John Kent 1937 - 2003

Today marks the anniversary of the birth of cartoonist John Kent in Oamaru, New Zealand in 1937. Kent spent his early life in Blenheim, later working in advertising in Auckland. Kent immigrated to England in 1959 and worked in advertising as an artist and copywriter. Kent made the switch from advertising to political cartooning in 1969 with his first published work a small strip, Grocer Heath, featured in Private Eye. This was the start of a thirty-five year relationship with Private Eye, a regular venue for Kent's work until his passing in April 2003.

John's wife Nina recalled Kent's career change:

"He came home from work one day and he said, "I'm going to be a political cartoonist." He was like that, he was very kind of quietly authoritative. He said it and I had enormous faith in him, I said "Yeah fine, okay." I didn't know he was all that interested in politics, though we did discuss it from time to time. I knew he was obviously some kind of artist as he'd been an art director. He was in advertising, that's what he was doing in Auckland before he left. He came to England and he did very well in the business actually. He thought it was stupid. He suddenly woke up one day and thought, what is this, a lot of grown-up men sitting around a table talking about a chocolate bar or something like that, and it didn't make a lot of sense to him. He was more interested in politics.He left one job and went to another job and they obviously didn't have a lot for him to do there or whatever it was, it was so boring. I didn't know he'd been doing it for a year, he'd been fiddling with this idea of Varoomshka. He decided to do it, He just went for it. When he had finished the idea he took it to the Guardian and they just overnight said, "Wow! That's fantastic and yes we'll have it."

John Kent cover for The Private Eye Story.

The several A3 samples of Varoomshka Kent sent to the Guardian impressed features editor Peter Preston and Varoomska appeared weekly for the next decade. Varoomshka was originally based on Kent's wife, Nina, and inspired by fashion model Verushka - Countess Vera Gottlieb von Lehndorff.

Michael McNay, a Guardian sub-editor at the time Kent's Varoomshka submission was received wrote,

"It was every features editor's dream: an innovatory political satire sprung, perfectly formed, from the felt tip of its creator. A hard core of the staff regarded themselves as the repository of Guardian values, and delivered a petition demanding the withdrawal of Kent's subversive work. But the editor, Alastair Hetherington, had the great virtue of always trusting his executives, and he saw off the opposition."

Varoomshka collection published in 1972.

Varoomshka, a naive blonde bombshell, was a device Kent used to frame his political examinations with searing insight. McNay recalls Kent's collaboration with deputy features editor, David Mckie:

"McKie's intellectual grasp of politics made him the perfect contact and adviser for Kent, but he increasingly found that as he explained the complexities of a situation, Kent cut through the persiflage to the basics."

After the Guardian dropped Varooshka in 1979 she reappeared in the NUJ paper, the Journalist, but was dropped after allegations of sexism. In 1982 Kent created another incarnation that appeared in the Sunday Times, with a strip entitled Zelda.

 
Kent also contributed cartoons to the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Sunday Times, and the Evening Standard. In 1998 when he joined The Times, his strip La Bimba was another "incarnation" of Varoomshka. In the late eighties Kent produced two lavishly illustrated guide books of the cities of Vienna, and Florence and Siena.

2011 saw the publication of The Someday Funnies from Abrams, A large 215 page hardcover originally commissioned in 1970 as a 20 page supplement for Rolling Stone magazine featuring artist and writers commentaries on the '60's in comic form. Editor Michel Choquette commissioned work from around the world but seven years later found himself $300,000 in debt and with no publishing partner. With dismal prospects for publication, Choquette placed the project in storage. A Comics Journal article on the project in 2009 lead to publisher interest with Abrams finally bringing the book to fruition.

John Kent was among the 169 artists and writers featured which also included Frank Zappa, Jack Kirby, Frederico Fellini, Jean Giraud, Tom Wolfe, William Burroughs, Art Spiegelman, Ralph Steadman, Will Eisner, René Goscinny, Wallace Wood, Justin Green, Don Martin, Sergio Aragones, Harvey Kurtzman and Gahan Wilson.

I'll be posting an interview with John Kent's wife Nina Kent in coming months.

All images © 2013 Nina Kent

Sources: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/apr/19/pressandpublishing.guardianobituaries , http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/artists/johnkent/biography

The Black and White Maestros by Les Tanner (Part One)

Les Tanner

[Editor's note: the following survey of Australian cartoonists was written by cartoonist and cartooning historian Les Tanner for the centenary issue of Sydney publication, The Bulletin, published January 29th, 1980. Les Tanner's Family maintain a facebook page for him here.]


The Black and White Maestros by Les Tanner

"THE sketches in the American comic papers made us yearn." This is not some clubman, pre-Australian Play-boy, talking but W. H. Traill, editor and manager of The Bulletin in the early 1880s, reminiscing about the pioneering days of the paper.

Traill in 1883 was about to embark on two trips overseas which were to change the future of black-and-white drawing in Australia. He was going recruiting.

J. F. Archibald has most of the glory from The Bulletin but it was Traill who did the leg work. He brought "one of the many clever comic draughtsmen whose work embellished various Yankee papers which we received regularly . . . Further," he wrote, "we had taken notice that the illustrations  were effected by some photographic process unknown in Australia." The first was Livingston Hopkins (Hop); the second, photo-engraving. Photo-engraving was to illustration what television is to Willesee, Frost and Parkinson — without it they would have been as interesting and exciting as any bunch of nice lads.

Until photo-engraving, drawing for reproduction was a dodgy business, relying on the skill and sobriety of the engraver as he painstakingly pared away with his engraving tools at the wood block, scooping out the white areas and leaving the black areas standing to receive the ink. Admirers of Tenniel's style in illustrating Alice would do better to pay homage to his engraver. Now Hop, Phil May (Traill's second recruit), Norman Lindsay and the others no longer needed to limp in this fashion; Traill gave them dancing shoes. Now they could draw with pen or brush and have their lines photographically enlarged or reduced on to a sensitised zinc plate and the whites eaten away by acid.

William Macleod, The Bulletin's first cartoonist, had tried drawing on metal with acid-resisting ink, and then etching. Traill stunk his house out with collodion experimenting. However, Hop insisted that he import two American engravers.

 

 Livingston Hopkins (Hop)

Livingston Hopkins was a tall, thin, austere veteran of the American Civil War whose work caught Traill's eye on the train journey from San Francisco to New York. His humor was the dry, laconic, no-bull type we have come to call Australian. He thought up his own ideas, clipping cuttings from newspapers which he carried around "in case of an idea."

 The Little Boy at Manly as captured by his creator, Livingston Hopkins.

Hop was remarkable in that he had no set manner of drawing — style as it is sometimes called. He moved easily from pen to crayon to brush, in line or half-tone, so that for the two periods when he was the whole art staff, The Bulletin had the appearance of having a variety of artists working for it. Hop was a truly inventive man with a keen sense of the ridiculous. In an age where most cartoonists were searching for a national symbol and were dredging up some of the most unlikely antipodean Britannia-substitutes (Minerva, goddess of handicrafts, professions, art, war and wisdom, was one), Hop spotted in the subscription list to aid the Sudan contingent the words, "A Little Boy at Manly, £25." He was off with the longest-playing supporting character in the business.

Norman Lindsay depicts The Little Boy from Manly in a cartoon during the conscription furore.

Hop drew him, Low drew him (sometimes as the Meggitt's linseed oil boy), Minns drew him and Lindsay drew him. Sometimes a bit stunned, sometimes shedding a tear (for poor, dead Henry Parkes), cheeky, angry or defiant, the Little Boy at Manly was both original and right as a symbol. As for what Hop did to Premier George Reid, Malcolm Fraser should take comfort at his demise. Although dignified, if not freezing, in manner, Hop was a practical joker, given to seating people on strategic benches in his garden, whereupon they would get water squirted in their ears. He nevertheless believed in creating for the readers an acceptable public image of lunatic bohemianism (every-one knows that artists are mad) and his self-portraits convey this convincingly. Maybe the self-portraits were right. When was the last time you had water squirted in your ear by a six-foot patrician?

David Low renders the Little Boy at Manly as the Meggitt's linseed oil boy.

Livingston Hopkin's portrait from Harrower collection, Les Tanner portrait from Cartoons of Australian History by Peter Coleman and Les Tanner. The Black and White Maestros © the estate of Les Tanner.

H.B.K. Hislop - Laughs Cover Gallery

Gallery of Laughs covers from the late 1940's and 1950's by New Zealand Publisher H. B. K. Hislop.
Background notes of H.B.K. Hislop here. 
Earlier Laughs cover gallery here, here ,here, and here.

English Comics Diversion: Wonder The Comic Full of Laughter November 23 1946

ComicsOz - Nat Karmichael Interview

 

To my knowledge Nat Karmichael was the first person to republish classic Australian comic strips through his Comicoz imprint with six issues of John Dixon's Air Hawk produced during 1988-1990. Nat has been actively writing about Australian comics on his Comicsoz blog since 2009. 2011 saw the publication of an Air Hawk book collecting five Air Hawk adventures and an assortment of biographical features on Air Hawk creator John Dixon. Nat has recently launched a pozible campaign to raise funds for three new books through Comicoz, a long in development collection of Monty Wedd's Ned Kelly strips, a collection of Sydney cartoonist Rob Feldman's cartoons and a second volume of Air Hawk and the Flying Doctor. More details on the pozible campaign here.

I asked Nat a few questions about Australian comics and his recent projects.

When did you first encounter John Dixon's Air Hawk?

I always knew of AIR HAWK in the Brisbane COURIER MAIL and SUNDAY MAIL, but as a kid I did not read it - I was too into the cartoon comics rather than the adventure strips. We did not get the COURIER MAIL every day, either. (My parents purchased the afternoon Brisbane TELEGRAPH more regularly).   

However, in 1974, I wrote to Australian Comic Historian John Ryan. In reply, he sent me a lovely letter (which I still have) and many of his writings when he was a member of a mailing group (I can't recall the name of it as I sit at work, but I have it at home....somewhere). One of the articles was on the history of John Dixon, which I read and became more familiar with his works. It wasn't until I left home and began reading the COURIER MAIL in the boarding house I was living in 1975 that I began to read it more regularly... And I have been hooked ever since!

What are some of the changes you've seen in publishing since your initial series of Air Hawk magazines? in terms of production and audience?

The biggest change has been in the ease of which to publish books and magazines these days. The computer has transformed information and the ability to produce magazines and books like never before. The last Air Hawk book, John Dixon, Air Hawk and the Flying Doctor from 2011, was all done on the computer. My First Issue of John Dixon's Air Hawk Magazine from 1988 was a matter of writing to John and his agent by mail, that is the post...and having to wait for responses, then the cut and paste affair of producing the magazine, physically taking it to the printers, mailing it out, and the like.  

These days there is less likely to be waste, with Print on Demand printers everywhere: if five people want to buy the latest issue, you print five copies only. No sense in having 650 copies lying in the Garage (which, sadly, is where a lot of my first print run still is). This second volume of Air Hawk will be print on demand. I am hoping it is of better print quality too - Volume One was not the sharp blacks that I was expecting, and this was disappointing. But with every print job, you learn how to make the following issue a better product.

 

The comic audience in terms of numbers may be lesser these days. There is much more competition with other forms of entertainment. But there is still, I believe, a need for comics and comic strips as an entertainment medium. Look at all the recent movies lately - comic related, a great deal of them. There is still nothing like a great story complimenting great art and vice versa, and so good stories will always be welcome by a core of fans who love the medium. The audience is probably easier to contact and maybe a bit fussier than those in generations past - they expect a certain high standard and should not be disappointed, as dollars are tight in this day and age - this is certainly not a bad thing.  

I wish there was a means of having at least one financially viable national Australian comic that appears regularly on the local news stands. I discount The Phantom, as it is a licensed US product. I believe that such a comic would generate a means of galvanising the local fan base, and improving the quality of our local output. It would also ensure Australian stories are being told for and to an Australian audience. The local comics shops presently carry out a part of this function (of uniting Fans) in their local communities, but more could be done to give a greater sense of national community to Australian comic fans. 

I think the [newsstand distributed magazine] Inkspot from Minotaur Books managed to start this to a degree in the early 1980s, and the resultant fanzines, The Fox by David Vodicka and The Australian Comics Collective by Cefn Ridout, went some way towards addressing that goal in that decade [the 80s]. Cyclone Comics gave us a taste of what can be achieved in the late 1980s, and I suggest this has lead - ever so slowly - to a greater love of comics with the fans of this day and age.
 

I have a few ideas about carrying this off, but maybe I am an old man living old dreams, and really comics are from a bygone era that has passed. I supposed I do not believe this and I live in hope that I - in a small way - can contribute by highlighting some of the comics and comic strips from the Past. And the present.  I am amazed at the talent available here in Australia; a reason why I want to publish Rob Feldman's work - that guy is so talented, and he needs a medium to see his work in print.

 

Apart from the Australian comics you're working on can you talk about some other 'lost Australian classics' that deserve republishing?

There are so many Aussie works that I feel deserve to be republished so that the readers of today can appreciate the quality in some of the older comics and comic strips. I will not make a definitive list here, but here are some that I have a passion for....  (Some I have actively sought out the rights to, some I have not, some I want to...Seriously, I know I am going to run out of money to acquire all the rights to all the material I would like to publish! (I never publish anything without offering some monetary award to the Copyright holder.)

Syd Miller's (comic book and comic strip) work is cruelly under-rated.  He has (last I looked in 1990) only one piece of work in the NSW Art Gallery collection.  Others: Phil Belbin's MAN Magazine work, the comic strip by Allan Marshall and Doug Tainsh, Pat O'Sullivan's FELIX the Cat (this is a long story, deserving of another long email or discussion another day, Matt), Bluey and Curly, Michal Dutkiewicz's work (uncompleted so far) for Ian Gould's EUREKA! comic;  George Needham's The Bo'sun and Choclit, All of Emile Mercier  comics, and Roger Fletcher's TORKAN and STARIA (I am going to 'work on him' about this next November!)....Hal English, Eric Jolliffe...I wish I were younger and had more time to publish more comics.... 

Please consider supporting the Comicoz Pozible campaign here.

Brent Willis - BD Zine

French publication BD Zine is published tri-monthly in full colour, each issue focusing on a comic maker from around the world. Comics featured are in french and english and freely distributed to various comic shops and libraries in France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. BD Zine is published by I.M.A., a French non-profit association. Their 38th issue features Wellington cartoonist Brent Willis. The 32 page zine features 20 pages of Brent's comics, an interview (translated in French) and some ads for other comics.
 
Along with other featured BD artists, Brent also recently designed a label for Koala Beer home beer. He described his contribution, " Mine is the one which looks like its been drawn and coloured in by a 12 year kid with cheap felt-tip pens and coloured pencils."

I asked Brent a few questions about what he's been up to lately,

Seeing as you have close to zero web presence, How did BD Zine become aware of you?

I asked the BD Zine people this and they say they found me by chance on the internet. Because of my "close to zero web presence" this is indeed surprising but in situations like this I don't delve too deeply.  Its just a happy little miracle of sorts.

How can people get a hold of your ongoing zine Wark or the recent Bristle Annual?

People can get hold Bristle (which is now the Bristle Annual) or Whark (which is now spelt with an 'h' as I have recently discovered there was a British sci-fi zine with the same name in the 70s) by emailing me at celfbw@xtra.co.nz 

The Bristle Annual is $10NZ and Whark is $3NZ, plus postage. If buying from outside NZ, I can accept a few other currencies so email me and we can work something out. Otherwise if you're lucky you might find them at a zinefest or comic convention near you.

Read any good comics lately?

The new Funtime comics collection is very good and I bought Lucky Luke and the Daltons for half price recently. And of course the comics that people send in to Bristle.

What are you working at the moment?

I have just finished editing and printing the Bristle Annual, which is like the Bristle Quarterly but bigger and less frequent. I'm currently working on a the latest edition of Whark and planning for a few comics beyond that. I'm also on the Wellington Zinefest Committee so we're working on organising a really good zinefest later this year.

English Comics Diversion: Wonder Jan 5 1946

Happy 32nd Birthday, James Andre

Pic by Bobby N.