AusReprints: Australian DC reprint Gallery

Peter Fatches—The Mistaken Ambulance Mystery

One of the pleasures of flicking through old Australian comics is that you never know what you'll find.

This was certainly the case when I picked up a secondhand copy of Super Giant Album 23, which was originally published by the KG Murray Publishing Company (Sydney).

By the mid-1970s, many of KG Murray's comics were reprinting an eclectic selection of strips from such American publishers as Marvel, DC and Charlton Comics, along with a growing number of translated Spanish comics, which were then starting to appear in English-language comics worldwide.

My copy of Super Giant Album, dating from the mid-1970s, was no exception. It featured an unusual selection of Western, science-fiction, horror, war and spy/thriller strips from American and European sources.

One strip, however, stood out from the rest. Titled A Case of Mistaken Ambulances, it was the story of three young surfers - Leon, Terry and Sue - who become the target of a ruthless crime boss when their old 1954 Dodge truck is mistaken for a missing drug courier's identical vehicle.

Unlike the other comics featured in the magazine, this story looked like a contemporary 1970s comic strip, with characters dressed in current-day fashions and driving new model cars.

A closer reading of the story, which was credited to 'Peter F. Fatches', revealed that it was set in New South Wales! The characters spoke using recognisably Australian slang, the crime lord's mansion was in Vaucluse - and you could even see an Ampol petrol station sign in the background of one panel!

Could this be an Australian comic? If it was, it would be the first time in 25 years that a new Australian comic had appeared in a KG Murray comic magazine, which had reprinted nothing but overseas material for decades.

So, who was 'Peter F. Fatches'? Excited by the possibility of uncovering an unknown Australian comic artist, I managed to track down this 'mystery artist', who now works as an architectural draftsman and freelance newspaper cartoonist in central New South Wales.

"I was only 17 or 18 years-old at the time when the strip was published in early 1976," he recalls.

"It was my first published comic strip, but I had been drawing comics for my own amusement for at least three years before then."

Peter grew up reading American comics like Sgt. Rock and Mad Magazine. "I also liked The Shadow, which was being drawn by Mike Kaulta at the time," he says. "I was influenced by the comics that had really good artwork and unusual page layouts."

"When I was a kid, however, I mainly read Donald Duck comics. I started out by reproducing a short comic strip out of Donald Duck, which was pretty good training!"

Peter's father was keen for his son to make something out of his passion for comic strips, so he took him along to the Sydney offices of Gordon & Gotch, the magazine distribution company which handled KG Murray's line of trade magazines and comic books.

"It was there we met with an editor from KG Murray," says Peter. "I can't remember her name, but she was a very attractive woman in her 30s."

"I asked her what was the possibility of me doing a comic strip for them and she said 'Oh, yeah'."

"She gave me the rundown on the printed format, along with the correct page border widths."

"She showed me one of the strips [Pinkerton's Man] that would actually appear in the same comic as mine as an example to follow."

Peter went to work straight away, choosing a contemporary crime story for his theme. "I was an avid moviegoer and was terribly influenced by American films of the time, like The French Connection."

"The first strip I did was about trucks being hijacked, but she [the editor] rejected it as being too explicit."

Undeterred, Peter went back and dug out a strip he'd done in an old exercise book, titled A Case of Mistaken Ambulances, and decided to revamp it for KG Murray.

"She sent me photocopies of my finished pages, with her suggested corrections and changes."

"We went back and forth with various changes," he adds. "She said the females were drawn too explicitly and didn't wear enough clothing!"

"She also didn't like the swearing and said the car chase went on for too long - but in the end, she left it all in!"

When he saw his comic published in Super Giant Album 23, Peter says he was "beside himself with excitement."

"I asked [the editor] if she wanted another comic strip from me, but she said 'No'," he recalls. "I suspect it may have been too involved a process for her."

Peter stopped producing his own comic strips soon after, but still continued drawing while studying at technical school.

Commencing in 1978, he spent 20 years working as an editorial cartoonist for the Southeast NSW Regional Publishing Group, which published several local newspapers for the region.

Despite being the first Australian cartoonist to be published by KG Murray in over two decades, Peter quickly realised there wasn't a career in Australian comics: "All that effort for the grand total of twenty bucks!"