After immigrating to Australia from New Zealand in the 1920's, Noel Cook was a prolific contributor to magazines, newspapers, and comics. Cook worked in a variety of styles, gag cartooning, adventure/humour comics, commercial artwork and painted illustration. The following illustrations accompanied short stories and serials in the Australian Woman's Weekly during the 1930's.
Read Noel Cook'sAdrift in Spacehere. Read Noel Cook's Deeds That Thrilled Australia!here.
Stand Easy after the Defeat of Japan,1945 was part of a series of books published for the Australian Military Forces by the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.Material was solicited from the Australianmilitary forces in early 1945 and the book was ready for print at the beginning of August. At that time the book was titledUp North in reference to the Australian Army fighting along an island front from Bougainville to Borneo. With the sudden ending of the war editors chose to defer production so depictions of the great conflict could be included. The title was changed to reference the ending of the war.Prose accounts of the war, cartoons, photos, verse, illustrations and maps were including in this volume.
Companion books in this series were produced annually from 1942.
1942 - Soldiering On 1943 - Khaki and Green 1944 - Jungle Warfare 1945 - Stand Easy
Similar volumes were produced annually for the Royal Australian Navy, Royal Australian Air Force, Volunteer Defence Corps, First A.I.F and Second A.I.F. Credits to artwork and written material were designated to a member's army number and the editors chose to remain anonymous. With the conclusion of the war and this being the last volume in production it was decided to include an appendix of contributors and their corresponding army numbers. Many contributing soldiers returned to careers as writers and artists after the war, among their number William Ellis Green (WEG), who would go on to become one of Australia's most iconic cartoonists.
Nick Gazin reviews Karl Wills'Princess Seppuku in the Lower Depths for VICE. Wills' Jessica of the Schoolyard features in the forthcoming Michael Dowers curated, Treasury of Minicomics volume one, from Fantagraphics.
Tasmanian cartoonists Josh Santospirito and Chris Downes performed their live comic ghost story, The Shipwright & the Banshees to a sold out audience as part of MONA FONA 2013 in Hobart last night. Chris Downes' stunning poster is available here.
Roger Langridge contribution to SATAN IS ALIVE anthology
The recently launched New Zealand comics anthology Faction Comics is now available in free digital form.
Fil Barlow is offering 5 day design tutorial sessions here. Series writer Brandon Graham shared Barlow's upcoming cover for Prophet #37. You may see it or you may not, Barlow shares via facebook an interview he did with Brandon Graham from Prophet #28.
Hanselmannshared pages from his forthcoming “Australian” comics/art anthology Victoria Drugs Scene at Girl Mountain.
Our handsome Paper Trail masthead is courtesy of Toby Morris, here's his rendition of Joseph Dredd having a cuppa.
In the neverending quest of cartooning archeologyI picked up a pile of old Auckland newspapers, The Weekly News, which my brother has been scanning and making notes on for me. Here's a couple samples,
The Ornate masthead of The Weekly News
Sir Gordon Minhinnick cartoon from Feb 9th, 1944.
Upcoming on Pikitia Press from the work in progress folder:
Feature on Maori cartoonist Harry Dansey.
Wartime cartooning by Australian soldiers in Stand Easy after the defeat of Japan.
The Lion Summer Spectacular Epic Holiday Special featured comic and prose adaptions of films from the late sixties. Batman, James Bond: You Only Live Twice, Thunderbirds, and more were featured along with an Oliver Passingham (1925-2003) adaption of the Arthur Hiller film, TOBRUK. Passingham's career started on newspaper strips such as Lesley Shane, Rick Martin, Jane Fortune and Sally Marsh during the fifties. Reprints of his Lesley Shane newspaper strips by Amalgamated Press led to work on Rick Random, School Friend and other Amalgamated titles. In the sixties Passingham commenced work with DC Thomson where he would freelance for a further 33 years. During the seventies Passingham traveled, living in the Canaries, on the French Riviera, Monte Carlo and a year in Sydney, Australia during 1980, eventually returning to London in 1990. During this time he continued producing work for DC Thomson until his retirement in 1993.
Click for larger view
The original board of the first page of Passingham's TOBRUK adaption is comprised of a photostat reproduction of the Tobruk movie poster as a header, a moody night scene depicted in inky washes, and two panels showing frogmen sabotaging a french freighter, depicted with ink line drawings and white paint highlights. Upon examining the art-board I found Passingham had originally depicted the entire scene in washes as shown below with the bottom two panels still visible under the pasted on replacement.
Click for larger view
My presumption for the redrawn panels is that Passingham may have been compelled by editorial to redraw the characters to resemble their movie counterparts. He certainly nails the likeness of star George Peppard in the bottom panel close up. In those days of no video or internet reference Passingham did a fine job of capturing the scale of the movie and compressing it into the limits of a comic anthology.
Click for larger view
Click for larger view
Trailer for TOBRUK starring Rock Hudson, George Peppard and Nigel Green.
