Kevin Patrick

Biography

Kevin Patrick is an Australian-born writer, publisher and academic, who has a lifelong interest in the history of Australian comic books.

His first academic monograph, "The Phantom Unmasked: America's First Superhero", was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2017. It examines the publishing history of "The Phantom" comic strip and comic books in Australia, Sweden and India, from the 1930s to the 2000s. The book is notable for including insights from nearly 600 Phantom "phans" in Australia, Sweden and India, sharing their firsthand accounts of how they came to read "The Phantom", and explaining the character's enduring popularity in their respective countries. The book is based on the author's doctoral thesis and research, completed at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia) in 2014.

He was appointed Guest Curator at the State Library of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia), where he staged the major exhibition, "Heroes and Villains: Australian Comics and their Creators", which was held over the southern summer of 2006-2007.

He acquired the publication rights to "The Panther", a jungle-adventure comic created by Paul Wheelahan, which was originally published in Australia during 1957-1963. He reprinted the first five issues of "The Panther" between 2001-2002, featuring new cover illustrations by Australian artists Greg Gates and Shane Foley.

He has written several articles about classic Australian comic books from the 1940s and 1950s, which have been published intermittently in Frew Publications' second series of the Giant Size Phantom comic book.

Since 2017, Kevin has taught media and communication studies, along with an elective course on comic books and American culture, at Fordham University (New York). He recorded an interview about his book, "The Phantom Unmasked", for Fordham News in 2018. He continues to write about the history of Australian comics on his blog, "Comics Down Under".