Paper Trail

Boy's Own adventure by Tony Thorne in Demons.

WIP: Jase Harper's Awk Wood.

Preview of Roger Langridge's L'il Ernie.

Preview for new comic from Katie Parrish.

A lengthy post on T.C. Denne’s soft drink and ice cream business by Darian Zam.

Recreation of a mid-1960s hand screen-printed poster for the Peter Pan Dazzle, by Bob Godfrey.

Philip Bentley has released a his comics memoirs A Life in Comics available from Second Shore.  Phil has been involved for much of the past 50 years with the Australian comics scene through fandom, retailing, writing and publishing. More info on A Life in Comics – a personal history of comics in Australia 1960-1990 here.

  
Phil also recently announced the end of his Australian comics publication Word Balloons.

"With the release of A Life in Comics it seems an appropriate time to draw a line under the publication of Word Balloons. It was not my intention from the outset to conclude its run here, but anyone who has been following the magazine’s trajectory will have seen that its frequency has slowed over the years. This is just the natural consequence of producing an work as labour of love. Eventually enthusiasm will run out. I had thought that perhaps at the end of producing the book I would feel energised and be enthusiastic about getting back into WB, but the opposite has been true, so I very much feel it is time to move on"

Back issues of Word Balloons can be purchased from Second Shore.

Emmet O'Cuana reviews Home Brew Vampire Bullets #0.

Eleri Mai Harris made a beautiful comic for the 2013 Caravan of Comics TCAF excursion.

Gallery of New Zealand reprint comics at The Library of American Comics Blog.

The Dominion Post profiles Murray Webb.

Simon Hanselmann's 2013 CAB report.

Daniel Best announces a Keith Chatto ebook biography.

Neale Blanden diagrams the Melbourne Comics Community.

Jem Yoshioka writes about the recent Women's Cartoon colloquium in Wellington.

Sarah Laing's commentary on the Women's Cartoon colloquium.

  
David Mahler writes about Marc Pearson.

Have you ordered your SAVAGE BITCH?

 Stephen A. Russell profiles Art Spiegelman for The Age prior to his recent Australian visit.

Paper Trail masthead courtesy of Toby Morris.

Armageddon Melbourne 2013

Some of comic folk at Armageddon Melbourne 2013.

All Star Comics

Colin Wilson and Tom Taylor

Colin Wilson sketches Star Wars

Fil Barlow and Helen Maier

Richard Fairgray

Craig Bruyn

Dean Rankine

Matt Kyme, Matthew Nicholls and Ross Stewart

Brent Anderson

Sorab Del Rio

Steve Sparke

Neville Howard and BMB

Ross Gore - Levins 1841 - 1941

New Zealand artist Ross Gore's history of the first hundred years of Levin and Company LTD was published as a handsome hardcover book in 1956 by Levin and Co and printed by printer/publishers Whitcombe & Tombs in Wellington. Comprehensively researched from archival sources at the Alexander Turnbull Library, the company itself, and other Wellington institutions, Gore used his artistic talents to provide chapter illustrations from the various eras of the company.

Ross Gore's background and connections with the 'Baby Face Artist' behind comics Patsy Kane, Victory Comics and Meteor Comics feature on this previous post. I'm now convinced Gore was an associate of the unidentified 'Baby Face Artist' and confident some further research will reveal their connection.

Dick Hudson's Adventures, a back up story in Victory comics circa late 1944, appears to be the uncredited work of Gore.

 Victory Comics featured a cover story by the 'Baby face artist'.

Samples of Ross Gore's newspaper strip It happened in New Zealand here.

Photos from Ross Gore's wedding to Barbara Standish appeared in the Evening Post, 10 February 1939.(Gore second from left).

Gallery of Ross Gore Illustrations from Levins 1841 - 1941

Victory Comic scan provided by Allan Kemp, Ross Gore wedding photo from paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

Illustrations copyright 2013 estate of Ross Gore.

Maurice Bramley

One of Bramley's prolific output of covers for the Horwitz publishing company.

New Zealand born cartoonist Maurice Bramley's childhood residence in Devonport has been listed with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust with report on the property filed by Joan Mckenzie last year. The New Zealand Historic Places Trust is a crown entity and national agency entrusted with identifying heritage places and ensuring they survive for appreciation by current and future generations as well as fostering this appreciation through the recording and sharing their stories.

I previously wrote about Maurice Bramley's work here and here.

Daniel Best recently wrote about Bramley's work for Horwitz comics here.

The following excerpt is from Joan Mckenzie's report on 14 Glen Road for The New Zealand Historic Places Trust. Read the report in full here.

Harriet Pegler sold the property to Margaret Eliza Bramley (1876-1914) in 1903. The absence of a recorded mortgage suggests that Margaret may have had financial resources of her own.

Margaret, her husband William Harry Bramley (1875-1948) and their two young sons became the new occupiers. By this time, the number of households in Glen Road had doubled to eight, the breadwinners predominantly in blue-collar occupations - mariner, shipwright, coach fitter, line-engineer. Although the Bramley family occupied the property for two decades, little is known of their life in Auckland. Harry, who gave his occupation as ‘gentleman’ or ‘settler’, became a member of the Auckland Kennel Club, and was elected to the executive of the Stanley Bay Ratepayers’ Association in 1921.

From New Plymouth, the family were part of Taranaki’s Pakeha-settler social network. The couple had married in 1897 at Margaret’s parents’ farm at Tikorangi, an outlying rural settlement founded in 1865 by militia families led by Margaret’s father Captain John Henry Armstrong (c.1834-1915). Armstrong was the son of a Church of Ireland minister and from a family with a long military tradition. A number of Margaret’s uncles were captains in the Taranaki Militia.
 
Harry Bramley had moved to Taranaki in the 1880s after the 1876 death of his father, a Rangiora farmer. Harry’s two sisters had married into prosperous families. Annie (1867?-1956) was a daughter-in-law of a late Superintendent of the Taranaki Province, Henry Robert Richmond (1829-90) of the influential Richmond-Atkinson family. Amy (1869-1947) was a daughter-in-law of a late Australian Premier and Colonial Secretary, Sir Charles Cowper (1807-75).

Retaining the Glen Road home on one-and-a-half lots, Margaret Bramley sold Lot 132 fronting Russell Street in 1906. Margaret died prematurely, in 1914 three years after the birth of the couple’s third child.

Staying on at Glen Road, Harry married Grace Eveline Sallabank (1874-1976) in 1917. Margaret and Harry’s three sons, including the eldest - Maurice (1898-1975), still lived at the house in 1918. Moving to Australia in the mid-1920s.

Gallery of Maurice Bramley Horwitz war comic covers courtesy the Adelaide Comics Centre.