Arthur Richard Mather (22 November 1925 – 4 June 2017) was an Australian cartoonist, illustrator, and novelist. He was the creating artist (and later also the writer) of one of Australia's most successful comics series, ''

Captain Atom Captain Atom is a superhero appearing in American comic books, first in the 1960s by Charlton Comics before being acquired in the 1980s by DC Comics. Captain Atom has existed in three basic incarnations. Publication history Captain Atom was crea ...

''. From the late 1950s until 1975 he worked in advertising and in his later years became a novelist.

Life and career

Mather was born in Melbourne and educated at Collingwood Technical School. He began working as an apprentice at a newspaper printer in Melbourne when he was 15, but also began drawing sporting, political and gag cartoons for local newspapers and magazines. He briefly attended art classes at the

Melbourne Technical College RMIT University, officially the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology,, section 4(b) is a public research university in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1887 by Francis Ormond, RMIT began as a night school offering classes in art, scienc ...

night school but was largely self taught.Collins, Paul (1998)
"Mather, Arthur (Richard) (1925– )"
''The MUP Encyclopaedia of Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy''. p. 124. Melbourne University Press. Kerr, Joan (1996)
"Arthur Mather b. 1925"

Design & Art Australia Online Design & Art Australia Online (DAAO) is an online database of Australian artists. It is fully integrated with other related databases, using syndicated metadata, making it a dynamic resource. It began as a project begun in the 1970s at the U ...

. Retrieved 29 September 2016 In 1947 he was approached by

Jack Bellew Jack Weldon Bellew (1901 – 1957) was an Australian journalist and publisher. He was a former chief of staff of ''The Daily Telegraph'' and the Sydney ''Daily News'' and one of the three founders of Atlas Publications. Life and career Bellew w ...

, who had recently founded

Atlas Publications Atlas Publications was an Australian publishing company which operated from 1948 until 1958 and was based in Clifton Hill, a suburb of Melbourne. It published magazines and popular fiction, and the genre for which it was best known, adventure ...

, to create a comic book series for the fledgling company. The result was ''

'', one of Australia's first all-colour comics and one of its most enduring home-grown comic heroes. The first issue sold 100,000 copies with a total of a million copies sold in the first year of publication. Captain Atom had its own associated merchandise and a fan club with 75,000 members. Like

Yaroslav Horak Yaroslav Horak (12 June 1927 – 24 November 2020) was an Australian illustrator and comics artist, of ethnic Czech-Russian origin, best known for his work on the newspaper comic strip ''James Bond (comic strip), James Bond''. Biography Horak ...

and

Andrea Bresciani Andrea Bresciani (29 January 1923 – 7 February 2006) was an Italian-born comics artist, illustrator, and animator. Of Slovenian origin, he was born Dušan Brešan in Tolmino (at the time part of Italy) and emigrated to Australia in 1950. Amongs ...

, Mather became a regular artist for Atlas, later working on the company's ''Sergeant Pat of the Radio Patrol'' and ''Flynn of the FBI''. When the Australian comic book industry declined in the late 1950s, Mather went into advertising as an illustrator. He went on to become Art Director, and later Creative Director, for George Patterson Advertising. Mather published his first novel, ''The Pawn'' in 1975 and retired from advertising to devote himself full-time to writing. He published seven more novels over the next 15 years. Mainly set in America, they were predominantly thrillers and crime novels with elements of science fiction, particularly ''The Pawn'', ''The Mind Breaker'' (1980), and ''The Duplicate'' (1985).

AustLit AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource (also known as AustLit: Australian Literature Gateway; and AustLit: The Resource for Australian Literature), usually referred to simply as AustLit, is an internet-based, non-profit collaboration betwee ...

"Arthur Mather"
Retrieved 29 September 2016 (subscription required for full access).

References

External links

*Patrick, Kevin (2004)
"Arthur Mather: Man of the Atom"
(archived copy of a lengthy interview with Mather, originally published on ''Pulp Faction'') {{DEFAULTSORT:Mather, Arthur 1925 births 2017 deaths Australian comics artists Australian thriller writers Australian illustrators Writers from Melbourne