Talented artist and author Peter Burleigh is shown above on Magnetic Island coming up for oxygen after reflecting on his fabulous contributions to the wild , short-lived l969 Australian national magazine , Broadside, a bound in copy from the Little Darwin collection before him .
Edited by Pete Steedman ,who had edited two Melbourne university student newspapers, Lot's Wife and Farrago, Broadside, said to have been produced in an office the size of a broom cupboard, opposed the Vietnam War and was published by the Melbourne Age.
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The very first issue introduced Fabula - the newest, wildest , most offbeat comic strip yet- by Gerald Carr, about the adventures of a curvey , whip- cracking private secretary to the Prime Minister in a great Southland continent , wink , wink,nudge, nudge .
Seemed to be Australia , Canberra in particular, although Fabula threatened the American president with a whipping. Come back Fabula , you are needed in the White House right now .
From Steeedman's personal file came another version of Fabula, below, inspired by Barbarella in Jean Claude Forest's French comics , Jane Fonda playing her in a film version, which upset the Catholic Church.
Peter Burleigh's contributions to Broadside were many, some full page, covered a wide range of topics from Scientology to politics, Disney characters , censorship and an hilarious send up of warnings about the danger of fluoride in drinking water
The latter featured a before and after series of a muscular bloke wth rotten teeth, apparently popular with women , who killed cattle at the abbatoirs by smiling at them. After fluoride applications, he becomes a weedy guy, knee deep in toothpaste, with dazzling white teeth, who could kiss anything at the meatworks.
It is not known if the fluoride user inspired graffiti in which Basil Sweetlips is mentioned.
An example of Burleigh's highly detailed work , below, showed a man asleep in the Darwin Early Warning Station during an invasion.
Another cartoon , below, covered Burleigh's departure for England , with a reference from the Victorian hanging Premier, Sir Henry Bolte , intent on telling the truth about Oz , with a special gift pack for Prince Charles.
Broadside also ran cartoons from two well known Americans , Jules Ralph Feiffer, described as the widest read satirist in the country , and ascerbic Ron Cobb .
Australia's own Michael Leunig provided several brilliant double page spreads .There were regular columns from both sides of politics .
The last issue of Broadside, signed by Pete Steedman, is run below. It seems some of the political content and a drawing-not one of Burleigh's- upset the publishers and some members of the Melbourne Club, and it got the chop. Steedman headed to London and met up with Burleigh .one of their misadventures an overland trip to Morocco , mentiond recently in this blog.
(Broadside. Burleigh. Cartoonists.)
