Ledger of Honour 2019 - Gerald Carr

The Ledger Awards were launched in 2005 to acknowledge excellence in Australian comic art and publishing. Named in honour of the expatriate Australian artist, Peter Ledger, the awards went into extended hiatus after 2007, but were subsequently relaunched in a new format in 2014. The Ledger Awards are not only an annual celebration of the best new Australian comics and graphic novels, but its special "Ledger of Honour" category acknowledges the historical contributions that great Australian cartoonists - both living and dead - have made to Australian comic books in decades past (Disclaimer: I have served as a member of the Ledger of Honour judging panel in 2016, 2017 and 2019).

I'm delighted to share the news that Gerald Carr was awarded the "Living Legend" for the 2019 Ledger of Honour award, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to Australian comics. Carr has enjoyed an wide and varied career dating back to the late 1960s, when he was a preeminent comic strip artist for the popular music magazine, Go-Set , and the satirical current affairs newspaper, Broadside . Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he was an enterprising comic book writer, illustrator and publisher, releasing such comic magazines as Vampire, Brainmaster & Vixen, Shock Raider and Fire Fang, spanning the horror, science-fiction and superhero genres and geared towards an older adult readership, at a time when Australian comics were deemed all but extinct.

I've written about Gerald Carr elsewhere on this blog, and I would encourage Australian comic fans to visit Gerald's own website, Vixen, dedicated to his curvaceous superheroine, which contains numerous samples of his published work, and you can also follow Gerald Carr on Twitter, where he shares his latest news and artwork.

Congratulations once again to Gerald Carr for receiving the "Living Legend"/Ledger of Honour for this year's Ledger Awards.