Stan Pitt
| Stanley Pitt | |
|---|---|
| Born | Stanley John Joseph Pitt 2 March 1925 Rozelle, New South Wales, Australia |
| Died | 2 April 2002 (aged 77) New South Wales, Australia |
| Pen name | Stan Pitt Safone Jais |
| Occupation | Cartoonist, Illustrator |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Period | 1942–1972 |
| Genre | Adventure, crime, science fiction, pulp fiction |
Stanley John Joseph Pitt (2 March 1925 – 2 April 2002) was an Australian cartoonist and commercial artist. Pitt was the first Australian comic artist to have original work published by a major American comic book company. He often collaborated with his brother, Reginald Pitt.
Stanley Pitt was born in Rozelle, New South Wales (an inner western suburb of Sydney), on 2 March 1925, the son of plasterer George William Pitt and his wife Ethel. Pitt enjoyed drawing as a schoolboy and got into trouble for spending more time drawing than on his schoolwork. In 1942, whilst working as a milkman he had his first professional work, Anthony Fury, published by Australian Consolidated Press. Pitt was heavily influenced by the classic style of Alex Raymond's artwork the creator of Flash Gordon, particularly his method of switching from a pen to a brush. The following year he began illustrating comics, written by Frank Ashley, for Frank Johnson Publications. These included Larry Flynn, Detective. Pitt had no art training and no opportunity to associate with other Johnson artists, like Unk White, Carl Lyon and Jim Russell.
In 1945 he produced comic strip advertisements for Colgate Palmolive, which led to Associated Newspapers placing him under contract to develop a new science fiction strip,Silver Starr (or Silver Starr in the Flameworld). Silver Starr debuted in the Sydney newspapers The Guardian and Sunday Sun on 24 November 1946. The strips ran until November 1948, where following a dispute regarding the print size of the strip Pitt left the paper.Silver Starr was a Flash Gordon-style comic strip centred on an Australian soldier, Silver, who on his return from the Second World War, joins an expedition, with his companions, Dr. Onro and Dyson, to the Earth's interior aboard a rocket-style ship. Together, they discover the incredible "Flame World" and its ruler, Queen Pristine (Pitt's compliment to Raymond's Dale Arden), rescuing her from the evil despot, Tarka (another acknowledgement to Raymond's character Ming the Merciless). John Ryan, in his Australian comic anthology Panel by Panel, describes the strip as having story lines of average standard for this type of comic with the real attraction being the artwork.
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