Jason on Ginger at 100
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The Ginger Meggs comic strip will mark its one hundredth anniversary this week.
It was Aussie Jimmy Bancks who introduced the world to this mischevious scamp in November 1921 in a feature called Us Fellers, which he changed to Ginger Meggs about a month later. A series of creators followed Bancks’s untimely death in 1953: Ron Vivian from 1953 to 1973; Lloyd Piper from 1973 to 1983; and James Kemsley from 1984 to 2007.
Since then, Meggsie and his crew have been penned and illustrated by Jason Chatfield.
GoComics interviewed that last named cartoonist about the rare comic strip achievement.
What’s one thing people don’t know about Ginger?
A lot of people don’t know that he started out as Ginger Smith, and was a supporting character in a strip called Us Fellers. The strip starred a different character named Gladsome Gladys. Isn’t that wild? The creator, Jimmy Bancks, had written such a lovable character in Ginger that the readers gravitated to him. Eventually, it made sense to make him the main character, name the strip after him, and for some reason still not known to this day, change his name from Smith to Meggs.
Note that Jason is honoring the five Ginger Meggs cartoonists this week, leaving Saturday for ????
© Jason Chatfield; Ginger Meggs ™ Winslow Investments Pty Ltd
disclosure: GoComics and Daily Cartoonist both part of Team Andrews McMeel
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