The Devil and Jim Doone

Decades before James Bond blasted on to the big screen, Australians got the chance to revel in the jet-set lifestyle with our very own 'international man of mystery' - 'Devil' Jim Doone.

With his jet-black hair and pencil-thin moustache, Devil Doone looked like a cross between Clark Gable and Errol Flynn. You knew, just by looking at him, that he could handle a machine-gun, race a sports car and mix a martini with equal aplomb. The fact that he was red-blooded ladies man went without saying.

Unlike many of his comic book contemporaries, Devil Doone was always meant for grown-ups. He first appeared in the pages of Man Junior in 1945. Man Junior was the pocket-sized kid brother of publisher K.G. Murray's enormously popular Man Magazine. Filled with tough stories, sexy cartoons and 'exotic' photos of pretty girls, Man Junior was Down Under's answer to American men's magazines like Esquire and Playboy.

Devil Doone was the creation of the Brisbane radio copywriter and novelist, Ron Carson Gold. Little is known about 'R. Carson Gold', as he was often credited in print. Aside from writing the Devil Doone comic strip, his known published works include several Western novels for Frank Johnson Publications' Sure Fire Westerns series, published in the late 1940s. He also contributed to GP Detective Stories, a crime fiction magazine produced by the Gayle Publishing Co., Sydney, sometime in the 1940s or 1950s.

Aside from his lengthy involvement in chronicling the adventures of Devil Doone, Gold's most prominent legacy is The R. Carson Gold Short Story Competition, which is still held annually by The Fellowship of Australian Writers (QLD) Inc., offering $1,000 in prize money for the best short story.

The Devil Doone comic strip was originally illustrated by June Mendoza, who simply signed her work 'Mendoza'. Born to musician parents, June Mendoza was, by her late teens, producing magazine illustrations, book jacket designs and record sleeves. She illustrated the Devil Doone comic for less than a year, before achieving greater recognition abroad as an acclaimed portrait painter.

Carl Lyon also drew a few episodes of Devil Doone for Man Junior during 1945-46. A regular adventure strip artist for Frank Johnson Publications' comic book line during the 1940s, Lyon remained actively involved in Australian comics throughout the 1950s, before joining Stan Cross as an art assistant on the Wally and the Major comic strip, which Lyon eventually took over in 1970.

The August 1946 issue of Man Junior saw the debut of the artist most identified with Devil Doone - Hart Amos.

Returning from military service in New Guinea, Hart Amos quickly found himself a berth in the K.G. Murray magazine empire, producing comic books for Murray's postwar 'Blue Star' and 'Climax Comics' lines, as well as back-up strips like Hurricane Hardy for Murray's reprint editions of Superman.

From the outset, Amos displayed a confident art style that grew more assured with each new Devil Doone story. Each self-contained adventure ran anywhere between 4-10 pages during the strip's life, which no doubt forced Amos to become an effective and economical storyteller.

The premise of Devil Doone, the urbane man of action, gave Amos scope to take the character anywhere in the world, accompanied by his giant, bald offsider, 'Desert Head'. Fight Communist guerillas in Southeast Asia? No problem! Go 10 rounds with a world champion boxer? Of course! Hurl a racing car around the track at Monte Carlo? Give him the keys!

Recognising the character's popularity, K.G. Murray launched a spin-off comic book, The Adventures of Devil Doone, in 1949. The first issue featured a cover by June Mendoza, but subsequent issues sported covers and interior artwork by Amos, who was now firmly established as the series' resident illustrator.

Devil Doone's magazine serialisation posed some unusual problems for K.G. Murray. The series' early episodes ran anywhere between 8-10 pages, so the publisher waited until there were sufficient episodes available to fill a standard comic book.

Early issues of the comic book were published in the landscape format, which was the de facto standard for many Australian comics in the late 1940s. However, when Devil Doone was published in the traditional portrait format, K.G. Murray would sometimes print the title page for each story in full-page size, but reprint the remaining pages two to a page - sideways! This method allowed Murray to squeeze what should have been a 40-page comic book into a 28-page comic book!

Reading Devil Doone is a fascinating history lesson in its own right, charting as it does Australia's shifting political and social attitudes during the 1950s and 1960s. It managed to touch on such diverse themes as the growing beatnik/hippy counterculture, Australia's escalating involvement in the Vietnam War and increased sexual permissiveness - with plenty of two-fisted action and scantily clad ladies thrown in for good measure!

The Adventures of Devil Doone comic book underwent a few format changes during its comparatively long life. For much of the 1950s, it was a 28-page comic book, but issues 39-41 were published as 100-page 'Giant' comics. This was in keeping with K.G. Murray's other giant-size reprint titles of the late 1950s and early 1960s, such as Five-Score, Century and Hundred Comic. By the early 1970s, however, the Devil Doone comic was being published in 52-page editions.

Aside from illustrating Devil Doone, Hart Amos was a prolific artist on both Man and Man Junior magazines. He also did numerous covers for Murray's line of DC Comics reprint titles, including Colossal, Gigantic and Mammoth Comics. This arguably made Amos the first Australian artist to illustrate the likes of Superman and Batman!

After working on Devil Doone for nearly a quarter of a century, Amos had had enough. Writing in Cartoonists in Australia (View Productions, 1983), Amos recalled: "During all this time...I had not taken a holiday and was slipping into the trap of work overload. And one morning the trap snapped shut...I hit a psychological block and found I couldn't draw a damn thing! Frightened stiff, I had to quit Murray magazines and ease off from the pressure of publishing deadlines."

Amos left Devil Doone in mid-1969, after which the strip was handled by a succession of illustrators. These included the Spanish artist Josep Gual (who would illustrate the European edition of the James Bond comic book published by Semic during the early 1980s) and Melbourne's Gerald Carr, who became best known for his self-published horror comic, Vampire!, between 1975-1979.

"I did three episodes, but only two were published," says Gerald. "Man Junior folded before the third one was published."

The last issue of The Adventures of Devil Doone (No.47) was published in 1971 and showed just how much the series, and perhaps its audience, had changed. Reprinting both of Carr's Devil Doone stories, along with episodes by Josep Gual, the comic had become even racier.

Despite the presence of a regular love in interest, in the shape of the buxom blonde Morna, Devil was to be found in more near-naked clinches with exotic ladies than ever before. Yet it wasn't enough to save Devil Doone in the end.

"The Murrays were trying to breathe new life into Devil Doone," says Gerald Carr. "It's just an opinion, but I think they were influenced by the popularity of James Bond," he says, "but Devil Doone - a comic I was fond of - belonged to the days of Errol Flynn and Clark Gable."

This column is partly based on material previously written for ModernTales.com and was previusly published in the June 2004 edition of Collectormania magazine (Australia). Cover image courtesy of Australian DC Super-Hero Reprint Gallery