The White Suit

There's me and Dur-e Dara, her regaling the crowd at the Tango8 launch with great words about the vital importance of love, and of food, and of comics in Australia, preparatory to an improvised beer-glass-and-spoon percussion piece which would officially launch the book into the world.

And there it is, the face that launched 1000 comics.  And the suit that he did it in.

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Thanks to Arts Victoria for the funding.  Thanks to Anita Bacic for the cover.  Thanks to Jen Jewel Brown for the publicity.  And thanks to Justin Caleo for the book design.

And most of all, thanks to the 70 contributors for entrusting their work to Cardigan Comics.

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It really IS a great book.  But don't take my word for it.  Buy a copy and read it for yourself.

'Tango8: Love and Food' - Launched!

Well well well: last night, Wednesday 17 December 2008, in a packed bar upon Lygon Street in East Brunswick ('Mr Wilkinson', 295 Brunswick Street to be precise), we launched the most recent issue of the Giant Australian Romance Comics Anthology.

Tango8: Love and Food

A goodly bunch of the 70 contributors were there, and as usual at a launch I met quite a few of them face to face for the first time (Simon Barnard, Brendan Halyday, Richard Butler, fine comic book makers all).  Much champagne was drunk, a bit of speechifying was done (thank you to Dur-e Dara, who officially launched the book) and a sense of joy and celebration filled the bar, as did we.

So now the book is out, and well and truly launched: you can grab a copy from our Melbourne stockists, listed on our website, or indeed direct from the site.

Thank you particularly to the following people, who I didn't credit in my speech as I should've: Adrienne Leith and John Retallick, super vendors of 144 copies of Tango8; Mary Anne and Salvatore Caleo for my new white suit (pictures to follow), and most of all, with great love, to Susan Bamford Caleo for making the making of the book possible in so many little and large ways.

And there we go!

There's the wonderful Jo Waite, curator of the exhibition 'Ugly, Drunk and Stupid' that she, and I, and Matt, and Susan, and Rose, and Joseph, and Georgia, and Zebedee, took down yesterday at the Town Hall Gallery at the Hawthorn Town Hall.  And next to her is Mr Smiley, who Jo drew and was our exhibition mascot.

Mardi Nowak, who's the curator of the space and a great booster for local zine and comics culture, took a whole bunch of photos of the exhibition, and of the 'Ugly Draw-Off' comics jam that we held on Saturday arvo after I gave a talk about the Ugly Tradition in comics art, focussing on Basil Wolverton, Ralph Steadman and Peter Bagge: a great discussion, much drawing, and, yes, sherry drinking ensued.

Thanks Mardi!  See you at next year's Fringe comics exhibition, eh?

Ugly, Drunk and Stupid? Us too!

Hey!  Who's that arriving this evening at the launch of the exhibition 'Ugly, Drunk and Stupid', part of the 2008 Melbourne Fringe Festival?

Why, it's none other than Jo Waite, the actual curator of the exhibition, photographed by Bernard Caleo, the virtual curator.

(Not an hour later, a real ugly, drunk and/or stupid person will sway up to the gallery, smash into one of the windows and then weave away into the night...)

The exhibition features grotesque portraits and comic strips by Melbourne comic book makers: Andrew Weldon, Jo Waite, Michael P Fikaris, David Blumenstein, Kirrily Schell, Neale Blanden, Mandy Ord, Tim Molloy, Bernard Caleo, Sarah Howell and Tolley.

It's on at the Town Hall Gallery at the Hawthorn Town Hall and runs until Sunday 5 October.  On Saturday 4 October there will be a talk at 2pm about the 'ugly' tradition in comic book art and then from 3pm there will be an 'ugly draw-off', a comic jam at which you can draw an ugly mug onto a beer coaster.

Just as you've always wanted to.

Radio Days!

Last night on 'The Comic Spot' (last Thursday of every month, 3CR, 855 on your Melbourne AM dial or streamed), John Retallick (proud skipper of the good ship Comic Spot) and I (inept bosun) spoke for a good half hour with one of our comic book heroes, Eddie Campbell.

Eddie is a Scot who has lived in Brisbane for about 15 years and who, over the past 25 years, has had a most remarkable career in the comic book field. He was part of the very vibrant British 'Small Press' scene in the 1980s, illustrated the big Jack the Ripper book 'From Hell', written by Alan Moore in the 1990s, has run his own publishing company out of the front room of his Brisbane house - it was called, unsurprisingly, 'Eddie Campbell Comics' - and over the past three years he has had 3 books published through First Second Books, the comic book imprint of Macmillan.  The most recent of these is 'The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard', written with Dan Best and illustrated in Eddie's 'fully painted comics' style.  (He likened this to working with an full orchestra after having been part of a quartet (that is, working in black ink) for many years).

We also talked about the upcoming release of 'The Life Size Alec Omnibus', a 640 page book coming out from Top Shelf next year which will collect Eddie's autobiographical comics (his fictional self in the stories is 'Alec MacGarry'), for which he is justly renowned.

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This morning Jo Waite (sometime first mate on The Comic Spot) and I were in at the ABC studios on Southbank to talk with the JJJ Breakfast people (Robbie, Marieke and the Doctor) about making comics, 'One-Sock the Lovesick Devil' (mini-comic by by Jo Waite), 'Tango' (romance comics anthology edited by me) and most pressingly, 'Ugly, Drunk and Stupid', the comic book exhibition that Jo is curating for this year's Melbourne Fringe Festival.

Perversely perhaps, radio is a good medium for discussing comics I reckon.  Somehow you can convey the excitement of reading and making comics by handing the books around in the studio, and referring to them as you speak about 'em.  Also, there's something about comics, when you read them, capturing a maker's 'voice', which radio complements beautifully by allowing you to hear their actual voice.

I think.

"By the shroud of Gargunza!"

Below: me as Liz Moran, wife of Mike Moran, 

Miracleman's alter ego (wig kourtesy Eva Burghardt)

Above: the closing night (Saturday 12 July) crowd at the recent season of mine and Bruce Woolley's stage adaptation of Alan Moore, Gary Leach and Alan Davis' 1980s superhero comic book 'Miracleman'.  As you can see, there was a packed-to-the-gunnels crowd up on the third floor of The Croft Institute in old Melbourne Towne.

We had an excellent time with our eight night season, and we were extremely fortunate to have a critic attend on the second night who has a background both in theatre and in comics, and who went on to write an excellent review on his 12 hour train trip back to Sydney, which you can read here.

And of course once the title is out there in interweb land it's picked up by a Miracleman-starved comic book readership...

And then we were delightfully blogged by Nicki Greenberg!

So, a great registration of our show out here in the world of the digital.

One of the hugely satisfying things about the venue, apart from it being a great shape for our show (about 3 metres wide by about 10 metres deep) and the people there being lovely (thanks Adam, Steven, Bridget, Becky and Anne) was the location.  In the midst of Chinatown, The Croft Institute backs onto what was once the Hoyts Cinema Centre, now no longer a cinema and in fact the whole huge cavernous building is being gutted and made into...what? An indoor Quidditch stadium?  But, that was where I first saw 'Star Wars', 31 years ago. As it is a common reference for Bruce and I, there was something very neat about performing our show in such proximity to a historic/sacred site.

Watch this space for details about the next Miracleman season, winging its way to a festival near you!

Wireless Comics - Drawn Out (June)

Last Thursday, June 19, I was on Richard Watts' weekly arts review/discussion program on 3RRR, 'Smartarts'. I've got a spot on the show, once a month, where I get to talk with Richard about local and international comic book and graphic novel news, and this was my second go.

In May we spoke about the current boom in Australian graphic novels: 'The Sacrifice' by Bruce Mutard, 'The Great Gatsby' graphic adaptation by Nicki Greenberg, Mandy Ord's 'Rooftops' and Shaun Tan's 'The Sacrifice'. We also chatted about Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's 'The Black Dossier', a comic book from overseas, which I had just begun. This last I wanted to use in juxtaposition to the Australian releases, all of which have strong storytelling at their heart, whereas 'The Black Dossier', in my opinion, was a postmodern exercise. Richard's perceptive, and more generous label was 'metafiction', and having by now completed the book, I would agree with him. However. Having skipped through those current greats of Australian 'book comics', in the first show, my brother Luke's comment later that day was: "Have you left yourself anything to talk about next month?"




Yes indeedy I had. And not only that, after asking for a title for the segment on air at the end of May's show, Richard immediately took a call from listener Robert Glavich who suggested 'Drawn Out'. And even though we got other, very good suggestions, this was the one that took my fancy. In its creation, a comic book is thought out, sometimes written and/or sketched out, but crucially it is... drawn out. Then there's also the sense of duration that that the phrase imparts, again crucial for a time-depicting artform. Finally there's the sense that 'the arrival' (if you will) of Australian comics has been a long time coming. It's been drawn out.

So that's 'Drawn Out', on the third Thursday of every month, at 9.30 am on 3RRR, 102.7 on your FM dial, with Bernard Caleo reporting to Richard Watts.

In the June show, I opened by talking about J. Marc Schmidt's 'Eating Steve', released by SLG Publishing in December 2007. This is a very entertaining zom-rom-com by Schmidt, who has also contributed stories over the years to Tango, the romance comics anthology that I put together. It's a bit smaller than A5, in the format that I'm beginning to think of as (see next post) 'manga size'. Jon is from Sydney, and spends a lot of time overseas in Asia teaching English. His cartooning is beautifully clear, his dialogue well timed and funny, and his characters well observed. And this book is about a cute girl, Jill, who is moved to munch on her boyfriend's grey matter, and the consequences of that. It's not, shall we say, a move forward for the relationship. But it's a great little graphic novella.


The next book under the comicoscope was 'Waldo's Hawaiian Holiday', written by Alex Cox, the writer/director of cult classic film 'Repo Man'. This book comic is the sequel to that 1984 punk- powered movie. Originally written as a screenplay in 1994 by Cox, it has been in Hollywood purgatory for more than a decade, but in a great move, Perth comic book publishing house Gestalt Comics secured the rights and engaged two local comic bookers to illustrate it - pencils and inks by Chris Bones and colour and textures by Justin Randall. This is a slick, accomplished, full colour publication with great production values, and the story is as incoherent, dreamlike and surreal as I remember the original film being. A great ride.

Other publications we discussed were: 'Word Balloons' the only print magazine discussing Australian comics, put out by Philip Bentley, this issue (number 7) featuring an interview with Nicki ('Great Gatsby') Greenberg; 'Going Down Swinging' the Melbourne poetry/stories/comics anthology, this issue (number 26) featuring comics by Daniel ('The Crumpleton Experiments') Reed and Paul Oslo Davis: and finally from overseas, Charles Burns' incredible work of suburban teenage horror, 'Black Hole', which I borrowed from my local library and I'm glad to be taking back, so excellently disturbing is it.