Australian cartoonist Doug Maxted’s renditions of Maori life from the novel Rangatira, written by Australian anthropologists Norman Tindale and Harold Lindsay and published in Adelaide by Rigby Ltd. in 1959. Maxted had assumed art duties at Rigby in 1958. Maxted immigrated to Australia in 1925 from London at eleven years of age and worked in the Australian comics industry during the 1940′s and 1950′s. Between 1947-1949 Maxted ran his own publishing company, publishing Ben Barbary Bushranger Comics. Maxted immigrated to England in 1963 and worked primarily for IPC magazines for the twenty years until his return to Australia in 1983. Maxted died in 1999.

Some of the comics Maxted worked on in England:

Legge's Eleven (1964-70) and Yellowknife of the Yard (1971) for Valiant
Come On, Coggin! (1965-66), Charlie Peace (1966), Nutty Slack (1966-68), The Sludgemouth Sloggers (1971-72), Drifter Long (1972-73) and Uncle Ironsides (1974-75) for Buster
His Sporting Lordship for Smash! (1969), Tiger (1971) and Valiant (1971)
Typhoon Tracy (1970) for Hurricane
The Hard Man (1976-1985) for Roy of the Rovers

Above: 'Vintage' Jinty & Penny comics, only $10 each! These were 40 cents each when they sold new in the 1980's and gosh that's about what anyone would pay for them now! Lots of lovely European and UK artwork in these, and some of my fave writers from the IPC's boys comics division as well as their juvenile comics.

In common with many other comic readers rapidly approaching 'middle-age-ness' I like to trawl second hand book shops and markets to pick up old cheap comics for entertainment and blog research. As an irregular feature I'll share a few things on the Pikitia blog, pics from this post are from the Camberwell markets in Melbourne 28 Dec 2014.

UK digest comics, all $2 - $4 each. if I remember correctly the western series Buck Jones and others by Amalgamated Press were created as standard size comics in England for the Australian market and then reformatted for digests in the UK.

These days I have a ridiculous obsession with Charlton Comics, I'd buy any title for a dollar or two. Chances are if it's a horror or Sci-Fi title it will feature something in there by Steve Ditko. $6 is a bit much though. Is that Herbe Trimpe Hulk? I can't tell. I fondly remember buying Hulk from that era off the spinner rack in the late seventies.

More delicious over-priced Charlton comics.

Will we get deluxe hardcover reprints of Gold Key humour titles? Probably not. Gold key comics are an important part of any comic reader's diet.

Newton Comic reprints of Marvel Comics from the 1970's (I think?) Comics historian extraordinaire Daniel Best has recently completed his exhaustive history of Newton Comics, get a copy of the ebook here.

What I bought: I can't help buying any IPC/Fleetway Holiday Specials for a dollar each. War, Battle, and Suspense holiday special digests are hundreds of pages of chiefly journeyman artists but good fun reading for a couple clams apiece, and on the far left a couple reprints of classic New Zealand novels to remind me of the motherland.