Ginger Meggs, the character created by JC (Jimmy) Bancks in 1921, is one of the most well known comic strip characters from Australia. The strip was originally titled
Us Fellers, but was renamed
Ginger Meggs when it was clear that the character's popularity was the main driving force behind the strip. Bancks' work was character-driven, though his artwork had the animated line quality of Percy Crosby's
Skippy. Fans were truly drawn to the language, wit and goings-on of Ginger.
This particular example, from August 7, 1934, features Ginger and Raggsey, as Ginger shows was a truly good guy he could be. It also features two of my favorites--Tony the monkey and Mike the dog--throughout the strip. Bancks' original artwork is very scarce. This is the first I've seen in all my years of collecting. The additional image in this gallery was scanned from the rare copy of
More Adventures of Ginger Meggs, the 1935 annual; #12 in the series. What follows is a biography of JC Bancks, as lifted from
Lambiek's site:
James Charles Bancks (1889-1952), or Jimmy Bancks for short, was born in 1889 as the son of an Irish railway worker in New South Wales, Australia. He left school at the age of fourteen, to start working for a finance company. His first illustration was published in 1914, in The Arrow, after which more publications followed and Jimmy Bancks was employed at The Bulletin, where he stayed until 1922. At the same time he submitted cartoons to the Sydney Sunday Sun, where he published 'Us Fellers', in 1921. Bancks developed it into 'Ginger Meggs', which became one of Australia's most popular comic strips.
In 1923, Bancks created 'The Blimps' for the Melbourne Sun; this daily strip ran until 1925, when he came up with 'Mr. Melbourne Day By Day' for the Melbourne Sun-Pictorial. Len Reynolds and Harry Mitchell wrote the texts for this strip.
Jimmy Bancks continued working on 'Ginger Meggs' until he passed away on July 1, 1952, from a heart attack.
The comic strip's popularity started lagging in the 1980s, until being taken over by James Kemsley, who not only revived the strip's fortunes, but created the daily strip format of Meggs. Kemsley sadly passed away on December 3, 2007, at the too young age of 59. The strip will continue with its fifth creator, Jason Chatfield.
For more information about the history of
Ginger Meggs and his creator Jimmy Bancks, check out
this extensive page.
