Virgil Reilly, was an Australian cartoonist, comic book artist and illustrator. In a long and varied career, he was one of Australia's most famous newspaper and magazine artists and a prolific comic-book illustrator. He was known as 'Virgil', the name he signed on his work. While working for Smith's Weekly during the inter-war years he became well-known for his cartoons of glamorous and seductive young women that became known as 'Virgil's girls'. During World War II he continued to draw cartoons featuring sensual and assertive young women for the Sunday Telegraph and contributed cover art, patriotic cartoons and paintings for the Australian Women's Weekly. In the late-1940s and 1950s Reilly was a prolific and successful comic-book artist, known for his fictional creations such as 'Silver Flash' and the 'Rocket Squadron', as well as his depictions of actual naval battles.
Virgil Reilly, photograph published in the Truth newspaper (Sydney), 2 November 1941.
Reilly's patriotic cartoon for the Alexandra Club's 1915 'Christmas billies' campaign.
Clerk: Will you have a free night to-night? Typiste: I suppose so; the boss usually pays for me. (from Smith's Weekly, 19 June 1926).
'Very Nice Two', cartoon by Virgil Reilly, Smith's Weekly, 2 January 1926.
Kenneth Adolphe Slessor was an Australian poet, journalist and official war correspondent in World War II. He was one of Australia's leading poets, notable particularly for the absorption of modernist influences into Australian poetry. The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry is named after him.
Plaque, Sydney Writers Walk