Hell Rider. One of the most under appreciated and rarely seen of all the Andru & Esposito works. I've seen more of their Golden and Silver Age works than this, and I've yet to find a single person with a page of original art from the series. Created by writer Gary Freidrich in 1971 for the now defunct Skywald company (better known for their horror magazines such as Psycho & Nightmare) the series featured art from the Andru & Esposito team and ran for a mere two issues. A third was advertised but no copies were ever printed and it appears it never got further than a cover mock up that appeared in an ad. The art team of Andru & Esposito came as no great surprise to me as the pair were Skywald's art directors at the time.

Here's what Mike Esposito had to say about Skywald recently:

Skywald was Sol Brodsky and I, with his friend Israel Waldman. Sol wanted to put out comic books so he called me up and said, “Mike, do me a favour, would you and Ross work for us…

This appeared in my inbox today, and as it's going to be a damn good show I thought I'd share the email with you. There's several displays going on, plus a lot of extras. I know that when we're over in Melbourne in early November we'll be popping down to visit the exhibition and lose ourselves in an afternoon of Australian comics.

Anyway, onto the blurb!

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Hi everyone

For those of you who aren't familiar with my name, I'm Kevin Patrick, the former editor/publisher of The Panther.

Now, it's been over 4 years since the last issue (#5) of The Panther appeared, but that doesn't mean I've turned my back on Australian comics - no siree!

One of the new projects I've taken on since then (which had its beginnings back in 2003, but really started taking shape in September 2005) is a new exhibition on the history of Australian comic books, which I've been curating for the State Library of Victoria in my hometown of Melbourne, Aus…

Oh, and this has also managed to keep me occupied. I fully intend to write a nice, long piece about the day, but in the meantime here's two photos and some comments.

It rained for pretty much all the week leading up to the ceremony. Then it rained on the day. It was a grey day and we both thought, "Jeez..." Funny thing happened. We walked into the gardens (we got married at the Botanical Gardens here in Adelaide) and the sun broke free and shone down for the entire ceremony. I kid you not - you can't make that stuff up. The photos, and there's a few because the people who were there were just awestruck, all show this bright sun behind us. I loved it. I bowed my head as we walked in because, quite frankly, emotion was getting the better of me. The spell was enhanced as we walked past my lad and he whispered, "I'm on the job Dad." The job he had was to make sure his uncle Ronald behaved. I'm convinced that Ronald put him up to it, but it made me ch…

Isn't it amazing when you sit there and realise that you're working on projects without knowing? Right now I've finished the Jim Mooney book. It's with sadness that I've finished because I really wanted it to go forever, it's been that much of a blast and so very different to my time spent working on the Andru & Esposito book, but it's done and I've just sent the text off and the images will now follow. And today I walk into work and have to ask for about a month or so off, sans pay, because I'm just too far behind in my work.

Here's what's on the table:

BOOKS
I'm working on three projects with artists now, all of them with major artists and all of them have the potential to be breakouts. I've never attempted three such major projects at once, but I'm up for it. Each one will be different, each one requires a lot of work and each one has tapes sitting here ready to transcribe. So far I have seventeen tapes in total for those thr…

We visited one of Adelaide's best kept secrets today in the form of a local trash and treasure market and whilst rummaging through the various boxes of magazines, books and other assorted junk that you just love to look at, the other half found these delights amongst others.

The first two books are digest sized and date back to around 1974. The contents are completely hopeless. The art is fairly poor and the stories aren't much better, but I had to buy them if only for the Keith Chatto cover art. In fact, I did only buy them for the Chatto covers even if they're not examples of Chatto at his best.

Both books are small - the same size as those UK war comics that everyone is familiar with. I've seen some Charlton and Dell comics reprinted here in the same small format, but these are new to me. I have no idea if the stories are locally drawn, certainly the art in Tales Of Terror is superior to the Candid Confessions, which suffers both from poor art and even poorer publishi…

Well it appears that the comic book industry's favorite dickhead, John Byrne, has been at it again (have a read and see what you think - Byrne really kicks in on about page three). This time, much like Germaine Greer, he's targeted Steve Irwin. It appears that Irwin was an 'asshole' for dying the way he did, and at the end of the day Byrne is glad that he's dead. And all of that on the same day of his death. And why? Because Byrne believes that Irwin used his son to tease a crocodile. I don't know what footage Byrne watched - knowing Byrne he's never seen it and is only going from a photo - but Irwin didn't tease any croc with his son. The lad was in the pen with Irwin while he fed the creature, but never was the lad used as bait for a tease. Also Byrne felt that Irwin should have been more like David Attenborough - a kindly, quiet man who stalked his prey at a very long distance. In short Byrne has missed the point of Irwin's life and career.

As usu…