Duffman_Comics Posted January 27, 2014 Share Posted January 27, 2014 First up, another quality Australia Day post by AJD. Those Frank Johnson books are truly amazing. Kudos Fascinating and very cool. Are there many copies still around or are the ones at the library the last remaining copies? I have never seen many of the books posted - and I've been collecting a long time. I am reluctant to state they are the only copies in existence but they are very rare. The strange thing is that when they do pop up they can often be bought for very, very little. They also turn up in Op Shops and second hand book stores and the like - not often, but it's not unusual. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porcupine48 Posted January 27, 2014 Share Posted January 27, 2014 Just amazing stuff.and I thought I had something special with my 6d Batman's. Really wonderful,thanks for sharing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southerncross Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southerncross Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 Venus #3 Australian edition Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southerncross Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 Blackhawk #24 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OperaHouseSydney-migration Posted December 9, 2014 Share Posted December 9, 2014 Some Golden Age Australian Original Art from Facebook groups Stan Cross and Yarmak. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheEyeSees Posted December 9, 2014 Share Posted December 9, 2014 This one looks to me like a swipe from something familiar to all of you: Thanks for looking, and have a bonzer Australia Day! Great thread! Somehow I missed it the first time around. LOVE this cover!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJD Posted December 9, 2014 Author Share Posted December 9, 2014 Some Golden Age Australian Original Art from Facebook groups Stan Cross and Yarmak. Whoa, the original of a seriously iconic cartoon! Is it yours, or did you just get the pic from FB? That's a really nice piece to own if it's yours. Welcome to the boards and the thread in any case. (thumbs u 1950's war comics 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duffman_Comics Posted December 9, 2014 Share Posted December 9, 2014 Some Golden Age Australian Original Art from Facebook groups Stan Cross and Yarmak. Welcome To The Boards !! That Stan Cross piece is iconic. A one page gag strip with the caption "Fer Gorsake stop laughing: this is serious!" first printed in "Smith's Weekly" in 1933. (I know you know this OperaHouseSydney - this is for those who may not be aware). So popular, it was reprinted as a poster and sold in large numbers. Stan's epitaph on his tombstone (he died in 1977) reads " Stop laughing - this is serious". Stan Cross Great pic. (thumbs u Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OperaHouseSydney-migration Posted December 11, 2014 Share Posted December 11, 2014 Whoa, the original of a seriously iconic cartoon! Is it yours, or did you just get the pic from FB? That's a really nice piece to own if it's yours. Welcome to the boards and the thread in any case. (thumbs u Not mine, but it was found in Sydney a few weeks ago and announced by the Australian Cartoonists Association. Also, there is a Frank Johnson Publications exhibition planned in early 2015 at the State Library NSW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJD Posted January 26, 2015 Author Share Posted January 26, 2015 Hi everyone, happy Australia Day. The Ghost Who Hops (cannot die) welcomes you to some new posts in this thread. I had been hoping that I'd be able to dazzle with some photos from a display of Australian comics at the National Library of Australia. After drumming up press interest I assumed that the library planned something worth seeing. I was wrong. Here it is, in its entirety: Two - count them - actual golden age comics and two enlarged photocopies. At least there's a library blog post which has some more on the subject, and a few internal shots of the comics as well, here. (There are other library blog posts on comics in their collection. Here's one on Australian Doll Man reprints.) Here are a few shots of the display, just for posterity. It's interesting to see that Library of New South Wales is going to feature their Frank Johnson comics in a display. I'd like to think that me requesting them being retrieved from storage for last year's update played a role. In any case, let's hope they do better than the National Library did. 1950's war comics 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJD Posted January 26, 2015 Author Share Posted January 26, 2015 But all is not lost. I've scratched together a few interesting things for this year's update. Let's start with one of Australia's most popular home-grown supheroes. (Most popular at the time - no one has heard of him now.) The best book on Australian comics is John Ryan's Panel by Panel (long out of print but see earlier in the thread for a few pictures). Here's what he says about the Crimson Comet: "While with Edwards [publishing], John Dixon drew over 150 issues of Tim Valour, about 50 issues of the crimson Comet, many issues of Biggles..." It also says "The Crimson Comet, with tight-fitting red costume and real wings, made it's debut five months after Tim Valour and was the first regularly published comic that came close to the traditional US super-hero... With the Korean War and the McCarthy era... both Tim Valour and the Crimson Comet spent a lot of time fighting 'the reds'." Bonzer by Annette Shiel and Mick Stone gives us the origin of the CC: "John Dixon's the Crimson Comet had the wings of a giant eagle grafted onto his back by his father, a surgeon whose mind snapped after his wife was killed by a burglar". ("I shall become a bat. No, wait, I'll make my son into an eagle instead. Yeah, that'll work.") Bonzer has a checklist that says there were two series of Crimson Comet. The first ran #1 - 69 and had cover prices of 6d (sixpence = 5c) and 8d. The second series was numbered 10-42 (possibly higher) and a single issue labelled CI. The cover price of the later series was 9d or 1/- (one shilling = 10c). Here's #1, offered for sale on eBay recently: Collecting Australian comics is a challenging business. As well as poor documentation, they are just really hard to find and many exist in small numbers. The GCD only has partial coverage of the covers of some titles. Here are some other CC issues. Enjoy the production quality: Yorick and 1950's war comics 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJD Posted January 26, 2015 Author Share Posted January 26, 2015 Here are a couple of issues of Captain Atom. #3 has the most bizarre cover I've seen. I have no idea what's going on in this picture (answers on a postcard please): #39 and 40 are at least more comprehensible. They are also in landscape format - not unusual for Australian comics of the day: Here's another landscape book. This is an Australian version of Classics Junior: 1950's war comics 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJD Posted January 26, 2015 Author Share Posted January 26, 2015 Finally for this year, it's about time I mention The Phantom - the single most successful title in Australian comic publishing. Published continuously by Frew from 1948 and still going strong today ( website ). I bought issue #1750, the 2015 bumper sized annual, yesterday. Here are a few early ones, 4, 7 and 10 (again, #4 is portrait, the other two are landscape): OK, that's it for this year's Oz Day special. I'm off to cook that well-known Australian dish Jambalaya. 1950's war comics 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Point Five Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Great stuff! I really like those Crimson Comet covers. Beautiful linework/detailing effects on that first one. 1950's war comics 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BB-Gun Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 But all is not lost. I've scratched together a few interesting things for this year's update. Let's start with one of Australia's most popular home-grown supheroes. (Most popular at the time - no one has heard of him now.) The best book on Australian comics is John Ryan's Panel by Panel (long out of print but see earlier in the thread for a few pictures). Here's what he says about the Crimson Comet: "While with Edwards [publishing], John Dixon drew over 150 issues of Tim Valour, about 50 issues of the crimson Comet, many issues of Biggles..." It also says "The Crimson Comet, with tight-fitting red costume and real wings, made it's debut five months after Tim Valour and was the first regularly published comic that came close to the traditional US super-hero... With the Korean War and the McCarthy era... both Tim Valour and the Crimson Comet spent a lot of time fighting 'the reds'." Bonzer by Annette Shiel and Mick Stone gives us the origin of the CC: "John Dixon's the Crimson Comet had the wings of a giant eagle grafted onto his back by his father, a surgeon whose mind snapped after his wife was killed by a burglar". ("I shall become a bat. No, wait, I'll make my son into an eagle instead. Yeah, that'll work.") Bonzer has a checklist that says there were two series of Crimson Comet. The first ran #1 - 69 and had cover prices of 6d (sixpence = 5c) and 8d. The second series was numbered 10-42 (possibly higher) and a single issue labelled CI. The cover price of the later series was 9d or 1/- (one shilling = 10c). Here's #1, offered for sale on eBay recently: Collecting Australian comics is a challenging business. As well as poor documentation, they are just really hard to find and many exist in small numbers. The GCD only has partial coverage of the covers of some titles. Here is a couple of other CC issues, both from series 1: Now we know what happen to the Red Raven. He migrated south for the winter and never came back. 1950's war comics 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flex Mentallo Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Finally for this year, it's about time I mention The Phantom - the single most successful title in Australian comic publishing. Published continuously by Frew from 1948 and still going strong today ( website ). I bought issue #1750, the 2015 bumper sized annual, yesterday. Here are a few early ones, 4, 7 and 10 (again, #4 is portrait, the other two are landscape): OK, that's it for this year's Oz Day special. I'm off to cook that well-known Australian dish Jambalaya. Am I right in thinking the Phantom has a fanatical following in Australia and these early issues go for big bucks? 1950's war comics 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJD Posted January 26, 2015 Author Share Posted January 26, 2015 (edited) Am I right in thinking the Phantom has a fanatical following in Australia and these early issues go for big bucks? Well, relatively big bucks, for the Australian comic market. The #4 above sold for $2,200 and I've seen similar prices for early copies. #1 is the biggie, though I haven't noticed one selling for a while. It's at least a $10k book though. The only Australian comics that run The Phantom close are early Disney reprints. WDC&S #1 and #3 are both hard to find and expensive (#2 is easier than #3, but again that's relative). Edited May 18, 2015 by AJD 1950's war comics 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scrooge Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Here are a couple of issues of Captain Atom. #3 has the most bizarre cover I've seen. I have no idea what's going on in this picture (answers on a postcard please): Creepy for sure ... but no less than those dwarfs on the Snow White re-imagining below! I sure can't help about the fat baby train thingy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJD Posted May 24, 2015 Author Share Posted May 24, 2015 Some sad news today. One of Australia's best GA and beyond comic artists, John Dixon, passed away recently, as I discovered when I saw the obituary in the Courier Mail yesterday. I couldn't find the obit online, but here's the Comicoz version. You can see some of Dixon's Crimson Comet covers a few posts back. His most enduring work in Australia is probably his 'Air Hawk and the Flying Doctors' strip that ran for many years. You can read a bit about it here. Here's one of the strips: As well as the Crimson Comet, Dixon invented the action here Tim Valour. Here's a couple of those. The #1 (first series): And one from the second series, with a really nicely done artist credit: 1950's war comics and Yorick 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
