THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN SUNSHINE COMIC No.1, 1979 BY SUNSHINE WATCHES LTD, AUCKLAND, NZ

Description The 1st edition of a comic book titled 'The adventures of Captain Sunshine'. An environmental crusader, Captain Sunshine battles the forces of evil and saves whales from an oil slick. Published in New Zealand by Sunshine Watches Ltd. Story by Peter Farrell, Roy Middleton, Reuben Wilson and Colin Wilson. Art work by Colin Wilson. Lettering by Helen Cross. Colour by Joe Wylie and Jean-Luc Bozzoli.

Reprinted in 2013

"The Suntracker wrist watch was one part of a fiendishly clever enterprise aimed at getting children excited about super-heroic efforts to save the planet from the dastardly acts of human beings. It was the brainchild of Peter Farrell, an Auckland marketing man, who established Captain Sunshine Watches Ltd with Reuben Sandler, a pure mathematics professor at Victoria University; Roy Middleton, a former theatre director and PR person, and an unnamed Auckland businessman. With a strong creative direction and DFC funding they set out to take their products to world markets in 1979. A Captain Sunshine comic was drawn by Auckland freelance artist Colin Wilson, and 160,000 copies of the first comic - in which Captain Sunshine joins forces with a conservationist professor to save the breeding ground of the humpback whale from pollution - were printed in November 1979 and sold in New Zealand, Australia and the US. A dramatised version of the comic on cassette tape, T-shirts, energy food bars and a breakfast cereal may also have made it to production. Another wrist-worn device - a heliograph which used a movable mirror to flash sunlight signals - was designed. Artwork for the second issue of the comic was almost complete when a major Australian corporate pulled out of a promotional deal leaving the investors deeply in debt and the enterprise collapsed. Colin Wilson continued his comic career with 2000AD in Europe and later settled in Australia