Wanna join the club?

There's a whole bunch of brilliant comic book activity swirling around Melbourne in one form or another at present, and one of my faves is this one: The Second Wednesday Comic Book Club, or more to the point Comic Book Club, or even more to the point, Comic Club.

The idea of a club has always got me going - a space where you get together with a bunch of other people and in that space you can focus on and discuss some topic which is important to the assembled group.  You agree to take whatever-it-is seriously for that period of time and delve into it, to the exclusion of the outside world.  I love that. Probably university was at its best for me when it was like that - tutorial discussions in a teacher's room.  It's probably why Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History' is such an important book for me, too.

C'mon, Bernard: what about Comic Club?

Well, it's held at City Library every fortnight and every second Wednesday we get together and discuss a particular book comic (as John Retallick describes 'graphic novels').  Week 1 was the Tintin adventure, 'The Secret of the Unicorn' by Herge, Week 2 'Scott Pilgrim' by Bryan Lee O'Malley, Week 3 'Maus' by Art Spiegelman and this week's book (Wednesday 14 September) is 'The Arrival' by Shaun Tan.  The pictures in this post were taken of the Scott Pilgrim week by Gregarious Gary Lee (thanks, Gary!) from the City of Melbourne, who, with Laffin' Luke Scully from City Library wrangled me into running the club.  (Not that I needed a lot of wrangling, you understand...)

(thanks for lending me your Scott Pilgrim box set, Pat Grant - I'm taking care of them, I promise!)

If you'd like to be part of the club (a club? for comics? are you kidding? where do I sign?) and you're over 15 and a student, then tootle on down to the Comic Club page here and sign up.  Then read the comic book in question and come along ready to talk and listen and laugh quite a bit.  It's free, it goes from 6 - 7.30pm, and did I say it's every second Wednesday?

We'll be talking 'Akira' Book 1 by Katsuhiro Otomo on Wednesday September 28, and 'Fun Home' by Alison Bechdel on Wednesday October 12.

And hey, Sumisha Naidu interviewed me about the club in meld magazine.

And here we are, comic clubbing. In a world of our own.  Brilliant.

Talking Comics and Filthy Lucre!

Hey there my comic book reading friends! As you know, every second person out there in the 'words-only' book world belongs to a book club, whereby a bunch of people all agree to read the same book and then get together to discuss that book and eat cheese.  I agree, it's about time us comic book readers did the same thing, and this Wednesday, thanks to the City of Melbourne and the City Library in Melbourne, we're going to do exactly that! Less cheese though, probably.  Sorry, lactose-lovers.

So, if you're over 15 and a student and a reader of comics, hie ye hither here, where you'll find the book list and the dates, and if you'd like to come to one or all of the nights, email Gary Lee and let him know you're interested.  Do come, I'd love to see you there.   We're beginning with Tintin, of course - 'The Secret of the Unicorn', but we will travel all over the world in the first 6 fortnightly meetings of 'The Second Wednesday Comic Book Club'.  Oh yes we will.

And the above is not the only remarkable comics-related thing coming out of City Library.  There is also, in the upcoming Lord Mayor's Creative Writing Awards 2011, a category for 'graphic short story'. You need to enter a 4 - 8 page comics story by the end of August 2011 which will put you in the running for a $1000 prize.  That's right.  A grand.  If you won with a 4 page story, that makes a $250 per page rate, which ain't bad.  And if you win the overall prize for best piece of writing across all categories for a 5 page story, that would be a $1000 per page rate, which is even less bad.

Draw!  Write!  Enter!