GoComics: Celebrating a Century of Ginger Meggs
As published on the GoComics blog
One hundred years! That’s how long “Australia’s favorite red-head larrikin” has been engaging in hijinks with his mates, befuddling his long-suffering family, and attempting to avoid his arch-nemeses. It was Aussie Jimmy Bancks who introduced the world to this mischievous scamp in November 1921 in a feature called Us Fellers, which he changed to Ginger Meggs about a month later. (More on that below.) A series of creators followed Bancks’s untimely death in 1953: Ron Vivian from 1953 to 1973; Lloyd Piper from 1973 to 1983; and James Kemsley from 1984 to 2007.
Since then, Meggsie and his crew have been penned and illustrated by Jason Chatfield, an Aussie expat who’s settled in New York City. We had a chat with him as he reflects on the impact this comic and character have had on Australia—and the world.
