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From Folk to Super Hero examines Australian stock characters and archetypes by exploring the remarkable mythology surrounding one of Australia’s most famous individuals – Ned Kelly – through the analysis of his story and its impact on popular culture across the globe.

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Ned’s folklore emerged through bush ballads, whispered tales, and G.W. Hall’s The Book of Keli, published while the Kelly Gang was still at large. The story continued to grow long after his demise. In 1906, the world witnessed its first full-length film featuring Ned Kelly, which helped lay the foundations of modern pop culture and set the hero’s journey for the central character in motion. Through books, comics, movies, gaming, theatre, art, and merchandise, the idea of Ned has expanded beyond the original narrative, taking on an almost superhero essence. His influence is evident in British weeklies from the mid-1930s, American detective comics in the early 1940s, and Western comics from the late 1940s, inspiring successive armoured heroes and villains across various pop-culture genres. Indeed, Dr. Doom and Iron Man would be quite different iterations had the Kelly legacy not existed

BOOKS

COMICS

GAMING

ART

COLLECTABLES

ROLEPLAY

MUSIC

VIDEO

If my lips teach the public that men are made mad by bad treatment, and if the police are taught that they may not exasperate to madness men they persecute and ill-treat, my life will not entirely be thrown away.

Ned Kelly