Françoise et Art in Brunswick!

On the weekend just gone, Art Spiegelman presented a new work of images, text and music, WORDLESS, at the GRAPHIC Festival at the Sydney Opera House.

Today, Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly visited Squishface Studio in Brunswick, and a group of local comic book people were there to welcome them to Melbourne.

Nicki Greenberg and Mandy Ord speak with Francoise.

Outside Squishface - Matt Emery, Ben Hutchings, Nicki Greenberg with Coco in arms and Poppy standing, Mandy Ord, Mirranda Burton, Art Spiegelman, Francoise Mouly and Gregory Mackay.

Oh, there's Shaun Tan too!

Art Spiegelman chatting with Shaun Tan.

We went across the road to Ray and drank coffees and ate cake and talked some more. Francoise Mouly, Penny Hueston, me and Mirranda Burton (photo by Matt Emery)
 

Art and Ben Hutchings talk pens.

It was remarkable to meet these two legends of comics, and to discuss with them Art's most recent book CO-MIX and Francoise's children's comics imprint TOON BOOKS.

Many thanks to Text Publishing's Penny Hueston who lined up today's meeting.

Art speaks at the Melbourne Town Hall on Tuesday 8 October.  Francoise speaks at the Wheeler Centre on Wednesday 9 October. Both of them are brilliant.

Comics by Pigeons!

This Monday just gone, I was at the amphitheatre at the Footscray Community Arts Centre for the launch of a remarkable new book.

'Pigeons: Stories in the Post Vol.2' is a collection of 21 stories by grade five students from Footscray City Primary School. In the making of these stories, each student has been matched with an author and in each case the two have collaborated on the work VIA AN EXCHANGE OF LETTERS.

Yes, paper. Envelopes. Stamps. You know the drill. Or ask your grandma. She'll know.

Lachlan Carter and Jenna Williams are the two enchanted genii behind Pigeons, and they have channelled the greatness of Dave Eggars' 826 Valencia and created their own version of a literacy/reading/writing/fun project, and a damn fine one it is that they have sculpted.

Last year's Pigeons book was all words, which was great, but for this year's, comics flew onto the page too, increasing the all-round brilliance of the publication by 123%, rounded up. Local comic book makers Mirranda Burton, Jen Breach and I each worked with a student, so that 3 of the 21 stories, or 14.3% of the book, is... comics. Shareholders, we will be working to increase that percentage in the years to come but I am sure you will agree, it is a 14% increase on last year. That's all growth!

My Pigeons partner was Jonathan Wu, who I met for the first time on Monday night at the launch, and who is set to make many more great and piercingly funny comics, should he choose that over a career in astrophysics. I hope he does. Below: two panels from page 4 of 'Odie & the Exploding Toilet', which we both worked on. That's Mr Rock ad Mr Blowtish in panel 1.

I enjoin you to purchase a copy of 'Pigeons: Stories in the Post Vol.2' and support the brilliant work by the Pigeons.

Coo!

Thursday 22 April, day 4 Dylan Horrocks Masterclass

Behind? What do you mean, I'm behind? Oh, so it's three and a half months after the event and you're wanting to know why it's taken me so long? Well., you see, it's like this --

LOOK!

OVER THERE!

BEHIND YOU!

Oh, nothing there? Well, as I was saying, the fourth day of the Dylan Horrocks masterclass at the Wheeler Centre in late April began with Jo Waite removing small leaves from my hair and glue sticking (or 'baton de colle'-ing) them into my sketchbook, where I was continuing to work on the story...


Wednesday's questions had been deep dark ones, and Thursday's were higher, and lighter, but no less vital:

What do I love about making comics?

What do I love about my own comics?

Me I love inking, and I love finishing a page. I love it when my drawings start to dance, that is when they start to live on the page, as ink on paper.

Who knows, maybe we would have answered these questions more flippantly without the 'rockbreaking' of the day before.

Anthony Woodward had more questions:


And his then-fellow Ballarattian, now-On-The-Road Mel Rowsell, had these things to say about making comics and looking at her own comics:



Later Dylan talked to us about a sequence that he put in at the end of his big comic book Hicksville, which he included as his (and thus the reader's?) farewell to the book and its world.


One of our show-and-tells this afternoon was Pat Grant, who staggered us with double page spreads from the graphic novel which is also his PhD.


General Pat Ulysses S. Grant shows us how simple it would be for the 10 of us to storm Parliament House.



Mirranda Burton had been busy earlier in the day (amongst other things, she was being contacted by the FUMETTO international comics art festival in Switzerland to be told she had won a prize for her comic 'P.S') but she arrived later to give these great statements about what she loves about comics.



Tim McEwan was getting pretty unshaven by this stage of the week (Interestingly >>> namedrop namedrop>>>) Tim and I were having a drink at the Neil Gaiman afterparty at the Sydney Opera House last Saturday night and he was talking>>> BIGGER namedrop >>> about seeing Will Eisner and Jim Steranko at the Opera House in 1985 when he was in Year 11, which makes Tim -GHASP!!!- a year younger than me!)

AS soon as the masterclass finished for the day, Jo Waite and I spirited (a-HA! See what I did there, Eisner fans?) Dylan away for a chat on yours and mine favouite comics radio show (and podcast) TheComicSpot.


It was a great interview (well I thought so) and you can now listen to it here)

Then it was back into the city to meet the rest of the masterclass gang, and assorted other Melbourne comics folk, at, well really there was only one restaurant that could possibly have housed us all:

Gaylord.


The aforementioned Tim McEwan, his stubbly chin, and a Kingfisher beer. And oh, what's that? A Trevor Bovis drawn onto the linen tablecloth designed to outrage not only the waiting staff but also the attending vegetarians?


I think so.


Finally, a whole lotta comics makers at a table. That's Kirrily Schell front right in front of me, then Dylan, John Retallick, Chris Downes, Tim McEwan and Mirranda Burton. On the left Mel Rowsell, behind her Jo Waite (doing I think some sort of manga sign language), a fuzzy David Blumensteain, a totally obscured Sarah Howell, Anthony Woodward and Neale 'Beautiful Artform' Blanden.

Next (or rather, In Some Time): I WILL get around to blogging Day Five, not my favourite day of the masterclass - Thursday or perhaps Wednesday were that - but the last day, and thus important.

In fact next will be a little GRAPHIC and then me on tour in country Victoria as long-dead Prussian naturalist, Wilhelm von Blandowski.

A Word or Two on Curriculum

So. Day Two. The drawing day. But how, you're asking, how does a comics masterclass GO? How does it run? What happens? Well, in general we'd get to The Wheeler Centre each day at about 9.30am, collect our wits and our morning beverage of choice, then have a chat for about an hour or so, led by Dylan. On this morning he had a slide show (or power point as the young people call them) to show us, of many of his drawing influences.

We'd got a bit of an inkling of this on the Monday, but on the Tuesday Dylan confirmed that yes indeed, he is

That is to say, he is very interested in comics at the point at which they break down, at which they don't work, at which they betray their makers' blind spots. It's an interesting idea and line of enquiry: that the fault lines in an artwork point towards the heart and the humanness of the creator, their fallibility and their shadow. It's a picture of the artist as vulnerable to, rather than as master of, their work.

On some mornings the talking would be followed by an exercise. So it was this morning: we'd been talking about drawing and Dylan suggested we do some life drawing. Rats, I thought, in my organiser mode, I HAD thought of getting a life model in but had jettisoned it from the plan about a month previously.

Luckily it turns out that you don't need a life model if the New Zealander in the room doesn't mind standing still for 2 and 5 minutes at a time. Dylan gave us itty bitty bits of paper (were they A7? A8?) and we drew him. Appropriately for a room full of cartoonists, they were about the size of a comics panel...

The mutt above ain't Dylan, but was lifted from a couple of pix that Dylan showed us from Rudolphe Topffer, the early 19th century schoolteacher and comics pioneer.

It was certainly a week of great t-shirts. Andrew Fulton was wearing this one on Tuesday. It was sort of a warning for the discussion that we were going to have on Wednesday morning.

After a chat and some work, clearly you're going to be hungry and clearly it's around lunchtime, so it's time to head out and grab a bite. Luckily the Wheeler Centre is right next to the QV Centre on Little Lonsdale Street and I quickly discovered the sweet and crazy delights available from Bread Top - deep fried donut anyone? And because the weather was warm you could then sit out on the QV's octagon of fake grass and talk, well talk comics with the other masterclassers.

Upon our return in the afternoons, we'd start in on working on the projects that we had on the go at the time - the idea here was that the masterclass time wouldn't be taking away from valuable drawing/writing time but adding to it.

This particular afternoon, we'd been asked by Anna at the Wheeler Centre if it would be okay if a crew from the ABC TV show 'Stateline' could come in and do some filming to go to air on Friday of that week to promote that weekend's talks/focus on graphic novels, 'Drawing In, Drawing Out'. The masterclass gang graciously agreed, little knowing that one of the crew would be part of the Australian comics world:

(you might need to click on the page above to get it to a readable size)

Yep, Stuart Thorne - Tony Thorne's brother, and writer of some strips from the great Melbourne-based FOX comics anthology from the 80s. Check out 'All Men Are Bastards' on this page from Tony's rather magnificent blog.

Once the press had left and we'd got back to our fart jokes and rude drawings, it was time for Show and Tell. Each afternoon tea time, two folks in the room would get up and talk about their work, show some pictures and speculate on where they were going with it. When we were constructing the program for the week, this seemed like a good 'extra bit' for each day, but in the week itself, these sessions were amazing - revealing and very important, for the artists du jour and for the others of us there, to question, appreciate and suggest.

Above, light floods the room and our consciousnesses, as Jo Waite unfurls her incredibly detailed street map for the town of Maversham.

Above: Chris Downes, Andrew Fulton, Mirranda Burton, Tim McEwan, Jo Waite, Dylan Horrocks and Mel Rowsell huddle around some more of the art from Jo's 'maximum octopus' (I think that's how she describes it), '*Lucky'.

NEXT: Wednesday. The horror, the horror...

Two Tangos: too much?

Well, it's been a month and a half or so since the big double Tango launch, and it's time to have a bit of a look back at that night and more generally at doing two big books in the one small year.

Night of the launch, 10 December 2009, making some comment that's making Mirranda Burton wince. Probably a pun.

Photo: Peter Jetnikoff

At this point I can say that I'm very proud of both books, but I have to admit that by the time Tango9 rolled around, rose up on its haunches and became the 350 page behemoth that it is today, it had outgrown my capacity to handle, muzzle, or restrain it. The sheer volume of pages and number of contributors flipped a switch somewhere in the tiny tinny little administration centre in my noggin. Mistakes were made. (And still are: only yesterday Greg Holfeld, author of the excellent 'Homefront' (page 124), emailed to say, "Um, could I please have my contributor's copy?" Oh, gosh.)

But the most significant errors on my part were to leave out stories which I had said were in. Yes, that's right. Two stories had been selected for the book, the authors informed, and then, in the utter madness of the final book assembly, I ... misplaced them. One of these, 'Interview with the Dictator's Mother', was a collaboration between Mark Scillio and myself (yep) - I realised it was missing the night before we went to press, and couldn't at that point change things. With the other story, Justin Woolley and Brendan Hayday's 'In the Trenches', it was only on the night of the launch, that this situation was revealed. To these three gentlemen, Mark, Justin, and Brendan, I offer my sincere apologies - I am terribly sorry. What happened with your stories was really the opposite of what I set up Tango to do.

But here's the silver lining: both stories are now available to be read on the Tango9 page on the Cardigan Comics website, here. Thanks to Justin Caleo for making this happen.

Hey look! It's dapper Neale Blanden!

Photo by Peter Jetnikoff

And thanks to brother Luke, it's now possible to buy Tango via Paypal on the website, here. Tango9 sells there for $25 and earlier Tangos for $10, and hey, psst! If you've ever wanted to fill in a hole in your Tango shelf or even if you just have fingers that twitch for a bargain, I'd get in now and make a purchase before I work out how to add a postage amount there.

That's right Tango fans: get in quick while you can, and order your books postage-free!

Animated David Blumenstein and Jovial Jo Waite, skylarking.

Peter Jetnikoff took the picture

And hey. Let's not forget that other fine Tango of last year, 'The Tango Collection'. It has not escaped my attention that having two of us (viz: Elise Jones and I) working the editorial angle of that book meant that it worked out a lot more smoothly. And yes, you're right, it's published, marketed and distributed by Allen and Unwin, too, (all of which is magnificent) but I'm focussing on the administrative aspect here, and I'm thinking that for 'Tango10: Love and Music' (planned for 2011), I will assemble an editorial team...

ANYway, if you're a Melbournite, you should really buy The Age this Saturday (all 16 kilos of it) and open the A2 section and check out the 'Books' section: the word on da street is that there will be a review of 'The Tango Collection' there. Please, stain it with coffee and croissant crumbs, for me.

And cry huzzah!

Finally, himself. Peter Jetnikoff, I think photographed here by David Blumenstein, next to a copy of Peter's biography and his portrait from 'The Tango Collection'. The rest of the group of photos of the launch from which the ones in this post were selected can be found here.