Ayers & James by James Zee
New and classic offerings
As the Australian comics market expanded after the Second World War, Ayers & James diversified its comics range, introducing a new high-profile US reprint series and some Australian series.
In 1947, Ayers & James commenced its long-running Classics Illustrated series, although the initial 20 issues were titled Classic Comics like its US counterpart. Australia was just the second foreign market (after Canada) to publish its own editions.11See also Kevin Patrick's Classics Illustrated - The Australian Way!....
From the start, Ayers and James made changes to the originals, printing stories in a different order, creating new cover illustrations and reworking the original American covers. Late 1940s issues were printed in 'landscape' mode, a common paper saving practice at the time that provided two original US pages to a single page.
This period also saw a number of new Ayers & James series featuring Australian artists:
Reprints of George Roots' daily newspaper strip, Wilbur (c1947-50).
J. Robey and Roy Beckhouse's Dick Barton Special Agent Comic (c1952-1953).
George Roots' Co-Ed (c1953).
Ayers & James also produced Ken Shannon Private Eye (c1951-52), based on the US Quality Comics character and series. Presumably, these stories were sourced along with the Doll Man and Kid Eternity reprints in its 'Yank' comics.
The Australian Classics Illustrated continued until issue 72 in June 1953. Later, Ayers & James imported UK editions (published by Thorpe & Porter's Strato) into Australia. At least some of these imports had covers specifically published for Australian distribution, including Ayers & James advertising for back issues.22Based on the US printings of cover paintings on early import issues, Ayers & James most likely began distributing the... The Strato World Illustrated comics were also distributed in Australia in the same way.33The UK editions (Strato/Thorpe & Porter (Sales) Ltd) ran from at least issue 501 to 534. Australian variants, imported by...
Other than its continued involvement with Classics Illustrated, the Ayers & James name disappeared from comics. The company continued to operate and resumed publishing reprint and original books (but not comics) in the late 1970s and 1980s.44The Ayers & James name was used for a range of reprint cook books from 1977, "Everyone's Cookery Series" (all...
While it is possible the company left the comics industry, it would be a strange move as the market was expanding, even though comic censorship was emerging.55Kevin Patrick has suggested some publishers may have switched business names to evade further problems when a title was banned... One option is that, as comics became increasingly accused of juvenile delinquency and moral corruption, Ayers & James deliberately separated its broader comics publishing from the successful Classics Illustrated brand.
Various historical clues point to the company continuing comic production through a range of subsidiaries or successors—even dramatically expanding its output and securing a dominant position in the comics market.