Design and Art Australia Online

cartoonist, comic strip artist, theatrical scene painter and commercial artist, was born in Forest Lodge, Sydney. He attended Ultimo Technical College and studied art with J.S. Watkins. Then he began a career as a scene-painter and pictorial artist with Greater Union Theatres under Fred Finlay (w/c of Theatres Art Studio by Lyon in Burgess, p.3). Went to Queensland as a cane-cutter in 1929 'hoping to avoid the Depression’ (Sheill) but was back in Sydney in 1930 working as a freelance artist (which he continued to be all his life). He contributed cartoons and illustrations to Smith’s Weekly , the Bulletin , Guardian , Sydney Mail (including covers), the Australian Women’s Weekly , Wireless Weekly and Humour (including covers). Good caricatures made from paper cutouts were published in various papers, e.g. 'Laurel and Hardy’ for Smith’s Weekly 13 June 1939, Prime Minister Lyons for the Sunday Sun and Billy Hughes (illustrated in monograph, p.5). In June 1936 he created Humour 's first comic strip, Tootles (“a dizzy blonde”), followed in late 1938 by Shaver: A Dinkum Aussie , a strip used as the cover of the Sunnyside supplement to the Daily News .

In the late 1930s and early 1940s Lyon drew eight adventure strips for Frank Johnson publications (some listed Sheill 1998, p.120). In the early 1940s he produced Avian Tempest for Frank Douglas James. In 1945 he drew 'New Chum’ for the Syd Miller publication Monster Comic and in 1946 produced 'Tim O’Hara’ for the Daily Mirror . He created the detective comic 'The Astounding Mr Storm’ in 1954. From 1930 to 1957 he also did many covers for Western and Detective Story magazines, e.g. The Sheriff and County Jail (both which combined watercolours and oils). Lyon also painted traditional oils and watercolours, many being bush landscapes done on regular holidays in the Burragorang Valley, now flooded by the Warragamba Dam.

In November 1948 he began the adventure strip 'Black McDermitt’ in the Sydney Sun ( supplement ). Set in 1812 it 'demonstrated … that a historical subject such as the crossing of the Blue Mountains by Blaxland, Wentworth & Lawson, could be produced in an educational and entertaining manner, of interest to adults as well as children’ (Burgess, 12). Did lots of other adventure strips and magazines, children’s book illustrations, advertisements, fashion drawings, etc.

In 1957 Lyon agreed to assist Stan Cross drawing daily and weekly Wally and the Major strips (NB: there are two strips by Stan Cross and Carl Lyon, dated 1938 and c.1938 by PICMAN cataloguer (ML PXD 764), presumably misdated. Lyon solely drew the weekly strip in 1966-70 and when Cross retired in 1970 took over the daily one too, devoting himself entirely to Wally and the Major for the next ten years. Hundreds of his 1970s original strips were presented to the SLNSW by Fairfax Press c.1979 (ML Pic Acc 3088). In 1969 and 1973 his colleagues at the Sydney Savage Club presented him with the Cartoonist Award for Best Comic Strip. He retired from Wally and the Major in 1979 and died in 1982.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007