Specialising in humorous stories, Emile Mercier was one of the most admired Australian cartoonists and a comic strip artist whose work was featured in many Australian newspapers and magazines such as Smith's Weekley, Melbourne Punch, Daily Telegraph, Truth, Daily Mirror and the Bulletin from the 1920s to the 1960s. Mercier studied art with Julian Ashton. He worked fulltime for the Truth from 1949 until his retirement in 1971. He was a member of the Black and White Artists' Society. Many of the originals of his cartoons are housed in the Frank Johnson papers at the Mitchell Library
Although listed in ACB as children's works, many of Merciers comics have adult appeal as the protagonists, for instance Mudrake the Magician, Tripalong Hoppity, Speed Umples-troop, were the satirical equivalents of the heroes of cinema serials and other strips, e.g. Mandrake, Hopalong Cassidy, Speed Gordon (Source: The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature. William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton, and Barry Andrews. Oxford University Press 1994).
