May Gibbs was Australia’s first female cartoonist
Children’s comic strips became popular in Australia from the 1920s, with the invention of Ginger Meggs and Fatty Finn. Ginger Meggs was created in 1921 by Jimmy Bancks for the Sunday Sun. Fatty Finn first appeared in 1923, produced by Syd Nicholls for rival paper the Sunday News. Both were a huge success.
May Gibbs was an unlikely candidate to come onto the comic scene in 1924, aged in her 40s and already known as a children’s author and illustrator of Gumnut Babies. May’s humorous style had been influenced by her father Herbert William Gibbs, who produced satirical cartoons of Perth’s social and political scene for the Western Australian Bulletin.
May began drawing comical sketches of her family at an early age. She had her first cartoon, ‘Little Folks,’ published in the same bulletin in 1889 at the age of 12, after winning a competition.
She was first commissioned as a cartoonist in 1902 for the Perth-based women’s movement magazine The Social Kodak, under the pseudonym ‘Blob.’ She went on to contribute sporting cartoons and topical sketches for the Western Mail newspaper.
May became particularly aligned with the women’s franchise campaign while studying art in England, illustrating for the suffragette journal The Common Cause in 1911. Despite embodying the educated, independent ‘New Woman’ of the early 20th century, May did not consider herself a feminist, saying later, ‘I never thought of myself other than as an individual and I was never anti-man.’
Nonetheless, May knew she was entering a man’s world when she approached Sunday News editor Errol Knox with her gumnut baby comic strip. Knox sought a second opinion from his senior artist Syd Nicholls. Nicholls’ assessment was that ‘the gumnuts were quite unique… They were not fairies, they were not caricatures, but reflected everyone we know…. [May’s] work had all the essentials of fine workmanship… with the simplicity of a talented cartoonist.’ (Maureen Walsh, May Gibbs: Mother of the Gumnuts, Angus & Robertson, 1985). So, Gibbs was commissioned at five pounds per strip to supply a half page cartoon each week. Bib and Bub first appeared in colour in the Sunday News on 3 August 1924.
Bib and Bob sculptures by Peter Kingston
The comic strips featured Gibbs’ familiar gumnut baby characters, adapted to impart life lessons to her young audience. Bib and Bub was later syndicated to newspapers across Australia and New Zealand. In 1926, Perth’s Daily News announced that it had secured the sole Western Australian rights to Bib and Bub, praising May for striking a ‘distinctive note, all Australian, and quite free of the vulgarity which marks so many of the allegedly comic strips which are supposed to amuse the younger generation’ (The Daily News, 4 March 1926).
Following the success of Bib and Bub, May Gibbs began to produce a series of short stories for the Sunday News children’s supplement, ‘Gumnut Gossip – Extracts from the Daily Bark,’ published from 1925 until 1935. May also presented a new cartoon idea to Errol Knox – Tiggy Touchwood, a magical pipe-smoking pig. When Knox refused another strip for the Sunday News, May offered her creation to his competitor, the Sunday Sun. Under pressure to keep the May Gibbs ‘brand’ as a Sunday News commodity, Tiggy Touchwood was published under the pseudonym Stan Cottman, from 1925 to 1931. May Gibbs therefore became the only artist to have a weekly cartoon strip in rival newspapers.
The popularity of the newspaper strips convinced May’s book publisher, Angus & Robertson, to produce the cartoon volume Bib and Bub Their Adventures: in Two Parts in 1925. A series of books based on these characters followed in the late 1920s.
Bib and Bub remained in publication until 1967, when its creator was 90 years old, making it one of Australia’s longest- running cartoon strips by a single artist.
Visit Stanton Library in North Sydney and May Gibbs’ Nutcote in Neutral Bay to see original Bib and Bub comic strips and related works on display, to celebrate the centenary of Bib and Bub and to recognise Australia’s first female cartoonist.
Historical Services, North Sydney Council.