Places To Put Money

My favourite social historian Darian Zam has been working over the last several years on a major project Coalfaces, a combination of an exhibition of posrtraits and 220 page book.

Darian has put countless hours into researching the largely unrecorded history of New Zealand products, business, commercial artists and more which he generously documents on his Long White Kid site. I'm personally indebted to Darian for the numerous occasions he has helped me with researching New Zealand comics and cartoonists, filling in gaps of information and bringing things to my attention.

I've cut and pasted Darian's words about his current project below, I heartily encourage anyone that might find it interesting to please help support his work.

Hi everyone,

Some of you are aware of the project I’ve been working on for the past six or so years. It’s called ‘Coalfaces’ and is an exhibition of portraits accompanied by a 220 page book. It was inspired by the time I spent living in an old mining town on the South Coast of NSW, Australia.

It couldn’t have been more different for someone who had resided in Sydney for nearly 20 years. Mount Kembla is notorious for being the site of Australia’s historically biggest industrial accident in which 95 people died.  

As such, most of the focus has been on the disaster and not so much what life was like afterwards. I have completed work based on the life stories of fifteen local elderly people and their memories of growing up there in the aftermath of that terrible tragedy. 

I’m passionate about recording the stories of older people before the information disappears for good.

I was hoping that I’d win the first inaugural local history ward in September and use the prize money to print the manuscript – but it wasn’t to be, unfortunately. So now I'm raising funds to print my book and stage my exhibition of portraits at the Wollongong City Art Gallery – which opens on Saturday 11th of March 2017. I'm now nearly halfway to my goal but it has taken ten weeks thus far and time is quickly running out.

There’s a preview of the book here. You can sponsor me for as little as one dollar a week; I need to find around 70 more five dollar sponsors to make my goal by March. There's a range of rewards listed at my Patreon site for different price points.

Many people have expressed they are more comfortable making a one-off direct donation rather than sign up to Patreon  - and this can be easily done via Paypal with 4 major cards. Or alternately, by bank deposit (AU or NZ).

Thanks so much for considering supporting Coalfaces, which will probably be my major life project as a social historian (mainly because I never intend to spend this long on something ever again!) 

Funds raised will be used to pay for shipping, printing, the opening and legal deposit commitments.

Best regards, dz

Peter Foster - Commando: Killer Shark

Commando No. 4343 Killer Shark cover by Ian Kennedy

Another selection of photocopies from Commando original art by Peter Foster. Originally drawn from a script by K. P. Mackenzie titled Mission Accomplished, this story eventually saw publication in 1993 as Killer Shark in Commando No. 2722. Killer Shark was also reprinted in 2010 in Commando No. 4343.

Hitler’s U-boats were the killer sharks of the Second World War, roaming the oceans of the world, terrorising the shipping lanes. Gerhard Hagen, a Nazi to the core, was one of the most ruthless skippers of those hunter submarines.
But even a killer shark will eventually meet its match, and time was running out for Hagen…

All images copyright DC Thomson 2016.

George Molnar (1910- 1998) - The Nine Muses

Examples of the lithe cartooning of George Molnar,  The Nine Muses, drawn circa 1970's. Molnar was born in Hungary in 1910 and came to Australia as a sponsored migrant in 1939 to work as a government architect in Canberra. As a cartoonist Molnar was initially employed at The Daily Telegraph in 1945 switching to competitor paper The Sydney Morning Herald in 1952 where he was employed until 1984.

The nine muses are Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Euterpe (flutes and lyric poetry), Thalia (comedy and pastoral poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Terpsichore (dance), Erato (love poetry), Polyhymnia (sacred poetry), and Urania (astronomy).

Peter Foster - Commando: The Pirate Killers

For over a decade from the late 1970's Australian cartoonist Peter Foster worked for British publisher DC Thomson, initially in England and from 1980 back in Australia. Peter would receive a script via mail and send completed black and white art back to the publisher. Peter produced over a dozen Commando digest libraries during this period and a similar amount of Football libraries. Miraculously no artwork (I've estimated 5000+ pages!) was lost in transit and only one script failed to turn up.

After a period of working via this method Peter started keeping photocopies of his art before dispatching it in the mail as a safeguard in case it went missing and as a record of his work for himself. The pages below are from an issue of Commando set in Vietnam, script titled The Pirate Killers, I'm not sure if the final published issue kept that title. Mechanically produced lettering was added to the art before publication.

All images copyright DC Thomson 2016.

New Zealand Cartoonists Art Dump #1

I'm trying to post something everyday but I don't have much time so here is a lazy post of covers from Wellington Publisher Feature Productions, active in New Zealand during the 1940's - 1950's. Feature Productions were easily the most prolific of New Zealand's many golden age publishers with one of the worlds lengthiest runs of Mandrake the Magician comics with 222 issues. Quite possibly the world's longest run of Brick Bradford comics as well lasting 108 issues, and The Phantom on monthly, biweekly and weekly schedules at times producing a respectful 556 issues.

To the best of my knowledge this Publisher's lineup was entirely made up of American newspaper strips licensed from King Features Syndicate. I'm not sure if English strip Garth was also licensed through King, but several issues of his adventures were published in the late 1940's.

The rarest FP comics are The Cisco Kid series, collector Geoff Harrison had heard they existed for years but not seen any of the actual comics until this year when we tracked down the first several issues.

I personally own issues #1 - #18 of Big Ben Bolt, possibly the only collection of these to exist anywhere, this of course means nothing to anyone but I just wanted to show off.

Covers here are all from The Adventures of Brick Bradford. Drawn by an unknown New Zealand artist, typically reproducing a panel or element of art from the internal stories. Brick Bradford covers were very odd in that many of them don't feature characters, just focusing on landmarks or modes of transport. Covers that do feature characters often show them depicted from behind. Very odd choices by this unknown artist. Regardless they are all amazing and coloured with the right colours.

This post did not end up as lazy as I intended it to be.

* Special thanks to Allan Kemp for additional info.