagues in hardship.

National Cartoon Gallery Wins Tourism Award

The Southern Hemisphere’s only dedicated cartoon gallery keeps earning accolades.

In December, the National Cartoon Gallery won the Excellence in Tourism Award at the CoffsCoast Business Awards.

Gallery Chairman Paul McKeon (right) was on hand to accept the award, presented by Fiona Barden, Leader, Destination and Business Development at Coffs Harbour City Council.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Cathy Wilox has been awarded the Vince O’Farrell Award for Outstanding Illustration/Cartoon at the 2021 NRMA Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism. The other finalists were The Mercury’s Christopher Downes and the Australian Financial Review’s David Rowe

Ginger’s 100th Celebrated in New York City

Despite everyone’s best efforts, Ginger Meggs’ 100th birthday celebration didn’t quite turn out as planned. The Covid-19 Delta variant kept Jason Chatfield in New York City, shutting down the ACA’s plans of a home-grown celebration in November.

Fortunately, Chatfield was able to accept the offer of a celebration hosted by the Australian Consulate-General in New York City on 13th November. Former NSW Premier, Nick Greiner, is the current Australian Consul-General and he enthusiastically welcomed the small gathering to the event, which was streamed live online.

Among the highlights of the relaxed afternoon celebration was a display of Ginger Meggs memorabilia, a reading by

Chatfield from Tristan Bancks’ 100th birthday story book and a “fireside chat” between Chatfield and comedian Ronny Chieng (below).

Meanwhile, back home, an exhibition, Ginger Meggs Turns 100, opened at the National Cartoon Gallery in Coffs Harbour on 10th December, with ACA President Cathy Wilcox performing opening honours.

“The Gallery is packed with vintage Ginger Meggs cartoons, memorabilia, comic books, stamps, coins and fun activities for kids, complete with a billycart just like Ginger’s,” said Chris Durham, Manager of the National Cartoon Gallery. The exhibition continued until the end of February, 2022. www.nationalcartoongallery.com.au

Leigh Hobbs Meets His #1 Mr Chicken Fan

One may well wonder if Leigh Hobbs has given much thought to the impact his characters have have had on kids from all around Australia (and the world!). Whether it’s from reading Old Tom, Horrible Harriet or Mr. Chicken’s adventures, the devotion of his school-aged fans, such as Riley who wrote this really cool letter (right), is something to be admired.

The latest visitors to Leigh’s studio in Melbourne, which he has dubbed “Mr Chicken HQ”, were seven year old Henry (far right) who arrived with his Mum, Helena, and this magnificent Mr Chicken suit which she made for him.

Jed’s Enterprising Ideas Not Half-Baked

If there’s one thing that could be said about Jed Dunstan, it’s that he never lets the grass grow under his feet. Jed has produced not one, but two 2022 wall calendars for sale! The Rabbit Trap calendar and the Bale Number 2022 calendar beautifully capture the unique aspects of rural life, viewed as they are through Jed’s eyes.

Jed has also been doing his bit for South Australian tourism. He has created what he called a “photo board head cut out thingy” (i.e. a photo stand-in) for Eudunda Bakery, using exterior acrylic paints on billboard material, which is sure to become a popular attraction for anyone looking for sweet buns and nice rolls.

www.shopjmdcartoons.bigcartel.com

Although it looks like Jan Andrews is threatening Lindsay Foyle with intent, it is in fact a photo taken on the happiest day of their lives. Telling only those closest to them, the pair finally tied the knot on 1st. May in a suburban Sydney backyard ceremony with all family members present. Congratulations to the new Mr. Foyle and Mrs. Andrews and the very best of wishes for the future.

It’s a “happy birthday” to the legendary Rik Kemp who turned 83 on 9th January. Rik’s distinctive single-panel drawing style was everywhere during the 1980s and 1990s, especially in the Australian Women’s Weekly, Australasian Post, The Bulletin, Woman’s Day and People.

“I Do... And So Do You”

News Launches Kids Comp

During November and December, News Corp Australia launched the Kids News Cartoon Contest, encouraging school kids from Years 3 to 8 to create a cartoon on a news event that mattered to them, whether it’s a sporting achievement, a political manoeuvre or an environmental issue that’s made headlines, or even a caricature of someone famous. News Corp’s stable of editorial cartoonists - The Herald Sun’s Mark Knight, The Daily Telegraph’s Warren Brown, The Courier-Mail’s Brett Lethbridge and The Advertiser’s Peter Broelman - acted as judges and created personalised caricatures for each of their State’s winners over three age groups. Each cartoonist offered tips for their junior protégés.

“A cartoon is 95 per cent idea and 5 per cent drawing,” Broelman said. “Cartooning is a form of expression of an idea or thought. Without that, it’s just a drawing.”

Knight said that before starting to draw, budding cartoonists should ask themselves: what is my topic, what do I want to say about the topic and how do I want to say it? Brown suggested keeping words to a minimum: “an old cartoonist once told me not to write more than four lines of words. I try to keep to that,” he said.

MARK KNIGHT’S TOP TEN TIPS FOR GREAT CARTOONS

1. Don’t try to draw a cartoon in one first take. Drawing is like sport, you have to warm up, stretch the imagination and your drawing hand. Make sketches, start doodling like drawing circles and making crazy faces out of them!

2. Use reference material. If you’re drawing a tree, Google pictures of trees to help guide you. The same with people. I always use a picture reference of the people I’m drawing, even if I’ve drawn them a thousand times.

3. Look at other cartoonists you like and copy from them. This will teach you about composition, technique and drawing style. Eventually your own style will emerge.

4. There are many different things to draw with these days, but start off with the basics: a pencil, eraser and paper. Then ink in your drawing with a fineliner black pen. You can colour with coloured pencils or there are some great coloured markers in art stores. You can also draw on iPads or Wacom drawing tablets. Add in programs like Photoshop or Procreate, and the sky is the limit!

5. Get a drawing diary. Carry it around and sketch things, places, people and objects. It will improve your drawing. I carry mine when I travel and I have a great collection of sketches from all over the world!

6. Ideas are what cartoons are all about: What is my topic? What do I want to say about the topic? How do I want to say it?

7. Using a visual metaphor can help illustrate an idea. For example, using an elephant in your cartoon symbolises that something is huge.

8. Be bold with your drawings! It’s a cartoon, so exaggerate things! You own the world you are creating on paper, so don’t hold back. Make a big splash!

9. Add humour to your cartoon. Not all cartoons have to be funny, but humour is a great way to convey a message. And your readers will thank you.

10. Simplicity is important. The idea must be conveyed to the reader as easily as possible. Try to limit the amount of words in your captions. Remember that we read from left to right, so speech bubbles and visuals should read in that direction to avoid confusion.

But most of all have fun with it!

Warren Brown

Brett Lethbridge

Peter Broelman

Wacom Donates Fundraising Art to National Cartoon Gallery

At the 2006 Stanley Awards in Ballarat, David Spencer (then Director of Wacom) emerged as the winning bidder on a unique piece of art, the brainchild of James Kemsley, which was designed to be the cornerstone of that year’s charity auction.

The piece features work by 27 cartoonists from all over Australia (and one from New Zealand), six of whom are

no longer with us, giving this one-of-a-kind piece greater historical significance.

After hanging proudly on the wall of their Lane Cove head office for 15 years, Wacom contacted the ACA to locate a permanent home for the artwork. We are happy to announce that this unique piece of cartooning history now resides at the National Cartoon Gallery in Coffs Harbour.

PERTH COMIC ARTS FESTIVAL

Alan Rose (centre) and Peter de Hahn (right) have been busy playing music over Christmas and New Year, including two gigs at Montclaire in Brighton, Victoria, home of ACA Patron, Vane Lindesay (left) - one of them a week before Christmas, the other to celebrate Australia Day. Al reports that Vane continues to be “in good spirits”.

Bruce Mutard, rejoicing in the news that the Democratic People’s Republic of Western Australia has rejoined the rest of the country, has announced dates for the Perth Comic Arts Festival 2022. Lock in the weekend of 6th & 7th August! To be held at the WA Museum Boola Bardip in Northbridge, Saturday will feature a professional development day - with talks, workshops, and the Gala CAAA Awards in the evening - followed by a market day on the Sunday. For now, the PCAF is taking expressions of interest for the 2022 Market Hall as well as for the facilitation of presentations and workshops. To register your interest, visit: www.pcaf.org.au

Rowe’s Award is World Class

The Australian Financial Review’s David Rowe has been awarded 2nd Prize, Editorial Cartoon at the 16th annual World Press Cartoon salon held in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, listed as one of UNESCO’s Creative Cities. While the prizes were announced in July 2021, it took seven months for Rowe’s trophy to be delivered.

Rowe had impressed the international jury with his entry, Trump Riot, but was pipped to the first spot by Konstantin Kazanchev from Ukraine. The overall winner of the salon, securing the Grand Prix award and €10,000 for her trouble, was Italian cartoonist Mariagrazia Quaranta, better known by her moniker, Gio. Her entry, Cultural Fingerprint, also won in the Gag Cartoon category.

“So proud to have been part of the wonderful world press cartoon awards,” said Rowe, “and congrats to Gio for her Grand Prix.”

António Antunes, curator and organiser of the World Press Cartoon, describes Kazanchev’s cartoon as “the construction of the world in a lie.

“All the living forces of society, from military power, to religious power, to judicial power, all share the same lie”, he said.

Commenting on Gio’s Grand Prix cartoon, Antunes said the piece “underlines the importance of the written press, which leaves a fingerprint on our culture”. In some way, “it also alerts us to the decadence of the written press”, he added.

This year, the entries shared many common themes. While many of the entries were largely defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, quite a few were framed by defending the freedom of press and expression, a major theme of the event.

The WPC Salon kicked off with a caricature drawing session in the city centre, before the official awards ceremony. The year was summed up well by Albanian cartoonist, Agim Sulaj, whose drawing of surgical masks in the shape of 2020 won him second prize in the Gag Cartoon category.

Cartoonists didn’t forget the environmental emergency and this was reflected in the choice of winner in the Caricature category, which was awarded to Mexican cartoonist, Darío Castillejos for his depiction of Greta Thunberg.

Speaking to news agencies, Castillejos said that “caricatures are like a double mirror. The character of the person who is drawn can be reflected, but we can also be reflected”.

www.worldpresscartoon.com

a Fishy Story of trees, tanks and a patella

When grown men reach a certain age, it’s often assumed that most will retreat to their back sheds to tinker with train sets, rebuild old cars or perfect their golf handicaps. But not The Newcastle Herald’s Peter Lewis

Since 2014, Peter’s side hustle has been creating and building a mechanical fish tank (MFT). He became inspired after his dentist complained of his expensive tropical fish dying all too frequently.

With Peter’s MFT, the mechanical fish are suspended from a moving track in the top and “swim” when switched on, moving between coral, rocks and foliage, all made by hand. The project was progressing splendidly until cyclonic storms ripped through Newcastle in April, 2015.

“A large tree out the front of my place was toppled by a cyclonic storm, flattening my garage art studio and everything in it,” he said.

With the ground already softened by torrential rain, Lewis’ neighbour across the street could see the large gum tree looked unstable in the howling wind. So he did what any good neighbour would do. He whipped out his phone and recorded it.

“I love my neighbour’s dialogue as he filmed it,” said Lewis. “The video was put on TV and was viewed 70,000 times on YouTube!”

So, Peter started again and, until August last year, he had been making good progress on the MFT Mark II, which boasted a rivetted metal casing (the previous version was made of wood) and dozens of pieces of hand-made and painted coral elements. And then, disaster struck yet again.

“I was working on it during August, tripped over a powercord and put myself in hospital,” he said in September, “I had torn my left Achilles and my right patella separated from the quadraceps. At least I can still draw.

“The surgeon reckons I’ll be off my feet for weeks, and it’ll be months before I’m walking without assistance,” he said.

Lewis spent 5 weeks in hospital, drawing his weekly Newcastle Herald cartoon from there on his iPad Pro.

“So much for the quiet retirement I promised Julie,” he commented ruefully.

In November, Lewis got his braces off and drove the car for the first time in months. While he is back on his feet, navigating stairs is proving to be a problem.

And the MFT? Peter said he’d been planning to complete the project for its 10th anniversary, but for now a completion date is not something he’s chasing.

Peter Lewis learns how to take it easy... the hard way

The Story of Gus John Thorby’s

Gus began as the name of a character in a comic strip, published in the Sydney afternoon newspaper, The Sun

In the 1970s, the women’s pages had a weekly page entitled “Young Sun” and this is where a comic strip called Our Street appeared. After several weeks, it was decided that the comic strip would be renamed Gus after the boy in the comic.

The women’s editor wanted a locally drawn cartoon rather than an overseas reprint. After several staff artists tried different cartoons, the job was given to me, one of the head artists at The Sun; I drew it at home and brought it into work with me each week.

Recently, I was going through some past artwork and I found Gus asleep in an old box - to my surprise, I found the comic as relevant today as when it was drawn in the 1970s, except that it wasn’t drawn for the 1970s - it was reflecting my childhood in the 1940s!

I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I was drawing on memories of the past - all the gags relate to that time and my memory of it. There are no bikes, but hand-made billy carts, we got together playing marbles and if someone had a bag of lollies there would definitely be a queue of kids behind you - lollies were part of the food rationing at the time. Astute readers will notice there are no dogs in the gags as there was no extra food for dogs. If you were lucky, American servicemen handed out gum - not coated like local chewing gum, but covered in a dusting of sugar.

Another sign of the times is that there are no TVs, personal computers or mobile phones in the gags. They were drawn for new and young readers with a simple gag line.

Your View On...

DAVID ROWE (New South Wales)

GLEN Le LIEVRE (New South Wales)

PHIL JUDD (Queensland)

PETER BROELMAN (South Australia)

HARRY BRUCE (Queensland)

compiled by steve panozzo

thanks to everyone for your amazing contributions!

NEXT ISSUE: Elections!

Please send your contributions to: inkspot@cartoonists.org.au

MARK KNIGHT (Victoria)

JOHN FARMER (Tasmania)

DAVID BROMLEY (New South Wales)

CHRIS THOMAS (New South Wales)

LINDSAY FOYLE (New South Wales)

MATT GOLDING (Victoria)

BRETT

LETHBRIDGE (Queensland)

WARREN BROWN (New South Wales)

JOHN FARMER (Tasmania)

HARRY BRUCE (Queensland)

PETER BROELMAN (South Australia)

PETER PLAYER (Western Australia)

MATT GOLDING (Victoria)

Canberra-based Stuart McMillen continues his string of non-fiction thinkpiece comics, with his latest publication, The Town Without Television

The comic profiles a classic study into the impact of television on a community. In 1973, Professor Tannis MacBeth studied the last remaining Canadian town without TV reception, running ‘before’ and ‘after’ experiments on the townsfolk. Sadly, Tannis MacBeth died in June 2021, shortly after Part One of Stuart’s comic was published.

You can directly support The Town Without Television by donating to the Tannis MacBeth Memorial Fund, which will allow Stuart to dedicate himself to completing the story. The ultimate aim of this project is for the work to be completed and published in time for what would have been Prof. MacBeth’s 80th birthday in October 2022.

“Well over 500 hours have gone into creating each of the comic’s first two parts,” said Stuart, “And I am currently creating Part Three.”

You can read the evolving comic for free at http://TownWithoutTelevision.com

Zen and a Murder of Crows

Jules Faber Explains Why Finding Serenity Isn’t Just For the Birds

It was during the frantic last days before Christmas when I was trying to wrap up everything and slow down a little. Over the break I’d be pencilling and inking the 19th episode of WeirDo, my ongoing book series and, being so familiar after nearly ten years, I needed something different to work on alongside.

I’d been recently inspired by the work of Jacqui Colley in Kate de Goldi’s Uncle Jack, so I started mucking about with different art materials on basic recycled card. My first few efforts were speedy, rough and, in hindsight, terrible. But at the time they thrilled me and I posted them online, secretly praising myself for my whimsy in using things like gel pens and metallic Sharpies.

I drew one messy new pic a day, on top of my workload, but this soon gave way to something else. I’ve always been rather meticulous with linework, always wanting it neat and perfect, and this returned as the pictures progressed, the freneticism of the early works departing.

So I was headed into familiar territory - just on a scale very different to usual. I’ve long used simple tools since the days

I travelled the country on live caricaturing gigs. I would work with pens I could find in any newsagency, rather than fancy arty ones. If I ran out onsite, it therefore wasn’t hard to replace them. The habit stayed on in the studio.

That meant I’d rarely use brushes for ink or even Process White. I’d simply use Sharpies for fills and left white lines in black areas by just drawing around them. But in the brush, I found liberation in terms of what I could do. From the finest of lines to heavy swathes of black, it was like nothing I’d done before, not even the paintings I’d worked on back in the day.

I’d illustrate with garden variety markers by day, but I was dreaming about what I’d be working on later with brushes and colour pencils and even toothbrushes for spray patterns.

My go-to models turned out to be birds. We’re always surrounded by birds, even in the cities, so they’re the most accessible wildlife. I started with old photos I’d taken of crows as reference.

My first few efforts were basic, but they paved the way forward. With each new bird I learned some way to improve.

I interspersed crows with other animals – tigers, cheetahs, even my daughter’s request for Marvel anti-hero Venom – but kept returning to birds.

I found a zen in aloneness with the work. A composure of mind in creating something just for the sake of it, and not because you’re being paid to, in solving issues with materials and fixing errors and experimenting with something new.

It’s early February as I write this and the whole change has only taken a month or so. My work has improved dramatically, to my mind, from that frenetic deadline pace of attempting to get something finished, to languishing on the details and enjoying the ride. Bent over the drawing table, I let the train of thought wander wherever it wants, like at the meditation camp I’d gone to a decade ago. Just at the end of this, I have a finished artwork.

In these ongoing days of the pandemic, finding that peace within is welcome. Art’s therapeutic advantages (part of my theory as to why cartoonists live so long) are well known and I’ve tapped back into something I had lost. Art used to be fun and just for me before it was my job. I forgot that while always chasing work and cheques, but I see things differently these days. I see things as they were before and as they are now.

And I’m not going to forget again.

Jules Faber

Lummo Bear& Part One

As the 1990s dawned, more and more Australian talent was heading to America to break into the comic book industry. As creatively rewarding as the Australian scene was, financially it was a wasteland. The true wealth lay in working for one of the big companies in the USA, and that meant Marvel or DC.

Stanley and Reginald Pitt had been courted by DC in the early 1970s and found it just too difficult and restrictive. Peter Ledger had moved to America where he found work with Marvel, Eclipse, Fantagraphics and Celestial Arts, the latter where he most famously coloured a limited-edition Scrooge McDuck collection over Carl Barks. But Ledger was an exception to the rule, and many of the Australians who were working in the 1980s and who had the potential to break through into the USA simply did not want to move.

In 1992, George Vlastaras from Kings Comics began to bring American comic book professionals to Sydney for OzCon. Before this he had brought over the likes of Mike Grell for in-store appearances, where Grell met Gary Chaloner and David de Vries, establishing friendships which led to work and introductions.

Being able to network directly, the work of Australians such as de Vries, Chaloner, Shea Anton Pensa, Glenn Lumsden, Michal Dutkiewicz, Andrew James Kent and Ashley Wood became known as they, and others, began to pick up work in America, to mixed responses and experiences. Amongst these was a group of artists (and a writer) who had emerged from Cyclone Comics to become one of the best known, and pound for pound, the most skilled of all the studio set ups in Australia for the latter half of the 20th century - Barossa Studios.

Located in the Barossa Valley of South Australia, the studio was formed around de Vries and Lumsden. At its height, it included Dave Heinrich, David G Williams and Rod Tokely. For some jobs, BS was supplemented by outside artists, such as Dillon Naylor, Mark Sexton, John Petropoulos or Martin Reilly which they’d use when they needed a different style to pitch to magazines that were in competition with their existing clients.

I recently had the opportunity to talk to three-time Stanley Award winner Glenn Lumsden and fellow Barossa Studios artist Dave Heinrich about their work with the Barossa Studios, with a focus on their work on Marvel Comics’ The Phantom and their ill-fated Batman: Legends of The Dark Knight title.

To begin, we went back to the days before Barossa Studios was formally founded. After spending the bulk of the 1980s working in the Australian comic scene, Dave de Vries and Lumsden knew that more people would see their work at Marvel or DC. They had already sold their talents and work at Malibu, Eternity and Aircel, so they made a trip to America in 1993 with the sole purpose of shopping themselves around in order to find work. When they stopped at Marvel, something happened.

As Glenn Lumsden recalls, “We were in America, Dave De Vries and I, and we were just going around all the companies. We started off in LA, and then went to Chicago, and then New York. And when we were in New York, we went to see DC and Marvel, obviously. And when we were there, one of the editors we knew, Fabian Nicieza, well, he had literally just got King Features. King Features had wanted to see if Marvel would do Marvel

When DANIEL BEST sat down to chat with GLENN LUMSDEN, he just happened to have a house guest that answered the general description of fellow Barossa Studios alumnus, DAVE HEINRICH. Two for the price of one? We’ll let you be the judge...

Dave Heinrich and Glenn Lumsden

versions of their characters. I think they had Flash Gordon, Phantom, Mandrake and Prince Valiant.

“Those characters were well-established and very old-fashioned newspaper strips, going back to the thirties, and they had an audience. But that audience was getting old, and I think King Features wanted to see if they could tap into the much younger Marvel audience, which would require rejigging their characters a bit to make it more appealing to the typical Marvel character. And so that was the brief. The guy said, “Do you want to do one of them? Would you like to do The Phantom? Because I hear The Phantom’s popular in Australia.”

“We went, “Yeah. Great.” So the brief was to Marvel-up The Phantom for a three-issue mini-series.”

Dave ‘Bear’ Heinrich: They had no idea how big The Phantom was in Australia, did they?

Glenn Lumsden: The Phantom’s a funny character, where it’s more popular in other countries than it is in America. And in America I think it’s generally seen as a bit of a Z-grade, or C-grade character, whereas in other countries it’s big and I think they find that curiously interesting.

In a recent Q&A, Lumsden expressed how he, as did most Australians, had grown up with The Phantom, as published by Frew. Despite this, the appeal of working for Marvel was simply being able to work for Marvel. The Phantom was secondary.

GL: I mean, I was just after any job. They could have said “Ka-Zar!” or whatever, I would’ve gone, “Yeah! Ka-Zar! Yeah. Yep! Give it to me!” The fact that I was more acquainted with The Phantom was just a kind of bonus. We would’ve picked that one anyway. Imagine picking Mandrake.

Nowadays, I would happily do any of those characters because I value them, whereas back then, I was more focused on making a name for myself and making it all about me, rather than making it about the character. And I think, in my opinion, that was to the detriment of the project overall.

But on the other hand, Marvel did want it to be Marvelled-up. So, I guess if we’d just done more of the same-old same-old, they would’ve gone, “You guys haven’t

changed anything. You haven’t really fulfilled the brief properly.”

My attitude at the time was more, “Got to make a career, got to make a name, take every opportunity and make a big deal of it.” And that attitude, because, I mean, it still happens all the time with artists today and writers, it’s that attitude of... they get given a character and it’s, they want the character to become, “Forget what you’ve read in the past about Wolverine This is Glenn Lumsden’s Wolverine. It’s just different. It’s edgier... It’s more violent.” And that’s all driven by the need to big-note yourself. And I don’t think that way anymore.

King Features hadn’t had much luck with The Phantom in American comic books in the 1980s and 1990s. Recent forays into the field via DC Comics had faltered and petered out. By handing the character over to a pair of Australians, who knew The Phantom and had grown up on the character, Marvel would have felt that they were on a winner.

With the contracts signed, Barossa Studios went to work. Here Lumsden and Heinrich show exactly how the studios operated, and how it worked like a well-oiled machine by that time. However, despite getting what they wanted (working for Marvel) it wasn’t all wine and roses.

GL: Dave de Vries did virtually all the scripting. What he would do is, he’d say to us, “What scenes would you like to draw?” So you’d say things like, “I want a car chase and I want him to do this impossible shot from a million miles away. And I want to have a scene with jackals tearing people apart”, or whatever. But you’d give him a wish list and then he would go away and try to fit in as many of those things as he could, which he usually did.

As to what the general gist of the story was, that was up to Dave, then we’d lay it out and then we’d get together and read it through, like a stick figure comic. Then we would talk about it; we’d say, “This last panel, maybe that panel could be the guy’s face, and then you flip the panel and, oh my God, you see the waterfall” or whatever, rather than having the waterfall on the last panel, the pages, things like that. We were able to kind of finesse those things. Ultimately the way we worked was, we could suggest those things, but it was understood, Dave had the final say,

because he was the writer. And the same with the drawing as well, because I used to hate drawing the characters looking at the camera. I used to hate that, but now I don’t mind it, now I think it’s good, but it must have frustrated Dave. Because he’d always say The Phantom’s staring straight at you.

“No!” And I always draw The Phantom like, “No!” (laughter) But bless him. He would go, “Nope, your call.” Yeah.

When it came to drawing the art, the general thought was that Lumsden drew everything, and the other members of the studio were there to merely ink. This wasn’t quite the truth. They formulated a workflow which would be inclusive to everyone, but, as with all such workflows, something would have to give as the workload increased.

DH: We had a workflow going, but Glenn was the star. Glenn would do the figures - naturally - because it had to look like ‘a Lumsden’. But he was so busy, and we were under such pressure. We were trying to crank it out. So we would wireframe everything and work out the perspectives and stuff. And then I’d populate the backgrounds. And of course, we had the luxury of having someone just doing backgrounds, and someone doing just figures. And we also had DeeDub (David G Williams) doing things as well.

We could take time to render that gun. I could study a real Beretta pistol and then draw a Beretta properly. And with the street scenes and things, I had the opportunity and luxury to add detail. I could put little things in. I used to put little bits of my own style in there, just because I could – and just to see if I could get away with it!

GL: The idea was that we have a small group of people and people who were inclined to, or had a specialty superpower for, like the power to draw good cars or the power to do shiny shoes, or whatever. Then you go, “Right. Can you do every shiny shoe in the book?” And you know, you’d have all of issue one, all the boards numbered and everything ready to go, and stick figure layouts and stuff.

DH: Yeah. We even had a priority. We called them FF ones and FF twos.

GL: That’s right.

DH: Threes and fours. If it was a crucial

panel, it was a splash page, Glenn had to do that pretty much himself. But if it was a background, then I could do it.

GL: Yeah. And so we’d be constantly swapping pages back and forth. And the beauty is I could go to Bear, “This is a double page spread of a waterfall, I don’t care. Just spend the entire day or two days, or whatever. Just do the best waterfall you can.”

DH: And I could.

GL: That’s Bear’s workload full, until he’s finished. And it was a really good way of working. The thing is, it was still hard to generate enough pages to generate enough money, so that people weren’t starving. That was a hard, and that was a relentless, sort of pressure. But in the end that got us, or it got me, with Batman

Because by the time we got to Batman, we’d got the system’s workflow. We had little whiteboards with graphs, and you had to cross off bits. We had alarm clocks, you’ve got an hour on FF three.

DH: That’s right, yeah.

GL: “Brrrr!” And I think, I can’t remember if it was you, but someone was sort of saying, “I’m not really enjoying this.” And I was just thinking, “I’m not enjoying it. We’ve stuffed up doing comics. How stupid! This should be a great, fun job. We’re doing Batman and we’re working in an Amazon warehouse.” Not that Amazon warehouses even existed back then. But it was like a sweatshop. And I thought -

DH: It did get to that, didn’t it?

GL: My nerves were just shredded.

DH: But I really enjoyed having the freedom to just contemporize it and personalize it too. Like all the easter eggs I got to put in there; in 1995, the Rolling Stones were in Australia. So in the street scene, I put Rolling Stones’ Voodoo Lounge on the theatre sign. And when I look at it now, I think back to that time when I saw the Stones live in Adelaide. And other little things, like the sign “Gotham CityMetropolis - Gawler” (laughter)...

Even with all artists on deck, it took eighteen months for Lumsden and his crew to produce the three Phantom issues. GL: Marvel were very patient, but I did blow the deadline for issue three badly. And I remember having a talk to the

editor, who was a nice guy; I rang him up and I said, “I’m going to miss this deadline. I’m really sorry. It’s just I’m redrawing...” And he said some comment, kind of, “That’s okay. I’m just used to working with professionals.”

And I just went, “Ooh.” And that might have been the last time I spoke to the guy, I just limped back to the drawing table and got back to it. He was a young bloke, but he was a nice guy. When Dave De Vries wants to ask a question, he just thinks, “Oh, I must...” You know? So he just rings up America without checking the time or the day or whatever. And it was something like late Sunday evening when this guy gets the phone call and Dave says, “Oh, yeah, I need to know, does The Phantom wear his underpants on the outside?” or something, and the guy’s saying, “Dave, it’s Sunday night, I’ve got friends over, we’re having dinner.” And Dave’s like, “Oh, oh, sorry.”

So, we had a few little whoopsies with that guy. But having said that, he was nice, and he was totally justified on both occasions in slightly telling us off.

The idea of Australians working on The Phantom for Marvel comics appealed to the press, and Lumsden and de Vries were interviewed and posed in Phantom costumes for newspapers, radio and television. Adding to the fun was that the chief villain of the story was openly based upon the likeness of Australian fast bowler, Merv Hughes. To make the connection clearer, the villain sang Cold Chisel songs and drank cans of Fosters.

The traditional (21st) Phantom appeared in the second issue, along with a recap of the character’s origin story. In this issue, the 21st Phantom is shot and dies, but not before passing the legacy onto the new, Marvelised, Phantom

Still, one man was very unhappy and had the potential to scupper the entire deal. Jim Shepherd owned Frew Publications in Australia. Frew had been in the business of publishing The Phantom on our shores since the 1948. They held the monopoly, and they weren’t about to let it go for anyone. In order to pacify Shepherd, Lumsden and de Vries met with him and offered to do cross promotion, perhaps Lumsden and de Vries could provide some covers for Frew? Shepherd was polite, he listened and once they were out the door, he

thought about it.

Adding to Shepherd’s angst was the news that Lumsden and de Vries were going to change up the character, make him more modern and bring him out of the jungle and into an urban society. This made Shepherd wonder, out loud, if Lumsden and de Vries were going to be respectful towards the character. He also went to work behind the scenes, contacting King Features with his concerns and reminding them that, under the deal that Frew had with King Features, only Frew comic books featuring The Phantom were able to be displayed and sold at newsagents. If the Marvel Phantom was openly on sale and freely available, then it would affect the sales of the fortnightly Frew Phantom. Shepherd couldn’t stop Lumsden and de Vries, but Shepherd wasn’t going to make things easy for them. King Features contacted Marvel with the news.

“Frew Publications holds the publishing rights to The Phantom comic in Australia, New Zealand and several Pacific areas such as Papua New Guinea,” Shepherd was quoted as saying at the time.

“Marvel have the contract to produce a Phantom comic book for distribution in the United States on the basis that they are not allowed to sell the product at a full retail level in Australia. Marvel were aware of that as of May last year. It’s all quite clear cut. This is how The Phantom comic is published all over the world. Marvel, if they had the rights to distribute at full retail level in Australia, let’s be honest, all they’d have to do is ship in an extra fifty to sixty thousand copies and their colour product would be up against our black and white.”

It didn’t help that Lumsden and de Vries were getting the kind of media attention that Shepherd wasn’t getting. In 1990, Shepherd, with artist Keith Chatto , had produced the first Australian written and drawn Phantom story. Titled Rumble in the Jungle, the story, although the first Phantom story by Australians, hadn’t generated the media interest that Lumsden and de Vries were now getting. It should have, but, for whatever reason, it failed to do so.

GL: Frew were the only ones who could sell Phantom on the newsstands. So he was totally within his rights to do that. Jim was just scared. You get very protective of your little world. It was, “What are they doing to my Phantom? Stay away.”

And then next thing we know, it’s all King Features and Marvel, going, “Nah, nah, stop!” King Features have got Jim Shepherd ringing up going, “Whoa!” And so that was, “Oh, okay. We’re not doing any of that stuff.”

So it just was going to go through comic shops. But to be honest, I mean, I don’t know if that’s a big deal because the comic shops account for all the sales of comics and news agencies were, even then, shrinking as the portal, the go-to place for comics. Your real comic fans probably wouldn’t go on a news agency to look for a comic. They’d probably just go straight to their local comic shop.

DH: Maybe in a funny way, us guys gave Frew a rev, revved it up. And, they had to up their game.

GL: Something that definitely happened was that there was a flurry of publicity that Frew would’ve got the benefit from, because suddenly if The Phantom’s just being talked about, a lot of people are going to go, “Oh, I haven’t bought a Phantom comic in ages. Do they still print Phantom comics?” And those are the sort of people who might go to the newsagency.

Because people who aren’t into comics, like my parents, say, they never really get it. And so, you say, “Oh, we’re doing The Phantom.” You tell them the whole story about Marvel. And it’s a mini-series and da-da-da, and their takeaway is, “My son’s doing The Phantom. Oh, so what’s happening next week in the newspaper? I’ll ask him and he’ll know how the story...”

“No, no, no, dad, I’m not doing that one.” “It says here, signed Barry. Where’s Glenn?”

“No, I’m not... Just, oh...”

DH: And we’d go to signings and things. And people would walk up with a Frew Phantom and say, “What did you do?” “Well, that was actually done in Sweden in 1950 by somebody else.”

On the side of Lumsden and de Vries was none other than The Phantom’s creator, Lee Falk. Falk had been informed of the deal between King Features and Marvel, and de Vries had been in contact with him, via phone calls, to keep him updated as to what direction the story was going.

Falk understood what Marvel, Lumsden and de Vries were doing, and approved

of it. At the end of the day, other than ensuring that the Marvel comic wasn’t to be sold at newsagents, there wasn’t a lot that Shepherd could do.

Despite the third issue being sent in late, the series appeared on time. Formally titled The Phantom: Ghost Who Walks, the first issue was shipped out in December 1994. Reaction to the comics, when they were finally released, was positive. As is his way, Lumsden wasn’t completely happy with the results.

GL: I think the first issue was the strongest. And then as, like all these projects, I find as deadlines start to loom and pressures increase, I just find the quality tends to slip, because the same thing happened with Eternal Warrior as well, where, I don’t know, it seems to start off with a bang and wheels fall off as we go further down. Also, then the third issue was so late. I mean, this all sounds negative because I think overall it did well. Overall the reaction was positive and aside from those being late for the third issue.

DH: And they did repeat a page, didn’t they?

GL: Oh yeah (laughs)... And they repeated a page from issue two, which got reprinted in issue three. They did a reprint and made the same mistake again (laughs)... It was after we spoke to them, and said, “Well, make sure you change that.”

DH: Did anyone really notice?

GL: I got a message from this guy, a Swede, and I don’t know if I’ve told you this before, but a Swedish guy was having an argument with another Swedish Phantom fan. One guy, who said that the repeat page was on purpose and was a stroke of Fellini-esque genius (laughter)... The other guy was saying, “No, it was a stuff up” (laughter)... And it’s really a difficult situation to deal with without insulting either of the parties, because you don’t want to insult the guy who’s calling you a Fellini-esque genius by saying he’s wrong. But he is wrong.

So what do you do? You have to be diplomatic, and you say things like, “Well, I guess, it kind of works the way you were talking about it. It wasn’t meant to be that way. It was meant to... they did stuff up, but I can see how you could read it as Fellini-esque. So in a way you’re both right, but not” (laughter)... I tried to talk my way out of it that way. (laughs)...

DH: And the ship sails on.

The media blitz around The Phantom had begun in May 1993 and had barely let up in the time it took the books to be finished and published. Lumsden

and de Vries were photographed and interviewed for newspapers and magazines, they were interviewed on television for evening news services, late night TV shows (Tonight Live with Vizard, Nightline), morning shows, current affairs shows and even featured on Australian Story for the ABC.

Once the book was nearing completion, Glenn Ford booked the pair a tour of Australia’s eastern States, to coincide with its release in January 1995. The idea was that Lumsden and de Vries would do hit-and-run store appearances in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia. The schedule was manic, with the duo hitting four stores in a single day in Melbourne, Camberwell and Windsor and three in a day in Sydney, Liverpool and Chatswood.

All told, the pair would visit eleven comic book stores in six days, an exhausting schedule. The tour would culminate in in-store signings with fine art dealer Silver K Gallery who would be selling the original art on their behalf. This, added to the media interest, had put Lumsden and de Vries at the top of the Australian comic book creators’ pile. For the notoriously shy Lumsden, the tour was nothing short of pain, but a necessary pain.

GL: That really was the work of Dave De Vries. He is very strong in promoting things and stuff and getting on the phone. Because I’m a bit more kind-of scared of doing that. But Dave will pick up a phone, ring up the Sydney Morning Herald or

The Herald-Sun, or Channel Seven. I remember, at one stage, we were around at his place, and we were doing a TV interview with say, Channel 10, but the Channel Seven and Channel Two guys were in the kitchen having coffee, waiting (laughs)... And I think there were some reporters as well. It was like Grand Central Station. And it was almost like, “Next!” And the next one would set up the camera (laughs)...

DH: I remember that day.

GL: And so it got great coverage, but the thing is, again, the journos, they’re a bit like my parents in what they take in. So they’ll say things like, “Wham, pam, zow! The Phantom’s back in town.”

You’re thinking, “No, that’s Batman.” Anyway...

“The Phantom’s back and Australia’s having a go at doing it. So next time you’re reading The Phantom strip in the paper, think of Australia-” (laughs) It’s just all wrong. If they spell your names right, that’s a bonus. Bonus points.

As soon as the first issue hit the stores, Shepherd was approached for his comments. After mentioning that the comic could not be found at newsagents, he then went on to say, “I mean he doesn’t make any sense. He’s an entirely different Phantom, he’s carrying all these weapons, and he’s a real tough guy, which is nothing to do with the Phantom tradition. I’m delighted King Features took the stand they did.”

Glenn Lumsden: “You don’t want to insult the guy who’s calling you a Fellini-esque genius by saying he’s wrong”

Appearing in late 1994 meant that the Marvel Phantom had missed the speculator boom of the early 1990s. This boom had been created by Marvel Comics off the back of Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee.

Other companies jumped on board, including DC (Death of Superman) and Valiant, and it reached its apex with the formation of Image Comics. Where comic books, especially first issues, had been selling hundreds of thousands of copies with each issue, resulting in creators seeing massive royalties, by the middle of 1994 the market had settled down and the numbers were low. According to the Herald-Sun, the first Lumsden-de Vries Phantom had a print run of 30,000, all of which sold out. The official Capitol City distribution numbers show that 10,450 copies of the first issue were shipped to comic book stores in America.

The Phantom should have led to more work at Marvel, but it wasn’t to be.

Seeing the work was legendary American writer/editor Archie Goodwin, then working at DC and overseeing their Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight line. This line published short story arcs, ranging from one-shot issues to six issue stories, by different creative teams for each arc. The caveat was that, at the end of each story, Batman had to be alive and healthy. Those writing the stories could not cripple, kill or alter the character. Other than that, it was open season.

Daniel Best

NEXT ISSUE: Enter Batman!

Skeeting Around

Quite outside the mainstream of Australian cartooning, two illustrated quarto size booklets of eight pages, including the covers, of comic strips featuring Skeet, obviously inspired by Jimmy Bancks’ Ginger Meggs, were published in 1939. They carried no price or advertising and were given away free of charge.

Curiously, the 18 drawings carry no artist’s signature. A suggested name is R. Shaw, of whom we know nothing. However, we cannot rule out that these works could well be from the pen of a woman.

The drawings in one of the booklets, printed in a pleasant tan colour, are the work of a competent artist. The evidence of Bancks’ influence is glaringly obvious – the goat is copied from the back cover of the 1939 Annual, Series 16 (right), as is Ginger’s infant brother Dudley, Tiger Kelly and the odd story plot. One such imitation is from a 1920’s Ginger Meggs strip in which he is involved with a box of eggs. A later copied plot depicts “sissy Cuthbert” roughed up, to the horror of his mother.

During the 1920s and ‘30s a Sydney cartoonist and contributor to The Bulletin, Tom Glover, was active in creating a comic strip for juvenile readers, Skeeter and the Magic Ring, from which Skeet is surely ‘borrowed’.

As for the humour of Skeet, the time-worn themes - the comic policeman, always the innocent victim; the Billy cart and the butting goat are all common elements of comic violence. In part, the overall tone of presentation follows that of the English childrens’ comic papers Jester, Chips, Funny Wonder and several hundred other titles.

These booklets, published in Melbourne were the sort of “fillers” in Royal Agricultural show bags and Christmas stockings. To adults, these Skeet cartoons appear inconsequential perhaps, but not to children for whom they were intended.

On the flipside of cartooning, a series of “bits and bobs” about Australian cartoonists never before recorded

Part Three

Cool, Kolm and Collected Where Are They Now?

Presented by IAN McCALL

I first met John Kolm many years ago when he came along to our Melbourne ACA lunchtime meetings, which were held at various restaurants and pubs. Having seen his recent work on Facebook and, knowing that he is currently living in the USA, I wanted to find out more about him and his current work.

Born in Melbourne, John grew up in the eastern suburbs and then on the Mornington Peninsula. His mother, Hana, had worked for newspapers as a fashion designers’ artist in the Czech Republic and instilled in John a love of drawing at a young age, as well as a subversive sense of humour. John spent his formative years drawing cartoons during maths class and doing maths during art class, but nonetheless graduated in mathematics and psychology from the University of Melbourne and then went on to do a postgraduate degree in maths in the United States. He worked as an artist and writer throughout this period.

John’s cartoons were first published on national news stands in 1984 by Syme Media, where he remained as a resident artist for 16 years. He had thousands of cartoons published in the various magazines and newspapers owned by David Syme. He also acted as a contributing editor for several of their magazines, and wrote a monthly humour column entitled The Last Word, which he also illustrated. After that, John continued to write and draw for various books and magazines and in 2004 co-wrote and illustrated Crocodile Charlie And The Holy Grail, an adventure story about teamwork and leadership set in rural Australia.

Crocodile Charlie was published by Penguin and became a global bestseller in seven languages and appeared in 14 countries. It is now in it’s third edition and you can find it on Amazon at https://bit.ly/ccgrail

John was welcomed into what is now the ACA by none other than the legendary Vane Lindesay. He then spent many happy years drinking at undisclosed Melbourne pubs with childhood icons such as Bill (WEG) Green, Jeff Hook, Neil Matterson and Bruce Cavalier. He recently had the great privilege of drawing one of the caricature pages for a presentation book coordinated by Lindsay Foyle for Vane’s 100th birthday.

In 2005 John moved to the United States and continued writing, drawing and performing while running his own company, Team Results, a firm he founded in 1996. Team Results grew in size and still runs corporate team and leadership events around the world, harnessing the creative talents of about 20 performers, facilitators, backstage technicians and support staff. John himself often says that he wanted to be an artist but didn’t fancy starving in a garret, so he found a way for himself and others to make a decent living in the arts by meeting the needs of the corporate world. You can find some animation by John at www.teamresultsusa.com and scrolling down to “Charlie’s Teambuilding Fail”. John’s cartoons are still published in magazines and on the web, and he still illustrates books. The latest of these was a book called Hooking Up, a compendium of high adventure climbing stories from two of the best big-wall climbers in the world. If you’re into climbing, or just enjoy adventure stories, you can find a copy on Amazon.com at https://bit.ly/hookingupaz

John Kolm lives in Potomac, Maryland, with his wife Lesliealso an author and mathematician - and their son, Ben, who is just beginning his career as a teacher of mathematics and history. You can contact John at john.kolm@teamresultsusa.com or via LinkedIn.

Reviews

Behind the Lines: The Year in Political Cartoons 2021 Museum of Australian Democracy

Published by Museum of Democracy at Old Parliament House, 2021

Available from www.moadoph.gov.au

$30.00

152 pages

ISBN 9780646842653

Reviewed by Steve Panozzo

Like its namesake exhibition, Behind the Lines 2021 is the latest in a long line of annual political cartoon collections that effectively summarises what was clearly a shocking year of upheavals in Australian politics. Usually released at around the same time as Russ Radcliffe’s excellent Best Australian Political Cartoons annual, you are pretty much guaranteed in both books gold class coverage and incisive commentary that will certainly make you smile, perhaps lead you to tears, but ultimately leave you thinking.

Unlike Radcliffe’s book, Behind the Lines 2021 is sold as a catalogue to an exhibition (albeit a rather extensive one). The book, like the exhibition, is styled around the central theme of Prophecy and Chance, though journalist Karen Middleton, in her interview with Behind the Lines curator Holly Williams, would prefer it to be Fatigue and Fury. In a pleasing addition, the MoAD’s Political Cartoonist of the Year, Glen Le Lievre, is given space to consider 2021 in reflection, to talk about his process and even dispense some creative advice, a feature I hope will be continued in future editions. All this and we’re only 19 pages in!

And the cartoons themselves? The book features the work of 38 cartoonists in full colour. All the stand-out favourites are there, plus work from a handful of new faces. Cartoons are arranged in sections covering political faux pas, sport, vaccine rollouts, economic recovery and climate change among others. Purchasing this book may be almost obligatory by now, but even given the certainty these books have of a dedicated audience, it’s nice to see MoAD broadening the scope and seeking to make improvements to the contents. This is a whipsmart addition to your ever-growing collection.

Vale Trevor Kennedy AM (1942-2021)

Trevor Kennedy, a larger than life figure in media and publishing, and a one-time right-hand man of Kerry Packer, passed away in November after a brief illness. LINDSAY FOYLE looks back on a fortunate life.

Trevor John Kennedy was not a cartoonist. He was not even a member of the Australian Cartoonists’ Association. However, it could be argued he had a bigger impact on the ACA than anyone who has been a member. How? He agreed to start The Bulletin Black and White Artists’ Awards in 1985 (later known as the Stanley Awards).

“I first knew of Trevor Kennedy in the early 1970s when he was founding editor of The National Times,” said Neil Matterson. “He wrote a reply to my cartoon submissions, accepting one and rejecting another. The accepted one was one of the first cartoons I had published. The rejection component was also very encouraging.”

Kennedy was born in the Western Australian town of Albany. He got his start in journalism on The Albany Advertiser before moving to The Canberra Times and then The Australian Financial Review. In 1968, he was posted to London as the AFR’s European correspondent. In 1971, at the age of 28, he became founding editor of The National Times, now defunct. At the end of 1972, he took on the job of editing The Bulletin for Frank Packer.

Long-time friend, journalist Andrew Clark, said Kennedy was, “a former champion footballer, accomplished skier and expert deep-sea fisherman”. He also said that Kennedy “was a commanding presence, with disarming charm, shrewd judgment, personal generosity, earthy wit, and a rare capacity to puncture pomposity and get to the nub of complex business and political issues”.

While there had been a time when The Bulletin was one of the most important magazines in Australia, when Kennedy took over it was a decrepit publication, only surviving due to large injections of Frank Packer’s money. Over the next decade, Kennedy rebuilt the magazine. He did it by investing in the best journalists and cartoonists the magazine could afford.

Les Tanner who was the staff cartoonist on The Bulletin from 1961 to 1967 and a contributor while Kennedy was editor. As Tanner wrote in The Bulletin’s Centenary edition, “Like all good machines, The Bulletin was the sum of its parts, which is why it was either bloody good or bloody awful. In any case, it led the way. It was the Graphis of its time as well as The Bushman’s Bible and it changed the way we drew.”

From the day Kennedy started work on The Bulletin he was an enthusiastic supporter of Alan Moir. He was using Moir’s cartoons at a time when he was just starting out. There were not many issues of the magazine from 1973 to 1984 which did not have Moir cartoons in it.

Patrick Cook said Kennedy was the most considerate editor for a novice, saying, “Trevor was the first editor I met face to face. I was relatively new. I took cartoons to his office and he gave me a crisp appraisal of them. He could be intimidating in manner, and blunt in speech, but he loved The Bulletin, he was enthusiastic about cartoons and he was always encouraging to me and to others.

“Plus, he always seemed to have the time,” added Cook. “I’m very grateful to Trevor.”

Matterson recalled, “I next met Trevor in the Sydney offices of Australian Consolidated Press in the middle 1980s when he was editor of The Bulletin. He was an editor of those times, meaning he would take the time to meet with a cartoonist. “Again, an initial rejection but a lot of encouragement went with it,” Matterson said. “He also proffered that I didn’t look like a cartoonist because I wore a slick suit and tie.

“I wasn’t discouraged as I then went on, with the encouragement of art director Lindsay Foyle, to become a regular contributor of cartoons to The Bulletin over the next seven years. Those simple connections and encouragements over those early

ABOVE: Trevor Kennedy, PM Bob Hawke, Lindsay Foyle and David Armstrong pictured at the 1986 Stanley Awards Trevor Kennedy at Rawson Hall in 2020

years of my cartooning career contributed greatly to my development as a regular contributor to the newspaper medium.”

“I remember meeting Kennedy in his office in Park Street. I was barely 20 but he would always make time for cartoonists,” said Sean Leahy. “He was a visionary leader at The Bulletin, even then. These days he’d be a giant”.

In 1979, Kennedy offered Ward O’Neill a job on The Bulletin, drawing full-page illustrations as well as some smaller ones. O’Neill won Walkley Awards for illustration in 1982, 1984 and 1986 for work he did at The Bulletin

While Kennedy often said being editor of The Bulletin was the best job in Australia, he did have a less than positive side to him, too, as Jenny Hughes discovered during her own interactions with him: “I really was small fry in my ACP days and none of my personal comments would really shine a good light on Kennedy - in particular, if I was quoting some of our conversations, they had far too many expletives to make complete sentences.

“I also fell victim to him at a farewell event,” she said. “He had supplied photos for a slide-show. When there was some rumbling as to the appropriateness of some of them, he hurled abuse at me across the room, making out that it was my mistake - so I tended to steer clear of him. Being a young female back in the day came with some pretty bad workplace practises.”

In 1984, David Armstrong was appointed deputy editor of The Bulletin, but in reality was acting editor. At the time, the magazine was using a lot of cartoons. Armstrong asked Kennedy how many should he use each week? Kennedy responded with, “You can’t run too many.” Armstrong acted on the advice and the number of cartoons used in the magazine increased significantly. It did cause problems with the budget, but it did have a positive impact on circulation.

The following year, when the Black and White Artists’ Club was sporting a dwindling membership and was almost broke, it was decided to run some national cartooning awards. Committee member, Roger Fletcher, said, “James Kemsley was very new to the committee then and he started pushing for national status and an awards night.”

“We needed a sponsor as the club itself was almost broke”, said John Thorby. “It was decided The Bulletin would be our best bet for a sponsor - as so much art work was used weekly - and to hit them for $5,000 to put on the night”.

In early 1985 he, along with Kemsley and Jim Russell, got in touch with Lindsay Foyle, who had been a Club member since the early 1970s. He was the main contact person for cartoonists at the magazine and they asked him if he could set up a meeting with Kennedy and Armstrong.

The reason the magazine was approached was because of its historical involvement with Australian cartooning. The magazine was also doing well. Circulation was up and it was considered to be one of the most influential publications in the country. At the time it was publishing up to 60 cartoons per week, almost all of them from freelance contributors.

A day or two before the delegation of cartoonists arrived in The Bulletin office, Foyle explained to Kennedy and Armstrong what they were going to be asked for. Both were keen on the suggestion, but not all of the details. As soon as the cartoonists walked into Kennedy’s office and introductions were over, he asked, “What are you after?” He was told $5,000 a year for three years to sponsor the Stanley Awards.

The cartoonists explained their intention was to increase the profile of Australian cartooning. They also said The Bulletin would get the kudos from being associated with a national media award.

While he did not reveal the figure at this meeting, Kennedy had estimated that it would take a minimum of $30,000 to run such an awards night. He said, “You can’t make a good job of it on that amount. I’ll make you a counter-offer. We’ll run the night, you look after the awards and we’ll worry about the expenses.” Russell came out of the meeting and said to his two companions, “That was easy.” He never realized that Kennedy had made up his mind to take control of the awards as soon as he had understood what the meeting was to be about. The meeting had just been a formality.

“Jim Russell had convinced himself shortly afterwards that the huge increase in sponsorship cash was down to his uncanny persuasiveness,” Fletcher recalled, adding, “That is said with affection and humour. And I recall that Thorby pushed to have the club’s name on the awards.”

Thorby’s push did not get the nod of approval from Kennedy. He was very keen on having The Bulletin’s name involved. “The Bulletin swept in and really took over the awards,” said Fletcher. “Our club had very little to do with it outside organising the voting book”. The indirect impact on the ACA was that it grew to become a national organisation with a much bigger membership. It could be said that the Stanley Awards became the glue which has held the ACA together since then.

In 1986, Kerry Packer promoted Kennedy to be his right-hand man running his entire empire, Consolidated Press Holdings. It was a big job, but Kennedy maintained his involvement with the running of the Stanley Awards. However, nothing stays the same forever. In 1991, Kennedy left CPH and The Bulletin soon lost interest in cartooning and running the Stanleys. In 1993, the Australian Cartoonists’ Association took full control and has continued to present the awards with the assistance of a number of smaller sponsors.

A lifelong collector of decorative and historical artefects, he renovated Rawson Hall in Miller’s Point, Sydney, to house his collection, his own private museum, as well as his office. In January 2020, he negotiated the sale of just over 800 items from his collection to the National Museum of Australia: jewellery, ceramics, art, furniture and textiles, all of historical significance. A month later, Kennedy decided to donate more than 4,000 additional items to the NMA, all of historical and cultural significance. The entire collection was valued at around $14 million, but are in reality culturally priceless.

Kennedy had a larrikin charm which he used to open doors. Sometimes it got him into trouble, other times it made him a fortune. He often said, “I’ve been kicked in the arse by a rainbow”. He died in November 2021, at the age of 79.

Vale Tony Kentuck (1938-2022)

The always-theatrical Tony Kentuck took his final bow in January, at the age of 83. Tony was a cartoonist and caricaturist who had great affection for the stage, performing in several musicals.

STEVE

PANOZZO remembers his friend of 35 years.

In February 1986, at the age of 21, I accepted the offer of a full-time cartooning job in Perth, working for Robert Holmes à Court’s suburban newspaper group, The Weekly. Having never been to Perth before, I decided to introduce myself to other newspaper cartoonists, such as Dean Alston and Dave Gaskill. At the time, both Channels Nine and Seven ran annual marathon charity telecasts. One day, Channel Nine advertised their annual Appealathon, saying that some chap would be drawing live caricatures at the ANZ Bank in Subiaco, so I thought I’d rock up and introduce myself to him, too.

He was tall, bald, with an artistic Van Dyke beard and leathery tan and sporting a beret, glasses and a huge Cheshire Cat grin; he was telling Welsh-accented, theatrically-embroidered tales to the curious crowd of onlookers while sketching his subjects, with all the money raised going to Nine’s annual charity drive. Tony Kentuck, I reasoned, was a force of nature.

Anthony James Kentuck was born in London on 19th February, 1938. His father was a Cockney and his mother was Welsh; the family moved to Pontypridd in Wales where Tony grew up.

He joined the British Army in 1955. He appeared in Army revues in England and North Africa. Upon his discharge from the Army, he went to London to pursue a career as a cartoonist until 1960 when he moved to Australia. At this point he gave up cartooning and worked as a medical sales representative.

Tony had always loved the theatre and while living in Sydney joined an amateur musical society, where he concentrated on character roles. However, Tony’s ambition was always to play the King of Siam in The King and I. After moving to Melbourne in the late 1960s, he did just that in 1972 in an amateur theatre production of The King and I.

Tony met his wife Adrienne in 1973 and they had their first child, Jacqueline, in 1976. Tony went on to play the King again at the State College Theatre, Burwood in Victoria in 1977. After moving his young family to Perth in 1978, Tony successfully resumed his passion for cartooning full-time, going on to play the King again, this time professionally, in June 1982 at His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth. This was one of his proudest moments apart from the birth of his two children.

In October 1982, the Kentucks welcomed their son, Anthony, into the world. Until 1987, Tony was working as the resident cartoonist for Simon Hadfield’s Community Newspapers Group. Not long after Tony departed the job, after being told by Hadfield that they “had no room for a cartoonist”, Holmes à Court sold Weekly Neighbourhood Newspapers to Hadfield. After we put out our final edition, the Weekly staff started working out of Community’s offices; Hadfield himself showed me around the office and helped me get settled, though thanks to Tony I knew my time there would be limited and Hadfield was lying through his smiling white teeth. I was, as expected, retrenched from my only full-time job at the end of March, 1987 and returned to Sydney’s northern beaches in May.

Unknown to me, the Kentucks had moved to Sydney ahead of my retrenchment, something I only discovered after bumping into Tony as he was exiting my local record shop the week I got back. He had started drawing live caricatures at various corporate events, as had I, and pretty soon we were working for the same entertainment agents who often booked us as a double act, an odd-couple partnership that continued until 2018.

Joining the Forest Musical Society, Tony played Captain Georg von Trapp in their production of The Sound of Music

Norman Hetherington, Tony Kentuck, Ken Emerson and Roy Bisson, Sketches Bar & Bistro, 1993

at Glen Street Theatre in April 1989, complete with a horrific wig. Whilst he was very good, I was in stitches seeing him wearing his budget toupée. Tony ended up playing the King once more for the FMS production of The King and I at Glen Street - this time with Jacqueline by his side, who played one of the King’s daughters. Another very proud moment for him.

But acting in musicals was merely a hobby for Kentuck and he decided to give them away completely to give full focus to his cartooning career. He became very well-known internationally for his printed sets of cartoonshis legal series of prints in particular became very popular. One project he was very pleased with was his cartoon salute to the famous 1950s radio comedy show, The Goon Show, entitled The Battle of Waterloo (Station), pictured above, which was endorsed by Patrick Milligan

Tony was notoriously terrible at business, often getting screwed by those he trusted, including a pair of real eastate con-men in Manly who ended up owing him a mountain of money. There were many missed business opportunities that I was witness to. He didn’t seem to believe in publicity and promotion, becoming entirely dependent on commissions from a dwindling corps of loyal clients, such as lawyer Norm Gibson, for whom Kentuck produced an annual Christmas card.

Tony briefly shared studio space with me from 2010 for a few years, but it eventually became cost-prohibitive. Throughout his career, Tony worked and socialised with dozens of fellow cartoonists, many of which became and remained lifetime friends.

Fellow live caricaturist, Stanley Toohey, loved conversing with Kentuck, and both Stan and I would do endless impressions of Tony at his expense. He was easy to send-up.

Tony and Adrienne divorced in 2012, remaining close friends. With his daughter and grandchildren living on the NSW Central Coast, Tony moved to a small flat in Umina, found by his business associate and good friend, Roger McDonald, who continued to supply Tony with regular freelance work. Roger declared Tony’s last cartooning job - Norm Gibson’s 2021 Christmas card - to be a “masterpiece”.

I was fortunate enough to have had a solid chat with Tony the week before he died and he admitted had been struggling a little with his health - he’d had a pacemaker fitted a few years beforehand - but told me he had started a series of exercises at the urging of his doctor. He was always proud of his grandchildren and had enjoyed a wonderful Christmas at Jacqueline’s place with the entire family, but he clearly wasn’t as well as he tried to make out. With promises of a restaurant meal the following week, I hung up. Needless to say, that meal didn’t eventuate, and Tony passed away peacefully in his sleep on 11th January, 2022, just a month short of his 84th birthday.

Tony is survived by his two children, Jacqueline and Anthony, and three grandchildren, James, Elizabeth and William, all of whom he was immensely proud... and a mountain of drawings, cartoons, posters and prints.

In writing this obituary, I am indebted to Adrienne Wister for her assistance during what has been a very trying time.

Vale Elizabeth Lambert (1937-2022)

During the middle of the 1980s, ELIZABETH LAMBERT was Secretary of the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club, during which time she created a newsletter she named The Inkspot and helped transform a Sydney-based social group of some 30 cartoonists into a national organisation with a membership of 112. Former ABWAC Presidents, STEVE PANOZZO and JOHN THORBY remember Liz.

Elizabeth Lambert was born Elizabeth Emma Ellison in Belfast, Ireland, on 14th July, 1937. Encouraged by her brother, George, who was already resident in Sydney, she boarded a ship to Australia in 1954 on the promise of an adventure. She was only 16.

Training as a nurse, Liz took up ballroom dancing at Arthur Murray Dancing Studios, where she met Roy Lambert. They were married in 1957, producing two daughters, Fiona in 1959 and Cyndie in 1963. In 1969, Liz secured a job at Reader’s Digest in Surry Hills, Sydney, and ended up spending 28 years working there. In 1970, the young family moved to Blackett in Sydney’s outer western suburbs.

Liz loved music and developed an impressive record collection, teaching herself to play a 12-string electric guitar. She was also an accomplished artist, often exhibiting her work. She became very passionate about cartooning and joined the Sydney Black and White Artists’ Club.

Liz was introduced to HRH Queen Elizabeth II at a State reception by Premier Neville Wran in 1980, when he remarked on her name. Since then, whenever she was asked her name, she would often reply, “Elizabeth, like the Queen”.

In 1983, Liz and Roy split up and she moved to Edgecliff. In late 1985, following the first Stanley Awards and subesequent Annual General Meeting, Liz produced a one-off newsletter for Club members, calling it The Inkspot. The name stuck and it evolved into the magazine you hold in your hand today.

Liz retired in 1997, moving to Village Court retirement apartments in Lewisham in 1999 where she lived for the next 23 years, in-between her many ocean cruises and trips overseas. Despite battling bowel cancer and macular degeneration, Liz remained interested in AFL, cricket, cartooning, new technology and regular completed the cryptic crossword. However, in December 2021, she received a devastating diagnosis from her doctor.

“4 weeks ago I was admitted to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital after having my regular treatment for back pain,” she wrote on 8th December. “I thought I was having a reaction to the anaesthetic but, after x-rays and tests, I was informed by a lung specialist that I had a mass on my lung and needed a biopsy.

“This has now been confirmed as an aggressive cancer which is inoperable. I have seen Oncologists from the Lifehouse Special Treatment Centre about chemotherapy and I have decided not to go ahead with treatment.

“At my age I feel the side effects would outweigh any benefit I might have, so I am now in my little room at Metro Rehab, overlooking the car park for the next week or so,” Liz added, to the shock of her many friends. “The prognosis is 6 months so I will be meeting my palliative care team who I will need later.”

Ironically, she had just renewed her passport with the intent of travelling once the Covid pandemic had subsided. Taking

A young mum in 1964 Liz in September, 2021

everyone by surprise, especially after enjoying a wonderful Christmas with her family, Liz passed away in her sleep on 8th January, 2022, aged 84.

Liz’s funeral was held at the South Chapel, Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens, North Ryde at 11am on 21st. January, 2022. Due to restrictions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, there were many who could not attend, so the service was streamed online. Liz is survived by her daughters and their families, including four great-great grandchildren.

As President, it was my privilege to present Liz with Life Membership of the ABWAC in 1997, in recognition of her tireless work behind the scenes as Secretary. Thank you, Liz, for everything.

Steve Panozzo

ACA Owes Liz Lambert a Huge Debt

Without Liz Lambert, I doubt if the Australian Cartoonists’ Association would be here today. It would have expired in 1983. That was the year that the Black and White Artists’ Club had dwindled to about 20 members, was broke and about to fold.

That was the time that the remaining members decided it was my turn to be President! We got together a committee and Liz was appointed Secretary. I had never run a committee and knew nothing of running a meeting. Liz knew it all and it was decided we weren’t going to be the members who would be folding the club.

That year we put together a social night at the Journalists Club in Surry Hills. It was a “Mad Hatters’ Night” and people paid to go. This was the start of the Club’s revival.

Fortunately - for us - Liz worked at Reader’s Digest and worked on their computers. A whole floor was taken up with computers which today would be outclassed by a single iPad. I was the new Head Artist at News Limited and had access to the free postage from the mail room.

Our work areas were a close block away and lunch time at the local pub was our office. When the Club went national and the membership rose to their hundreds, we would have gone under without someone with Liz’s ability and computer skills. She kept the Minutes of the meetings so accurate and legal, we moved into the new era without a hitch. I was very sad indeed to hear of her death, but I am grateful for those fond memories.

John Thorby

ABOVE: Theo Batten, Norman Hetherington and Liz Lambert, State Library of NSW, 1989

BELOW: The newly-minted Life Member, 1997

Vale Brendan Akhurst (c.1948-2022)

BRENDAN AKHURST, who died on 7th January from pancreatic cancer, was an accomplished illustrator and cartoonist, wrote a hugely successful course in cartooning and even sang in a barbershop quartet. Many thanks to HELEN KEMSLEY, BORIS MIHAILOVIC and TRACEY WARREN for filling in the gaps.

Brendan Akhurst claimed to have spent his early years as a child, eventually becoming, during the 1960s, the first Brendan Akhurst in history to develop an adult appearance. After one week working at Woolworths in the fruit & vegetable section, he decided to try his hand as an apprentice marine engineer with RW Miller. He then signed up with NSW Water Police. In 1978, Akhurst resigned from the NSW Police Service “to do silly drawings”, becoming an illustrator and cartoonist, mainly because it was the only job with no entry requirements.

“To be quite honest, human beings proved to be quite a disappointment over time,” he said, on leaving the Water Police. “That job got rather depressing and, having always loved drawing and cartooning, it slowly took over and I was better for it.”

Signing his work “B.J. Akhurst”, he became one of the most widely-syndicated cartoonists in Australia, creating more than 40 specialty comic strips over his career, beginning with Normie (based on Bob Hudson’s 1970s novelty hit, The Newcastle Song). Other strips include Slipway Sam, Wayne & Vicky for Street & Custom Magazine and Louie the Fly, which was published by the Sunday Telegraph. His work appeared in Silicon Chip, The Picture, Street Machine and OzBike

“His was a rare and stunning talent,” wrote journalist and editor, Boris Mihailovic, “Not only could he illustrate to a script, but he could and did write his own cartoon scripts, which were always better than what someone else could have

written. I was in awe of his talent, as were all the people who worked with him. And there were many. His work is everywhere.”

Brendan was justifiably hailed and revered by editors and writers all over Australia, while being simultaneously castigated as being a “bastard who could never meet a deadline”.

“He was the bane of my existence as an editor in that regard,” said Mihailovic, “He never met a single deadline. Not one. Not ever.

“I even got into the habit of lying to him about the deadlines. I would move them forward, knowing he would miss them and hoping he would make the actual deadline. But he’d miss that one too,” he wrote in January, “I’d sacked him. Four times. Then I re-hired him soon after each sacking because his work was without equal and always worth the wait.”

It’s not that Akhurst didn’t appreciate deadlines. He did. He even wrote off his beloved Dodge-engined V8 Charger trying to deliver an illustration a week after its due date. He was so tired he’d fallen asleep and driven into a tree on the journey from his home in Burradoo to Sydney.

Steve Panozzo recalled a breathless Akhurst arriving at News Limited, late in the day in the early 1990s, after running up the stairs to the fourth floor art department. He was hoping to deliver the latest instalment of Louie the Fly for that weekend’s Sunday Telegraph comics lift-out, but had missed his deadline and the copy person had already been sent downstairs with one

of his old strips as a replacement. He had to chase down the copykid and swap the old strip with his new one.

“Brendan and James started an Australian syndicate business called Fun Focus,” remembered Helen Kemsley, “They managed to stitch up a few deals for Australian cartoonists with various newspapers. Sadly it didn’t last long.”

During the late 1990s, Brendan devised and constructed a freelance cartooning diploma course, which was run through the Australian College of Journalism. The course was very popular and the college employed several ACA members as tutors. His influence didn’t end there. His mentorship and encouragement extended to other artists.

“He was like a brother to me for 30 years and a wonderful mentor, said Tracey Warren, “He would call and say, ‘Hello, Little Sister... I’ve put the kettle on, so it must be time for a coffee. We need to get our heads together and have another art exhibition’.

“I would often get my boots on and I’d pop down the road to his studio,” she said, “He called it the Chook Shed and it was the most amazing space. Filled with exercise dumbbells, weights, artwork on a huge easel, chairs and a long lounge where he would often crash out and sleep after pulling an all nighter.

“I ended up creating my own art & drawing course which really took off and went both national and international and it was all because of him,” said Warren, “He was an amazing

support and fantastic teacher.”

In 1997, Akhurst attended a barbership quartet conference at Darling Harbour, where he discovered the joys of 4-part harmony. Before too long, Brendan’s “side hustle” became singing baritone with a trio of like-minded singers in a group called the Highlandaires. Those of us who attended the 2004 Stanley Awards in Bowral will have experienced that same joy, being serenaded by Brendan and his mates upon arrival.

Late last year, Brendan was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He had remained upbeat, until early January.

“And I’ve run out of puff,” he told Mihailovic, “But look, I’m OK. I have made my peace with God.”

Mihailovic raced down the to Southern Highlands to see his friend. The change the cancer had wrought upon him was appalling.

“Brendan was always a big, strong, bloke,” recalled Mihailovic, “He was still big. But he was a big skeleton. He did not look at all like the Brendan I once knew. But then he smiled and that was instantly recognisable.”

Of course, Mihailovic was hoping, in vain, that this was one of those deadlines that Akhurst would miss.

Brendan Akhurst was laid to rest at a private service conducted at St. Thomas Aquinas Church, Bowral and is survived by his wife, Michelle, sons Ben and Carl and a tribe of grandchildren.

Brendan Akhurst flanked by his wife Michelle and Tracey Warren in 2004

Barbershop harmonies at the 2004 Stanley Awards in Bowral

Cartoonists Zoom-in for a Lashing of Lumsden

Glenn Lumsden’s career was under David Pope’s scrutiny at November’s ACA Zoom Coffee Catch-Up. The technology has been instrumental in allowing cartoonists to meet up during Covid, with members in most States and Territories regularly tuning in.