The Australian cartoonists who will lose their gigs are Jason Chatfield (Ginger Meggs), Gary Clark (Swamp), Tony Lopes (Insanity Streak) and Allan Salisbury (Snake Tales).
100 year old Ginger Meggs strip which was started by Jim Bancks in 1921 will no longer be published.
Read about Jim Bancks story on Wikipedia below…
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bancks-james-charles-jim-5119
NOW BERT’S CONNECTION ? In 1929, Bert is Dean of the Cartoonist Club in California and hosts fellow Aussie Jim Bancks at the Breakfast Club at Long Beach where members of the Cartoonist Club have gathered.
See below Melbourne Herald article…
Bancks wrote a piece titled ‘Us Fellows in America’ describing the rather wild breakfast event of the Strip Cartoonists in California in the Home Magazine Vol. 10 on Sept 2 1929. It is quite a good read. Interesting it was about a week before the start of the Wall Street crash which eventually played out a month later.
Click on the link above to read Banck’s description of the breakfast. He was astonished that the MC made 400 well dressed people in the room do exercises en masse before breakfast was served. Bancks was obviously not an early riser and possibly a stranger to exercise!!
The current cartoonist and brains behind Ginger Meggs is Australian Jason Chatfield who is based in New York.
You can watch the Sunrise story (yes, I know) on the Murdoch decision which includes interviews with Chatfield and Cathy Wilcox who is President of the Australian Cartoonist Association. Click here
Good news is that Ginger Meggs will fight on…
Bert Levy 
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