Hi everyone
I did a quick search to find out more about 'Jo and Her Magic Cape' by Moira Bertram from the Triumph Comic, and found a really interesting conference paper by
Dr Kevin Patrick called
Jo and Her Magic Cape: The Female Superhero and 'Austerican' Culture. By 'Austerican', he's referring to the Americanisation of Australian popular culture, particularly after all the US military were stationed in Australia during WWII. As my mother will tell you, we never saw Coca Cola or chewing gum before then
You can find the article at the following site, though you have to register for free to get the full PDF (and I'm not sure if it's available everywhere). Well worth reading if you're interested in that sort of thing.
https://www.academia.edu/1695350/Jo_and_Her_Magic_Cape_The_Female_Superhero_and_Austerican_CultureAccording to the article, Moira Bertram was only 14 when she wrote and drew the first of her comic instalments for Sydney's
Daily Mirror newspaper. She later repackaged the full stories as comic book features that she sold to various publishers, though she told them she was 16 so that they would publish them. That could be one reason why different dates appear for her year of birth. Although Moira was an Australian girl, she had visited New York with her father who had business there. So her heroine Jo was a Broadway dancer with a New York accent who had a magician's cape that enabled her to fly. Like other superheroes of the time, she joined the US military in fighting the Japanese, though she surprisingly didn't include Australian or New Zealand military. In fact, Kevin Patrick notes that Bertram went to great lengths to pitch her character as American. This could be because she had first-hand experience of America, due to her travels, but it could also be because of the American influence in wartime Australia.
Patrick also makes some interesting comments about the art. When the embargo on American comics was put in place in Australia during the war, publishers turned to homegrown products. However, some of the older male artists had come from an illustration background and weren't necessarily familiar with the dynamic storytelling techniques of comic books. Patrick gives
Dr Mensana by Tom Hubble (one of our other selections this fortnight) as an example. Hubble was born in 1903 and came from a commercial art background, and was part of the generation who grew up on British 'penny' comics which were 'full of stories, not pictures', according to children's author Ivan Southall. (Perhaps our British friends can comment on that.) Comic book creators from that era tended to use 'unvarying panel compositions, overcrowded with word balloons'. I think you can see that in the Dr Mensana comic, though others would be a lot more knowledgeable about that era than I am.
By contrast, Patrick notes that Bertram was a child in the 1930s and would have experienced American comic books before the embargo, which tended to be more dynamic. Interestingly, her sister Kathleen was the one who did the lettering and designed the page layouts.
Anyway, you can find more detail in the full article, but I thought that was an interesting contrast and helps explain why her art is quite different from some of the others in that era. I'd be interested in any comments you have on it.
Cheers
QQ
Author
Topic: Reading Group #318 - Obscure Post-War Australian Comics (1946-1948) (Read 1160 times)
