Whoopee with Shiver and Shake - Issue dated 12/4/1975

[Raven]

I have some Dennis the Menace annuals on ebay right now which I have described as near mint - thought that would be ok but got one bloke asking five questions about each of them. Is the price clipped, any writing, is the spine undamaged? What doesn't he understand about "near mint"? Do sellers actually use the word mint even though it clearly isn't?

Indeed they do - though often you can see; a chap recently had lots of early Whizzer and Chipses up described as mint but they looked terrible with rusted, rotting staples. Ones I've bought have had puzzles filled in, missing pages, loose pages, dog-eared pages, all sorts, so buyers probably do feel the need to check, despite the descriptions.

Who are you on Ebay? There's a stevezodiac but apparently not you, and quite a few folk selling Dennis annuals.

EDIT: Actually, I think I've found you from the "near mint."

[blaing]

Were you in Australia back then? I know the IPC comics were sold there - I always noticed the Australia 20c price on them.

If so, were they well distributed or hard to find? Did they turn up many weeks late?

I was actually born here.

It's the same here today than it was back then, the comics were released approximately 2 months after it was released there. (so you could imagine us reading the Christmas issues in February)

Where I used to live, you were more likely to see IPC titles at the newsagent (we had three to choose from) than you would the D. C. Thomson titles.

In fact, if I wanted to buy an issue of The Beano for example, I would have to go to a newsagent in Sydney's Town Hall station (but mum only took us to the city once in a while)

It's probably likely that the Thomson titles were more widespread, but I never really noticed.

The situation is the reverese today. You would be more likely to see Thomsons womens magazine "The Peoples Friend" than you would any of Thomson's titles in our newsagent.

[Lew Stringer]

Interesting stuff blaing. What was the scene like for comics that originated in Australia? I presume it wasn't just Phantom reprints. Did you have home-grown humour & adventure comics?

[blaing]

Lew.

Outside of the comic reprints from the newspapers (Snake Tales, Footrot Flats) in book form, and of course "The Phantom", we didn't have much of a comics industry here as far as I know back then.

[stevezodiac]

I've seen quite a few Australian comics at fairs and they are mostly Thorpe & Porter style reprint collections like Marvelman and John Wayne cowboy comics.

[klakadak-ploobadoof]

Some time ago I corresponded with a collector who has a huge collection of Australian comics. He said that Australians for some reason had a huge comic book industry from the 1940's to the early 1950's with the same variation of characters that appeared in the USA. He also recommended a couple of books on Australian comics which he said were very good:

Ryan, John. Panel by panel: a history of Australian comics. Stanmore, N.S.W.: Cassell Australia, 1979. ISBN 0-7269-7376-9

Shiell, Annette (ed.). Bonzer: Australian comics 1900-1990s. Redhill South, Vic.: Elgua Media, 1998. ISBN 1-876677-00-7 / 1876677066

[blaing]

Well, that's something I didn't know. (I'm sure the John Wayne comics would have been in the 1960's, a bit before my time.)

I'll have a search for them books, for sure.

[philcom55]

Interesting stuff blaing. What was the scene like for comics that originated in Australia? I presume it wasn't just Phantom reprints.

It's always been something of a mystery to me why Australia embraced the character so enthusiastically, but I'm pretty sure that a lot of their Phantom comics contained original material (even if they were occasionally subcontracted out to American and British writers).

Also, considering their relatively small population during the 1950s and 1960, Australia seemed to nurture a surprising number of superb comic artists in its own right, including the great Stanley Pitt, his brother Reginald and Yaroslav Horak (who later drew the James Bond newspaper strip in the UK).

- Phil Rushton