The heroe with a thousand faces

[Flex Mentallo]

Part Superman, part Doc Savage, part Flash Gordon, part Adam Strange (though he of cxourse, had yet to be invented) Garth, man of mystery first appeared in a british paper, The Daily Mirror, Saturday 24th July, 1943.

 

He was still going strong in the 1960's when I discovered him as a child, and I was enraptured.

 

What made Garth unique was that he died many times over, only to be inexplicably reincarnated in a succession of different times and locations, giving the storytellers license to place him in settings as diverse as the Mexico of the Aztecs, the Wild West, Victorian London - and outer space.

 

The stories were generally better than the art, until the 1970s, when the great Frank Bellamy took over. His stunning black and white artwork brought out the exoticism of the tightly spun tales.

 

I was amazed years later to learn that his stories had been reprinted as far afield as Italy, New Zealand, Australia, France - and even the The Menomonee Falls Gazette. (And he is apparently very popular in India). Apart from the Bellamy strips, relatively few of Garth's adventures were ever published in the UK.

 

Here are a couple of links:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_%28comic_strip%29

 

http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/g/garth.htm

 

 

So, begging your indulgence -and since as another boardie has pointed out it is Australia day, I will contentedly post the covers to the Australian series - all 24 issues, which reprint the earliest adventures.

 

They are incredibly scarce - this set was part of Steve Geppi's collection until I snaffled them on ebay after years of fruitless searching.

 

And then I will post a few Bellamy samples. But first, an example of the early stories:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[TheWatcher]

I thought this was going to be about The Avenger. Never heard of Garth before this. Interesting backstory on the character

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..cant resist making a direct comparison with Doc Savage:

 

 

 

 

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..and finally, the great Frank Bellamy, most of which I'm delighted to say, was reprinted by Titan in the 1980s:

 

 

 

 

[adamstrange]

Very interesting post. I had not heard of Garth before (no surprise as I'm very sketchy in my knowledge of international comics other than some of the biggies). Thanks for sharing the scans of the Bellamy artwork. It's no surprise to me that it's so good as I love everything I've seen of his.

[AJD]

Thanks for posting this Michael. I remember reading Garth every day in the Melbourne Herald in the 1968-83 period. It was my second strip to read. (Peanuts was always #1 for me.)

 

Feel free to cross post one or more of those Garth comics in the Australian comics thread I started - it would be nice to have them consolidated.