Jet Fury #15 (Part One) - Yarolav Horak

New Zealand edition of Australian comic Jet Fury published by Times Printing Works in Auckland circa 1950's. Time Printing Works published thousands of comics from 1937 until 1954, when they were effectively shut down by import licensing introduced by the National Government. Times Printing Works published some New Zealand drawn material but chiefly used material syndicated from foreign sources with Australian comics contracted by Young's Merchandising in Sydney.

Jet Fury creator Yaroslav Horak (born 1927) was one of Australian's most prolific cartoonists, producing thousands of pages of comics in Australia before moving to England in 1962. In England he worked on War and Battle Picture Libraries for Fleetway Publications. In 1966 he replaced John McLusky as the second artist on the James Bond newspaper strip which led to a lengthy run of 33 adventures between 1966 - 1984. I'll be posting some of Yaroslav's serialised magazine work, Mike Steele - Desert Rider from Woman's Day next week, Sadly uncollected, hopefully an enterprising publisher can produce a book of these one day.

William Edwin Pidgeon (WEP) (1909-1981)

Australian artist William Edwin Pidgeon (WEP) was born today in 1909.

WEP's son Peter Pidgeon has created an amazing digital archive on Flickr of WEP's life, digitising artwork/correspondence and ephemera from across his lengthy career.

Peter Pidgeon also maintains a blog Pidgeon Post - an Insight into the life of Australian Artist, Bill Pidgeon (WEP) 1909-1981, adding contextual notes to WEP's papers.

Australian Dictionary of Biography Entry.

Below: WEP'S 1950 Archibald winning Self Portrait.

Below: Two paintings created by WEP during a tour of New Guinea during World War Two.

Mike Manly - Ivan Southall & Peter James

I suspect there is a largely undocumented history of Australasian comics featured in magazines and newspapers published during the 20th century. Australia in particular had many comic serials created by comics professionals that appeared solely in magazines and newspapers. Many of these strips were collected in comics form but I am constantly discovering many were not. Mike Manly was serialised in Women’s Day during 1954. Written by Ivan Southall (1921 - 2008) and illustrated by Peter James, Mike Manly involved a young Australian scientist who creates a ray that enables him to do anthing he wishes, this leads to conflict with evil government powers. Ivan Southall was a prolific and popular writer of young adult fiction and as far as I know this was his only contribution to Australian comics.