What It Is? #4 - July - Comics and Songs

The final 'What It Is?' in this first series was performed/presented at Readings in Carlton on Monday July 2011 at 8pm, and featured me and Martin Martini, as above.  We talked and sang and shew drawings on the theme of 'songs and comics'.

The kick-off kamishibai was titled

'Katasuburi
Sorosoro nobore
Fuji no yama.'

that is, the haiku by Issa (1763 - 1827) which is translated in 'Franny and Zooey' by JD Salinger (1961) as:

Oh snail
Climb Mount Fuji
But slowly, slowly!

and you can watch the whole 8 minute kamishibai here, courtesy of Daniel Hayward (also thanks to Dan for the pictures in this post).

The youtube episode of the whole evening is coming soon.  Watch this space!

What else did we do?  Well, I adapted a song (Alice by Tom Waits) to comics form (and invented a new artform, 'comicshibai' in the process), and Martin Martini

made a song out of a comic ('Douglas and Douglas' from Lumpen #7 by Pat Grant), and then he found out that I was made of comics and I discovered that he was made of songs.

Apparently, we all are.

What's an edicomicorial?

Glad you asked!  There's me, on Wednesday 20 July 2011, in my 'comics talk' purple shirt, trying to work out what such a thing might be with the very talented editors of 'Early Harvest', a special issue of Harvest magazine, 'a somewhat literate quarterly for somewhat literate quarters'.  This upcoming issue of Harvest is edited by this crack team, and will feature writing in its many forms by young folks from Hither and Yon (mostly Yon, as it turns out).

This project is the brainchild of the great folks at Pigeon Projects, Lachlan and Jenna (thanks to Jenna for the pictures in this post), who cook up remarkable writing and art-making projects for kids to do. Lachlan and Jenna involve grown-up (?) writers and designers and illustrators and yes, even comic book types to lend their expertise - or ravings, as the case may be - and each time I have done so I have had so much fun that I have floated home. Seriously.  That good.

Together, we managed to establish that an edicomicorial is a editorial made in comic book form whereby four groups of editors each write/design/draw one page.  Recently I've heard a rumour that the insanely talented Chris Downes, once of Tennessee now of Hobart, is the comics artist who's going to do the final art.  If this is true, it is Very Good News.

And there's me with one of the groups of writer/artists - these editors of 'Early Harvest' are 10 - 12 year old students from schools from the inner west in Melbourne, and the project is supported by the City of Maribyrnong.

Go editors! Go comics!  Go go go!

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!

Graphic Narratives wrap party!

On the evening of Friday 1 July, there was a comics 'swap and sell' - not so unusual you say, except that this one was held at Melbourne University and the comics being swapped and selled were ones made by the students of the inaugural outing of the course 'Graphic Narratives', offered as an honours subject to students in the school of Creative Writing.  The course is the brainchild of Elizabeth MacFarlane, who you can see below proudly talking about the amazing work made by her students.

The course looked at the history of the comics form, theory about comics, and, given that it is a creative writing course, the students actually made comic books.  Jam-packed, eh?  There were a bunch of guest lecturers/cartoonists too: Mandy Ord, Bruce Mutard, Nicki Greenberg, Mirranda Burton and Pat Grant.

Of course I couldn't let such a monumental occasion go by without throwing in my two bob:

and my two bob was this: the academy has a real place in the development in the comics arts in Australia, if the last week (which had seen the completion by Pat Grant of his magnificent graphic novel BLUE - which you can read in its entirety here - AND the evidence of the piles of books by the students of the Graphic Narratives course) was anything to go by.

The poster for the course was also by the octopoid Mister Grant, who with a bunch of other Melbourne cartoonists, will be drawing live over the next month down at the National Gallery of Victoria at Federation Square: written NGV information here, excellent little filmette here.

It's called 'Inherent Vice'. Get on down.

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

'What It Is?' #3 - What a Thing It Was!

So, last night Monday 27 June 2011, at Readings bookshop in Carlton, we delivered the third show in the category-busting series that IS, 'What It Is?'

In this case, the 'we' was me and

Alex McDermott, whose latest book

got published recently. So we launched it, there and then, with the three 'Huzzahs' normally reserved for the launch of a comic book (if you'd been there, you'd know why I consider Alex's weighty yet extremely toothsome tome to be an honorary comic book) and then we got into the show, kicking off with a kamishibai about the Australian career of the 19th century natural historian Wilhelm von Blandowski (yes, THAT Wilhelm von Blandowski - the one who I took on a Victorian roadtrip last year - read all about that here)

The kamishibai WAS to have been 'narrated' by a song called 'The Curious Man', by calypso artist 'The Death Adder', of Berlin, but various technological barriers meant that the recording could not be played, so I ended up speaking the story.  The song however is magnificent, a sprawling calypso epic of high romance and utter desolation, and I will find a way of posting it.

Wilhelm at the Port of Adelaide in 1849.

He loves it here.

But 7 years later, 200 miles up the Darling River, he has an experience of the sublime.  And from that point, his career in Australia starts to unravel.  Our argument was, he SEES something out there...

Something...

oooooooo000000000000000ooooooooo

We then went onto the story of Redmond Barry, a big statue of whom stands outside of the State Library of Victoria:

Our proposition was, you can't really understand Redmond (or Melbourne) without the vital piece of information that he was actually a

centaur.  And, as a centaur, it is unsurprising that he spends quite a bit of time on his 1839 voyage over from Ireland

amidships, as it were, with one Mrs Scott, which Mr Scott, and eventually the entirety of the rest of the passengers, finds quite off-putting (thank you to the puppetteering hands of Stephen Mushin (Barry the centaur and Mrs Scott and ocean) and Colleen Burke (boat and ocean).  When they get to Sydney?  He's really frozen out of the social scene there.

Anyway he eventually makes it to Melbourne and makes it in Melbourne and, in the end, makes Melbourne (State Library, Melbourne University, Art Gallery).  Well, you know:

he's a centaur.

ooooooo000000000000000ooooooo

Our coda to the night was an imagined 1859 meeting

between Blandowski (me) and Barry (Alex), in which Barry identifies what it is that has followed Wilhelm back from the interior, and indeed what it is which will tail him all the way back to Silesia.  All the way back to his death.

And you too can see it, here.

THE NEXT 'What It Is?' (and final in this series): songster Marin Martini and I will puzzle over, sing about, and draw about, the mysterious and ancient connection between comics and songs.  Monday 25 July. 8pm. Readings Carlton. See you there!

THANK YOU: to Jackie Kerin again for the loan of her kamishibai box, and for all the photos dotting this post.  Soon I will post the youtube episode of last night's 'What it Is?', which, as with the other two, was shot and is presently being edited by the skilful Dan Hayward.

May 'What It Is?' - comics from Bordeaux to Broome

Well what a month May was! I did one show for the Clean Energy Council about renewable energy, did another show about the humble candle as the great scientist Michael Faraday at St Paul's Cathedral, spoke about Australian graphic novels to the Graphic Narratives class at Melbourne University and then about comic book editing to the Society of Editors (Victoria). I also managed to turn 43 somewhere in there.

And at the end of the month was 'What It Is? no. 2, The Town that Comics Built'.  Above is the youtube episode, shot and edited by Dan Hayward - great work Dan!  And below is a DC10 flying the very tall Mike Shuttleworth into France.

There was a kamishibai titled 'Sous les paves, la planche' - 'Under the paving stones, the comics'.

It starred

Jean-Paul Sartre and

Simone de Beauvoir, who

argued and

made up.

We travelled with Mike to Angouleme, the great comics festival held every January in the freezing cold south-west of France.

Then we came back to the hot north-west of Australia, and I spoke with Brenton McKenna, the author of 'Ubbys Underdogs: The Legend of the Phoenix Dragon'

a way-cool graphic novels for kids, first of a trilogy, from Magabala Books. It was great to meet Brenton, who we also interviewed on The Comic Spot, where you can listen to that interview. Brenton even drew a picture of Ubby for us!

It was another great fun 'What It Is?' - the which question remains pertinent, as I am still not quite sure what indeed 'What It Is?' is, but I'm going to press on with another couple, at least.

Next 'What It Is?' will be a historical fairy tale for adults with the remarkable Alex McDermott, poet/historian, centaur laureate, and bike rider extraordinaire.  Monday June 27 at 8pm at Readings Carlton: details (and a drawing) on the Readings website. We will also launch Alex's latest book, 'Australian History for Dummies'.  Come along!

And massive thanks to storyteller Jackie Kerin for all the photos in this post, for the lend (again!) of her beautiful kamishibai box, and for writing about the May 'What It Is?' so beautifully here.