The GA in Australia 4 4

[AJD]

6 hours ago, sagii said:

@AJD This one's for you. An Australian Bugs Bunny aviation cover! Making his own plane, Bugs is such a bada**

 

Very nice Corey. Is there a plan for a plane inside the comic? Or a story in which Bugs builds a plane?

[sagii]

1 hour ago, AJD said:

Very nice Corey. Is there a plan for a plane inside the comic? Or a story in which Bugs builds a plane?

 

[Sqeggs]

21 hours ago, Duffman_Comics said:

On 1/18/2018 at 12:51 AM, Davidone said:

Daredevil is only 1' shilling and it was probably printed in 1965. 1950 seems way off for this book. Maybe more like 1966?

The Daredevil reprint was a 32 page offering for 1/-.  Pretty sure the Giant Size Westerns had (at least) twice the page counts

I didn't count them, but it looked like maybe 64 pp.  Seem to be b&w reprints of Atlas `50s western stories, so I imagine it was printed then.

[Davidone]

On 1/18/2018 at 6:48 PM, Duffman_Comics said:

The Daredevil reprint was a 32 page offering for 1/-.  Pretty sure the Giant Size Westerns had (at least) twice the page counts.

Looks like my detective skills were a little off.... ?

[Duffman_Comics]

Well, Australia day is with us, so an Oz offering in this thread seems appropriate.

This isn’t about Australian funnybooks  per se – plenty of space for that later – this is a reminiscence about a Comic Convention in Sydney held on the October long weekend in 1982.

There had been a couple of other attempts at a convention, both in Melbourne (at the Institute of Technology). The second one was in late 1979, over a single weekend and it was thought that Sydney deserved and would support a Convention of its own.

It did. Sort of. Those involved in organising it had no idea what they were doing, and this was reflected in a number of very strange decisions (let’s close the dealer’s room when the “pro-Panels” are convened ) and the running at a loss – not much of a loss, but still .

Speaking of professionals, there were a number of (obviously) Australian guests, all of whom gave their time freely and for no reward, bar basking in the slight glow of fannish appreciation.

Onward. Here’s the cover of the convention handbook. Note the “prominence” of the “III” and the complete lack of any date. This omission, you will be pleased to note, continues throughout the pamphlet.

The cover was intended to portray every Australian “heroic character” known to date. Artist Glenn Ford (and his helpers) had a lot of fun researching the details, including a visit to the State Library of NSW to examine their newspaper archives.

 

[Duffman_Comics]

Internally, a lot of potted biographies and articles. Here’s one with a self-portrait of the late John Dixon (Air Hawke) who was in attendance.

Paul Wheelahan wrote and illustrated a lot of GA/Atomic Age Australian comics – Panther, Raven etc. When the industry here collapsed, he turned his hand to (successfully) writing pulp westerns under a number of noms de plume including “Emerson Dodge” .

Paul also attended and is still with us, but I understand his health is not the best.

[Duffman_Comics]

One of the great memories of this Con was sitting at the Bar after the convention had closed on the Saturday and chatting with John Dixon, Allan Salisbury (Snake), Paul Wheelahan, Monty Wedd (Captain Justice, Ned Kelly), Karl Fourdrinier (artist/writer for a pornographic strip “ Willow” that ran, unsurprisingly, in a low grade porn paper), Paul Power (East meets West), Roger Fletcher (Torkan and Staria).

Interestingly, Monty Wedd was not a guest, not because he wasn’t up to scratch, but rather because no one knew how to get in touch with him .

Monty rang the Hotel during the Convention and asked if he could attend. Of course, so there we are in the bar.

What was interesting about the bar chat was it made me realise how close the older guys were – they did not work in isolation, they all knew each other.

I do not think I have laughed as much as I did over the three days at the "New Crest Hotel" in Kings Cross.

 

Lastly, for now, this is one of the articles in the handbook. Roger Morrison is well known in collecting circles here and has written (and had published) a number of books about comics and especially Australian comics. This article is self explanatory:

[AJD]

Great stuff Peter - thanks for posting that. It must have been quite the event to go to. I have the con book you posted, and that's fun. (The Barks reprints article also cleared up a few mysteries for me about early Australian Disneys.)

I have a few examples of work by the artists you mention in my collection. Here's one of Wheelahan's Panthers:

And an early Raven:

He was pretty prolific. As well as his own titles, he pops up regularly as a cover artist on reprints of American comics. Here's one of many from the  Rangers run:

 

[AJD]

And we've already had John Dixon and the Crimson Comet a few times in this thread, but one more can't hurt. Especially this one, which I was delighted to get recently. It's another of the landscape format books (staples at the top of the FC), which I expected. But this is the earliest CC I have, and I had no idea how big they were. This one is even a little larger in both dimensions than the  'classic GA' size. And it has a nice GGA angle too. It has an October 1950 arrival date stamp.

The villains in the story are 4" tall Neptunians...

[Sqeggs]

23 hours ago, Duffman_Comics said:

One of the great memories of this Con was sitting at the Bar after the convention had closed on the Saturday and chatting with John Dixon, Allan Salisbury (Snake), Paul Wheelahan, Monty Wedd (Captain Justice, Ned Kelly), Karl Fourdrinier (artist/writer for a pornographic strip “ Willow” that ran, unsurprisingly, in a low grade porn paper), Paul Power (East meets West), Roger Fletcher (Torkan and Staria).

Interestingly, Monty Wedd was not a guest, not because he wasn’t up to scratch, but rather because no one knew how to get in touch with him .

Monty rang the Hotel during the Convention and asked if he could attend. Of course, so there we are in the bar.

What was interesting about the bar chat was it made me realise how close the older guys were – they did not work in isolation, they all knew each other.

I do not think I have laughed as much as I did over the three days at the "New Crest Hotel" in Kings Cross.

 

Mostly OT ... but I recently picked up a copy of Cartoon County by John Cullen Murphy's son Cullen Murphy.  Turns out that from the 1940s through the 1970s many U.S. newspaper (and some comic book) artists lived in Westchester County outside of New York City.  Makes sense because it is a short train ride from the offices of the strip syndicates and comic book publishers in Manhattan and because housing prices were much lower.  But I had never realized how many of these guys knew each other, socialized with each other, and even pitch hit on each other's strips when needed because of illnesses or accidents. 

[AJD]

A nice Whitman cover on this Jumbo.

[AJD]

Two more FH reprints to add to the box.

[AJD]

A couple of years ago I checked through the usual sites looking to see if Archie #50 had an Australian reprint. I couldn't see it in either the GCG or Ausreprints* and no one I asked had ever seen one. Until now.

*It's on both sites now, but only because I put it there.

[sagii]

What a find (and acquisition) Andrew! Just Wow! 

Major congrats! 

 

[Sqeggs]

10 hours ago, AJD said:

A couple of years ago I checked through the usual sites looking to see if Archie #50 had an Australian reprint. I couldn't see it in either the GCG or Ausreprints* and no one I asked had ever seen one. Until now.

*It's on both sites now, but only because I put it there.

Super find!  What is published at about the same time as the U.S. Archie 50?  

[AJD]

2 hours ago, Sqeggs said:

Super find!  What is published at about the same time as the U.S. Archie 50?  

Hard to say, but might not be much later. GCD says May/June 51 for Archie #50. The Australian series is undated but thought to have started in 1950. So #14 might be sometime in 1951/2.

[Point Five]

16 hours ago, AJD said:

A couple of years ago I checked through the usual sites looking to see if Archie #50 had an Australian reprint. I couldn't see it in either the GCG or Ausreprints* and no one I asked had ever seen one. Until now.

*It's on both sites now, but only because I put it there.

SO awesome. Big congrats Andrew! Major find.

But shouldn't Betty be offering to refund his 5D? 

 

[Frisco Larson]

A fairly recent pick up.

[AJD]

8 hours ago, Point Five said:

SO awesome. Big congrats Andrew! Major find.

But shouldn't Betty be offering to refund his 5D? 

 

Thank you!

And I had the same thought - but clearly 'Americaness' was a selling point for Archie, judging by the fact that they kept the banners at the top and bottom of the cover as well.

Confusingly, the pence version of a nickle is 6d (sixpence) rather than 5d, as the equivalent to a dime was a shilling (1/-), which was 12 pennies. There was a small silver coin for 6d, but 5d would have been five pennies. The old currency system based on multiples of 12 and 20 ( 20 shillings = 1 pound) was tricky to do change with!

[AJD]

7 hours ago, Frisco Larson said:

A fairly recent pick up.

Nice - and a very presentable copy. Did you get it slabbed yourself?