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| Information about Syd Nicholls and Monty Wedd are on this site (against their comics Middy Malone and Captain Justice respectively). GEORGE ARIA drew comic strips, illustrations and advertising art in a range of Australian newspapers and magazines. Other than his ‘Bertie’ strips in Fatty Finn’s Comic, his only other comic book work was when one of is magazine strips (‘the Aria Family’) were reprinted in a series of three comics. Examples of his magazne work can be seen at the Pikitia Press blog https:www.pikitiapress.com/blog/tag/george+aria. Similarly, STAN CLEMENTS produced very little comics work, but was a commercial artist who provided cartoons and illustrations for books, magazines and newspapers. Clements was a tutor for commercial arts students, and also illustrated a range of pamphlets published by Australian communists. |
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| Wow! Stan Clements' and Syd Nicholl's drawing is fantastic! It must have been great to read such comics during the 1940s. They were much better technically than the work of so many of the artists in the 1930s and early 1940s North American comic books, especially those stories that hadn't been reprints of newspaper comic strips. Monty Wedd's work is quite good, as well (but isn't quite so eye-catching). The art of the other two jumps off the page at the reader. It remind's me of the late 1800s engraved book illustrations. |
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| Is it just me or does Bertie look similar to Percy Crosby's Skippy comics? |
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| @ Robb_K If you haven't checked out the Middy Malone material here, give it a go. There's more info on Syd Nicholls as a business man and comic producer, he's something of a force of nature! From what I can see, Stan Clements did very little actual comics work, and that almost all for Syd Nicholls. But he did illustrations for other writers, some of which were published by comics publishers and I'll be looking at whether they can be added here, but maybe over in the Odds and Ends section |
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| It's NOT just you, Scrounge, Bertie looks like a Clone of Skippy. But that was the typical style of comics for and about young kids back then. |
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| There were not one, but two Fatty Finn films. First a silent film. Kid Stakes "Australian Classic" Fatty Finn FINAL https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckk4bqf4q68 and this one in about 1980. Somewhat Camp. Fatty Finn 1980 Trailer https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNqM0jZiv9k
Note to the WOKE;- Finn was not Fat. The nickname was in the cockney/Australian tradition of giving someone a nickname that was the opposite of a persons real characteristic. |
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| 'Kid Stakes' was made with Syd Nicholls' active participation, including a segment with Nicholls at his drawing board, sketching his characters. 'Fatty Finn' was made after Nicholls' death, and is loosely based on 'Kid Stakes'. |
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| AP- Thanks for the links to the films. That 1927 film is quite like MGM's shorts series, "Our Gang". from the 1920s through early '40s. And the comic strip had a bit of the flavour of The older Ginger Meggs comic strip.
And the nick-naming of the person as the opposite of his/her qualities was not just a Cockney tradition, but an England-wide tradition (note "Little John" in the Robin Hood Tales), and we have it in Holland and Germany as well. I think it's a fairly old tradition in all The Germanic countries, and France, too. I, myself, had the nickname "Black", and it wasn't from being a bad or mean-spirited person, and I am
(was) a redhead, with pasty-white skin (almost an albino). |
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