Open last Saturday's paper, all 15 kilos of it, and it's choc-a-block with comic book folk: there, on page 7:
Neil Gaiman's in Melbourne to talk at a children's book conference (Shaun Tan will speak at it too) and en route, he'll Johnny Appleseed some 'comics is grand' talk.
And there, on page 12 of the A2 section, an
article about a book about doodling, but the main picture is of Mandy Ord and her ink-stained hands! You read about 'em here, a couple of posts ago...
The above is a detail of Simon Schluter's photo.
And then on page 27, a short review of Bruce Mutard's 'The Sacrifice' by Owen Richardson. I can't find a link to this at the moment, but it got me pretty steamed, I can tell you. Richardson starts with some good points about comics/graphic novels in general, and then mounts a fair description of Bruce's book in particular (although saying that "... the pictures are in the tradition of the exact verisimititude of the
Tintin books..." is spectacularly wide of the mark), but finishes the review (and that's the business end, after all) with a summation which is quite dismissive of 'The Sacrifice'. It's unearned, either by book or by reviewer, and I dispute it.
As I say, the smell of this review has hung around me like a dead possum under the floorboards - I will clearly need to deal with it in another post.
But just to tie this one off to say that 3 fair-sized mentions of comics and their creators in the weekend paper seems just about right to me, and it is what I will be expecting from here on in.
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