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Frew Publications is an Australian comic book publisher, known for its long-running reprint series of Lee Falk's ''The Phantom''. Frew formerly published other comics, including Falk's earlier creation ''Mandrake the Magician''. ==History== Frew Publications was founded in 1948 by Ron Forsyth, Lawford 'Jim' Richardson, Jack Eisen, and Peter Watson, with each contributing 500 Australian pounds to establish the publisher. The name "Frew" is an acronym made from the surnames of the four founders, Forsyth, Richardson, Eisen, and Watson. Eisen and Watson withdrew from the company before the first publication was issued. Forsyth and Richardson approached Yaffa Syndicate the Australian representative of King Features Syndicate about producing an Australian comic book issue of ''The Phantom''. The agreement was conditional that Frew could not print any stories that was currently running in other publications, nor any story soon after it had appeared in the ''Australian Woman's Mirror''. The first edition of ''The Phantom'', "The Slave Traders", published by Frew debuted on 9 September 1948. The first two issues were not numbered and printed in a landscape format, with the staples were on the short edge of the cover. The third issue, "Mr Hog", was the first to be numbered and reverted to the traditional portrait format. Between 1949 to 1958 Frew also published comics including ''Popeye'', ''The Phantom Ranger'', ''The Shadow'' (an Australian creation not to be confused with the American version of ''The Shadow''), ''Sir Falcon'', ''Catman'' and ''Super Yank Comics'', peaking to a total of thirty titles in the mid 1950s. In the early 1960s due to the influx of imported American titles Frew reduced their publications to a single title, ''The Phantom''. In November 1978 Frew published its first Swedish Phantom adventure entitled "The Ghost" (Issue #730), although it was not until January 1983 that another Swedish story appeared, "The Tiger from Rangoon" (Issue #763). In 1987 Forsyth and Richardson engaged Jim Shepherd as a consultant, the following year he was employed as its managing director. Shepherd and Forsyth's son, Peter subsequently bought all the shares in the company. In 1995 Shepherd purchased Forsyth's shareholdings, becoming the sole owner of Frew Publications. In 1990 Frew published the first ever Australian created Phantom adventure, "Rumble in the Jungle" (Issue #951A), with art by Keith Chatto and the story by Jim Shepherd. Chatto and Shepherd produced another two Phantom stories "Return of the Singh Brotherhood" (Issue #962) and "The Kings Cross Connection" (Issue #1000). Shepherd also wrote another story "The Search for Byron", published March 1996 (Issue #1131), which was illustrated by Glenn Ford. On the 15 April 2013 Shepherd died of a heart attack at his Sydney home, at age eighty. He is survived by his wife Judith, who is also the senior editor at Frew Publications and son, Stephen. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Frew Publications」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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