Adrift In Space - Noel Cook Part One of Three

Noel Cook was born in Foxton, Horowhenua, New Zealand in 1896. Cook's mother was Australian and his father William Thompson Te Rauparaha Cook, a compositor-journalist, in Foxton and later Masterton. Cook's father established  the Taumarunui Press enabling Cook a large supply of drawing paper as a child. After a brief time employed as a clerk Cook lied about his age to get enlisted and fought in the Great War.

 

After the war Cook took on work at The New Zealand Herald and The Auckland Weekly news. During this time he became friends with George Finey and Cecil 'Unk' White with all three going on to become significant artists and cartoonists in Australia.

Initially drawing in an old fashioned style, text separated from image, Cook evolved, producing wildly inventive work with dynamic layouts often populated by bizarre alien creatures. Cook was noteworthy for creating some of the earliest examples of science fiction comics with Peter and all the Roving Folk produced for the Australian Sunday Times in 1924.  Cook was equally at home illustrating funny animal stories and produced many popular series such as Kokey Koala. Cook could work fast and long hours often completing fifty pages a month.

In the 1950 Cook moved to England working in a freelance capacity on Fleet Street before accepting editing positions with the childrens magazines at Fleetway Magazines. In 1959 whilst serving as Editor and Art Editor of The Children's Newspaper a nine week printer's strike gave Cook the opportunity to redesign the front page relocating the logo allowing for a dynamic cover layout. Two years before Cook passed away 1981 a retrospective exhibition was held in Auckland.

Several exhibitions of Cook's work in Australia, England and New Zealand were held during his lifetime including a group exhibition at the Royal Commonwealth Society that was opened by the Queen Mother. Some exhibitions focused on work with Polynesian themes hinting at Cook's Maori lineage through his father.

Adrift In Space scans graciously supplied by Michael Baulderstone of the Adelaide Comic Centre. If you're in Adelaide swing by and pay him a visit he has a fantastic collection of Australian comics. Adrift in Space is undated but presumed to have been published in the mid 1940's

Adrift In Space Copyright 2012 Estate of Noel Cook

Sources: http://noelcook.comics.org.nz/index.html, http://www.lookandlearn.com/childrens-newspaper/index.php, ACE biographical portraits : the artists behind the comic book characters : the Australian comic book exhibition, Melbourne State Library.

New Zealand Woman's Weekly Star Wars Newspaper Strip

The Star Wars New Zealand website has a thorough write up on the Star Wars newspaper strip that ran in the New Zealand Woman's Weekly from 20 Aug 1979 to 04 Jun 1984. With striking pink borders and hole punch guides the Star Wars comic page was one of two pages of the magazine devoted to children. Initially written by Don Christensen with conributions by Steve Gerber and Russ Helms the strip was illustrated by Russ Manning up until his death in 1981. This was followed by a several month run by Alfred Alcala, Russ Helm and Archie Goodwin which segued into Williamson reuniting with his  X-9 Secret Agent Corrigan colleague Al Williamson for the concluding years of the strip.

More scans and article here

Star Wars by Russ Manning and Don Christensen

Star Wars By Russ Manning and Russ Helm

Alfredo Alcala and Archie Goodwin's adaption of Brian Daley's novel Han Solo at Star's End

Star Wars by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson

 

Star Wars Copyright 2012 Lucasfilms

Maurice Bramley Marvel Reprints Cover Gallery

As well as illustrating many comics, books, and magazines New Zealand born cartoonist Maurice Bramley created covers for many of Australian publisher Horwitz Publishing House's line of Marvel Comics reprints. Dan Best has a good write up here about Bramley's work for Horwitz including side by side comparisons of where swipes were used in some of his compositions.

Ross Gore (1904-1981) - Baby Face Artist?

It Happened in New Zealand was a newspaper feature produced by artist, writer, and historian Ross Gore in the 1950's. Combining illustration, text and word balloons Gore detailed historical events and mysteries from pre-european times through the European colonisation of New Zealand. Many of Gore's strips focused on clashes during the Maori Wars as well as myth and folklore. Some stories were adapted from accounts related to Gore such as the tale of sailor Albert Roberts who was pronounced dead during the seven months he spent missing presumed drowned whilst shipwrecked on a rock several miles from Auckland in 1907.

 

Gore's father Henry Morland Gore (1864-1930) painted landscapes and served eight years as President of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts. Gore's brother Eru Digby Gore (1906-1947) was a land agent and Secretary-Manager of the National Art Gallery in Wellington. Gore's daughter Jenny Gibbs recalls Gore carrying a sketchbook all his life, drawing and painting wherever they went – family holidays in their old army tent and family picnics up rivers.

 

Unexplained mysteries were a feature of Gore's work with tales of mysterious artifacts, premonitions, and hidden treasures.

 
It Happened in New Zealand was featured in many papers all over New Zealand. The Evening Post, The Auckland Star, The Christchurch Star-Sun, The Taranaki Herald, The Southern Cross, The Greymouth Evening Star, The Southland Daily news and The Students Digest all carried it at a time. The Students Digest published a collection of 48 strips in 1953. Atypical of other newspaper features of the time Gore attributed copyright to himself or the person who's story he was adapting in the bottom right corner of each strip.

A second collection of 30 strips, Thrilling Tales of Rotorua was published in 1958 by Wellington publisher A.H. & A. W. Reed.

As well as the 78 strips featured in the two collections at least another 130 were completed. 208 original pages of Ross Gore's cartoons were donated by Gore's daughter Jenny Gibbs to the cartoon archive at the Alexander Turnbull Library in 1995. Gore worked at just over double up size with his six panel strips being reproduced at 14.5cm by 21cm in contrast to his originals that typically had a working area of 31cm by 53 cm.

Stop Press was a 32 page digest of stories and cartoons produced during the 1940's by Wellington publisher, Mcdonald Publications. Typical of the era there are no authors or artist's credited short of the occasional artist's signature. Patsy Kane was a one page comic serial in the vein of Norman Pett's Jane launched in England twelve years prior. Like Jane Patsy Kane becomes involved in intrigue whilst spending a portion of each episode scantily clad or nude.

Patsy Kane has no artist credit but I theorise it may be the work of Ross Gore. In the August 12 1944 episode above Patsy meets a man by the name of 'Ross Gawe'. This could have been a subtle way of Gore 'signing' his work.

The episode below features a 'D' in the bottom last panel which again could be Gore's masked way of signing his work by using the initial of his middle name.

The illustration below from the same issue of Stop Press is signed the same and is very similar stylistically with the work of Gore's It Happened in New Zealand strips.

 

In the episode below Ross Gawe is revealed to be a villain. Another possible theory is this comic is the work of an acquaintance of Gore who has named his villain after Gore as a prank. it's not unknown for cartoonists to slip their colleagues into their work.

Ross Gore's daughter Jenny Gibbs suggests that at the time Patsy Kane was produced her father was stationed with other artists in the camouflage unit of the Trentham Military Camp. He may have been disinclined to sign his work if he was moonlighting from the army and perhaps by it's salacious nature. She also commented, 'The name is surely not a co-incidence & stylistically it looks very like his work.  None of the language or phrasing seems unlike him.'

The Stop Press digests feature adverts for Auckland publisher Jaycol Comics including Victory Feature Comic that is clearly the work of the same artist as Patsy Kane, referred to by New Zealand comic enthusiast's Tim Bollinger and Geoff Harrison as 'The Baby Face Artist' on account of all his characters having similar features.

The same artist illustrated the lead story in Meteor Comics, a fourteen page Flash Gordon-esque Sci-fi adventure. None of these comics feature artist credits or dates but it is probable they were published in the mid 1940's with Victory Feature Comic likely appearing around the time it was advertised in Stop Press late 1944.
 

 
It is possible Ross Gore is one of the pioneering figures in New Zealand comics. There is no conclusive evidence but hopefully more information will surface.

Sources: http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-GovArt-t1-body-d2-d75.html , http://www.familytreecircles.com/jack-bristed-24432.html , http://www.listener.co.nz/uncategorized/dear-dad/ , Meteor Comics material supplied by Geoff Harrison, Victory Comics Cover supplied by Tim Bollinger, Stop Press Digests supplied by Anne Emery, Thanks to Geoff Harrison, Jenny Gibbs and Tim Bollinger for additional information. All It Happened in New Zealand images copyright estate of Ross Gore.

New Zealanders As We See 'em 1934-35

New Zealanders As We See 'em in Cartoons and Caricatures is a handsome volume of black and white work published by the New Zealand Cartoonists' Association in 1935. The preface notes that this book could be considered 'The Cartoonists' Who's Who of New Zealanders' and features 438 portraits combining photos with pen and ink work. Doctor's, lawyers, politicians and businessmen are featured throughout the book with text describing occupations and recreational activities. Due to a hearty response from subjects invited to be a part of this project a second volume was published in 1938 in a limited edition of 450 copies. Typical of the era, all subjects featured are male and appear to be European.

Cartoonists featured in this volume:

William Blomfield

Pike

Fred R. Alexander

Gordon Minhinnick

Roy Evans

Trevor Lloyd

E R Leemings

William Sykes Baverstock