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Comics in Australia

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Australian comics
Earliest publications1921
LanguagesEnglish
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Australian comics have been published since 1921 and Australian comics creators have gone to produce influential work in the global comics industry (especially in American comics),

History

At first Australian comics copied British comic papers until its first comic book The Kookaburra appeared in 1931.

Several early uniquely Australian comics had wide circulation and enjoyed long runs. Probably the most famous is the comic strip Ginger Meggs, created in 1921 by Jimmy Bancks which still runs in syndication to this day (with new artists, of course). Bancks published the first of the Ginger Meggs Annuals in 1924, and they were to continue for the next 35 years. For a more recent example, Dillon Naylor's Da 'n Dill has been running in one form or another since 1993.

Because of its contribution to winning the Second World War, Australia incurred a huge national debt: local publishers found they had a captive market as import restrictions were enforced, at the same time the modern American style comic book (mostly sans color) was adopted. In its Golden Age Australian talent produced exciting creations such as Captain Atom, The Panther, The Scorpion, The Raven, The Mask and many others. Later, in the Seventies, Vixen became Australia's first comic book super heroine. However, the longest best-selling and longest running comic book in Australia is a local fortnightly publication of The Phantom by Frew Publications. First published in 1948 more than 1500 issues have been released in the series. Although mostly reprints, the comic does occasionally include original work by local creators.

Since the 1940s, and particularly in the 1970s, many local reprints and translations of English, European and both North and South American comics were published in Australia. Since the 1980s there have been fewer local reprints and more direct importing of foreign comics.

Alongside the reprints and imports there has been a long tradition of Australian made comics, though many of these were clones of, or occasionally parodies of, foreign, mostly US, comic books. After the arrival of television in 1956 the market began to dry up causing many publishers to fold, by the early Sixties the comic industry faded. Gerald Carr revived the Australian adventure style comic book in 1974 with the best selling Vampire! during the horror comic boom, followed by Brainmaster and Vixen (1977) and Fire Fang (1982).

In the mid 1980s many anthology comics titles appeared, forming the basis for the modern Australian self-publishing community. Three notable ones were Fox Comics, which began in Melbourne in 1985 and lasted for 5 years and 26 issues. Phantastique from Sydney in 1986 lasted only 4 issues, as it was in the style of Underground comix but with mainstream distribution - it generated national publicity from opponents Fred Nile and John Laws. Cyclone! also from Sydney in 1985 was a more traditional superhero comic with an Australian flavour, it ran for 8 issues as an anthology and then another 8 as Southern Squadron focusing on its most popular feature (plus other spin offs and a 1990s revival - over 30 related comics were published in the series).

Other long running popular Australian comic books include Hairbutt the Hippo (1989), Platinum Grit (1993) and Dee Vee (1997), which are still being published by their creators today.

Since 2000, a significant market for Australian comic creators has been commercial Australian children's magazines. Dillon Naylor led the way with "Da 'N' Dill" and the popular Batrisha the Vampire Girl in K Zone. Other artists with regular work in these markets include Patrick Alexander, Jase Harper, Rich Warwick, Dean Rankine, Damien Woods and Ian C. Thomas.

In 2007 Julie Ditrich and Jozef Szekeres launched the Comics and Graphic Novel Portfolio for and with the Australian Society of Authors, which focuses on interests and needs for the comic and graphic novelist, both writers and artists, covering topics such as standardized contracts approved by the ASA for both creator owned comics/GNs and work-for-hire.

Australian artists/writers also regularly produce work for overseas comics companies. These include Michal Dutkiewicz, Nicola Scott, Ben Templesmith, Jozef Szekeres, Julie Ditrich(writer), and Doug Holgate.

Australian comic book publishers

Since the late seventies, the comic scene in Australia has been largely driven by self publishers who created, printed and distributed their own books, with a few publishers who were willing to publish the work of others gradually emerging. Of these, some companies, such as Phosphorescent and Gestalt, have manage to become professional publishers of Australian comics and graphic novels.

From 2002 increasingly mainstream publishers have begun to publish graphic novels by Australian comic creators, beginning with The Five Mile Press (Dillon Naylor) and Slave Labor Graphics (J. Marc Schmidt) and, more recently, Allen & Unwin (Nicki Greenberg, Mandy Ord, Bruce Mutard), Scholastic (Shaun Tan), TokyoPop (Queenie Chan, Madeleine Rosca), Seven Seas Entertainment (Sarah Ellerton) and Finlay Lloyd (Mandy Ord).

Australian editorial cartoonists

Australian professional cartoonists work for commercially published newspapers and journals, and many also work in Australian comics (also children's illustration and animation), with many of these artists having work collected as published books.

Awards

  • The OzCon Awards were also an important recognition of Australian comic creators from their inception in 1991, until the OzCons ceased.
  • The Kanga Awards were a much sought after recognition of Home-grown Australia Self-Publishing in the mid to late nineties.

Conventions

  • The first true Australian Comic Convention was Comicon I (1979) held at RMIT in Melbourne. Comicon II (1980) followed at the Sheraton Hotel in Melbourne and Comicon III (1981) was held in Sydney.
  • The much larger Australian Comic-Book Convention, was held on 16–18 January 1986, at the Sydney Opera House, featuring international guests for the first time including Will Eisner and Jim Steranko. It was the forerunner of the many later OzCon conventions held from 1992 to 1998 in Sydney, with an additional event in Melbourne in 1997, and the comicfest! events, again in Sydney from 2000 to 2002, before the concept was expanded into...
  • Supanova, Australia's largest con. Held in Sydney and Brisbane each year since 2002 and 2003 respectively. It has since grown to incorporate Perth and Melbourne since 2008. It features a mix, in addition to Comic-Books, of current TV Pop Cultures, from Science Fiction & Fantasy to Anime & Manga. It features special guest comic-book writers and artists and actors from currently in vogue series, movies and anime as well as special effects workers.

Creators

Australian comic book, strip and cartoon artists and writers:

Collections

National Library of Australia

State Library of New South Wales

State Library of Victoria

  • Kevin Patrick Collection of Australian Comics, 1970-2005 (~170 titles)

Notes

  1. ^ Nelligan, Katelin (November 2, 2010). "Salisbury man's comic no joke". Leader Messenger. Retrieved November 2, 2010.
  2. ^ Lambiek comic shop and studio in Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2007-04-27). "Comic creator: Paul Wheelahan". Lambiek.net. Retrieved 2010-08-24.

References

  • Burrows, Toby and Stone, Grant (eds.). "Comics in Australia and New Zealand: the collections, the collectors, the creators". New York; Norwood [S. Aust.]: Haworth Press, c1994. ISBN 1-56024-664-2
  • Patrick, Kevin. Heroes & villains: Australian comics and their creators. Melbourne: State Library of Victoria, 2006. ISBN 0-9775064-4-4
  • Ryan, John. Panel by panel: a history of Australian comics. Stanmore, N.S.W.: Cassell Australia, 1979. ISBN 0-7269-7376-9
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