Bernard Caleo's Paper Theatre

Last week it was my birthday and I turned 45.  Last night I was at the parental home, where my family gathers every Monday night for a meal. Parents, brothers, sister, spouses, children, cousins gathered as usual. And then, unexpectedly, my friends began to arrive. And arrive. And arrive. WHAT was going on?

 Candles were lit, the song was sung, cakes were cut.

I was delighted.

And then Part Two began.

The wonderful Fleur and her bloke Marcus got up (other suggestions: 'Male and Female', 'Marxist and Free Market', 'Mongrel and Flaneur') and Fleur explained that maybe just maybe it stood for 'Fantasist (or Fabulist) and Maker' and suggested that those two titles could be applied to me and that if they could, both roles could probably do with

a kamishibai box of their very own.

I was something flabbergasted, alright. Oh boy. I have been borrowing fellow kamishibaya Jackie Kerin's beautiful kamishibox, or K-box, designed and built by Ted Smith, for the last couple of years. This beautiful new one looked very like, very like.

And not without reason - Fleur had got onto Jackie and placed Ted's plans in the hands of Marcus, who as it turns out is a master wood artist. The timbers in this case are meranti and red gum, making it a darker, redder K-box than the one that Ted made for Jackie.

Fleur then performed a lovely kamishibai tale about the genesis of her idea to make this box for me - a plan hatched two years ago - and a vision of its use

Well, as you can well imagine.  I was staggered and astonished and absolutely delighted. The box was placed on Leopold, my bike, wheeled in for the occasion, and I managed to blather a few words about sophrosyne and poiesis and the Ancient Greeks before just saying, thanks.

And again, thanks. To my family, to my friends, to Jackie Kerin, for smuggling the plans across the border, and for the photos in this post, to my wife Susan for her part in all this wonderful skulduggery, and to Fleur and to Marcus, builders of dreams.

Well.

It's time to get writing and drawing and performing.

More MONGREL

The February number of MONGREL was adorned with a potplant going up from 3 to 2D.

The March cover, featuring a truncated container.

Local subscribers should be receiving their MONGREL 3s today or so, and international subscribers next week. Many grateful thanks to Susan Bamford Caleo for helping out with the last two mailouts.

It is tremendously satisfying making these comics pamphlets, and it's been great working at them in various places - at home in Northcote and Phillip Island, at Pat Grant's in Austinmer (near Wollongong) and researching number 3's locations in Adelaide while I was there in March performing the show Faraday's Candle. I also did a little bit of work on number three up at Chugnut a couple of weeks ago. What all this means is that for me, each of those pages has a certain association with people and spaces

I am currently working on number 4.  The last five pages are pencilled, and with the arrival of a bunch of reference photographs of the mean streets of Soho (thank you Luke Caleo), the pencilling of the first three pages can begin. Every number thus far has become print-ready via the magic hands of Justin Caleo, to whom also thanks.

Below, an earth-bound Port Adelaide tug that didn't make it into the comic, but I include it here as a gift for the dedicatee in number three:

GRAPHIC 2011 Day 1: Saturday 20 August/ Oz Comics

Yes folks, there he be, your intrepid reporter, barking into a microphone while the unlikely geometries of the Sydney Opera house threaten to eat his right ear.  Actually this shot and the rest of the photographs in this post are excerpted from footage taken by Dan Hayward, who with his dad Ian came up and filmed GRAPHIC #2. Of which more anon.

Above, the Marvellous Mandy Ord, doing a live reading of stories from her book 'Sensitive Creatures', from the first session that Susan and I saw at GRAPHIC, 'Oz Comics Show and Tell', and below, Leaping Leigh Rigozzi,

who binned a copy of the Sydney newspaper 'The Sunday Telegraph', the paper which, in publishing an article about R. Crumb as a 'self-confessed sex pervert' or similar, caused that same R. Crumb to decide not to attend.  Arrgh.  Humans.  Sometimes they drive you crazy.

Oslo Davis was also there, speaking about Drawn From Life, the comics newspaper which he edited and which was published as part of this year's Melbourne Writers Festival. And also talking about his own, very funny cartoons.

Here are the panelists, who emerged en masse at the end of the session. Prior to this, each of them had done a solo presentation to do with their work.

All of them, that is, except the 'two Sydney Matts' - above, Matt Taylor doing a live reading of his recently-launched Lars the Last Viking goes to the End of the World, with live metal guitar playing by his friend Scott Collins, and

Matt Huynh, who actually wasn't on stage during his piece - a beautiful, continuous horizontal scroll-comic of people rehearsing for a Dragon Festival - which was accompanied by live drumming, and a live dragon!

So there they are, folks - from left to right, Gabriel Clark, Pat Grant, Mandy Ord, Leigh Rigozzi, Oslo Davis, Matt Taylor and Matt Huynh.  A truly great start to GRAPHIC 2011.

What It Is? youtube episode #3 - Comics and Australian History

And here's the youtube episode of Monday night's 'What It Is?' - again, shot and chopped by film maker Daniel Hayward in double-quick time. Thanks, Dan!

And you can hear some of the song, 'The Curious Man', the Blandowski calypso recorded by The Death Adder in Berlin, which we missed on the night because of technical hitches.

'A Comic Book History of Australia' is what we called the show on the Readings website, but okay, yes, it was a bit specificker that that.  It was more about Victorian history.  Well, Melbourne history.  Okay, Melbourne history circa the 1850s.

And, when I got home and was chatting to Susan about it, she pointed out that the evening wasn't SO much about comics, either.  A bit, but not a lot.  It's probably more accurately about various forms of  'paper theatre'. Kamishibai.  Puppetry. 2-D sets. Masks.

Okay, so what about calling it 'An Evening of Paper Theatre in 1850s Melbourne'?

Call it what you will.

It is what it is.

Please do scroll down to the next post for still images and ruminations on the night.

Yours,

Bernard

Don't go to sleep!

We got to Sydney last Friday, Susan and I, and spent the weekend in an amazing parallel world where comics were, for two days, a combination of rock and roll and high art. Remarkable.

For one thing, GRAPHIC seemed to be everywhere: on billboards, in newspapers and the street press. It had a public presence that I've not seen for a comics event previously.


A group of larrikins, currency lads in the Green Room of the Opera House on Saturday morning, about to run a three hour comics making workshop in the Utzon Room. From left: Leigh Rigozzi, Andrew Weldon, Pat Grant, Mat Huynh and fuzzy Gabriel Clark.


Post-workshop, we are joined by Matt Taylor, a Sydney comics maker foreground right. Thanks for the cranberry and soda Matt! We are all wondering how you paint comics panels up on those sails...


Susan Bamford Caleo arrives. She's really into it.


Susan and Andrew practicing rock and roll comics attitude.


They are given some pointers in this by Jonathan Walker, the redoubtable writer of Five Wounds (Allen and Unwin, 2010) . Next time, they will remember the headphones around the neck dress code. We are all at the 'Publishing your Work' panel, featuring Gary Groth, Erica Wagner, Eddie Campbell and Jeremy Wortsman.


Eddie looking askance in a sort of 'what am I DOING here?' moment.


See what I mean? Signage.


Inside the Opera House, this room soon fills for Neil Gaiman reading 'The Truth is a Cove in the Black Mountains', with painted illustrations by Eddie Campbell and a live soundtrack by Fourplay string quartet.


At the afterparty (woo! yeah!), a fuzzy Neil Gaiman and a (more) in focus Jordan Verzar, the ringleader of the entire weekend. Jordan is also the fellow who brought out Jim Woodring a couple of years ago. More, Jordan! More!


Sunday we swing back over to the Opera House and Susan plays a computer game in the independant games exhibition - thanks ACMI!

Then it's into the Studio for an undoubted weekend highlight: 'Focus on Fantagraphics' - a My Life In Comics slideshow by Gary Groth. Many, many good stories including the time he organises Hunter S Thompson to attend an event: "This being the mid-70s and me having hair down to my middle, I had a can of mace in my pocket to deal with rednecks." Thompson of course nicks the can from Groth's pocket in order to spray some hapless hotel attendant. Hilarity ensues.


This is what I think of as my Gary-Groth-as-Robert-Mitchum drawing. And yes, he said that.

This is him interviewing Charles 'Peanuts' Schultz, and uncomforatble using the nickname:


Then there was the 'Evolution of an Idea' panel, which I chaired, also in the Studio. The speakers were Shaun Tan, Neil Gaiman and Eddie Campbell. We covered three environments where writers' and draw-ers' ideas evolve: collaborations, adaptations and reader reception. It all seemed to go pretty well.

After that, Susan and I hurried to see the second half of Regurgitator performing a live soundtrack to 'Akira', which was ear-bleedingly loud and fantastic. I really didn't understand the film the first time I saw it, at the Valhalla in Westgarth, 20 years ago, and on Sunday I understood it no better, but boy it made whole lot more sense.


And then - SOB!- it was time to go. Here Susan approaches Wendy, John (TheComicSpot Retallick) and Sonya. We had dinner together, then Susan and I left the city of rock and roll comics to return to the town of comic books as literature.

Thank you, Jordan. An incredible weekend.

Graphic! Novel! And operatic!

Hey there team, very excited to be going up to this: GRAPHIC, at the Sydney Opera House, next weekend August 7 and 8. An incredible lineup of speakers and presenters and events - have a look at the program. Congratulations to Jordan Verzar, who has organised it all! Take a bow, Jordan...

On the Saturday I am joining an all-star lineup of cartoonists (Pat Grant, Matt Huynh, Leigh Rigozzi and Andrew Weldon) to present a comics workshop, and on the Sunday I am being the anchorman for a panel,'The Evolution of an Idea', featuring the speakers Shaun Tan, Eddie Campbell and Neil Gaiman. What, as Susan would say, a hoot.

Folks, Gary Groth is going to be there. Gary. Groth. Who made it possible to use the words 'comics' and 'art' in the same sentence? Gary Groth did. He did for comics what Gary Gygax did for dice, and I say that without being facetious or didactic in any way.

Dylan! Horrocks! Supa! Nova!

Last week was ten days long.

It began on the morning of Friday 16 April at Melbourne Airport (nee Tullamarine), with me at international arrivals, waiting for someone I'd never met before but had corresponded with across many years, first via letter and more latterly by email. And yes, the picture below is literally true: I had lettered (in the style of Torres) on cardboard and cut out a speech balloon

to welcome Dylan Horrocks to Melbourne for a festival of comics goodness. His first gig, on Saturday 17 and Sunday 18, was the SupaNova Pop Culture Extravaganza out at the Melbourne Showgrounds. Below, Dylan (standing) at Doug Holgate's table. The images beside Dylan's head are of the cover to the recently released second edition of his masterful graphic novel, Hicksville. Sitting on the table next to Dylan was his fellow New Zealander (and hero) Colin Wilson, who these days lives in Melbourne, and who Dylan had never met until that Saturday - happy days!

And hey, y'know, I wasn't just the limo driver. I had some time on the Saturday to do some signings of The Tango Collection for Allen and Unwin, who were trialling having a stall at SupaNova. Below, Zebedee on the right and Joseph on the left take a few minutes out from watching the wrestling to drop in on dad.

I wasn't really around that much at SupaNova over the weekend, which probably explains the expressions (but not the black lipstick mark) on Stewart McKenny and Tim McEwen (he, without lipstick), when I arrived on the Sunday evening to pick up Dylan and journey with him and Susan to 'Tripod versus the Dragon' at The Forum.

Tim has been associated with SupaNova for years and years, having been the Art Director for some time. But he and I and ten other comic book makers were about to spend 5 days in a room with Dylan, talking writing and drawing naught but comics...

NEXT: The Dylan Horrocks Masterclass/ Comics Studio