[1] He came to Australia in 1919 and took a clerical position with a commercial house doing translations during the day and spending the evenings taking classes at the Julian Ashton Art School.
[1] Constrained by his limited command of English and unable to sell further drawings Mercier took a variety of jobs, including office boy, working on coastal ships, a spruiker at the Royal Easter Show, acting in stage melodramas.
Some of his regular targets included drunks and tramps, fads and fashions in dress or house design, horse-racing, golf, food prices and motoring, all of interest to 1950s Australians.
Other Mercier's whims were depicting buildings, footpaths on floors supported by bed-springs, eccentric three-wheeled automobiles, yaks, and portraits of 'Uncle Ezra' on the walls of rooms.
There was also a cast of frequently recurring secondary characters who starred in background gags of their own, including a bearded old gentleman (occasionally referred to as "Argylle"), who wore pince-nez glasses, a striped blazer and either a deerstalker hat or a straw boater – and who sometimes appeared carrying a euphonium, driving one of the above-mentioned three-wheeled cars, or, more often, on stilts; and a seedy old drunk in a battered brass fireman's helmet.
The Smith's Weekly art editor rejected the cartoon and gave Mercier an angry lecture about including 'smutty gimmicks' in his work.