Inkspot 95

Inkspot

Cartoonist of the Year

Inkspot Presidential Palaver

Issue #95, Autumn 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: Michelle Akhurst, Daniel Best, Matt Bissett-Johnson, David Blumenstein, Peter Broelman, Jock Brodie, Harry Bruce, Peter Byrne, Gerald Carr, Phil Day, Jed Dunstan, Chris Durham, Matt Emery, Jules Faber, John Farmer, Lindsay Foyle, Andrew Fyfe, Marnie Giroud, Matt Golding, Christophe Granet, Paul Harvey, Megan Herbert, Dave Heinrich, Edmund Iffland, Phil Judd, Mark Knight, Cyndie Lambert-Smith, Vane Lindesay, Glenn Lumsden, Tania McKenna, Terry Mosher, Peter Nicholson, Dean Rankine Glenn Robinson, Alan Rose, David Rowe, John Thorby, Mark Tippett, Peter Viska, Hayley Ward, George Vlastaras, Andrew Weldon and Cathy Wilcox

Cover Art: Judy Nadin

Inkspot is published quarterly by the Australian Cartoonists’ Association

Deadline for next issue is 17th JUNE

PO Box 5178

SOUTH TURRAMURRA NSW 2074

ABN 19 140 290 841

ISSN 1034-1943

Australia Post Registration PP 533798/0015

As I write this, we’re just one week out from the Federal Election. By the time you read this, it’ll all be over, and we’ll be wiping away the tears, or sweeping up the confetti, depending on the outcome and how you view it.

Some of us wallow in the quagmire of politics for our daily inspiration, but it can be so exhausting, and not a little depressing, to be so immersed when the campaigning gets so filthy and dishonest. I’m glad to be able to immerse myself in the rest of life at the end of a working week, and I expect I’ll feel relieved whatever the outcome that there’s nothing more I can do: it’s done. In this edition there are four pages of your cartoons on a theme of elections, which you can view with nostalgia, or with the trauma still fresh!

There’s also news from the National Cartoon Gallery’s current exhibition (until late May), The Morrison Years, featuring work by David Rowe, Warren Brown and me.

You’ll find lots of great articles inside about artists past and present, in many areas of our profession, and an exhaustive catch-up on the huge postponed awards season, where we kind-of-managed to adapt to prevailing circumstances and a few of us got to travel.

Editorial Notes

As you flick through this edition of Inkspot, it may not escape your notice that there’s a lot of Cathy Wilcox in it. From the exquisite cover artwork by the always-brilliant Judy Nadin, to the story of the Talking Pictures episode that almost never was and the dance-on-hisgrave exhibition that was The Morrison Years, we haven’t had this much Wilcox all in one place. It’s understandableshe’s the ACA’s President as well as the 2021 Cartoonist of the Year, after all - but it’s also nice to see some overdue recognition going her way. We are all mighty proud of you, Cathy!

In these days of cutbacks, it’s rare to have a newspaper adding a comic strip

I think the matter of cancelled events for a second year in a row has led to some people, who didn’t even think they liked hanging out with their cartooning cohort, craving the chance to get together! (We introvert-extroverts are complicated, I know.)

Enjoy the magazine - there’s reading in here for days - and let me thank Steve Panozzo for all the work and time he puts in - writing, sourcing, designing, chasing up... occasionally only pausing to make a living. Look, I do have a few issues around his flamboyant use of typography... but there wouldn’t be a magazine without him! And remember, if you have an interesting tale to tell, you can contact Steve.

We hope to do more coffee mornings soon, as they’ve provided some blessed relief to the isolation. But more than that, we really look forward to lots of you making the trip to Coffs Harbour for THIS YEAR’S STANLEYS CONFERENCE on November 18-20, 2022. Stick it in your diaries, and stick around for a few days!

Let’s hang out! We’ll need it!

to their lineup, but all credit must go to The West Australian for doing just that with Brenton McKenna’s Ole Champ.

While I’m here, sincere thanks to everyone who writes and contributes news and articles for Inkspot. Don’t forget to send in your cartoons on HOLIDAYS by 17th June - we’d love to see them!

Finally, we lost two cartooning greats in March, the irrespressible Ernie Carroll and the saintly Peter Foster. I got to know Peter when we travelled to the NCS’ Reuben Awards in 1994 and I have lost a wonderful friend.

Shaw to be Sure

Vane Lindesay (Inkspot #94) writes about a mystery cartoonist known only as Shaw. He did seem to hide from historians, but there are some bits known about him. Robert (Rob) Shaw was born in Melbourne, grew up in Gippsland and studied at the Melbourne National Gallery Drawing School. During the Great War he drew political cartoons for Truth in Melbourne. By the 1920s he was contributing to the boy’s paper Pals, then for The Sun News-Pictorial where he drew Billo and Co. For The Weekly Times he drew Benno and His Town Cousin from 1930 to 1933. He also drew The Doings of Dave and Dan and, from 1936 to 1937, drew Treasure Trove, The Adventures of Dr Zarovitch and The Mystery Man for The Age. The comic books he drew called Skeet may well have been give-aways for the Melbourne company, Renwick Pride. Shaw died in Melbourne in 1970. There is a short biography on him in Graeme Cliffe’s book, From Sunbeams to Sunset.

Lindsay Foyle STANMORE NSW

A Dry Read

Darn weather! Just spent 15 minutes waving my daughter’s hair-dryer, drying my copy of Inkspot that ended up quite wet in my letterbox. I’ve managed to dry it so that it is in a readable state. Thank you so much to all the minions in the background making Inkspot happen 4 times a year. An amazing effort from all involved. My sincere thanks...

Christophe Granet RYDE NSW

A Good News Story

Recently, I was at a social function and I was sitting next to someone I had never met. When he asked what work I had done in my life, I indicated I had been a newspaper artist on The Sun. He asked me if I had known Darren Pracy. I said I had worked with him and he told me the story about his wife knowing Darren’s mother since they were about 5 years old and that she had been Darren’s godmother. She and the mother talk almost every day and neither of them had ever really managed to get over Darren’s early death. I emailed him Lindsay Foyle’s story that had appeared in Inkspot about Darren (issue #88, Autumn 2020) and he was so appreciative for his wife. Good one, Inkspot!

John Thorby NARRABEEN NSW

Thanks From Rural SA

The latest edition of Inkspot is fantastic. Nice work! And thanks for featuring my work, much appreciated.

Jed Dunstan NGAPALA SA

(More Letters on Page 23)

THE 2021 STANLEYS!

No slap-up black-tie ball this time, but we do have the results... and a new CARTOONIST OF THE YEAR!

ROWE RULES ROTARIES

It was all systems go at the National Cartoon Gallery in Coffs Harbour, where DAVID ROWE snared Cartoon of the Year

DRAWING WORK

Are freelance cartoonists living in poverty? DAVID BLUMENSTEIN looks at data from the Australia Council’s report

WARNIE BOWLED OUT

Almost everyone seems to have a SHANE WARNE story, but PAUL HARVEY’s tale is hard to beat

THE MORRISON YEARS

The 2023 Federal Election looks likely to mark the end of an era, so the National Cartoon Gallery held a retrospective!

OLE CHAMP RINGSIDE!

We talk to BRENTON McKENNA who did the seemingly impossible and got a new comic strip published in The West!

THE BAT AND THE GHOST THE ART IN ANIMATION

DANIEL BEST talks to GLENN LUMSDEN and DAVE HEINRICH in Part 2 of the story of Barossa Studios*

PETER VISKA introduces us to Australian animation royalty - namely, the one and only DEANE TAYLOR

From the Art Room Jeremy Winkle... and the Half-Tone Dots of Doom!

We celebrate the lives of the late Ernie Carroll and Peter Foster

* Old Jungle Saying

Stanley awards 2021

It was supposed to be different. For a start, the 2021 Stanley Awards would usually be held in 2021. But that was before the Delta strain swept through Australia and before we’d even heard the name “Omicron”. Postponement was inevitable - not just for us, but also for the Walkley Awards and the Rotary Cartoon Awards. Pretty much everything that had been scheduled for late 2021 had been either cancelled or postponed until early 2022.

To make matters worse, the arrival of Omicron and continued border closures again made planning a large Stanley Awards event an uncertain prospect. And so it was that, for the second year running, the Stanley Awards results would end up being announced via a live streaming event through the ACA’s Facebook page.

Importantly, the National Cartoon Gallery resolved to press ahead with the Rotary Cartoon Awards on 25th February. Which meant several cartoonists would be in Coffs Harbour for the Rotaries, so why not livestream a reading of the Stanleys results the following night over dinner?

Unlike 2020, we had no AGM to organise (that had been held via Zoom in November 2021, as planned).

To provide a lead-in to the announcement dinner, the ACA’s Deputy President and conference facilitator, David Blumenstein, organised a single conference session for the afternoon, titled Drawing Work: Opportunities for Cartoonists, Illustrators & Comics-Makers, which kicked off at 3:15pm.

The main inspiration for the session was the Australia Council’s report, Graphic Storytellers at Work, and attempted to address issues such as cartoonists and illustrators essentially working in poverty. Other participants were ACA Board member and multi-award winning comic book artist, Dean Rankine, UTS lecturer and co-founder of the Sydney Opera House’s GRAPHIC festival, Gabriel Clark, and the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s Cassie Derrick.

Once that had wrapped, eighteen dinner guests converged on Shearwater Restaurant

Inkspot

Photos by LINDSAY FOYLE

The scene at Shearwater Restaurant in Coffs Harbour

in rain-soaked Coffs Harbour and, after a couple of false starts, live coverage on the ACA’s Facebook page resumed. Once food orders had been taken, ACA President Cathy Wilcox began reading from the list of nominees provided by accounting firm, KPMG, our official returning officers. Thanks to technical assistance from the National Cartoon Gallery’s Hal Snodgrass, sound quality was an improvement on last time, despite the arrival of several other diners to the annexe where we were all seated. As the background noise increased, it became harder for those at the other end of the long table to hear the list of nominees and recipients, causing more than a few to pull out their smartphones and simply watch the broadcast.

Shocked and surprised reactions came through from those topping their categories, including a stunned Judy Nadin in Newcastle, who won Stanleys for Book Illustrator and Caricaturist. There was probably nobody more surprised than Cathy Wilcox herself when she was named Cartoonist of the Year. The only award recipient who was present, Cathy consoled herself with a silver water jug, which is quickly becoming an accepted Stanley Award substitute in the absence of actual statuettes. The Australian Cartoonists’ Association congratulates all the nominees, salutes those who will be receiving their Stanleys later and we all look forward to the weekend of 18th-20th November, 2022, when the Stanley Awards dinner returns in all its black-tie glory.

2021 STANLEY AWARDS - LIST OF FINALISTS

EDITORIAL/POLITICAL CARTOONIST

Peter Broelman

Mark Knight

David Pope

David Rowe

Cathy Wilcox

COMIC STRIP CARTOONIST

Jason Chatfield

Gary Clark

Ian Jones

Tony Lopes

Alan Rose

ILLUSTRATOR

Anton Emdin

George Haddon

Paul Harvey

David Rowe

Eric Löbbecke

SINGLE GAG CARTOONIST

Matt Bissett-Johnson

Jed Dunstan

Peter Player

Andrew Weldon

Steve Panozzo

CARICATURIST

Terry Dunnett

Paul Harvey

Judy Nadin

Steve Panozzo

David Rowe

COMIC BOOK ARTIST

Gary Chaloner

Eleri Harris

Glenn Lumsden

Paul Mason

Stuart McMillen

BOOK ILLUSTRATOR

Jason Chatfield

Anton Emdin

Simon Kneebone

Judy Nadin

Dean Rankine

EVENT CARTOONIST

Peter Byrne

Terry Dunnett

Paul Harvey

Steve Panozzo

Anthony Pascoe

CARTOONIST OF THE YEAR

Paul Harvey

Mark Knight

Judy Nadin

David Pope

David Rowe

Cathy Wilcox

JIM RUSSELL AWARD FOR SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTION TO AUSTRALIAN CARTOONING

Kaz Cooke

AUSTRALIAN CARTOONISTS HALL OF FAME

Ron Vivian, Lloyd Piper and James Kemsley

NOTES:

The Stanley Award for Animation Cartoonist was not presented in 2021 due to the low number of entries.

The formal presentation of the 2021 Jim Russell Award and the inductions into the Australian Cartoonists Hall of Fame will take place at the 38th annual Stanley Awards on 19th November, 2022 at the National Cartoon Gallery, Coffs Harbour.

Jock Brodie, Ian Jones and Nat Karmichael think Cathy Wilcox looks better on TV

“This is your President speaking...”

(Recipients are listed in bold type)

THE 2021 ROTARY CARTOON AWARDS

While the formal presentation of the 2021 Stanley Awards was curtailed for yet another year, the Board of the National Cartoon Gallery resolved to press ahead with the Rotary Cartoon Awards night, which were presented on 25th February this year, after being postponed from November.

Winning the award for Cartoon of the Year - the twelfth time since 1995 - was David Rowe, for his entry, Nuts. Rowe also won first prize in two other categories, Political Cartoon and Caricature (for his portrait of US President, Joe Biden).

Several prize winners were on hand to accept their awards, with others sending acceptance videos. In the Open category, first prize went to Jason Chatfield (Coronavirus Diary 1-3) who accepted his award from New York City, with the Merit award going to Jed Dunstan (Kangaroo Looking for a Date) who beamed in from rural South Australia.

“This is the first time I have won,” said Chatfield, “and I’m devastated I had to cancel my trip. I drew this piece while I thought I was dying.”

Photos by LINDSAY FOYLE and STEVE PANOZZO

David Rowe

In the Sports category, Harry Bruce was present to take home the first prize, with the Merit award going to Lindsay Foyle Ian Jones won the Comic Strip category and Mark Lynch, in proving that it’s impossible to have a Rotary Cartoon Awards without him picking up a prize, was awarded the Merit.

The Merit award for the Political Cartoon category went to Lindsay Foyle and the Merit for Caricature was awarded to Steve Panozzo for his portrait of retired ABC journalist, Kerry O’Brien Andrew Fyfe won first prize in this year’s special category, In Our Backyard Bubble, while Phil Day picked up the Merit award.

A feature of this year’s Rotary Cartoon Awards was a People’s Choice Award for each category. The Open winner was Dave Blumenthal, Sports winner was Steve Panozzo, Comic Strip was won by Jason Chatfield, Caricature was won by David Rowe and the Special category was won by Vince Steele

“The last couple of years have provided plenty of inspiration for the cartoonists to draw from and they didn’t fail to deliver,” said National Cartoon Gallery Chairman, Paul McKeon

Ian Jones with his long-awaited award!

The Battle of the Shirts!

David Bromley with Steve Panozzo

Pope Harry Bruce blesses the crowd

Lindsay Foyle

Cathy and Jock Brodie

Sue and Phil Day

Report by DAVID BLUMENSTEIN

On the afternoon of 26th February, shortly before Cathy Wilcox handed out the 2021 Stanley Awards, we ran a livestreamed chat about opportunities for cartoonists, avoiding poverty and standing up for yourself and others. It was a great discussion. Topics of chat were the Australia Council report, Graphic Storytellers At Work, MEAA’s new Freelance Charter and general tips on freelance life.

Aside from myself as moderator, the panelists were Dean Rankine, freelance cartoonist (Simpsons Comics, Magda Szubanski’s hit kids’ book series Timmy the Ticked Off Pony), Gabe Clark, academic and event producer (including the Graphic festival at the Sydney Opera House and live comics reading series, Read to Me) and Cassie Derrick, Deputy Director of the Media Section for the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), and the lead of their campaign for freelance rights.

Gabe presented on Graphic Storytellers At Work, which was funded by the Australia Council for the Arts and released in 2021. Gabe described it as, “a report on the working lives of graphic storytellers in Australia”. Written and drawn primarily by Gabe and comics artist Pat Grant, it makes use of 260-odd survey responses to illustrate how the technical, interpretive

and interpersonal skills we naturally build up through practice as cartoonists are having impact in other fields, such as medicine, law, education and design:

“We were noticing that these skills which we know through comics, cartooning, zine fairs, are actually being utilised in really expensive ways by industry, but there’s no acknowledgement that these skills are actually being used.”

It’s a really interesting report, an easy read, and points the way toward how many of us could be, and are, making a living outside of the media.

We found that the results of recent surveys undertaken by the MEAA matched up with Gabe’s, and with the 2019 ACA survey, all of which show that most freelancers are pursuing their creative work, with a day job or a “side hustle” keeping them financially afloat; those artists with steady work are in the minority.

Data from Graphic Storytellers At Work shows half the “graphic storytellers” in Australia are living below the country’s median wage, a third are living in poverty and an eighth are making over $100k/year.

Making a Living

The media sector’s redundancies over the last 20 years have hollowed out the industry, but also left the Australian media swarming with freelance journalists. Cassie described their freelance members’ feeling on this:

“There are a lot of great things about being a freelancer - and some of them never want to go back to having “a job” - but the challenge [the union] faced was that in this country... people who are employees have the safety net of minimum wage and working conditions, and freelancers have none of that. So we were having extremely important work done by extremely dedicated and skilled people who are earning nothing. They’re barely able to earn a living wage.”

This led to the formation of the MEAA’s Freelance Committee, and their new Freelance Charter of Rights, with which the MEAA are now approaching major media employers in an attempt to have the larger Australian media industry sign on and bring local freelancers’ rights and pay up closer to the level of their “employed” colleagues.

Dean, currently on the ACA Board, came armed with a list of things artists should have in place to survive as a cartoonist.

“Very few people make a living just doing comics... so my theory is that everybody else kind of needs to do a bit of everything,” he said. “Choose maybe five of these things to survive as a cartoonist in Australia.”

The list included “having a partner who works”, “having a part-time job you don’t hate”, “teaching cartooning, “live caricature”, “book and magazine illustration”, “getting a manager and doing commercial art” and “putting cartoons on the web and selling merchandise - the more angst-ridden the better”.

The tone was serious but we were able to have a good time talking about how we make a living and bantering with the many people making pertinent comments on the ACA’s public Facebook page.

You can watch the recording of the chat by dropping in on the ACA’s public Facebook group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/australiancartoonists (it’s a Pinned post), or by popping over to Squishface Studio’s Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/squishfacestudio

LINKS

MEAA Freelancers Charter: https://freelancers.org.au/charter

Graphic Storytellers at Work: https://australiacouncil.gov.au/advocacy-and-research/graphic-storytellers-at-work

Folio, a comics history 1980-2020: www.foliocomics.com

ACA’s artist survey 2019: www.cartoonists.org.au/blog/2019/04/30/aca-survey

“Data from Graphic Storytellers At Work shows half the “graphic storytellers” in Australia are living below the country’s median wage, a third are living in poverty and an eighth are making over $100k/year”

The Return of the Baldies

After a three-year hiatus, the nation’s most controversial art prize – The Bald Archy Prize – is returning in all its irreverent and vulgar glory.

The iconoclastic spoof on the Archibald Prize, which has a first prize of $10,000, has not been awarded since the death of its founder, Peter Batey, in a car accident in June 2019.

Mr Batey established the prize 27 years ago from his home in Coolac, NSW, to poke fun at the established arts community. He always insisted his pet cockatoo, Maude, made the final decision on winners and that her opinion was just as valid as the judging panel for the Archibald itself.

The Bald Archies will now be run by Wagga Wagga’s Museum of the Riverina, which has had a long association with the competition.

“We are calling for submissions that include wit, slapstick, vulgarity, farce, black comedy, irreverence, and anything inbetween, preferably featuring an Australian distinguished in art, science, letters, politics, sport or the media,” said museum manager Luke Grealy.

Entries for the 2023 prize are open until 10th January. There will be a preview of finalists at Canberra’s Watson Art Centre in February 2023 before it sets off on a tour of regional Australia.

www.baldarchy.com.au

Farewell to Surjit

Surjit Singh Gujral died in April. He might not be someone many cartoonists recall, however, when James Kemsley was battling Motor Neurone Disease in 2007, former Test cricketer Len Pascoe organised a fundraising event at Surjit’s Indian Restaurant in Sydney’s Angel

Megan Celebrates Tantrum

A tantrum is child’s way of conveying frustration at situations seemingly beyond their control. In The Tantrum That Saved the World, Sophia uses tantrum power to convert her rage into action to change the world. After a succession of climate refugees knock on her door, Sophia is confused and exasperated, but soon realises she shares their concerns and decides that stopping climate breakdown must become her mission, too. After being dismissed by the people in power at city hall, she transforms her anger into an epic tantrum that the world can’t afford to ignore!

The Tantrum That Saved the World, by Megan Herbert and Michael E. Mann, started life as a 2018 Kickstarter campaign, but after being picked up by North Atlantic Books in 2020, she saw an opportunity to revise it before publication.

“Since its first print run was only 2,000 copies and sold mostly to

Place. Originally intended to be a lunch on Friday, 14th September, it ran well into the evening. Surjit turned away all his regular customers for the day to ensure the event’s success. Given Kemsley’s love of cricket, it was an appropriate venue as Surjit had a passion for cricket and knew all the Australian and Indian Test Cricketers.

Kickstarter backers, it is really more like a brand new book,” Herbert said. “This weekend, it was listed in People magazine as one of the best new climate kids’ books!”

Importantly, both authors wanted to inspire children to do something about climate change. They were also cautious to avoid adding to the problem, so carbon neutrality became a central goal for this project. This book is printed on 100% recycled materials, using soy inks, in a printing facility run on renewable energy, with no waste going to landfill, and carbon offset shipping. Every effort has been made at every stage of production and fulfillment to create a book that not only has a strong message, but also walks the talk.

The Tantrum That Saved the World (ISBN 9781623176846) will be released in Australia by Penguin Random House on 31st May, 2022, RRP $29.99.

Surjit

Walkleys Roll Out Award to David Pope

Editorial cartoonist for The Canberra Times, David Pope, has won the 2021 Walkley Award for Best Cartoon. He won the award for Rollout de Vax, a take on the Federal Government’s challenges with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

“During the 2021 Tour de France, an unthinking bystander caused a major accident with a cardboard sign, creating a viral moment that cartoonists put to good use,” said Holly Williams, curator of Behind the Lines, in which Pope’s cartoon features.

Pope has been repeatedly nominated for Walkleys, winning in 2015 for his cartoon drawn in response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in France, He Drew First, which has been described as “iconic” and became one of the most recognised responses to the shootings.

The two other finalist for the Walkley were The Saturday Paper’s Jon Kudelka and The Australian Financial Review’s David Rowe

Behind the Lines Opens in Parramatta

On 15th March, the touring version of Behind the Lines opened at Riverside Theatres, Parramatta, as part of the National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach programme.

The touring exhibition features 105 of the 126 cartoons currently on show at Old Parliament House. The next stop on the tour will be Old Treasury Building Melbourne (5th May-23rd June), followed by NSW Parliament House (4th July-23rd July), National Cartoon Gallery in Coffs Harbour (5th August-16 October) and winds up at Western Plains Cultural Centre, Dubbo (29th October-27th November).

MOVING HOUSE? JUST MOVED?

Then update your address with us - we’d really hate it if you missed the next Inkspot! Get in touch with the ACA’s Membership Secretary today… it’s easy: secretary@cartoonists.org.au

Holly Williams, Cathy Wilcox and Fiona Katauskas at Riverside Theatres

David Pope

A Blast From the Past at the Royal Easter Show Holy Hilton Notepad!

Drawing caricatures in a live setting isn’t every cartoonist’s cup of tea. While plenty of us draw caricatures, it can be intimidating to perform with the distraction of an audience watching your every move.

Even then, most large events such as Oz Comic Con will only last two days at the most. Spare a thought, then, for Graeme Biddle, Steve Panozzo and Stanley Toohey who braved two weeks’ worth of 12-hour days at the Sydney Royal Easter Show in April, where daily crowd numbers reached 90,000 over the Easter weekend.

“What kept us going, apart from the stories of the people who came to get drawn, were the friends, clients and cartooning colleagues who dropped by to say hello,” said Panozzo.

“They are extraordinarily long days and the random appearance of a few familiar faces certainly gave us that lift when we needed it.”

One of those faces was former News Limited cartoonist, Craig Stephens, who has been living in Denmark for the past 25 years. In Sydney for a short visit, with his daughter in tow, he had been dragged along to the show by his sister and happened to see Panozzo at work.

“It was such a buzz to see Craig,” said Panozzo. “Before I knew it, we had spent more than and hour trading some very funny stories of those heady newspaper days.”

Stephens has become well-known in Denmark as a portrait painter, but manages to maintain his cartooning skills by producing regular op-ed illustrations for the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong.

Also dropping by was fellow live caricaturist Peter Byrne, who visited the boys on the Show’s final day. It was a welcome reunion for Toohey, who has been living and working in England for the past decade.

Most Australian comic book aficionados will know of George Vlastaras, the owner of KINGS Comics in Sydney. In 2002, George was one of the few local comics retailers involved with the DC Comics Retailer Roundtable Program meeting, held at the Burbank Hilton, California, with the conference room set up like a classroom. The famed Jim Lee was to talk about his work on Batman, starting with issue #608.

While the DC presentation was underway, Lee entered the room and sat next to George. As he was waiting to make his presentation, Jim took a Hilton notepad and began to sketch away. George was amazed at Jim’s speed and detail with no reference! As Jim finished the sketch and was preparing to stand up, he dedicated the drawing to George before passing it to him. Needless to say, this unexpected surprise went straight to the pool room.

Steve Panozzo, Peter Byrne, Stanley Toohey and Graeme Biddle with unnamed stuffed friend

Craig Stephens and Steve Panozzo get photobombed by Stanley Toohey George Vlastaras

Cartoons the Perfect Covid Cure

In June last year, Canadian cartoonist Terry Mosher (Aislin) set about gathering Covid-related cartoons from more than 100 cartoonists from 38 countries. It proved to be a bestseller.

“The Covid book was a great success as we managed to raise CAD$10,000 for several Montreal hospitals,” Mosher said.

Several Australian cartoonists pitched in: Christopher Downes drew the lettering for the front cover, Glen Le Lievre and David Rowe both contributed cartoons and Lindsay Foyle had one of his cartoons on the book’s flyleaf.

“It’s a very, very serious business, cartooning on a subject like Covid,” Mosher said. “Humour is part of it, yes. But there are many kinds of humour. Some can be quite cutting. Some can be quite dark.”

The book has received rave reviews. Ian McGillis from the Montreal Gazette said, “Highlights are too many to mention”.

www.aislin.com

In March, Alan Rose launched an annual online sports caricature exhibition called Sporticatures. The first edition, which covers great Australian sporting moments between January 2021 and February 2022, is currently able to viewed as an online flipbook. At this stage, Al reports he is limiting participation to Victorian caricaturists only, but is hoping to extend an invitation to others down the track. To view the current exhibition, go to: https://online.fliphtml5.com/ylltc/aygu

LEFT: Two of the works in the current edition of Sporticatures - Novak Djokovic by Paul Harvey and Emma McKeon by Alan Rose.

Other featured artists include Levent Efe, George Haddon, Anthony Pascoe, Mark Rhodes, Simon Schneider, Ricky Walker-Rincon and Danny Zemp

Drop in For a Beer, and Bob’s Your Uncle

The HAWKIE! Drawn to Politics exhibition, curated by Mark Tippett at the end of 2019, proved to be a great success... then the s#*t the fan. Fires, pestilence and something called Covid-19 stymied immediate plans to host the show in Sydney.

The 2019 show - HAWKIE! - was a collection of 70-plus artworks and cartoons from Australia’s best cartoonists and satirists (with the odd New Zealander thrown in), which chronicled the political career of the late Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke. This exhibition was not only a testament to the Bob’s ‘everyman’ charisma and powerful identity, but also served as a time capsule for the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s from some of this country’s best black and white artists. It was suitably launched by former Hawke Government senators, Graeme ‘Richo’ Richardson and Gareth Evans and was proudly supported by Hawke’s Brewing, Landcare and the Australian Cartoonists’ Association.

Hawke’s Brewing was borne out of two mates with an idea: ‘Who would I like to have a beer with?’. Hawke had only one condition to being involved with Hawke’s Brewing Co. – that 100% of his royalties be donated to Landcare Australia, the environmental charity he established in 1989. Bob’s share, as well as ongoing fundraising efforts by Hawke’s Brewing Co.

and its partners, has helped fund projects such as Landcare’s Protect Our Threatened Aussie Species Appeal and Bushfire & Natural Disaster Relief. Hawke’s Brewing Co. continues to support Landcare projects around Australia.

Now, in 2022, comes the Bob Hawke Beer and Leisure Centre in the inner-western Sydney suburb of Marrickville, which has attempted to embody everything that screams, “Hawkie!”

Mark was recently contacted by Nathan Lennon, co-founder of Hawke’s Brewing, who wanted to recreate the same vibe from the exhibition to display in a section of the Leisure Centre, called Bob’s Pool Room.

“I thought it was a great honour,” said Tippett, “so I seized it and approached all the donors and artists from 2019 to see if they would be involved. They all said yes! So, thank you”.

If you get the chance, pop along to The Bob Hawke Beer and Leisure Centre – a new brewery, bar and bistro experience in affiliation with Hawke’s Brewing Co. - at 8-12 Sydney Street, Marrickville, where copies of the 2019 exhibition of Hawke cartoons and caricatures are now on permanent display.

www.hawkesbrewing.com/beerandleisure

Mark Tippett (centre) with former Senators Graham Richardson and Gareth Evans at the launch of HAWKIE! at the Kurrajong Hotel, Canberra in 2019

Brendan Akhurst’s portrait of Bob Hawke (1979)

Non-Talking Pictures

Buy Cartoons and Help the Planet

Talking Pictures, hosted by the always exuberant Mike Bowers, debuted on the ABC’s Insiders in late 2001 and quickly became everyone’s favourite segment on the programme. It has appeared at the tail-end of every edition of the show since, one of the few bright spots in what can be an otherwise dull gabfest presided over by a small group of humourless, self-absorbed political analysts.

That was until 10th April, when the decision was made to drop the pre-recorded segment in favour of keeping all eyes on the Prime Minister’s journey from Canberra Airport to Government House in Yarralumla, where he would meet with the Governor-General and request a dissolution of Parliament. What followed was ten minutes of drivel about whether Scomo would be

drinking tea or coffee en route and the mechanics of the ensuing press conference to announce the date of the federal election. Viewers fumed as guest host Patricia Karvelas then announced that there would be no time for the outrageously popular Talking Pictures, but that it could be seen on ABC iView and that it was “an excellent segment”.

All we can say is: thank heavens we have iView, where the ditched segment may be viewed in all its glory, with none other than Cathy Wilcox in fine form, going through the week’s cartoons and photographic highlights. Glenn Robinson wasted no time in imagining the scene at Castilo del WIlcox following the segment’s ditching, which he sent to Cathy, who thought it so funny that it deserved a wider audience.

For Marnie Giroud, the fight to protect our natural environment never ends.

Earlier this year, she spearheaded a project with students from Rockingham Senior High School to help protect threatened species, particularly the Australian Sea Lion. The students created artwork to be reproduced on products - such as leggings, t-shirts, mugs, bags and soft toys - to raise funds for research into the animals. WA Premier Mark McGowan sent the students a letter to congratulate them on their efforts.

Alarmed by the increasing numbers of dicarded surgical masks entangling wildlife around the world, she has produced a range of reusable masks, with the tag line of “Trim It Before You Bin It”, featuring the Australian White Ibis (a.k.a. the ubiquitous “Bin Chicken”) in an attempt to alert people to the very real dangers of carelessly tossing disposable masks. Marnie advises that a dolphin character is coming soon!

For every mask sold, Redbubble (see link below) will donate a mask to Heart to Heart International. Heart to Heart works with volunteers and donors to make healthcare more accessible. They have launched international, domestic, and local responses to COVID-19.

www.redbubble.com/people/marnieg/shop

MUTED: Cathy Wilcox with Mike Bowers

Glenn’s Poster Artwork Sizzles

Apparently, there are over two million podcasts out there and I can guarantee you that virtually none of them interest me.

Except one.

Sizzletown is a podcast jointly created by Melbourne comedian Tony Martin and producer/writer Matt Dower. It’s premise is described as “the world’s only late-night call-in podcast”.

The show is hosted by Tony and he voices an extensive range of unhinged characters who call in each episode. These include conspiracy theorists, politically-incorrect publicans, stoned teenagers, bewildered old men, and shonky finance managers, all of whom phone in to air their grievances on a range of topics: such as, asking why the Bathmat Warehouse doesn’t only stock bathmats or someone who firmly believes his own television set is watching him. This madness is helped (or hindered) by Matt’s skills as sound engineer. Once the characters get going, it’s like 3AW’s Nightline dialled up to one hundred.

Four years ago, I reached out to Matt and Tony via Instagram with a few of my own designs based on their Sizzletown characters. Since then, the cartoons have been used in their social media advertising, on merchandise, and even in some of their videos on YouTube.

As podcasts are an audio-only format, there are no visual guides to how any of these weird cast of characters are supposed to look. It was all down to my own interpretation which Tony and Matt were happy to let me play around with. So far I have drawn around thirty of the characters from the podcast.

“Glenn’s work quickly became an integral part of Sizzletown, consistently bringing the show’s ever-increasing ludicrous characters to life visually,” said Matt. “We’re the luckiest in the biz to have an artist onboard who not only gets the surreal nature of the show, but consistently delivers work beyond our wildest expectations”.

At the start of 2022, I was asked to create a limited-run print for one of

Sizzletown’s sponsors, Allegiance Wines, to be used as a tie-in promotion for their range of vino. The print features many of the characters I have created, in a style similar to those old-style band posters that used to be glued to lamp posts throughout the city during the 1970s and 1980s. Each of the 200 prints is individually numbered and signed by Tony, Matt and me.

“Sizzletown is a sprawling mess of multiple characters, and Glenn has managed to render that in visual form with style, wit, and a satisfying amount of detail for the fans,” said Tony. “We love this poster - it’s like our version of the Sgt Peppers album cover.”

It was an amazing few weeks of coming up with ideas, layouts, as well as new interpretations of existing characters, and then trying to make it “work”. Tony and Matt were (as always) extremely supportive, encouraging and more than happy to let me run with it, which I was more than happy to do.

Glenn “GROB” Robinson

Matt Dower and Tony Martin with Glenn Robinson’s poster for Sizzletown

Glenn Robinson

Harv Remembers an “Open Book”

The sudden, unexpected passing of Australian cricketer, Shane Warne, on 4th March prompted a string of tales from cartoonists all over Australia. Warne’s antics, both on and off the field, had made him a frequent subject of caricatures and cartoons over the years. Paul Harvey had a closer working relationship with Warne than most.

“In 2016 I put together the Warniemojis with Spike Creative and Warnie’s great mate, Luke Tunnecliffe,” recalls Harv. “Warnie was great fun. He was open, honest and up for anything which was awesome. I had drawn him running from spiders, dancing with stumps and even teaching blondes how to play golf.

The free phone app came with a range of emoticons which could be sent via text message, email, or shared on social media. The majority of the emojis included recreations of some of Warne’s iconic cricketing moments, including dancing with a stump and pouring champagne onto his own head. Others feature golf and poker references. For an additional in-app purchase of 99 cents, users were able to unlock a series of “naughtier” emojis.

“I also got to call in two mates, Ricky Walker-Rincón and Anthony Pascoe, to give me a hand, so we had a ball.”

Warne loved the artwork so much, he wanted Harv to put together a bunch of vector illustrations for all his mates, such as Niall Horan, Chris Martin and Ed Sheeran. He even talked about doing them for Mick Jagger and Elton John, but decided they might not see the joke. Harv also created designs for Warne’s children, Jackson, Brooke and Summer, who vetoed the one of Shane in leopard skin undies.

“Probably wise,” agreed Harv. “He was happy to have a laugh at everything, even his Ashley & Martin treatments, the girls, the bonking, the selfies and sexting. He was an

Shane Warne with Paul Harvey in Chapel Street, Melbourne

(Photo by Mick Russell)

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With a looming Federal election tipped to see the end of Scott Morrison’s tenure as Australian Prime Minister, it seemed as good a time as any to look back over his time in office.

So the National Cartoon Gallery asked Warren Brown, David Rowe and Cathy Wilcox to dig into their back catalogue and present a combined assessment of our 30th Prime Minister from a cartoonist’s perspective. Titled The Morrison Years, the exhibition opened on 11th March to much fanfare, with both Wilcox and Rowe in attendance

Since Scomo and his cohorts came into office on 24th August, 2018, we’ve had fires, floods, pandemics, rorts, protests and scandals galore - not to mention a war - so whittling out a selection of cartoons was no easy task. And with an exhibition period of some three months, there was always the prospect of more controversy to come.

“About 25% of the exhibition space will be held for “current” cartoons which will change over the duration of the exhibition,” explained Paul McKeon, Chairman of the National Cartoon Gallery.

“When the artists are sending their cartoons to their newspapers, they will also send a copy to us and we will hang many of them on the wall.”

The idea of an exhibition showing cartoons which have just appeared in major newspapers has never been seen before in Australia.

“The initiative keeps the exhibition fresh and engaging from a social history perspective,” he added. “Gallery patrons can pop in for both a coffee and news update.”

The Morrison Years is at the National Cartoon Gallery, Coffs Harbour, until 29th May.

www.nationalcartoongallery.com.au

The cartoons provide plenty of topical discussion

Cathy Wilcox and David Rowe at the opening in March

Letters... continued

A Tribute to Brendan...

I recently received in the mail your note together with the copy of Inkspot featuring a tribute to Brendan (issue #94, pp. 38-39). Thank you so for much arranging this lovely tribute and sending it to me. Please also pass on my thanks to Helen, Boris and Tracey for their help. I’ll be attending a family reunion tomorrow and will take the article with me as I know it will be very much appreciated by all.

Michelle Akhurst

BURRADOO NSW

... And Love For Liz

I am Liz Lambert’s daughter. Her neighbour passed on Inkspot magazine to me. It had my daughters and myself in tears. I had heard the story of Inkspot’s birth many times, but seeing it acknowledged in print made my heart sing. Mum would have loved it. Would it be at all possible to get another copy to give to my sister?

Cyndie Lambert Smith

TOTNES VALLEY NSW

Laughing With Lummo

I really dug Daniel Best’s article in Inkspot with Glenn Lumsden and Dave Heinrich. It reminded me of - and made me miss - the old Comics Scene and Wizard magazines.

Dean Rankine

LANGWARRIN VICTORIA

Daniel Best replies:

Thanks Dean! But all credit must go to Lummo and Bear - I just sat there and laughed a lot that afternoon, and then spent five days taking out all of the swear words and slanderous stories that were told. Hopefully you’ll like Part Two just as much.

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:

Rodolfo Almeida (Qld) and Tony Pyrzakowski (NSW)

Wicking Retires, Leaves NT News

The cheeky, and ever-so-slightly controversial, cartoonist for the NT News, Colin Wicking, has decided to call it a day after 34 years with the paper.

Wicking has been giving Northern Territory readers his view on local events since the 1981 after arriving in Darwin for a two-week holiday. Following a stint with the now-defunct Darwin Star, he became the editorial cartoonist for the NT News and Centralian Advocate in 1988. Wicking’s last cartoon for the NT News appeared on 31st March.

Last year, Wicking donated a collection of more than 10,000 cartoons, created between 1988 and 2018, to the Library and Archives NT, prompting the National Trust to declare his collection a cultural heritage icon and Wicking a “legendary social commentator who has held people, politicians, crocodiles and even dingoes to account for decades.”

Wicking’s reign at the NT News was frequently controversial. He was on Media Watch almost every other week and received more than his fair share of Human Rights Commission complaints. And there were letters from the Bishop every Easter over his depictions of Christ on the cross.

“After 45 years in newspapers, I’ve decided to put aside the pens, have a bit of a break and look to new creative horizons,” he said in March. Colin and his wife, Andrea, are in the process of relocating to northern Queensland.

eszra Hopes to INSPIRE Kids With NEW comic Strip

Last year, something rather unexpected happened. A new daily comic strip made its debut in an Australian metropolitan newspaper.

The West Australian unveiled a new comic strip, called Ole Champ, in March, 2021. Ole Champ is the brainchild of Brenton McKenna, a respected Yawuru cartoonist and graphic novel author from Broome, WA.

Ole Champ is the story of a young, gritty and ambitious Aboriginal wrestler who, along with his best friend Kol, are trying to make a big career break as professional wrestlers. Unfortunately, they’re both stuck in their laid-back home community

a thousand miles from the nearest wrestling promoter, where no one celebrates wrestling or cares about two crazy guys in masks and leotards. Ole Champ is a mix of over-the-top storylines with all the flair and bizarre characters that go with pro-wrestling along with the bush antics and campfire tales straight from the community.

Along the way they meet both allies, villains & everyone else in between. Some of the key characters are Ole Champ, Kol, Uncle, Kelly and Keithy

McKenna, who goes by his middle name (and alter ego) Eszra, credits his old art teacher from Broome’s St.

Mary’s College, Sister Helena, with fostering his passion for drawing after she handed him a copy of Christopher Hart’s Step-By-Step Guide to Drawing Superheroes.

“I literally read it from front to back and inside out,” he said. “That one book changed everything. I decided then that, no matter what I did in life, this would be something I would pursue.”

After studying visual arts in Victoria, Eszra was one of twenty successful applicants to be awarded ahighly sought-after and respected mentorship with the Australian Society of Authors in 2008.

Brenton McKenna

In 2011, he became the first published indigenous graphic novelist when Magabala Books published the first volume of his three-part Ubby’s Underdogs series. The success of the books has led to greater success than he ever imagined, especially overseas, with invitations to attend the US Library of Congress’ National Book Day Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Bangalore Literary Festival and the Brisbane Writers’ Festival, among others.

Eszra also dedicates his time to educating kids and youth through creative storytelling workshops. He hopes his work will encourage children to engage with words and stories.

“It would be really great to have that kind of impact on other kids,” he said.

“Our mythology is as rich as that of any other culture but a lot of it has been lost, unfortunately, so I am trying to make it my personal mission to go out and find it all and bring it out in a medium that even reluctant readers or those whose first language isn’t English can take in.”

“It would be really great to have that kind of impact on other kids”

Lummo Bear& Part Two

Last issue, as you recall, these two had completed their landmark mini-series, The Phantom: The Ghost Who Walks, for Marvel Comics and were in talks with DC about a three-issue run on Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. Archie Goodwin had got in touch with Glenn Lumsden and Dave de Vries to offer them the opportunity to create their own story arc. Valiant Comics had also approached them to draw the Eternal Warrior Yearbook and a Ninjak series. The former would end up being published; the latter, despite being fully written and drawn, would be shelved. It was an omen of things to come.

Glenn Lumsden: So... we were getting to a stage where we had a queue of jobs, and so you get something, you get Batman,

and you go, “Let’s start tomorrow!” But we’re, “Oh, okay. But we can’t start until a few months from now when we finished Ninjak” and Archie Goodwin was saying, “That’s cool.” It’s because it’s for Legends of the Dark Knight, and they’re all those self-contained stories.

Dave Heinrich: And we finished Ninjak, didn’t we?

GL: Yep. Yep. But that never got published. DH: Didn’t Dave, in the end, suddenly break it into three issues?

GL: It was going to be an annual. A giant annual. And then they changed... They got rid of the annuals. They said, “We’re just going to run it as a regular, but you

got to split it into three issues.” Then they cancelled it (laughs)... But, I mean, so many sad comic stories with that story, and then they never printed it. Then the editor died. Then da-da-da... there’s always something.

I just wish my career was full of triumphant stories of, “... and then it got published and we went and did the next one. It was even better. And everyone was loving it and we got more stuff, and we were happy, and we were drawing, and it was great...” (laughs)

DH: Because the first thing you tell an aspiring comic book artist is, “Finish your story.” Really, that’s one of the first tips. Well, if you’ve got an idea, yeah, finish

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...

Inkspot AUTUMN

Dave “Bear” Heinrich and Glenn “Lummo” Lumsden eyeing off Tasmania’s finest ice cream

it. Write a small story so you can get to the end and sit back and go, “There, I’ve done it.” And then you can move on to the next one. But when you don’t finish it, it’s kind of like kissing your sister, isn’t it? (laughs)

Goodwin was a decent man, and he was willing to wait for quality. Lumsden went to Hong Kong to photograph and scout locations. He did the same in Sydney where he was photographed sketching on the top of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Their story would take Batman from Gotham, to Hong Kong and, ultimately, a finale in Sydney. Despite growing up wanting to draw Batman, Lumsden was in a dark place personally.

GL: Well, Dave de Vries and I both have different experiences. Dave agrees that we have a different take on it all as well. But when my personal thing was, I think I was going through a total meltdown, breakdown of everything, including my relationship with the girl I’d been living with. It was just like everything was crashing down on me. The idea that Batman was my favourite character was neither here nor there by then. It was just, “I got to get out of here. I’m going to kill myself or something.” Because I remember one time, getting this bad RSI, because we were working so hard around the clock.

I was getting acupuncture done and it was just killing me. I remember one time, leaving the guys in the studio. I just wanted to go for a drive somewhere and cry, and I could not find a place. Every night, I’d park somewhere and someone would park next to me. And I’d end up in Menglers Hill near the sculpture park thing, and I thought, “No one’s going to be there.”

And about three vans pull up by the side of my car full of tourists. I’m going, “I can’t even sob my head off. I just went back to the studio. I was like... I’m fine.

Not everyone at Barossa Studios wanted to draw superheroes.

DH: I don’t think I ever actually appreciated superheroes. I was never into superheroes. So Batman was huge and Legends of the Dark Knight was huge too, but I don’t know. I wouldn’t say it was just another gig. I was proud I could say I worked on a Batman comic, and I worked on Legends of the Dark Knight. I meant that, but I was never into superheroes like others...

I was into Heavy Metal. And European adult comics... I liked Moebius and Richard Corben, and underground stuff. So, I don’t think I quite realized the gravity of it all, until afterwards. Of course I respected Batman. I went to great lengths to document Gotham City. I studied the Gotham City skylines and stuff when I was doing the cityscapes. But I don’t think I was a big enough superhero fan to really appreciate it at the time. But now I’m grateful for it.

I knew Glenn was suffering as the star of the show, but again, he always gave me some licence within his magnum opus. I always had plenty of room to go apeshit with the backgrounds, which was nice, because it was a cool world to populate. And at the time you had Tim Burton’s Batman movies out as well. So there was a lot of that, for me anyway.

Sadly Archie Goodwin, who was struggling with cancer, passed away shortly before the first issue was completed. Replacing Goodwin as group editor was Denny O’Neil, while editors such as Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Darren Vincenzo,

Andrew Hefler and Bob Schreck took over for story arcs and single issues.

Lumsden stopped working on the book after learning of Goodwin’s passing to sort himself out and took the opportunity to quietly removed himself from the project. Once it became obvious that DC wasn’t going to pursue the book, Lumsden began seeking out work in advertising and Australian magazines. This became the priority as the money was regular, good enough to live comfortably on and didn’t have a lot of the uncertainty that working in the American comic book scene did.

The first Legends of the Dark Knight issue was 95% complete, pencils and inks, and the splash page for the second issue was pencilled but that was it.

The art went back on the shelf, DC paid them off and it has never seen publication in its entirety. Lumsden feels that the editors who inherited Goodwin’s mantle may not have been aware that the Australians were working on the book.

Despite how it ended, both Lumsden and Heinrich remember the times with fondness.

GL: It was good. It was like an assembly line thing. It was kind of a fun assembly line, until Batman was not fun. But Phantom, despite all caveats I have about the quality of the final work -

DH: It was a good experience.

GL: It was mostly fun. Especially knocking off and going for a beer afterwards and stuff like that.

DH: It was the best job in the world for me. Best time of my life. Yeah.

Archie Goodwin Denny O’Neil

GL: You go, and you’d have these, you know how we’d have these spontaneous sessions? Because you think, we’re just going to have one beer. It’d be Wednesday, got to have one beer, because it’s a work day tomorrow, then suddenly it’s 2:00am (laughs)... And it’d happen all the time.

DH: It was good too, because at that point too, we were… well, Glenn and Dave were… earning enough money for it to drip down to the rest of us. But I think by the time when we started Batman, we started to have to do other things. Is that when you started doing other things, other gigs to get by?

GL: Well, maybe those gigs just came along?

DH: Maybe. Yeah. I can’t remember. No. My point was, we’ll say after Batman, after Batman we had to diversify. And to do comics properly – and well, you really need a tunnel vision. You do. I mean, I know we’ve just talked about avoiding tunnel vision, but you need to live in that thing to get it right. That’s the problem with sequential art, isn’t it? It’s such a lot of work. And you have to immerse yourself in it.

Barossa Studios kept on going after Batman. The set-up evolved over time. Lumsden and de Vries were no longer the bosses and the other artists being assistants, instead the new set-up had everyone taking equal responsibility for their own work. They sought out work for magazines and advertising clients. In this way, everyone could work autonomously or as a collective if they elected to do so. If a big job was brought in, then talents would be shared. The Studio also had a rule that each person would not interfere with anyone else’s territory, unless they had the blessing of the other.

By working in this way, the Studios became highly successful for the remainder of its life. In fact, Barossa Studios was more financially successful in the post-comic book era than it had been during the comic book boom of the early to mid-1990s.

All things must pass, though, and Barossa Studios was eventually disbanded, and the partnerships dissolved.

Once Barossa Studios folded, Lumsden went into advertising and all but turned his back on sequential comic

book art. After moving to Adelaide, Lumsden founded his own food van (Haddo’s Hot Dogs) with wife Carly. When he and Carly moved from Adelaide to Deloraine in Tasmania, he was contacted by an old friend, Glenn Ford, who asked him if he’d like to draw some Phantom covers for Frew Publications, now co-owned by Ford and René White.

This time around, Lumsden accepted. Moving away from traditional methods, Lumsden embraced digital technology and began to produce Phantom covers that stood out on the newsstands due to their sheer quality.

DH: Oh, it’s amazing.

GL: It is absolutely the best stuff I’ve ever done. And that is, and I still think I’m getting better, because I was looking through some of the... Because, basically, when I started doing the Giant Size covers, I thought, this is a level that I’m totally sure is good enough. And I’m never going to look back on it and go, “Ah, destroy it!”

And so now I’ve looked back at it, and I’ve gone, “Okay. It’s not as good as I initially thought it was, but I still know that it was good enough,” which means that my standards have gone up. My eyes are getting better and I’m picking out stuff that I literally could not see was wrong back then. But I’m also banking on, I don’t think a lot of other people could see what was wrong either. It’s a case of, just having a more... a keener eye than the average consumer, which you would expect, from my whole life.

DH: Connoisseurship.

GL: I’m still happy with the level of all that stuff and I’m not going to destroy any of it, or try and say “I never did it” or whatever, but the stuff I’m doing now is better than that. And I hope that in a few years’ time, that stuff will be better than what I did. And I’ll be able to look back on what I did and go, “I still know that stuff’s good, but it’s not as good. And I would change it, if I was to redo it, I’d improve this, this and this.” Now I’m saying that’s mission accomplished in my mind. That’s what I want to be doing. I would worry if I looked back on stuff, I’ve done a couple of years ago and went, “Oh, that’s better than what I’m doing now” (laughs)... That would be bad. But that’s inevitable, I think. But hopefully I’ve still got another eight years before that happens.

From covers, Ford tested the waters and asked if Lumsden would be prepared to write and draw his own Phantom story. Lumsden was receptive but pointed out that he didn’t work fast. This wasn’t an issue for Ford, who allowed Lumsden all the time he needed.

Once Covid-19 hit in 2020, Haddo’s quietly went under, like most food vans did. This now meant that Lumsden was back to where he began – relying on his art to earn an income. In order to bring a steady income, Lumsden began to offer reasonably priced commissions. For these, he went back to traditional pencil and inks. His art didn’t suffer from the time he was away from those traditional ways of drawing, though.

DH: I reckon I can pass a judgment on this. I would say he’s matched the level he reached with brush on paper, now, on the Cintiq. I reckon that impact; he’s matched it and surpassed it. And in fact, (it’s one of the things I’m really enjoying about this trip) is I’m learning again about how he’s working now. He’s even more fastidious and he does more preparation. Now it’s not automatic at all. It’s probably even more labour-intensive. But these tools enable him to go higher than he ever did when he held the brush.

GL: Well, that was the thing, I think, with all technology, is that there’s this sort of dream that technology is going to free everyone up. You’ll be able to do eight hours of work in one hour. People go, “You could produce eight times the amount of stuff now! Do that.”

DH: It’s just another tool. It’s just a different tool.

GL: Yeah, so now with Photoshop, I mean, if you can draw a perfect etching line on a layer and then copy that layer and move it and then adjust it, so that it’s still a perfect line, but it’s a slightly different angle.

And then do that a hundred times and it just creates this perfect gradation, you go “That’s great.” And you think, “But that also took me 10 times longer than it would’ve been if I’d been in a rush.”

Also, you zoom in on a fingernail and it’s filling up the whole, A3 Cintiq screen and de-de-de. An hour goes by and then you zoom back out and you go, “Holy shit, that’s 1% of the surface area I’ve...” No, it’s too much. You got to-

DH : It doesn’t help you with your perfectionism.

GL: You can disappear down a rabbit hole.

DH: But what Glenn’s saying is that he does and that’s why he wants to get it right, because he wants to go to his grave knowing that that’s the best fingernail he can do at that time.

GL: (laughs) But you can get carried away with... you can create work for yourself you don’t need to. Because as you say, you zoom out, no one sees the fingernail. But what happens is you can get tunnel vision and you forget that you’re working on a tiny bit because like when you’re working on a piece of paper, you can see the whole paper the whole time and you can go, “I know how much I’ve got left to do. And every brush stroke’s the same size.”

But when you’re working on a computer, you zoom in, zoom out, you’ve got to keep on zooming in, zooming out to make sure you are working at the same scale because it’d be easy just to be doing these, what you think are big fat brush strokes and you zoom out and they’re tiny, so you can hardly see them. And the brushstrokes in the previous panel are

five times the size, (or maybe) ten... more space between them but you could have sworn they were the same. But you were doing them at different scales.

So that’s something you got to keep in mind, which makes it a bit more complicated. But it just means you got to, I guess, be aware not to fall into that trap and to keep on checking back and forth.

The future looks bright for both Lumsden and Heinrich. Lumsden is moving further and further into writing and drawing.

GL: Well, I’m writing my own stuff and I’m writing a little bit extra for Glenn Ford mostly. And that’s just because it’s, well, Glenn Ford asked me. He said, “Can you do another Gaslight story?” And I went, “Yeah, sure.” Because it gives me a chance to write a 64-page story that - no way am I drawing it, because it’ll take me 10 years (laughter)...

It was good. And you get paid for the writing and meanwhile I’m still drawing and writing my own, other stuff. It was just a little extra sort of gig, which is good. Gives you... Because I really, I’ve always loved writing and I didn’t get to do it for a long time because when I teamed

up with Dave De Vries, obviously, you’ve got to have demarcation points where you say, “Right. There’s two of us. We both kind of double up on everything, who’s going to do what?” And the rule we had was, when we decided who does what, you’ve got to respect boundaries. So if I’m the drawer, I have the final say on the drawing, you have the final say on the writing, colouring, lettering... whatever.

Because otherwise you’re constantly undermining each other, especially if you both see yourself as writers. You can’t undermine the other person. You’ve got to just go, “Right. I’m drawing this. This is a script. Perfectly good script. That’s what I’m doing.”

And one day, I will write my own script and draw that. But the good thing with writing and drawing your own script is that there’s no resentment, because it’s very hard not to resent the writer. (laughs)... I’m not referring to Dave de Vries. I’m referring to the general relationship between the artist and writer in comics where one job is so much more labour-intensive than the other, even if that’s acknowledged where the writing gets paid less, blah blah blah, there is still that time, usually, where a penciller

goes, “This is taking forever. And that guy’s written another 10 comics. He’s worked with all these other artists that published the things. I’m still writing this.”

DH: Still doing that crowd scene.

GL: Yeah! But the thing is, if you write the crowd scene yourself, then you know it’s got to be done. You just knuckle down and do it and you don’t bitch to yourself like, “You idiot, Glenn, why did you write a crowd scene?” You just go, “I wrote it because this story needs the crowd scene.”

DH: And you wear it.

GL: Just do it. And it would be nice - in a perfect world - that if you could feel the same way about another person who was writing it, if you could offer them that same generosity.

Although now firmly entrenched with Frew, Lumsden is still looking for new challenges.

GL: I’ve had a chat with a British publisher (Rebellion Developments), who does 2000 A.D. I just introduced myself, showed him what I was doing, and said, “I only want to work by myself. If I do something with you, if you want me to do something with you, I want to draw, write, letter, everything.” And he went, “Okay. Well, it sounds like you’d be better off doing five-page

“Go The Grey”: The Case Against Purple Tights

Words by GLENN LUMSDEN

An unusual feature of the Phantom’s publishing history is the different coloured outfits he wears, all around the globe. Red with yellow trunks in Brazil, blue with red trunks in Scandinavia, and, if you’re a Kiwi…a kind of olive brown colour that can only be described as “baby poo”.

And in Australia? Depending on when you started following him, the Phantom has been green, grey, and purple.

Due to the vagaries of cheap printing, from the 1940s to the 1960s, the shade and hue of grey varied hugely. Bluey-grey, pinky-grey, ghostly-grey, then almost charcoal! The one common feature throughout, though, was that he was always a variety of grey.

In the late 1960s, the grey colour became more consistent, as Frew stuck to a cheap and cheerful limited colour palette on their covers that would become iconic and much loved nationwide... the logo was always red, the background blue, the skin tones orange, the Phantom grey. You could spot a Phantom comic a mile off, all because of the repetition of this simple colour palette.

An interesting aside... out of all the nations in the world, Australia was the only place taking notice of what Lee Falk himself spelled out unambiguously in the scripts….that the Phantom was grey. Falk was even originally going to call him “the Grey Ghost” before settling on the name “Phantom”. There are dozens of references in stories to his grey duds.

So why the purple? The US started doing a purple Phantom, exactly when I’m not sure... in the 1960s, I think. And in the late 1980s, Australia followed suit. Over time, that colour has been juiced up to get us to an electric panel-van purple that would make targeting him in the jungle an absolute hunter’s delight. It makes “Kiwi baby poo brown” look tasteful.

Being asked to do the covers for the retro vintage Giant Size Phantom comic seemed like the perfect opportunity to resurrect the Grey Ghost Who Walks of my childhood, and I secretly live in hope that his superior greyness will slowly win the hearts and minds of a younger generation who have, for too long, had their pupils pitilessly pummelled by purple punishment.

future stories.” Or they’ve got another short story thing, which are basically almost like little mini Twilight Zone things . They’re either horror or set in the future. Five pages, self-contained, basically pitching an idea. And if he likes it, go for it. And I’ve written down a whole lot of ideas. I’ve fleshed a few out, but I haven’t been in touch yet, because I’m still finishing off a story for Frew. And it’s pointless me pitching a story and have the guy saying, “Love this. Great. Yeah. When can you get this done?” “About a year?” (laughs)... It’d be, “Okay, come back in a year, man.”

But as soon as I get the Frew thing done, I will pitch him my ideas and see if he’s interested. Also, I don’t even know their page rate. So that’s another thing I’ve got to ask him, “By the way, what’s the page rate?” Because if he says, “It’s 25 pounds,” then I’ll be, “Well, I’m out of here. See ya.”

Heinrich has also been away from the comic book medium, and he, too, wants to return. He’s dabbled in art direction, game design, webcam animation and children’s books. He’s spent the past few years publishing a magazine dedicated to vintage Chrysler cars, along with running a design studio at Flinders Medical Centre, where he is a technical and scientific illustrator. A former footballer, he is also writing a history on his beloved South Gawler Football Club.

DH: I’m a medical illustrator, so that eats up a lot of my creativity. I want to go back and do Earth and I’ve always had that in my head. I do have a new story in my head. I just gotta write it. Well, I’ve half written it. Anyway...

And Steve Carter and Antoinette Rydyr gave me a Savage Bitch story. They wrote it for me, and I would really like to draw that –just because I want to draw beautiful amazons running around in the jungle fighting dinosaurs and monsters.

And I also have another little idea. I don’t know what for, but I’ve got this thing stuck in my brain called Soma, an anthology of adult comics, which I was talking about before. Glenn is involved in that, as is Alister Lockhart, James Fosdike, Michal Dutkiewicz and Dr. Mike

I think, for me, doing stuff with my friends and publishing something with my old friends again would be great. I just want to see a book where I’m in it with all my best mates again. Like Glenn. For no reason. I don’t care if it sells. I just want to be in a book with my mates again, because that’s what I want to go back to. Create and have fun with like-minded souls, hey.

We’ve been talking about this a lot down here… since I’ve been here, there’s the sense that we’re running out of time. And that’s the trouble when you’ve got to make a living doing something else. It eats into your creativity. Don’t get me wrong, I love being an art director and doing medical illustration – but I’m a comic book artist and not just a graphic designer. I get to do some illustrating at work, but I also have to do a lot of graphic design, and when you come home, you’re knackered. I have to devote my energy into my problem-solving skills, so instead of writing stories it’s more about “how do I portray a particular surgery?” or “how do I draw that particular machine?” And that’s very challenging and very rewarding, sure. I’m in the New England Journal of Medicine. I’m in the Oxford Dictionary of Plastic Surgery. That’s quite an honour…

But I was a Heavy Metal fan, so I would love to be in Heavy Metal. That’s what I really want to be in. No one knows about these academic journals, not really – unless you’re a surgeon – but I guess they’re different peaks, different accomplishments. I can still draw. And I still draw at work. Just not all the time, like I want to.

I was never into superheroes. I’m into adult comics. Not only do superheroes not sell as many as they used to, but the comics I want to do, adult comics… they have an even narrower audience. The stuff I want to do is more in the Vertigo style. I know I can do it. I think I really need to get Earth out, and I really need to do Soma with my mates. And I’ve got a few little one-shots for Soma in my head. But also, I’ve got a couple of historical books to write – and they’re big projects as well.

Just need to find that time and energy to create.

Interview by DANIEL BEST

What could have been: Batman hangs from a girder on the Sydney Harbour Bridge

Reviews

Leonard Lawson: Rapist, Murderer, Comic Book Artist, Monster

Daniel Best

Published by Blaq Books, 2021

Available from www.amazon.com.au

$19.80

182 pages

ISBN 9798757209388

Reviewed by Lindsay Foyle

Leonard Keith Lawson (1927-2003) was a one of the most successful Australian comic book artists in the 1940s and 1950s. He was also one of the worst rapists and murderers in the country. Daniel Best gets it right when he points out, in his book about Lawson, that he was also a monster.

Lawson tied up five young models in 1954 and raped two of them. For these crimes he was sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to 14 years in prison after the death penalty was abolished in New South Wales later that year. Lawson was released from prison on good behaviour in 1961, after serving only seven years of his life sentence.

The following year Lawson sexually assaulted and murdered a 16-year-old girl who he had invited into his apartment, on the pretext of painting her portrait.

He then drove to the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, where he took a number of hostages at the Sydney Church of England Girls’ Grammar School. During the siege, a scuffle occurred where he killed a 15-year-old girl. For this crime he was sentenced to life imprisonment - again. Some years after, while still in prison Lawson attacked a female dancer, who was performing in a concert at Parramatta Gaol. He died at Grafton Correctional Centre in November, 2003.

Best goes into considerable detail about these crimes. Some of it is quite harrowing, which might be an understatement. Much of the book is harrowing. It would be hard to give a full account of Lawson’s shocking crimes without the details.

The book is not entirely about Lawson’s crimes. Best also goes into some detail about the comic book industry of that time and explores some of the lives and activities of many of Lawson’s contemporary comic book artists.

While not mentioned in the book, Jim Russell once revealed that he and a few other artists would visit Lawson in prison now and again. According to Russell, Lawson was a nice person and nobody could understand how he could commit the crimes he did and that side of Lawson is also depicted in the book.

For anyone interested in the history of Australian comics, this is a book not to be missed.

Lindsay Foyle

Leonard Lawson with Detective Constable Whelan being escorted into Sydney Coroner’s Court on January 25, 1962

Part Four

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

Who Are You Calling Fatty?

Australian journalism, in particular newspapers, up until the 1920s were characterised by dull grey pages and misty half-tone photographs. This was to change with the introduction of what was to become a remarkable success - the comic strip, a feature that was slow to catch on at first but increasingly gained in popularity in newspapers.

The Sunday Sun in Sydney, in particular, saw remarkable success when they published a strip titled Us Fellers, drawn in 1921 by a young artist named Jim Bancks. To counter this, a rival paper engaged another cartoonist, Sydney Nicholls, to create a comic strip called Fatty Finn to compete against Bancks.

The humour of both comic-strips was often on an adult level, but Fatty Finn had a particular appeal to boys in that many of his adventures were with pirates, highway robbers and jungle cannibals. It was all rattling good yarn-spinning, particularly in those strips concerning pirates, which were magnificently illustrated by Nicholls.

After eight years of a Fatty Finn strip feature, without warning it was replaced by Bib and Bub, a fantasy strip for juvenile readers, written and drawn by May Gibbs

LEFT: The Fatty Finn Book #1 (1929)

There is no record of why Fatty Finn was terminated. This blow to Nicholls came at the peak of the world-wide economic depression, nevertheless, in 1934 he produced his own Fatty Finn weekly, an eight-page tabloid printed in black and white and priced at one penny. Circulation in Australia and New Zealand was said to be 48,000.

During this period, Nicholls founded a Fatty Finn Club, creating a bond with his readers. A colourful certificate was issued with a fake seal, also a Fatty Finn lapel button and badge came with the certificate. This promotion came to an end with the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, along with shortages of paper and labour.

The 18cm x 12cm certificate (reproduced at right) was sent to this writer when he was aged fourteen.

Vane Lindesay

Syd Nicholls

the ART in animation

by PETER VISKA

In this issue, I would like to introduce DEANE TAYLOR. His enemies include blank sheets of paper and artists who don’t draw enough. Deane is the doyen of animation designers/art directors in Australia and a search on him will let you know he has worked for decades on top global shows and movies. He sets up universes, characters and sublime styles that leave you awestruck or ready to change occupations. There isn’t enough space here to do his work justice so check out his Instagram page. I will now hand over the page to Deane to let him tell you about his approach to work and his current plans...

I fell into the animation world accidentally when I interviewed Bill Hanna in my role as an on-air presenter on a live-to-air South Australian Children’s show.

The year was 1978. I was flown to his Sydney studios and given the choice to join any department, and so, with having no real clue, I ended up in layout. I learnt very quickly that my real job was to make the next artist’s job as painless as possible. Being able to draw was almost a secondary qualification.

Layout at that time meant translating the storyboard into working drawings. Poses for the animator, fielding for camera and background design for the background artists. If you did your job in layout, it allowed the animator to act without being burdened by the mechanics of the scene, and if you designed the background thoughtfully, it would inspire the artists to take more ownership in their final painting.

The camera crews implemented the cuts and moves with ease and commitment. If you did your job well, it would be evident on the screen. As an outsider to this world, that fact made perfect sense to me.

My approach was simple. Make the next person look good. Since that time I have found this work ethic both practical and personally satisfying and, as I moved through many productions to follow, I dug below the surface in an attempt to understand story better. This opened up fresh challenges in staging, scene planning, cinematic language, and acting.

Meeting the challenges were profoundly rewarding and have taken me around the world, working and learning with the best. Make no mistake: learning comes from experiences, both good and bad. Be ready to do your time in the trenches.

More recently I made a decision to apply the principles of what I have learnt to the development of projects of my own creation. Stories that have a conscience. I have no illusions. These are stories that will, at best, enjoy limited success, but most importantly they will be driven by the passion and experience that I hope will serve to inspire personal gratification to those storytellers amongst you to do the same.

Make every thought count, every line drawn matter. If you believe it, you are the boss. If you give it your best, it will show on the screen.

Taylor

Deane

Dean Taylor’s credits include:

Blinky Bill (storyboard artist) (1982)

Footrot Flats (layout artist) (1986)

Jetsons: The Movie (layour director) (1990)

The Nightmare Before Christmas (art director) (1993)

Cow and Chicken (art director) (1997-1998)

Blinky Bill (director) (2015)

Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (production designer) (2022)

“I joined the industry in the late 70’s working alongside many talented individuals who shared a common creative vision.

“This gave me the direction to become a specialist in Production Design, storytelling and Director for animation. I am particularly interested in stories for older audiences and lean heavily toward the dark side.

“Also interested in book properties that share a cinematic tone, and to that end have a number of ideas in early development.”

JEREMY WINKLE and the Half-Tone Dots of Doom!

Below, you can see a page from Jeremy Winkle that appeared in The Sun newspaper in around 1970. The women’s pages had a new page called Young Sun and they wanted a non-American comic strip.

Another artist began a strip but was too unreliable, so I took it over and drew it in my own time. Cartooning was new to me at the paper, so I took photos from the image library, had half-tone screens made from them and I used those as backgrounds, which saved a lot of time.

My first comic strip was called Major Blunder, which was OK for a while, but then they wanted an adventure comic, so first was Peter and Penny, who flew

around the world on a flying carpet, seeing sights such as the Taj Mahal and Jenolan Caves (all represented by halftone screen photos) then Jeremy Winkle came after that. This went for about 6 months but the editor of the women’s pages reduced the amount of space for comics, so I started Our Street (which later became Gus) for about another 6 months. Finally the page closed and out went the comics.

My 24 years at Fairfax was in 2 parts. For the first 21 years my job was on The Sun, with the last 6 as Head Artist. I would work directly with the editor and deputy editor. For most of that time the deputy editor was Jack Plummer, who was

fairly difficult to work with but I got on with him quite well. For my last 3 years, the editor was Derryn Hinch. Plummer could not work with Hinch so he was moved to features on the Sydney Morning Herald. Hinch wanted everything his way, as a lot of editors do!

Fairfax paid for Hinch to be picked up in a Rolls-Royce in the mornings. A new masthead was designed. All new section headers had to be designed, so it in fact it looked like a new paper. All the department heads (from sub-editors to photographers and the art department) had to be at the pub every afternoon to discuss the next day’s paper. This often included all day Saturday at his place. He expected a lot of personal time devoted to HIS paper. This was difficult for those with families, so I decided to leave as I was also doing freelance work for other magazines.

I was offered work with Project Publishing, a small publisher with a printer on Broadway. I was earning the same money, but after 3 years it was sold and the staff were out of a job. After a year as a full-time freelancer, I realised it was not for me, so I asked Ian Cox, art director of Fairfax, for another job. This was on the Sydney Morning Herald and involved night shifts.

To my surprise, one afternoon I was called to the features editor’s office and there was Jack Plummer from my old job on The Sun. He put me on the spot by giving me all the travel artwork to draw. He knew I was out of my depth, but with my knowledge of working with the printers for so long, I knew all the shortcuts.

The newspapers were printed by letterpress, and meant that photographs were made up of 65 dots per square inch. This included all toned artwork that would have no whites and all tone had a dot. A line-and-tone drawing had to have all the dots painted out of the white area which was hours of work.

LEFT: Jeremy Winkle by John Thorby

John Thorby’s

The only way I was going to do travel drawings was copying photographs so I got the idea of drawing pen work over the photo on clear acetate film and putting the tone on a separate layer of film.

With the tone the block maker would overexpose the tone drawing so there were dots only in the tone and then print the line negative and the tone negative together to make a line and tone result in the paper without hours of work. These results surprised everyone and it was my job from then on to produce the travel page. This all changed with colour and offset printing as we do today. These are a few results of drawing on film.

John Thorby

Vale Ernie Carroll (1929-2022)

Ernie Carroll - the rarely-seen alter-ego of Hey Hey It’s Saturday’s OSSIE OSTRICH - passed away in March. Ernie’s Hey Hey colleague, Andrew Fyfe, remembers his publicity-shy friend.

I first saw Ernie Carroll at the age of eight at the Glen Shopping Centre in Glen Waverley. He was performing under the guise of his fine feathered friend, Ossie Ostrich. After the show I stuck around and was fascinated to see the ostrich being packed away into a suitcase by a man who had been hiding behind a podium. That vision haunted me for years.

Little did I know I’d be working with that man 10 years later, first to ghost his Ossie Ostrich cartoon strip for TV Week and, later, drawing on-air cartoons for Hey Hey It’s Saturday... but that’s another story.

Ernie was born in 26th May, 1929 in Geelong, Victoria, the son of a fruit farmer. His first foray into media was at radio station 3TR in Sale and later moved to Geelong’s 3GL in the 1950s. At that time he began his cartooning career, drawing ads for the Purcell Electric Company, together with other regional companies around Geelong and was a regular contributor to Humour magazine, whose covers he also drew.

In 1956, at the inception of TV, Ernie headed to GTV 9 to explore his creativity in other areas. He worked as a cameraman, a producer for The Happy Show (which later evolved into The Tarax Show) and wrote comedy for Graham Kennedy. He appeared as Professor Ratbaggy and as himself, narrating the adventures of Joy-Belle, which he also illustrated for the show during this time.

Ernie kept his hand in cartooning, drawing Smiler the Swaggie Strip, which ran for 25 years in country newspapers.

It was at GTV 9 that Ernie was to meet his future performing partner, and half of one of Australia’s greatest double acts, while producing Cartoon Corner. After cartoonist and host James Kemsley left the show in 1971, Ernie auditioned a budding young singer and drummer, Daryl Somers, to host the show with Ernie’s greatest creation, a pink talking ostrich puppet, named Ossie. The adlib chatter between Daryl and Ossie lasted for 10 minutes. It was at that moment Ernie realised he had found his new host.

LEFT: Daryl Somers and Ernie Carroll get photobombed by a certain pink ostrich

Ossie had been born on 3GL, and first appeared in the mid-1960s on The Tarax Show, “after Carroll was inspired by a French television show that had a talking duck”.

It was a partnership that was to last 25 years, during which Ossie Ostrich, with his quick retorts and razor-sharp wit, soon became an Australian household name and part of TV history. During this time, Ossie fronted his own TV Show, The Ossie Ostrich Video Show, which Ernie also produced.

Ernie continued to keep his hand in cartooning, penning the Ossie Ostrich strip for TV Week during the 1980s, which I later took over. Ossie’s last appearances were during the two 2009 Hey Hey specials and the series reboot in 2010.

I last saw Ernie during an intimate lunch with fellow Hey Hey cast members to celebrate his 90th birthday 2 years ago. We reminisced, watched clips of his hilarious quips (which never aged) and laughed until we cried. A gentle, generous and extremely talented human being, Ernie was truly a gift to us all.

On 30th March, 2022, Ernie Carroll passed away peacefully, surrounded by his family at his Mornington retirement village, aged 92. He is survived by his partner of almost 50 years, Miffy Marsh, their two children, Lynne and Bruce and their grandchildren.

TOP: An Ossie Ostrich strip by Carroll (1982)

ABOVE: A gag cartoon from The 102 Collection (1985)

RIGHT: The cast of GTV 9’s The Happy/Tarax Show (Ernie Carroll is at top left)

Andrew Fyfe

Vale Peter Foster (1931-2022)

Peter Foster, who passed away on 22nd April, was a beloved member of the Australian Cartoonists’ Association and an immense talent in the fields of cartooning and illustration. His friend (and number one fan), Matt Emery, recalls a remarkable life.

Peter Foster was born in Caulfield, Victoria on 18th May, 1931. He taught at De La Salle College during the 1970s, before realising his long held ambition to be a professional cartoonist upon moving with his family to England in 1978.

As a young man, he had worked in the reproduction department of The Argus newspaper in Melbourne, where he pored over blocks containing months of syndicated newspaper strips. Within weeks of landing in the UK, Peter took his portfolio around the two largest publishers, IPC and DC Thomson, and quickly secured steady work with DC Thomson.

Peter was often employed to establish new story settings and character designs for a title’s launch. Of the weeklies DC Thomson produced, Peter primarily contributed to Spellbound, The Hotspur, Champ, Buddy, The Crunch, Nikki, Bunty and Judy. Peter’s lively drawing style was aptly suited to the UK market, where his work varied from teenage superhero hijinks through to crime and war. After moving back to Australia in 1980, Peter continued working for DC Thomson via mail. As DC Thomson’s output of weeklies shrank during the late 1980s, Peter focused exclusively on illustrating sixty-five page stories for Commando Comics and Football Picture Story Monthly.

In 1982, Peter was commissioned by Greenhouse Publications to adapt Marcus Clarke’s classic Australian novel, For The Term of His Natural Life. Peter’s vibrant black and white artwork depicted the suffering and inhumane treatment of convicts, drama in storms at sea, sailing ships, costumes and uniforms, all in heavily-researched detail. American graphic novel pioneer

Will Eisner was impressed with Peter’s adaptation.

“This is a fine piece of work,” Eisner said. “You’ve executed some brilliant rendering - particularly in the ship sequences but I’m most interested in your skill at human expression; to me a most important element in this medium.”

In 1991, he was paired up by Ginger Meggs cartoonist James Kemsley with his father, James H. Kemsley, to illustrate a strip loosely based on Kemsley Snr’s time in post-war Papua New Guinea. Ballantyne’s jungle-based stories featured an equal mix of humour and adventure and ran for six and a half years in The Sun-Herald as a Sunday feature. Twelve complete adventures of Ballantyne were produced, which were also syndicated in Indonesia. During his retirement, Peter coloured and reformatted these strips into ten comic books which were published by Pikitia Press.

Numerous other comics projects were published in limited runs, with others left unpublished or incomplete. An abortive line of comics with his friend Gerald Carr did produce one issue with Peter’s atomic powered hero as the backup feature. In collaboration with Derrick Warren, he created fifty-nine dailies of humour strip, Local Guvmint. With James H. Kemsley, he produced twenty-eight dailies of their humour strip, Captain Lamplight. Adventure-themed newspaper strips included Sport Inc. 72, about a budding sports agent and Shannon, an adventure/mystery strip of which about fifty dailies were completed. There was even a parody of The Phantom for MAD. There are perhaps as many unpublished works of Peter’s as there are published ones!

Jim Russell and Peter Foster at Sydney Airport prior to flying to the NCS Reuben Weekend in May, 1994

Tinkling the ivories at an ACA event in 2008

Throughout his career, Peter also produced a vast quantity of illustrations, book covers, advertising and work for church and educational projects. An accomplished musician, Peter composed several musicals that have been performed in Australia and abroad. Peter’s art, music and faith entertained and inspired a lot of people all over the world. Beyond his artistic output, Peter often remarked to me how proud he was of his three children and the adults they grew up to be. Peter’s friend, Jim Bridges, recently summed up Peter’s personality and disposition for me and anyone that knew him: “A wonderful man, who kept his childlike wonder into his adult life.”

Peter was presented with a Stanley Award for Adventure/ Illustrated Strip in 1993 for his work on Ballantyne . His cartooning colleagues also presented him with the rare treat of a signed artist’s smock in 1992. To cap off a remarkable career, Peter was awarded the Ledger of Honour in 2020, the “hall of fame” award for the Australian comic book industry.

During his last couple of years, Peter moved into mecwacare’s Noel Miller Centre in Glen Iris, eventually becoming bedridden; it was recently revealed that Peter had been suffering liver cancer, yet he never betrayed his obvious discomfort and kept a cheery and enthusiastic disposition. Peter passed away on 22nd April and his life was celebrated at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Chelsea on 5th May.

Matt Emery

ABOVE: A selection of book covers from Peter Foster’s prodigious pen

On stage at the Stanley Awards in Ballarat in 2006, with partner-in-crime, James H. Kemsley

BELOW: One of Peter’s coloured pages from the Pikitia Press series of Ballantyne reissues

BELOW: A panel from Commando Comics