Design and Art Australia Online

cartoonist and illustrator, was born on 26 May 1889 at Enmore, Sydney, son of a cleaner on the railways. He grew up at Hornsby, then part of Sydney’s rural fringe, leaving school at 14 to work as a part-time lift driver, wool clerk and office boy but practising drawing in his spare time. His first published drawings were art nouveau (Souterish) cartoons in the Comic Australia (1911-12), e.g. 'Under Government./ PARSON: “And your husband-what has he been doing the last six months?”/ PARISHIONER: “Six Months!”’ 28 October 1911, 15. From 1913 he drew for the Lone Hand , e.g. 'Women at the Front’ 1 April 1915, 307 (women as soldiers), and from 20 August 1914 for his long-admired Bulletin . When it guaranteed him £8 a week he left his office job and worked there full time, taking drawing lessons from Dattilo Rubbo (Royal Art Society) and Julian Ashton in the evenings. He remained at the Bulletin for eight years (included in c.1930s list of Bulletin artists, ML Px*D557 pt 5, '2’, as 'J. Banks’ – who could also be the painter and illustrator John Banks ) specialising in caricatures of sporting personalities and other Sydney notables, e.g. 42 original caricatures 1918 to 1930s of sportsmen, politicians etc. ML Bulletin collection; original caricature of Samuel Hordern 1918 (AGWA 957/0D62); original “Bogle” and “Frank Darcy” 1919 (AGWA, 957/0D49 & 957/0D57); joke about caricaturists during the influenza epidemic (when everyone covered their faces): 'Queered./ “Nice time for a blinkin’ caricaturist!”’ 6 February 1919, 8 (no original); (two men discussing an election poster) “What do you think of the candidates?”/ “Well, the more I think of them, the more pleased I am that only one of 'em can get in!” 1920.

Then he had a period freelancing, living at St Kilda with a studio in Swanston Street, Melbourne. He drew illustrations in Home , e.g. Jazz 1 December 1920, 35. In 1921 D.H. Souter initiated and drew 'Weary Willie and the Count de Main’ for Australia’s first comic strip supplement, 'Sunbeams’, four pages in the Sydney Sunday Sun that began in November 1921, but his strip about 'domain dossers’ so offended 'Sunbeams’ editor Ethel Turner (she later claimed) she demanded it be replaced. Five weeks later Bancks was given half the back page of 'Sunbeams’ for the strip 'Us Fellers’ (see Poole pp.332-33). One character was Ginger Meggs, who was to become the most famous Australian comic strip character of all time. Ginger did not lack rivals; within a year other Australian newspapers had set up comic supplements in competition. In 1924, however, 'Us Fellers’ was a full page in Melbourne’s Sun News-Pictorial and it subsequently appeared in newspapers in all the Australian states. The first major Australian strip to occupy a full newspaper page printed in colour (acc. Vane Lindesay in Inkspot ), it was syndicated in 1929 to the New York Mirror , the Boston Post , the St Louis Democrat and the Dallas News , and translated for French (Montreal) and Spanish (Buenos Aires) newspapers. In 1924 the first Ginger Meggs anthology was published and Bancks continued the series every Christmas until he died in 1952, with the sole exception of 1951. His successor, Ron Vivian , continued the tradition until 1959.

For a time Bancks was Australia’s highest paid black-and-white artist, receiving £80 a week in the 1920s. He also wrote a play. For the Evening Sun he drew the daily political cartoon in 1924 and created the comic strip 'The Blimps’ (1923-5). He drew for Keith Murdoch’s Melbourne Punch in 1924-25 and created the single panel feature 'Mr Melbourne Day by Day’ for Murdoch’s Sun News-Pictorial (1925). After the demise of Melbourne Punch , he worked on Table Talk (1928 [sic] doctor joke ill. Lindesay 1979, 185). In 1925 he moved himself and 'Us Fellas’ back to Sydney and to the Sunday Sun ; 'Ginger Meggs’ became the strip’s official title from November 1939. Bancks took it to Frank Packer’s Sunday Telegraph in 1951 after Associated Newspapers failed to fulfil a contractual obligation to put it on the front page of the comic supplement.

Bancks’s died from a sudden heart attack at his Point Piper home on 1 July 1952. Then Ronald Vivian drew the strip until he too died (in 1974) when it was taken over by Lloyd Piper . In August 1978, amid much fanfare, 'Ginger Meggs’ returned to the Sun-Herald where it vigorously continues its weekly slot, as well as a daily Sydney Morning Herald strip to mid 2005, the Daily Telegraph since then, having been drawn by James Kelmsley since November 1983 (full story Ryan pp.77-78 and Lindesay 1979, 38-41). In 1995 Kemsley’s fourth Ginger Meggs anthology (no.39 in the series) was published by Allen and Kemsley of Mosman NSW.

Bancks married Jessie, daughter of E.J. Tate, manager of J.C. Williamson’s. She died in childbirth in the 1930s – and the child also died. In 1938 Patricia Quinn became his second wife. They had a daughter, Sheena, whose husband Michael Latimer wrote the screenplay for the 1982 film of Ginger Meggs. Another movie with Kelmsley involved was filming in 1998.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2011