Paul Wheelahan

Paul Wheelahan (6 November 1930 – 28 December 2018) was an Australian comic book writer, artist and illustrator, best known for his creations, The Panther and The Raven.

Biography Paul Wheelahan was born in Bombala, New South Wales in 1930, the son of a mounted policeman. He grew up in Dalton, New South Wales, during the Great Depression, whose work, Silver Starr he had long admired. Quote|...when the Sunday Sun and Guardian's Sunbeams comic supplement published episode one of Stanley Pitt's Silver Starr, I freaked. In the hour I first held that comic in my hands, I knew I would be a comic artist and assured everyone of this fact on that same day – including my parents, who were massively unimpressed.|Paul Wheelahan which was first published in December 1955 running for two years which commenced in May 1957 and ran for 73 issues until June 1963. The Panther, capitalised on the huge popularity of The Phantom but was based on Tarzan comics by Burne Hogarth. Quote|The Panther idea was simply to create a man who looked like a panther and justify his strange lifestyle. I wanted him to be a slinky, stealthy man of the night, and the jungle setting was perfect for this kind of character.|Paul Wheelahan which ran for ten issues commencing in July 1962. The Raven featured, Lord Ashley, the Seventh Earl of Ravenscourt, who lives in a ruined castle, Ravenscourt Manor, in England, a man wrongly accused of committing a crime, who dedicates himself to avenging injustice. Wheelahan also introduced an evil brother Sebastian and was developing a storyline based on a Cain versus Abel theme.

By the early 1960s, however, Wheelahan's comics were amongst the last original Australian titles being published. Local reprints of American comic books had swamped the market throughout the 1950s. The situation was made worse by the introduction of television in Australia in 1956, followed by the resumption of imports of original, full-colour American comic books. These combined events forced most Australian comic book publishers out of business by the late 1950s. In 1963 the company folded following the death of its founder Charles Young.

In 1996 Wheelahan wrote his last story for Cleveland Publishing, briefly becoming involved in television screenwriting. He created and wrote the children's TV series Runaway Island, about two orphans living in Sydney during the 1830s, which screened on the Seven Network in 1982.