AusReprints: Australian DC reprint Gallery

Richard Rae—KG Murray Cover Artist

If you've been charting the fortunes of Australian-made comics for the last 25 years or so, then chances are you've come across the name Richard Rae.

You might have been one of the first Aussie comic fans of the early 1980s who picked up one of the many comic books which Richard wrote and published during 1980-1983, such as Star Heroes, The Greatest Super Hero and Fantastic Australian Heroes.

Boasting a roster of talented artists, such as America's Tom Sutton, Aussie industry veteran Hal English and newcomers like Glenn Ford and Frants Kantor, Rae's small line of comics were a tongue-in-cheek blend of superhero, science-fiction and EC Comics-style "shock ending" stories.

They may not have had a long shelf-life, but Richard Rae's comics represent one of the first concerted efforts by a local publisher to issue a line of Australian comics, since the collapse of Australia's once-booming comics industry in the early 1960s.

He even found the time edit and publish the 1983 book, Cartoonists of Australia, which featured biographical profiles of notable Australian newspaper cartoonists and comic book artists, including Monty Wedd, Syd Nicholls, Fil Barlow and Roger Fletcher.

If you lived in Sydney during this time, you might have also visited Richard's discount specialty comic shop, "Comic Empire". Perhaps you attended the event billed as "Australia's First International Comic Convention", which was held at the Sydney Opera House on 17-19 January 1986. This convention brought overseas guests such as Will Eisner and Jim Steranko to our shores for the first time, where they were joined by veteran Aussie comic artists like John Dixon. You may not have known it at the time, but Richard Rae was the principal organiser of that event, too!

Of special interest to fans and collectors of Australian black & white reprint comics is the fact that Richard Rae was (very briefly) a cover artist for KG Murray, the company which published dozens of Australian edition titles reprinting classic DC Comic characters during the 1940s-1980s.

According to Richard's essay, "The Comic Book Industry in Australia" [Published in Comics in Australia and New Zealand: The Collections, the Collectors, the Creators ¹], he was making one of his regular visits to the KG Murray offices in Sydney, when a golden opportunity arose. They had received the contents of four reprint titles, without the cover artwork. Knowing that Richard was an aspiring comic artist, they asked him if he would be able to draw some original covers for use on these comics.

"The person I dealt with at Murray's was the same woman whom I invited to my convention at the Sydney Opera House in 1986," he recalls. "She was their 'main' comic person—in fact, she was the one who asked me to help them with some covers."

And before anyone asks, Richard cannot, sadly, recall the woman's name. Chances are she may have been the same woman who published the locally drawn comic strip, "A Case of Mistaken Ambulances", which appeared in Super Giant Album 23 in late 1975/early 1976. (For more details, see my "Comics Down Under" column in the August 2005 edition of Collectormania magazine).

"The fourth cover I did for Murray's was an issue of World of Speed," he adds. "It was the last one I did and it shows in the art—I really hated that comic, and the cover, because it had heaps of car art and no super-heroes.

"I only did four covers because they did not pay local artists, so I did them for free," explains Richard.

"I had a well-paid advertising job [at the time] and comics were my personal interest, so I guess I did them as a 'love job'," he adds. "But after four covers I got jack of working for nothing!"

Richard was often surprised by KG Murray's editorial indifference to their comic book products.

"I believe that it is important that you do not think of Murray's as a "publisher" when trying to find out how they did things - in reality, they were just [the publishing] arm of a printer.

"For example, when I was asked to do a cover for Savage Tales, which happened to be the name of a 1970s Marvel Comics title, I was amazed to see that, other than the name, it was all DC stuff inside—to them it was all the same, it was real cut 'n' paste stuff."

Since then, Richard has moved into other fields, but has always retained an abiding interest in comics publishing. Despite his brief involvement with KG Murray, Rae is convinced that there is still a viable market for local reprints of American comics.

"I believe that a fantastic opportunity exists in this country - and has done so for a long time—to combine reprinted, overseas comics, with Australian-made comics," he says. "Kind of like what they did in the UK with Smash, Pow and Terrific comics, back in the 1960s."

But turning that opportunity into a reality isn't as easy as it might sound, as Richard has sometimes learned.

"Last year, I contacted a company which represents Marvel Comics here in Australia, with a proposal to reprint the Spider-Man and Incredible Hulk newspaper strips in comic book form," he explains.

"This project would have meant all-new cover art by Australian artists for these American heroes, plus back-up stories featuring Australian superheroes by local writers and artists.

"Sadly, the project went nowhere, because the spokeswoman I dealt with had no idea about the properties she was paid to represent," says Richard. "In the end, she made it too hard to come to any agreement, so I moved on."

Richard is currently at work on developing a joint American-Australian sci-fi comic. Not only will this comic feature Rae's original stories, but his pencil artwork will be inked by such noted American comic strip artists as Al Williamson and Bill Loebs.

Despite the obstacles he has encountered in relaunching local reprints of overseas comics, Richard remains convinced that such a venture remains commercially viable in the Australian market.

"The simple fact is that Australian publishers do a heck of a lot of the same thing, over and over again," he stresses. "If I see another new fashion or gossip magazine come out, then I'm just going to vomit!"

"There is an opening for a new Australian comic group right now—and there has been one for years," says Richard. "But what it needs is a 'real' publisher to back it, and not some backyard job. The key to success is distribution and [marketing] back-up and major publishers have all that.

"Years ago in America, publishers took a chance on Superman—and now American comics and all the marketing they create (movies, games, etc) is a multi-million dollar industry.

"We have just as much original talent right here, right now—and amazingly, not one local publisher will come forward to command a bigger slice of the action. I guess our local publishers are just happy with crumbs and prefer letting the overseas publishers make the big bucks."