Australian Cartoonists Art Dump #3

Above: Maurice Bramley cover for In Battle Action No. 72

Below: Peter Chapman's Sir Falcon.

Below: John Dixon's Crimson Comic. When I was about eight years I bought a Crimson Comet comic from a carboot in a muddy paddock at a flea market in provincial New Zealand. Unbelievably one hundred and fifteen years later I still have that comic.

Every day I wake up and wonder is this the day Nat Karmichael announces he'll be publishing the complete Tim Valour by John Dixon? A phone book collection of these tight adventure stories would be a gift to mankind...

These King Size Comic anthologies have stunning covers by an unknown artist. They chiefly contain American reprints but invariably would have an Australian comic like Stan and Reg Pitt's Silver Starr. A smarter person than me like Kevin Patrick or Daniel Best could have written about these in a smarter way.

The Adventures of Flash Cain No. 3 collects comics from Cavalcade magazine by Phil Belbin, cover by Devil Doone mainstay artist Hart Amos.

Even when guesting in other heroes comics the Phantom Ranger could oddly be relied upon to find a Mexican to punch in the face.

Kent Blake of the Secret Service #18? There seventeen issues before this one? Nat, while you're assembling that Tim Valour phone book can I please also get an inch thick collection of Monty Wedd's Kent Blake comics?

Out of The Past - Phil Belbin Film Adaption

For a brief period during 1948 and 1949 Phil Belbin produced comic adaptions of RKO Radio pictures for Murray magazine Cavalcade. Adaptions included Return of the Badman, Fort Apache, Magic Town, Night Song, Rachel and the Stranger, The Bishop's Wife, The Velvet Touch, If You Knew Suzie, The Miracle of the Bells and Out of the Past. The film adaptions were replaced in late 1949 with original comics featuring Flash Cain, Private Detective, illustrated by Belbin and written by Ray Heath. Flash Cain was subsequently replaced by Kath King of Kismet Cove, the adventures of a female reporter, illustrated by Belbin and scripted by Sydney Ockenden.

Read a biography of Belbin by Greg Ray here.