tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52196076452648450302024-03-14T20:26:28.995+11:00Fragments from a Second ShoreNews, updates and excerpts from publications by the boutique Australian comic publisher Second Shore.Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-30232520769243397672013-11-19T17:24:00.000+11:002013-11-19T17:24:44.415+11:00A Life in Comics – a personal history of comics in Australia 1960-1990 by Philip Bentley<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG7x7sHr96cBcOoCiXkIj1gk1Gmmx_2XeZ7KuDvKZJthFAOk0I7h2jvr5kVKW9nYC47-gknnmCL7UhWwXdiMudfGX57ijL1Q-mTqoOUMw4L47t0mJYN0pAOvpq4_2EDx8zde-WT1C8vFY/s1600/A+Life+Colour+COVERcrop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG7x7sHr96cBcOoCiXkIj1gk1Gmmx_2XeZ7KuDvKZJthFAOk0I7h2jvr5kVKW9nYC47-gknnmCL7UhWwXdiMudfGX57ijL1Q-mTqoOUMw4L47t0mJYN0pAOvpq4_2EDx8zde-WT1C8vFY/s320/A+Life+Colour+COVERcrop.jpg" width="224" wta="true" /></a></div>
Second Shore is proud to announce the publication of the above work. <br />
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For much of the past 50 years, Philip Bentley has had an involvement with the comic scene in Melbourne and Australia. From collecting Marvel comics in the 1960s, to attending early meetings of fans in the 1970s, being involved in publishing two seminal anthologies – <i>Inkspots </i>and <i>Fox Comics </i>– and in the establishment of Australia’s first comic shop –Minotaur, in the 1980s – Philip has lived a ‘life in comics’. <br />
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In this engaging and candid memoir Philip reflects on these events within the context of the development of the medium in Australia and the world. Hence this is not a work not simply for those with an interest in comics, but for anyone with an interest in popular culture in general. It collects together chapters serialised in <i>Word Balloons</i>, now fully revised and with the addition of many more illustrations. Excerpts of the respective chapters can be found throughout this blog. It is a trade paperback sized, softcover of 125pp retailing for Au$25. Trade discounts on application. <br />
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Available from Minotaur, All Star and the publisher via payment methods to right (under Word Balloons). Add $5 for post Australia-wide. Overseas postal rates on application. <br />
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'Comic books were one of the most popular, and yet most despised, forms of popular culture in Australia. Yet despite their often tumultuous history, the fascinating stories behind comic books in this country have largely gone unrecorded. Overlooked by academics, the history of Australian comics has been largely documented by generations of fans, who have compiled informal histories of comic-book characters, their creators and publishers. Without their tireless efforts, our knowledge of this vibrant medium would be all the poorer. <br />
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‘Philip Bentley's A Life in Comics is a welcome contribution to this growing body of ‘fan scholarship’. Drawing on his longstanding involvement in Australian comics, Philip's work draws on his unique perspectives and experiences as a comics retailer, editor and publisher and, latterly, comics historian. His firsthand accounts of the ‘new wave’ Australian comics scene during the 1970s and 80s adds a much needed, and most welcome, chapter to the unfolding history of Australian comics.’ Kevin Patrick, Curator, “Heroes and Villains: Australian Comics and their Creators”, State Library of Victoria, 2006-2007. <br />
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‘Any culture worth its salt has its archetypes, its myths and ley-lines. Here, Philip Bentley breathes life into some of the great rivers that have fed comics culture in Melbourne. How can he do that? Simple. He was there.’ Bernard Caleo, Cartoonist and Editor <i>Tango. </i><br />
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'Philip Bentley is in a big way responsible for making Melbourne the comics city that it is. Without Minotaur Books I doubt I would have made a career in comics, as where else would I have found them at the crucial juncture I did? I blame him for all that has happened since!’ Bruce Mutard, comic creator, <i>The Sacrifice</i>, <i>The Silence</i>. Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-72129106865437786942013-11-19T16:54:00.001+11:002013-11-19T16:54:22.773+11:00Word Balloons ceases publicationWith the release of <i>A Life in Comics </i>it seems an appropriate time to draw a line under the publication of <i>Word Balloons</i>. It was not my intention from the outset to conclude its run here, but anyone who has been following the magazine’s trajectory will have seen that its frequency has slowed over the years. This is just the natural consequence of producing an work as labour of love. Eventually enthusiasm will run out. <span style="font-family: Courier New; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">I had thought that perhaps at the end of producing the book I would feel energised and be enthusiastic about getting back into <i>WB</i>, but the opposite has been true, so I very much feel it is time to move on. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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I would like to take this opportunity to thanks those readers and retailers who supported the venture. Copies are still available from the publisher, Minotaur or All Star, see note to right. <br />
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Philip BentleySecond Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-49401029157478810622012-05-04T13:06:00.000+10:002012-05-04T13:06:25.102+10:00Word Balloons 14, April 2012<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This will probably be only issue of Word Balloons produced this year, with the next slated for March/ April of 2013.</div>
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<br /><strong>Interview</strong><br />
<em>“George Miller would introduce me as ‘Head Geek’.” </em><br />
<strong>An interview with Wai Chew “Chewie” Chan.</strong><br />
Conducted by Philip Bentley, March 2012<br />
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Since making his home in Australia in his late teens, Chewie Chan has set about working in a number of different capacities across the graphic story spectrum. Receiving his initial break as a storyboard artist on Happy Feet he has subsequently worked on more films, as the Graphic Novel Supervisor for film director George Miller, and in main-stream American comics. But Chewie has always paired his creative work with that of a comic advocate. He super-vises the extensive graphic novel section at Sydney bookshop Kinokuniya and, more recently, has set him-self up as a ‘comic consultant’ advising librarians and booksellers on how to establish a graphic novel section, and talking up the medium at conferences and universities. Chewie is therefore well placed to make informed comment on the medium as well as having an entertaining story to tell.<br />
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Excerpt<br />
PB: How much of a difference is there between comics and storyboards? Clearly there is major difference in the purpose they are being put to. Comics are designed as entertainment, storyboards have a more functional purpose to explain to the director, cameraman, actors etc. how the action is going to flow. <br />
CC: There is quite a difference. They both come from the same source, namely the visual language, but as they have different purposes you produce them differently. Having done comics I spoke the language, but how you express it, the images you choose are totally different. I used to think with comics you would have a sequence running in your head and you would grab freeze frames from it. I have ultimately decided that was the wrong way to go because you end up with a static work. So in comics you need to amalgamate action so that it appears to be fluid and in the moment all the time. Whereas in storyboards it is very much about grabbing freeze frames. <br />
PB: Is this notion of fluidity for comic breakdowns more applicable to dynamic action work as opposed to an interior drama say?<br />
CC: No, it is probably needed more in quieter works to keep the reader involved the whole time. The reader needs to think that it’s a moving narrative. Storyboards aren’t about ‘good’ or finely rendered art, they’re about communicative art. But like any language the better you speak it the better people understand it. So the better you draw the more communicative your ‘boards will be. And I have to say that the ‘boards for Happy Feet looked amazing, even if I do say so myself. [Laughs] But it wasn’t just my work, there were eight of us involved. But, you know, it was an academy award winning film, so I took that and ran with it. And not long after that I got work on Superman Returns (2006). I was there for over a year ending up being the longest serving ‘board artist on it. I also got to do the opening credit sequence, which again was unfortunately deleted. [Laughs] That was done as an actual comic which was used in a sequence where a kid was shown opening it, much like in the original Superman movie. After that I used my Superman Returns credit to go to the States, to Marvel and DC, and see if I could get work from them as a result of it.<br />
PB: So what are your feelings on the future of comics?<br />
CC: I think our best days are ahead of us.<br />
PB: What will be the fate of floppies [traditional pamphlet-style comics]? Are they dead in the water? <br />
CC: Umm…no. The format will have to change, but the monthly nature should stay. We are actually lucky to have that monthly schedule built-in to the format. It’s monthly advertising we don’t pay for. It means that people think of comics every month. We don’t have to remind them. Someone like Tom Clancy, even if he brings out a book every year, will still need to do a certain amount of advertising to reintroduce himself to the market. So in order to keep the monthly schedule you would need to keep things cheaper. Either as a floppy or a short app. It needs to be short and quick so people get it. That’s why TV shows work. What DC have done with the app for The New 52 [the relaunch of DC’s superhero line comprising fifty-two titles that are released as print and digital versions simultaneously] is I think brilliant. It’s the sort of thing which will bring people back to the market. The biggest challenge is to grow the market because it is so tiny compared to its potential. Once we get a billion people in the world reading comics then we can tap into other things and not worry about relying on the monthly schedule. To get there we need the app. More people will be brought in by the app than any other method I can think of. But as you still need to produce the work you may as well produce a printed version. <br />
PB: What about print-based graphic novels?<br />
CC: Always going to stay. Certainly in our lifetimes. Even with iPads. Their main use is if people want to travel light. Hands down people still prefer books. <br />
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The rest of the interview can be found in Word Balloons 14.<br />
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<strong>Interview</strong><br />
<em>“It’s about being creative. Who cares if it’s a comic or a painting.” </em><br />
<strong>An interview with Trevor Weekes.</strong><br />
Conducted via email by Philip Bentley, February 2012<br />
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For a brief period of time in 1980 Australia had not one but two adult-oriented comic anthologies.<br />
After a couple of decades of little comic publishing activity the debut issue of Minotaur’s Inkspots had been released in June then, later in the year, mainstream publisher Angus & Robinson made their own pitch with Outcast magazine. Comprising seventy pages, with twenty-eight in colour, Outcast was a bold attempt at a quality product. But as it turned out the early ‘80s were not a particularly advantageous time for publishing this sort of magazine. Inkspots, largely financed by its editors, ran at a loss for four issues before expiring (see next article). Outcast, produced with harder commercial expect-ations, lasted but the one issue. <br />
In an attempt to learn more about its brief tenure I tracked down one of its principal contributors Trevor Weekes. As I discovered he is someone who has had a greater connection to the graphic story medium than I was aware, whilst forging a distinguished career as a painter, sculptor and academic.<br />
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Excerpt<br />
PB: Your recollections of the beginnings of Outcast? <br />
TW: The year after I finished art school (1979) I shared a house with Louis (Luciano) Silvestro who was doing the “Eric and Douglas” comic for Revs motor-cycle magazine. [A fairly outré full page strip in a style vaguely reminiscent of British cartoonist Leo Baxendale about a bike rider (Douglas) and his side-car koala sidekick (Eric). It appears to have run from the late 1970s to early 80s. There was a collected edition in 1983. Ed.] I think Tony was the editor and Louis introduced me to him. Tony moved to A&R and had an idea about an adult fantasy & science fiction comic magazine. He pitched the idea to his boss Richard Walsh. He went for it, so we started doing stories. Originally it was just Louis and myself, but gradually others were added. <br />
PB: Where did you draw your inspiration from?<br />
TW: Heavy Metal had a big influence on us at the time and Outcast was based on that format. [Heavy Metal began in 1977 mainly reprinting European strips in translation. Ed.] I was also aware of Metal Hurlant, Pilote and other publications coming out of Europe. I guess my persuasion toward European comics came out of the interest in drawing and the fantastic characters the French artists had developed. Arzach was a single story basically and that was it. It left me wanting more but there wasn’t any. So I would move on to another story and another character. But the source of inspiration was always Moebius<br />
PB: Thoughts on the completed work then and now? From my perspective there is a shared stylistic quality of a storybook/surrealist bent which helps the overall unity of the mag, but may have made it less saleable to comic fans weaned on superheroes and barbarians.<br />
TW: I think it was an adventurous move and as you have so rightly pointed out perhaps misguided in terms of the projected audience. I think Australia was a hard market at that time and is still not an easy market to release comics in. I think there is an audience out there but it remains small in relation to other countries. So it was a brave move.<br />
PB: How was its cancellation broached to you? Your reaction?<br />
TW: My recollection of that is quite vague. I think there was disappointment but as it was an experiment I was rather casual about its success. If it was successful I would do more, if not it was a matter of getting on with other projects. I did do some more comic strips that were done for nothing in particular and in just the last few years I have returned to doing stories, graphic and animation, not only for Scribble [a comic anthology edited by Trevor and published by the University of Newcastle] but for my own solo graphic novels. I feel I do them better now. At art school I was hassled for being too illustrative and too graphic. I don’t see the division. It is all about being creative and who cares if it is a comic or a painting. If people like it they will want to read it or buy it or even just appreciate it.<br />
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The rest of the interview can be found in Word Balloons 14.<br />
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<strong>My Life in Comics </strong><br />
<strong>Addendum– Inkspots: the final reckoning</strong><br />
Philip Bentley<br />
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Regular readers will recall that as part of my personal reflections on the Australian comic scene over the past forty years, I detailed the circumstances surrounding the publication of Australia’s first adult-oriented comic anthology Inkspots, in the 1980s. At the time I wrote these articles (WB 5 & 7) my sources were mainly my memories, augmented by diaries and letters from the period. Most of the documen-tation from the publication had ended up with fellow editor, Greg Gates, whom I assumed had disposed of it long ago. However during Greg’s move to Adelaide (referred to last issue) much of this came to light enabling a more accurate picture to be constructed. It is my eventual aim to revise all ten chapters of my recollections into book form This is more to enable late comers to access the information without having to buy all issues of WB, rather than expecting loyal readers to have to double dip to access the extra information. So I present some of the extra Inkspots related information here. Whilst it may be a bit too fine-grained for some, I know there are readers who appreciate this level of detail.<br />
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The rest of the article can be found in Word Balloons 14.<br />
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Plus reviews of Terra 1 (Black House, 2011) by various, Keith McDougall’s The Many Faces of George Grosz 1 (Degenerate Comix, 2011), Hidden by Mirranda Burton (Black Pepper Press, 2011), Ubby’s Underdog’s: The Legend of the Phoenix Dragon by Brenton McKenna (Magabala Press, 2011), Frank Candiloro’s The Testament of Dr Zeitpunkt 1 & 2 (Franken Comics, 2011), Ballantyne: Where hidden rivers flow, and The Return of the Night Eagle by Peter Foster (Pitikia Press, 2012)<br />
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<br /></div>Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-40726238045997090922011-10-26T15:04:00.002+11:002011-10-26T15:26:18.085+11:00Word Balloons 13, October 2011<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAsccIHCm876D2cV5wHZf_nL90ryEpq7Q8ITQFgH1OxA1_dWu5yhozyW2XNbZk4LhjkR7IF_lPbprN9eSl-sc4h38CHRnJbOb3cee88PNOtKG1Q2glee8PazpTcmLWaLE2cEvGglbC-OM/s1600/wb13+sml.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5667647834101073810" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 283px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAsccIHCm876D2cV5wHZf_nL90ryEpq7Q8ITQFgH1OxA1_dWu5yhozyW2XNbZk4LhjkR7IF_lPbprN9eSl-sc4h38CHRnJbOb3cee88PNOtKG1Q2glee8PazpTcmLWaLE2cEvGglbC-OM/s400/wb13+sml.jpg" border="0" /></a> <strong>Editorial</strong><br /><br />The ‘unlucky for some’ thirteenth issue of <em>Word</em> <em>Balloons</em> marks a partial change of tack for the magazine. Following the completion last issue of my recollections of ‘my life in comics’ this issue sees the unveiling of not one, but two replacements.<br /><br />The first will be articles by myself and others. Some, as Dann Lennard’s here, will be of a nostalgic bent, others will deal with issues relevant to the form. The second replacement will be interviews of a more historical nature where I will track down past proponents of the field. My especial interest is with those creators who were active during the interregnum period of the 1960s & 70s, post the collapse of the local industry but before the rise of the more fan-based titles of the 1980s and 90s. It is an area largely overlooked and ripe for exploration.<br /><br />Towards that end this issue’s historical interview is with Fysh Rutherford, the writer of the brief but legendary newspaper strip Iron Outlaw. These historical interviews are meant to complement those with contemporary creators, such as this issue’s conversation with Mandy Ord.<br /><br />As a result of these changes I have decided to stick with the thirty-two page editions. I would much prefer to charge either five or ten dollars, and I don’t hear anyone pushing for a return to the black & white format. That said, in all likelihood I will be cutting back production to once a year (around April-May) to allow space to undertake other endeavours.<br /><br />In news of a more personal vein, Greg Gates, who will be known to many readers, either personally or via my recollections, has recently announced that he will be moving to Adelaide for family reasons towards the end of the year.<br /><br />Greg has made a significant contribution to the Australian comic scene in general and the Melbourne one in particular over the past forty years. Had it not been for Greg’s insatiable desire to meet and converse with other comic aficionados it’s fair to say that the course of comics in this city would have been quite different.<br /><br />By introducing himself to those he saw buying comics, first in newsagencies and later at Space Age Books, Greg formed a network of friends that inevitably led to the creation of the comic anthology <em>Inkspots</em> and the Minotaur emporium. He has also been instrumental in perpetuating the monthly Melbourne comic meetings, which have been running continuously for over twenty years. As well he has been an informal mentor to a generation of artists, doling out praise and criticism in just the right measures to inspire these people forward.<br /><br />Greg has also been a great supporter of this magazine, always ready to provide an illustration here and a cover there, sometimes at short notice.<br /><br />So Greg’s cheery countenance will be missed around the Melbourne comic traps, but our loss is Adelaide’s gain.<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Interview</span></strong><br /><em>“I like stories where people take that risk and reveal things.”</em><br /><strong>An interview with Mandy Ord.<br /></strong><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, September 2011<br /></span><br />From self-published mini-comics to square bound books from major publishers, and a slew of contributions to magazines of both a comic and literary bent, Mandy Ord has trodden a path that many would like to follow, but few have achieved.<br /><br />Seeking to uncover how she has gained such apparent success, this interview follows her life from Sydney, to Canberra and then Melbourne, seeking to understand the forces driving her to wish to commit her life to paper.<br /><br />Mandy gives insight on the creation of her one-eyed alter ego, explains how baring your soul can be empowering and describes some of the challenges of teaching the medium. Through it all Mandy’s passion for comics is self-evident.<br /><br />Excerpt<br />PB: Over the course of the last ten years or so you have concentrated on autobiography. It really could be said that you have just done instalments of one strip, that of the One-Eyed Girl, for want of a better name. What is it that drew you to continue with autobiography rather than other genres.<br />MO: Well that had to do with working in a comic book store.<br />PB: Really?<br />MO: Yes, I worked at Impact Records for two years. [Canberra’s first comic store that branched out from merely carrying records. Ed.] I was in charge of ordering all the alternative titles from Fantagraphics etc. So I used to order a lot of different books for myself. That’s when I discovered the various artists out there doing autobiographical work; people like Mary Fleener, Julie Doucet, Seth, Chester Brown, Joe Matt, Denis Kitchen etc. I also liked Charles Burns, even though he didn’t do autobio. But seeing all this work sort of confirmed that autobio was a legitimate way to tell stories. I like stories that are real. I know some may find them trivial, but you will find with any genre that it will appeal to some and not to others.<br /><br />PB: Do you find it challenging to bare your soul?<br />MO: No. I have something of a confessional streak. I will be talking to someone and find myself revealing things even though I didn’t mean to. A voice in my head will be saying “Shut up”, but I just go ahead. [Laughs.] I like stories where people take that risk and reveal things. Often the sort of things people are reluctant to reveal are the things that others will best relate to. But within telling your own story there is a degree of control. I do try to be sure that I’m certain about what I’m putting in a story before I publish it. There’s a lot that I don’t tell. That would be the advantage of doing fiction – you can deal with various human conditions without mentioning names or referencing anyone. Although it’s not as easy as that. If I’m reading a book I will often wonder if any of the author’s friends have asked “Is that character based on me? [Laughs.] But I feel confident when I tell stories about my life, because they deal with events that I have experienced and processed.<br /><br />PB: I was amused in the final strip in <em>Sensitive Creatures</em> [Allen & Unwin, 2011] you say that someone had suggested you should “put yourself out there more” as a creator, as of anyone who has produced comics in Australia I’m inclined to say that you have been the most widely published. So I’m just wondering what your strategy for being placed has been. Have you actively submitted work wherever you can?<br />MO: I actually don’t think I’m very good at actively seeking things out. I tend to have offers come to me. And there’s a ninety-nine per cent chance that I will say yes – unless it’s going to be a lot of work for little reward, not necessarily financial. But I really like appearing alongside other artists in anthologies. And working in anthologies with a single topic is good as it stretches you as a writer and artist. I tend not to go searching for things because whenever I do I seem to be rejected and I find that soul-destroying. It’s like I know I can do this thing, but someone else is sitting in judgement. I’d rather sit at home and do my own work. But it’s not like I’m dependent on comics as a means of support. I have a day job working in an organic greengrocer, and previous to that I have done lots of things.<br /><br />PB: How do you approach creating a comic story?<br />MO: I generally write it first. I always work out where I’m going, and where the characters are going visually through the story, allowing for some tweaking as I go along. If it feels wrong and you ignore it, it’s not going to turn out right. The incentive for me is always the story. Forget about the drawings, forget about the panels, just think about the story. Even comics that are rendered in a style I normally wouldn’t be attracted to, if the story is fantastic I get sucked in regardless and put my aesthetic bias aside.<br /><br />The rest of the interview can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 13.<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Interview<br /></span></strong><em>“We were ‘being the change’ at this time.” </em><br /><strong>An interview with Fysh Rutherford.<br /></strong><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, August 2011<br /></span><br />For a brief period of time in the early 1970s Australia had its own superhero, in the form of the Ned Kelly-helmeted, golden boomerang-wielding Iron Outlaw.<br /><br />A full page weekly newspaper strip, it ran for the year July 1970 to June 1971 initially in Melbourne’s <em>Sunday Observer</em>, then later in the nationally distributed <em>Sunday Review</em>. Although in part a super-hero spoof, Iron Outlaw was very much a part of the radical agenda of its day and gained in notoriety by sending up then political figures and societal attitudes.<br /><br />Credited only to ‘Greg & Grae’ it was in fact drawn by Gregor McAlpine and written by Graeme ‘Fysh’ Rutherford, two friends who had met at uni and created the strip on a whim inspired by the ‘spirit of the times’.<br /><br />In this interview Fysh explains the strip’s origins, its connection to the radical culture of the day, the reasons for its truncated run and why the two creators never produced any more strips.<br /><br />Excerpt<br />PB: How did Iron Outlaw come about?<br />FR: Greg [MacAlpine] was a talented artist and I liked writing so at some point I suggested we should do something together. There must have been some trigger, I think he had some comics in his folio.<br />PB: What were you attempting to achieve with it? It presumably was tied in with the growth of radical culture at this time.<br />FR: It was, but it’s not like we had a well-thought through agenda. To begin with we were both pretty naïve, just interested in drinking and girls and the like. If you had asked us who the Prime Minister of Australia was I’m not sure we would have known. [Laughs.] But we were interested in some of the more creative events happening around the city like the Film Festival. Its director, Erwin Rado, was one of a number of [Continental] European immigrants after WWII that helped to break us from the shackles of our staid Anglo culture. But at the same time there was a growing Americanisation of the country. There was an increasing American content on TV and of course there was also the Vietnam War and conscription; the big raffle you didn’t want to win! Both Greg and I were in the draft, but our birthdays missed being picked. It was scary stuff. So there was naturally a big anti-American sentiment around. Our idea was that there were all these American superheroes so we would do an Australian one and parody the American influence, whilst propagating Australian humour and attitudes. At the same time we decided to stick it up local politicians, as there was a backlash against Liberals, such as [State Attorney-General Arthur] Rylah and [Premier Henry] Bolte.<br /><br />FR: We came up with a hero who in real life was Gary Robinson, an accountant for Melvern Council, who after becoming concerned with the way the world was going encountered an aboriginal spirit at Glenrowan and is bequeathed superpowers, a Ned Kelly helmet and some golden boomerangs. Gary Robinson resembled and was broadly based on me. I worked at Malvern Council at the time and like him drove a FJ Holden.<br />FR: We produced some pages, made an appointment at <em>The Age</em>, went and showed our samples and they said “Hmm…gosh…well…this is interesting… Maybe you should go and see this new paper the <em>Sunday Observer</em>”.<br />[A creation of the libertarian millionaire Gordon Barton, the <em>Sunday Observer</em>, and it’s successor the <em>Sunday Review</em> (later <em>Nation Review</em>), ruffled the feathers of the staid Melbourne establishment of the time by giving a voice to the emerging radical urban left. Ed.] So we just showed up and they said “Okay, we’re looking for some comic strips.”<br /><br />PB: What sort of editorial direction or interference was there?<br />FR: Very little. We answered to nobody and told no-one what we were doing. Greg would show up once a week with the strip and I think he picked up the cheque at the same time. But some of the things we depicted now make me cringe. Like the drawing of aboriginal trackers as bloodhounds on dog leashes.<br />PB: I do read that as satire i.e. you’re drawing the reader’s attention that that is how aboriginals are viewed by society at this time, rather than promoting the idea, but it is fairly edgy and I’m sure that there are those who would take offence at it. But I’m betting that there would have been fewer complaints to this than there would have been to say bare breasts. In one of the later strips there is an aside that “Dawn [Iron Outlaw’s girlfriend and partner Steel Sheila] is depicted nippleless in Victoria”.<br />FR: That was a joke on the state of affairs here, not direct interference.<br /><br />PB: Did you deliberately keep a low profile due to worries that you’d be a target by those in power? The strip was just signed Greg & Grae.<br />FR: Not really, it was more our inability to handle fame. [In <em>Ferritabillia</em>, Richard Walsh’s annotated reprinting of the best of <em>Nation Review</em>, he calls Iron Outlaw one of the Sunday <em>Observer’s</em> most popular features. Ed.] But then again Greg once claimed that one time when he went to the studio he found a couple of ASIO agents going through it. And there were a couple of blokes in a car parked near where I living in St Kilda for a few weeks. So we were observed.<br /><br />The rest of the interview can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 13.<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Article<br /></span>My Life as a Comic Geek <br /></strong><span style="font-size:85%;">Dann Lennard</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span>Inspired by ye ed’s recollections of collecting comics in the 1960s and 70s Dann Lennard has committed his own story to posterity. Providing an interesting counterpoint to my own, Dann traces his steps around rural South Australia and Adelaide in the 1970s and 80s, then to Sydney in the 1990s.<br /><br />Dann is a journalist for Australian Consolidated Press and has published the shrine to trash-culture <em>Betty Paginated</em> since 1992. This article originally appeared in <em>Betty Paginated</em> 30 in 2007.<br /><br />Excerpt<br />If there’s anyone I have to thank for my lifelong love of comics, it’s my mum. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of grabbing the big plastic bag from Mum’s wardrobe, removing the musty, crumbling contents and poring over her beloved collection of Australian comics from the 1940s and 50s. I quickly fell in love with the artwork of Keith Chatto, especially his ‘good-girl art’ in the bush soap opera, Bunny Allen, a standout strip in <em>Tex Morton’s Comic</em> (Allied, 1947-50), and <em>Lone Wolf</em> (Atlas, 1949-56).<br /><br />But my love for comics was influenced from many different directions. Growing up in rural Kalangadoo, South Australia, there were no shortage of <em>Wizard Of Id</em>, <em>B.C., Peanuts and Tumbleweeds</em> paperback collections in the house, courtesy of my older brothers. There were also their <em>Cracked</em> mags and tons of <em>Phantom</em> comics. Best of all, my older brothers had accumulated several 60s-era English annuals: hardback collections like <em>Hurricane, Bronco Layne, Superman and Batman</em> (containing reprints of the original American comics).<br /><br />Soon, I was ordering weekly English comics from my local newsagency. My fave titles as a non-discerning reader in the early 70s were IPC’s horror-themed humour titles <em>Shiver & Shake</em> and <em>Monster Fun</em> (starring Frankie Stein), followed by the adventure-filled <em>Valiant</em> & <em>Lion</em>.<br /><br />However, my comic-reading habits were to receive a massive shake-up one day in 1975 when my mum sent me down to the corner store to buy some milk. She also gave me twenty-five cents to buy a comic. Instead, it was a thirty cent comic that caught my eye: The <em>Avengers</em> 2, a black & white reprint published by Aussie company Newton Comics [see article in <em>WB</em> 6]. Despite the lack of colour, it had more pages, plus a pull-out colour poster… that seemed like value for money to me. So I ‘borrowed’ five cents of Mum’s change and bought the mag. Despite getting in a heap of trouble from my parents when I got home, it was worth the hassle as I pored over the cheap reprint, marvelling at Jack Kirby’s artwork (although I had no idea who he was at the time) and the fascinating tale of a team of superheroes bickering and fighting among themselves thanks to the cunning machinations of a creature called the Space Phantom. There was also a creepy back-up tale featuring Giant-Man and the Wasp versus Egghead’s android. I loved that comic. After that, I collected as many Newton titles as I could find, especially The Avengers.<br /><br />When my family relocated to another country town, Peterborough, in 1977 I discovered two wonderful things – there were two newsagencies and a second-hand bookshop. From Homes Newsagency I picked up my first genuine Marvel comic. Distribution was utterly random but I scored a fair number of George Perez’s <em>Avengers</em> including the Kang/Immortus finale in 143-44.<br /><br />But the coolest thing about Peterborough was the second-hand store run by Mrs White. It was located in the town’s defunct movie theatre and for a while there it seemed like every week it had a fresh stock of awesome comics for sale from the 60s and early 70s.<br /><br />My attitude to collecting comics changed drastically in 1980 when I spied my first copy of <em>The</em> <em>Uncanny X-Men</em>. It was issue 138 – written by Chris Claremont, art by John Byrne and Terry Austin – and was the perfect issue to get into the title. Cyclops had quit the team after the tragic death of Phoenix the previous issue and this was a recap of not only his life but the X-Men from its beginnings. I was hooked.<br /><br />1980 was also the year of another seminal event in my life while on a trip to Adelaide to visit my oldest brother Chris. One evening we went out for dinner in the city centre and afterwards he took me to a trippy second-hand bookshop called Third World in Hindley Street. For a naïve country boy, being inside a shop at…gasp…9.00pm was mind-blowing. After all, Peterborough’s shops closed at 5.30pm! The two-storey shop was overflowing with strange books and magazines (many appeared to have been there since the 60s) and its ceiling was covered with weird and wonderful posters.<br /><br />In this magical place I bought <em>Masters Of Comic Book Art</em> by PR Garriock. This 1978 book featured art and bios by some of the world’s greatest artists and opened my eyes to the likes of Will Eisner, Wally Wood, Harvey Kurtzman, Moebius, Richard Corben and Robert Crumb. It was a consciousness-expanding experience. Very quickly, I adopted Eisner, Wood and Corben as my three main comic book idols.<br /><br />The rest of the article can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 13.<br /><br />Plus reviews of <em>The List</em> and <em>Uncle Silas</em>.Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-55837433332485738132011-04-15T15:38:00.002+10:002011-04-15T16:34:19.925+10:00Word Balloons 12, April 2011<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRxdiB-R4ZauyWH6GemJScwSqNNVzSAq2Z307q6hBAgyORubno0b-Yf34Tt1uJSVg0Cag87JXdciti0DGBaMjkIac5YdfNyFIyZ0LySNl8FvXLldHytcRBI440J1IA8n2COoCfINJDn3Q/s1600/wb+12+cover+outlines+correctedsmall.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5595681110193811890" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 283px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRxdiB-R4ZauyWH6GemJScwSqNNVzSAq2Z307q6hBAgyORubno0b-Yf34Tt1uJSVg0Cag87JXdciti0DGBaMjkIac5YdfNyFIyZ0LySNl8FvXLldHytcRBI440J1IA8n2COoCfINJDn3Q/s400/wb+12+cover+outlines+correctedsmall.jpg" border="0" /></a> <br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Editorial</span></strong> <br /><br />Welcome to the long overdue twelfth issue of Word <em>Balloons</em>. Having concentrated mainly on creators in past issues I thought it was time that the spotlight was shone on another aspect of the scene namely publishers. After all they are responsible for taking raw material and turning it into a published entity. Even though professional comic publishers in this country are fairly thin on the ground I have sought out the three most prominent. <br /><br />My original idea was to ask them all essentially the same questions in an endeavour to see where their similarities and differences lay. My assumption was that this would produce a number of fairly short responses (especially as two would be conducted by email), which would hopefully take up the same amount of space as one long interview. However I reckoned without their loquaciousness. So given circumstances had prevented me from producing an issue at the end of 2010 I decided that rather than holding over the conclusion of the Fox saga I would increase the page count to present a bumper issue. It is my intention to revert to the 24 page full colour format next time. <br /><br />This issue also brings to a close the recollections of ‘my life in comics’. Given it seems as many people appear to buy the magazine for these as the interviews, I do wonder how sales will hold up in the future. For the moment, though, I intend to press on and will replace my recollections with a variety of articles broadly alternating nostalgia with a more critical analysis of the form, which tend to be the two hallmarks of the journal. <br /><br />It should be noted that none of the three publishers interviewed are currently in a position to accept unsolicited submissions. <br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Interview</span></strong><br /><em>"My motivation in publishing is not just to make money.” <br /></em><strong>An interview with Erica Wagner. <br /></strong><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, December 2010. </span><br /><br />The Australian publisher Allen & Unwin was established as an independent entity in 1990, following the sale of its British parent George Allen & Unwin. <br /><br />In 2007 Erica Wagner (pronounced Germanically like the composer), the publisher of their children’s and young adult books made the significant decision to publish Nicki Greenberg’s adaptation of <em>The Great Gatsby</em> .This has been followed by a number of other graphic novels and illustrated books including Greenberg’s adaptation of <em>Hamlet</em> (2010), two works by Bruce Mutard The Sacrifice (2008) and The Silence (2009), Shaun Tan’s <em>Tales From Outer Suburbia</em> (2008), Nathan Jurevicius’ <em>Scarygirl</em> (2009), and <em>Five Wounds</em> by Jonathan Walker & Dan Hallett (2010). <br /><br />This interview endeavours to discover what led a mainstream publisher to what many might consider a fringe market, what they are trying to achieve in it, as well as canvassing the vexed issue of marketing comics in the modern world. <br /><br />Excerpt. <br />PB: Why did you decide to start publishing graphic novels and what interest had you had in the comic medium prior to this? <br />EW: Well it grew out of doing children’s books – working with illustrators who were wanting to develop their own stories. I guess I have always been attracted to work with a strong visual element. As a child I loved dark German fairy-tales and stories, Disney comics and Peanuts. I would also read comics that my older brother had. But my big awakening was reading <em>Maus </em>in the 1990s when I was still at Penguin (it was a Penguin book). The lynchpin to start doing the graphic novels, though, was probably [cartoonist] Andrew Weldon. He had approached me when I was at Penguin looking to have his editorial cartoons published. I loved them, but they didn’t come under the heading of children’s books and the perceived wisdom was that cartoon books didn’t sell unless you had a huge name already. So I suggested Andrew do some kids’ books. Andrew knew of my interest in graphic-oriented works and he would occasionally send artists my way to look at their work. One of these was Nicki Greenberg, who came with the first 100-odd pages of <em>The Great Gatsby</em>. And we all thought it was fantastic and I really wanted to publish it. But it took a long time to work out how we could do so. It was a big risk <br />PB: What criteria do you use in choosing works? Is it different for graphic novels than with other books you publish? EW: At one level it is, but it isn’t at a fundamental level. The basic reasons that make you take on a book are whether you have a gut feeling that it is good and that there’s a market for it. Then you’ve got to analyse whether there actually is a market or you just want there to be one. [Laughs.] <br />PB: Do you have a specific idea of the types of stories you’re after or is that being too proscriptive? <br />EW: It’s more of a gut reaction that I look for – you just feel it in your bones if the work moves and excites you, has integrity, is very well thought out and executed, and has that indefinable ‘x’ factor that is of the time and will attract readers. <br />PB: It must be more difficult to work out what is going to sell well in the graphic story market as you have fewer sales figures. <br />EW: That’s true. But we’re not trying to attract just the established comic audience, we’re trying to attract a book-loving audience. <br /><br />The rest of the article can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 12. <br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Interview </strong><br /></span><em>“The nature of storytelling is truly gestalt.”</em> <br /><strong>An interview with Wolfgang Bylsma. </strong><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, December 2010-January 2011. </span><br /><br />Since its beginning in 2007 Perth-based, but internationally focussed Gestalt Publishing has produced a number of impressive looking works in a variety of formats. There have been the anthologies <em>Character Sketches </em>(2007) and <em>Flinch </em>(2009); graphic novels <em>Vowels </em>by Skye Ogden (2007), Waldo’s <em>Hawaiian Holiday </em>(2008) by Alex Cox & Chris Bones and Justin Randall’s <em>Changing Ways </em>(2010); and ‘traditional’ comic magazines <em>The Example </em>(2009) by Tom Taylor & Colin Wilson and Taylor & Ogden’s <em>Rombies </em>(2010). They have also stepped in to publish the originally self-published <em>Digested </em>by Bobby N. (2008-) <br /><br />Nowhere is its international perspective better illustrated than by its two principals – Perth-based Wolfgang Bylsma and the Tokyo via Melbourne and Perth located Ogden. <br /><br />In this email interview Bylsma gives an insight into Gestalt’s origins and their publishing rationale. <br /><br />Excerpt.<br />PB: What is the story behind the establishment of Gestalt? <br />WB: Gestalt came about owing to an alignment of several elements. I used to teach media production at Murdoch University in Perth, but opted to leave that position in 2000 to take my own business in branding and web development more seriously. Admittedly, that became a smidgen laborious despite being quite successful. After a couple of years I came to realise that I was essentially just doing my work because it was, well, just work. Enter Skye Ogden, now Art Director with Gestalt. We worked together on [comics] projects for about eighteen months. During this period we managed to network and discover more Australian comic talent than we’d realised existed. We were disappointed that their work wasn’t more readily available and, after one of our production meetings, decided to do something about it. Investigating arts funding options led me to the Write In Your Face grant, established by the Australia Council to assist with exactly what we were trying to set up. So I applied, and a few months later we received the letter that made it all possible. The funding was only $5000, all of which was paid out to artists for the stories that were included in our first anthology, <em>Character Sketches</em>, but that was the crux of our approach; we wanted people to be paid for their work. <br />PB: What is Gestalt’s publishing ethos or mission statement? <br />WB: We started out with the clear mission to enable Australian creators to receive international distribution and exposure without having to take their intellectual property overseas, or being forced into ‘work-for-hire’ to create their careers. For the most part that remains true, although we have now expanded to work with international creators as well. Our underlying ethos, however, is to enable great storytelling. <br />PB: What market are you aiming at? <br />WB: We’re aiming at a somewhat discerning market who appreciate storytelling with substance, which may sound a little odd given that we’re publishing a comic about zombies in Ancient Rome, but at the heart of every story we choose to publish there is a poignancy or perspective that we feel holds a degree of gravitas.<br /><br />The rest of the article can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 12.<br /><br /><strong>Interview </strong><br /><em>“I want to back artists, not hire them to do a job.” </em><br /><strong>An interview with Baden Kirgan. </strong><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, December 2010-January 2011. </span><br /><br />Begun as an offshoot of a successful printing business, Black House has initially concentrated on horror or gothic-tinged comics in the traditional pamphlet–style format, before recently branching out into graphic novels and pulp fiction in a wider range of styles. To Chris Sequeira, John Cornell & Dave Elsey’s revisioning of Sherlock Holmes in <em>The Dark</em> <em>Detective</em> and Jan Scherpenhuizen’s apocalyptic thriller <em>The Twilight Age</em> has been added Jason Paulos’ horror anthology <em>Eeek!,</em> a collected edition of an early Bruce Mutard strip <em>A Mind of</em> <em>Love</em>, the black humour of Matt Emery in the <em>Guzumo Show</em> and finally a line of zombie novellas <em>After the World</em> by a variety of authors. <br /><br />In this email interview Black House proprietor Baden Kirgan explains what led a teenage sci-fi nut to publish comics once he ‘grew up’, the pitfalls of calling for submissions in the horror genre and why ballerinas should get a day job. <br /><br />Excerpt.<br />PB: What prompted you to found a comic company? <br />BK: The same reason anyone starts a company – to make money. I had been operating a successful commercial printing business for about eight years by then and I was a bit bored. I was also looking to the future and for printers a challenge we all face is that we are always waiting for the next job to come through the door. The most successful printers, however don’t wait, but generate their own work by creating content, such as magazines or newspapers. I wanted to find a way to do that myself. At the same time my interest in comics had really blossomed and one night I was at work running a press and reading a trade of <em>The Walking Dead</em> [Image, 2003- present]. It occurred to me that I could easily produce the physical book myself if I wanted to and so I set out to see if anyone was doing anything locally to the level I thought I could achieve. <br />PB: What is Black House’s publishing ethos or mission statement? <br />BK: When I started I remember telling Jason Paulos I wanted to be an Australian Vertigo. He was very kind in not laughing in my face, but that was the original idea – to print good quality, adult oriented darker material. Over time that changed a bit as a few realities hit. No company can really restrict itself to one genre and be commercially viable. You need to be open to a spread of genres and ideas. You also have to be careful not to dictate the art to the artist. I had several very good creators pitch stuff to me that they thought I would like or that fitted my vision of the company, but they mostly lacked passion or interest because they were trying to tell me what they thought I wanted to hear – and it showed. It was much more rewarding for me to ask them to give me an idea they liked regardless of whether they thought it would suit us <br />PB: What are your selection criteria when it comes to projects? <br />BK: From a material point of view, really, I just have to like the story. I have no one to please but myself and if the book is something that I actually want to read then I am interested. I am text focused so I tend to pay more attention to the idea and the quality of the writing at first. I don’t regard myself as a good judge of art so I do ask advice on that. But having said that, I know enough to be put off by non-professional standards and I have knocked back several projects with interesting stories because the artist hasn’t been up to it. Apart from those obvious points, who is behind the project is the main criterion. A professional attitude and proven record of getting work out the door is essential. <br /><br />The rest of the article can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 12.<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Article </span><br />My Life in Comics Part X – <em>Fox Comics</em>, the later years 1989-92. </strong><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">By Philip Bentley </span><br /><br />This is the tenth and final of a series of articles chronicling my path as a comics aficionado in Australia over the past forty years. Primarily these are my recollections alone and make no claims to be the authoritative view. <br /><br />After last chapter detailing what I felt to be the strengths of the magazine, this issue I look at the difficulties involved in its production. Starting from the move to magazine size in 1985, the saga is taken through to the last four issues co-produced with Fantagraphics Books. Reasons for the title’s cancellation are canvassed and the variety of short-lived titles, also under-taken with Fantagraphics, are detailed thereafter. <br /><br />Excerpt. <br />With our thirteenth issue (Oct. 1985) publisher David Vodicka decided it was time to up the ante by seeking greater overseas distribution. As I have previously explained, at this time there were fewer comics being published and more distributors carrying them than is the situation today, so achieving overseas distribution wasn’t that difficult. We simply sent a sample copy and many, but not all, agreed. Much to our surprise the issue was ordered in numbers far exceeding expectations – in the vicinity of 3,500 copies, a considerable amount for an indie publication. Whilst gratified by this turn of events, I think we greeted the news with caution given the prevailing conditions in the US comic scene at this time. <br /><br />Like many collectables over the years various types of comics have come in and out of popularity, with various companies, titles, artists, characters and motifs all having their time in the sun. By the mid-80s the spotlight had turned to black and white indie books sparked by the success of the <em>Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles</em> (<em>TMNT</em>), a spoof on the X-Men and other teen groups. When <em>TMNT</em>’s popularity took off back issues, which had been produced in modest numbers, became like gold. This frenzy spilled over into the rest of the indie market as dealers bought up any and every new work in the expectation that one of these would go stellar and sales of its back issues, at vastly inflated prices, would cover the cost of all of the other stockpiled titles. <br /><br />But of course there was no guarantee that any of these books would gain massive popularity. So after a while dealers became tired of tying up money on obscure titles and in a version of ‘blame the victim’ there was a backlash against all indie comics. <em>Fox Comics</em> was unlucky enough to be caught in the middle of this reaction and whilst it would be churlish to lay all our woes at this door it still provided market conditions that were weighted against us. So from a high point of 3,500, orders steadily declined in direct opposition, in our minds, to the increase in quality in the book.<br /><br /> … <br /><br />The situation in Australia was a bit different although very much of two speeds. Away from Melbourne there was virtually no way of reaching interested parties and the few copies that ended up in comic shops probably languished in some dark corner. In Melbourne, though, sales steadily grew. This was due partially to word of mouth, partially through being prominently displayed at Minotaur where there were a number of supportive staff. But most importantly it was due to promotion on independent radio programmes. <br /><br />The rest of the article can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 12. <br /><br />Plus reviews of Daren White & Eddie Campbell’s <em>The Playwright</em>, Gregory Mackay’s <em>Francis</em> <em>Bear</em>, <em>It got big for no reason</em> by Andrew Fulton, <em>Guzumo Show</em> by Matt Emery, & <em>Yuck</em> 1 & 4.Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-53046986725700983172010-05-07T14:37:00.005+10:002010-05-07T15:09:41.405+10:00Word Balloons 11, May 2010<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRiUh6G-SEhtm7Ndq8mzQlhBy1PqBT5W5ZXDzf0i6aC5JO097PGN5PG4iaUUhDP_lc8V48_aQYtdMMw66R5zC2uxyNsZdkwcdGxpFHEm6H4ihfUregPEg8rHjyy1mUM7urWbIOE5qWYIE/s1600/wb+11+cover+outlinesjpg.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5468388275310070914" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 283px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRiUh6G-SEhtm7Ndq8mzQlhBy1PqBT5W5ZXDzf0i6aC5JO097PGN5PG4iaUUhDP_lc8V48_aQYtdMMw66R5zC2uxyNsZdkwcdGxpFHEm6H4ihfUregPEg8rHjyy1mUM7urWbIOE5qWYIE/s400/wb+11+cover+outlinesjpg.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Editorial<br /></span></strong>There have been further heartening moves to bring the graphic story medium out of the shadows of late. In late April 2010 Melbourne’s <strong>Wheeler Centre</strong>, a newly-formed peak literary body, hosted a weekend spotlight-ing the medium with talks, panels and workshops. On the Saturday a series of panels were held giving some notable creators such as Bruce Mutard, Queenie Chan, Bernard Caleo, ‘Chewie’ Chan and Dylan Horrocks (from NZ) the opportunity to both explain their work and debate some perennial questions of the form.<br /><br />Apart from the encouragement of the weekend being held at all, it was refreshing to realise that the graphic story medium in this country has reached the point where there are sufficient articulate creators to make such an event possible. I well recall panels from early comic conventions of the 1970s and 80s where creators were exclusively newspaper cartoonists between whom and the audience, I have previously suggested, there was an insurmountable distance.<br /><br />It was also great to see that the panels were so well supported. I had feared that there may have been only a handful of people in attendance. But instead it looked as if a couple of hundred attended each session, with most of these not being the ‘usual suspects’ from within the comic scene.<br /><br />Of course the event was not without its hiccoughs. Organisation prior to it seemed a bit shambolic with details sketchy. Whilst I appreciate that promotion may best be targeted in the week leading up to an event, the relative paucity of information on the website in the preceding weeks was hardly encouraging.<br /><br />It is hoped given these sorts of numbers that this experiment will continue. Readers are encouraged to stay abreast of activities at the Wheeler Centre by bookmarking the website www.wheelercentre.com.<br /><br />In early May Melbourne again played host to <strong>Doujicon</strong>, a small but vibrant convention focussing on small-press creators from both the manga and Western comics fields. As with the Wheeler Centre events the release of this issue was poorly placed to advertise them, but again interested parties are encouraged to bookmark www.doujicon.oztaku.com.<br /><br />Finally, small-press creators from all types of media will be showcased at the <strong>Page</strong> <strong>Parlour Zine Fair</strong>, associated with the Emerging Writers Festival, at Federation Square, Sunday May 23 12.00-5.00. www.emergingwritersfestival.org.au.<br /><br />The colour introduced last issue has been persevered with this time, although with a further rise in price to seven dollars. Unfortunately a breakdown in communications with the printer led to last issue’s price being increased post-printing, and had I thought the matter through more closely I would have realised that it needed to be seven dollars rather than six. So apologies for two price rises rather than one. Mail sales are now seven dollars by cheque, post inclusive, but will remain at five for those wishing to pay by notes.<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Interview<br /></span></strong><em>“I wanted to draw magnificent naked women having adventures.”</em><br /><strong>An interview with Chris Johnston.<br /></strong><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, April 2010</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span>Given the fractured state of the Australian comics scene over the past fifty years, it is perhaps not surprising that someone could make a notable contribution to the field, yet remain a virtual unknown. But when you consider that this person’s most prolific work appeared for ten years in Australia’s most popular magazine of its time, it is certainly worthy of comment.<br /><br />This is the case with Chris Johnston whose “Nurse Nancy Nightingale”, produced in collaboration with Rowena C. (under the pseudonym of Roy Roberts), appeared weekly in the magazine <em>Picture</em>. Of course <em>Picture</em> is hardly your most high-brow publication and Nurse Nancy was, it must be said, a work that was aimed around the groin, even though it still maintained a narrative integrity that meant it was more than simply a ‘stroke piece’.<br /><br />Chris’s work makes him well-placed for our discussion into the <ahem>in and outs of producing an erotic comic. But there is more to him than this as over the years he has also turned his hand to book illustration, storyboards and political cartooning, demonstrating again the varied paths someone with comic skills can take.<br /><br />Excerpt<br />CJ: [In the early 1970s] I would haunt Franklins [second-hand bookshop in Melbourne] and picked up quite a few old books and magazines. A lot of the magazines were illustrated by the likes of Kelly Freas, Leo Summers, Jack Gaughan, Edd Cartier etc. who were early influences. Then I discovered Space Age Books. And there I also discovered the wider world of comics. I was never really into superheroes, but there were other comics that had more of a fantasy nature.<br />PB: What in particular?<br />CJ: Richard Corben made a deep early impression on me with works like <em>Rowlf</em>. He and artists like Jeff Jones had more of a European sensibility about them. Then I discovered French artists such as [Jean-Claude] Mezieres (Valerian) and Moebius. I think I was naturally led to comics because I had an abiding interest in illustration as opposed to painting. In my teens I had been an admirer of English illustrators from earlier in the century like Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac and Heath Robinson. Then I had a moment of epiphany on a visit to the Art Gallery in the early1960s when I saw a Norman Lindsay watercolour. That was the first time I had seen a picture of a woman with public hair. [Laughs.] But it was also the style of the art. Despite the fact that it was a painting it still was closer to illustration and a comic book style than what you generally saw in a traditional painting. And I realised that that was the sort of art I wanted to aspire to. To draw magnificent naked women having adventures. [Laughs.]<br />***<br />PB: In the early 1980s you started an artistic partnership with Stephen Campbell.<br />CJ: Through SF fandom I’d met a number of people who would play a major part in my later life. Stephen was one. Prior to going overseas in mid-1979 Stephen and I had talked about working together. [On my return], towards the end of the year, it seemed appropriate to get the partnership happening. [After about a year]…we had a stroke of good luck by getting onto the publishers Decalon [and through them were put in touch with Tony Barber who had developed a range of soft toys called Puggles which he wanted us to visualise. ]<br />PB: At Decalon you did seven Puggles books: an initial large one in 1981, and then a series of six small booklets that you did three each in 1982.<br />CJ: [After a couple of years we set] up under the name of GASPP (Graphic Art Suitable for Practical Purposes) in St Kilda.<br />PB: That was in a couple of shops in Carlisle Street, close to the corner of Barkly and opposite the National Theatre. You were all living there: yourself, Stephen and Rowena C whom he had now taken up with.<br />What sort of work did you do at that studio?<br />CJ: Well, you could say there were two levels. Stephen lead the more artistically challenging jobs, like art directing ads, and painting book covers and video jackets. On the other level, Rowena and I used the Puggles to hawk our wares around, producing children’s books for publishers such as Rigby, Mimosa, and Macmillan. It was something of a production line, as she coloured my pencils.<br />PB: Over the years, either by yourself or in partnership, you have done many children’s books. How many roughly?<br />CJ: I’m not exactly sure. It would be more than fifty but less than one hundred. The peak period was in the late 80s to early 90s.<br />***<br />PB: Previously you’ve mentioned your interest in the naked form and your early exposure to Norman Lindsay, but you have been able to take these interests and do what for some would be a dream job, and that is to make a living, for a time, drawing naked women.<br />CJ: It started in the late 1980s and occurred through Paul, a former partner of Rowena’s who was doing articles for <em>True Blue</em>, an Australian men’s magazine. Rowena and I started off by doing some accompanying illustrations, then the magazine approached us to do a strip “Jody Jumpsuit”. We had always admired “Little Annie Fanny” [the Kurtzman & Elder strip in American <em>Playboy</em>] and “Wicked Wanda” [by Ron Embleton in <em>Penthouse</em>]. Wanda was probably more of an influence as Rowena liked the way she was more in control of her own destiny.<br />PB: How come you decided to work with Rowena?<br />CJ: Well we were working together already. It was a natural progression. Our intention was to do ‘subversive erotica’ where the woman was in control; naked, but in control. [Laughs.] We didn’t see anything sexist about nakedness in and of itself. Jody lasted until the early 90s. When the editor of <em>True Blue</em>, Brad Boxall, moved over to Picture he asked us to do something for them as well.<br />PB: What was Brad’s brief?<br />CJ: He asked for the adventures of a naughty nurse and came up with the name “Nurse Nancy Nightingale”.<br />PB: Did you collaborate any differently given these were continuing story arcs?<br />CJ: We’d have a conversation about the direction, I’d make some notes about where I thought the story should go and Rowena would then write the script. But I would sometimes make changes to ensure continuity and that there were naked ladies in it each week.<br />PB: It’s a hard life. [Laughs.]<br />CJ: I know. [Laughs<br />PB: How many years did it run?<br />CJ: It began in 1991 and ran to 1999, although it did return in the <em>Picture Home Girls</em> magazine [where] we did a number of episodes of “Young Nurse Nancy” that ran into the early 2000s. There were ten different story arcs, eleven if you count the young Nancy, that amounted to some 400 pages.<br />PB: Now although you started out with Nancy as a nurse in a hospital, at the end of the first storyline you blew the hospital up and she became a secret agent.<br />CJ: We felt that had more narrative potential. At this time <em>Picture</em> wasn’t simply the best selling men’s magazine in Australia, but the best selling magazine period. It had regular readers’ polls and for quite a few years Nancy was the most popular comic in the magazine. So we had a bit of clout. So long as it remained popular Brad was happy to let us have our heads. We still kept Nancy as a nurse, but changed her to a world famous sex therapist who thought that sex could solve all the world’s problems.<br /><br />The rest of the interview can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 11.<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Article</span></strong><br /><strong>My Life in Comics</strong><br /><strong>Part IX – <em>Fox Comics</em>, the middle years 1986-88.</strong><br />by Philip Bentley<br /><br />Excerpt<br />In this chapter I deal with the ten issues (14-23) of <em>Fox Comics</em> produced after the shift to magazine size but before the co-publishing deal with Fantagraphics. It was a period when the magazine attracted some talented creators and impressive strips, as well as developing a pleasing sense of community. Readers who find the tone perhaps too triumphalist are advised that it ideally needs to be read with next issue’s instalment, which will cover the more sobering issues of what went wrong, as opposed to this issue’s what went right.<br /><br />The early Foxes were produced to a small-press ethos and largely published such work as was to hand. In 1986, though, we made the switch to a magazine-sized format with our fourteenth issue. This move had a knock-on effect in other areas. One immediate observation was how some of the off-the-cuff strips that had worked in the A5 magazine looked out of place at a larger size. Another was that we needed to add more ‘bang for the buck’. As it would happen, issue fourteen was released the same week as a <em>Love & Rockets</em>, and whilst both had thirty-two pages, the Fox took a mere ten minutes to read, <em>L&R</em> took over half an hour. So we began to consider whether by imposing more selective editorial criteria we could produce something with greater artistic clout.<br /><br />Whilst we may have begun to have a greater input into the magazine’s direction, we were still well aware of the limitations we were working under. At around thirty-two pages, but with a ‘stable’ of artists that over the first thirteen issues was pushing forty people, space was at a premium. So strips over the first few years had tended to be short (one to five pages) with subject matter that could be easily contained in a few pages, such as flights of fancy, humorous cartoons or autobiographical tales.<br /><br />It was the latter that I that I seized upon, when I was contemplating future directions, as the one most likely to produce a deeper emotional response from the reader in the shortest amount of space. It’s not like we issued a blanket ultimatum for real life stories, and strip selection still remained largely by submission rather than by commission, but we did come to have a preference for this style of work which, significantly, some of our key creators had already been utilising.<br /><br />As chance would have it subsequent arrivals to the Fox had their own take on the autobiographical area. The most prolific was Dave Hodson, who, following his first appearance in <em>Fox Comics</em> 14 became one of our most significant contributors. Another take on the notion of ‘real life’ strips, if not totally autobiographical, came from New Zealender Dylan Horrocks.<br /><br />Other local contributors to make their mark during the middle issues of the magazine included Lindsay Arnold, Micheal (sic) Graham, Tony Thorne, Maria Peña, Gerard Ashworth, Lazarus Dobelsky, David Bird, and Dillon Naylor.<br /><br />The UK connection continued to prosper helped along by a number of visits there by David Vodicka. After initially publishing reprints we had begun to receive original strips, primarily from artists we had approach-ed, but over time unsolicited ones as well. The main contributors continued to be Ed Pinsent and Phil Elliot, although others such as Glenn Dakin, John Bagnall and Bob Lynch made cameos.<br /><br />In <em>Fox Comics</em> 18 (March 1988) we welcomed back Eddie Campbell, who by now had married and emigrated to Australia. In the succeeding issues we ran a suite of strips that Eddie had been producing since his arrival in Australia. Drawn in an appealing sketchy manner, they reflected the fact that sometimes it takes a perceptive outsider to capture the spirit of a locale<br /><br />So as time progressed there was to our eyes a growing momentum about the magazine. It had begun with <em>Fox Comics</em> 16, which was the first to reflect our attempts to up the ante in terms of better strips and design. Then, with the addition of Dave Hodson’s strips, Lazarus Dobelsky and Ian Eddy’s “Lifestyles of the Poor and Insignificant”, Dylan Horrocks's “Sex” and Eddie Campbell’s work there were some heavy hitters to build each issue around. For me this wave peaked with issues twenty and twenty-one in the latter half of 1988.<br /><br />The rest of the article can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 11.<br /><br />Plus reviews of <em>Scarygirl</em> by Nathan Jurevicius “a lushly illustrated tale…that is not without its flaws”; Daniel Reed’s <em>Crumpleton Experiments</em> 9 “full of invention [with] the quality of an off-kilter fairy-tale”; <em>Dead By 30</em> by Andrei Buters “a creditable beginning”; Bobby N’s <em>Digested</em> 2 “some finely observed and well-interpreted insights into various aspects of the human experience” and <em>Dark Detective Sherlock Holmes</em> 1-3 by Chris Sequeria, John Cornell and Dave Elsey “the mix of Holmes and Hammer Horror seems to mesh effectively enough.”Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-19716388413640774862009-12-09T13:44:00.007+11:002009-12-09T14:18:59.097+11:00Bruce Mutard Interview Update<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkxpBWw2XYyvv03zpGRSq78Rp6FyovpxroDEx8273jO5p15kAMkTNJV2nFULhDYHjOljr49TiF-vsL0bsHPWLlUe2QM99SwR5nG4tNjiK4CsEIJIuxqbbR3SN-YJmaRuqPhqpmdPi_NtM/s1600-h/PB+WB.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413069409144581298" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 221px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkxpBWw2XYyvv03zpGRSq78Rp6FyovpxroDEx8273jO5p15kAMkTNJV2nFULhDYHjOljr49TiF-vsL0bsHPWLlUe2QM99SwR5nG4tNjiK4CsEIJIuxqbbR3SN-YJmaRuqPhqpmdPi_NtM/s400/PB+WB.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;">A Panel from Bruce's submission to <em>Tango</em> 9.</span></div><div></div><div></div><div><div><br />To coincide with a reprinting of <em>Word Ballo<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXnF4Uqf1fU3h1vf_z-gHy9P2K5nuXDKfC7zGeweQ1HRheAU0eZeHiV4Yt5XAsUOfSAWDipeRsCJoUA3MJ8hzlf0mm2ESEUiO4kMz8YB73s6sUSc-vzwIcOA-bSeAu4PuJFJKqlcSBnco/s1600-h/PB+WB.jpg"></a>ons</em> 1 we present below an update to that issue’s interview with Bruce Mutard. For those who came late, Bruce is a Melbourne-based writer-artist committed to telling stories that have a deeper meaning. From early socio-political works for street zines he has progressed through his self-published <em>Street Smell</em>, contributions to local and overseas anthologies, such as <em>DeeVee</em>, <em>Tango</em> and <em>SPX</em>, to substantial graphic novels: <em>The</em> <em>Bunker</em> (Image 2002), <em>The Sacrifice</em> (Allen & Unwin, 2008) and <em>The Silence</em> (Allen & Unwin, 2009).<br /><br />PB: When the interview was published, early in 2006, <em>The Silence</em> was in limbo following Image dropping it due to poor advance orders. <em>The Sacrifice</em>, meanwhile, was in the early stages of production. Given its subject matter you expressed a hope that you may be able to find an Australian publisher for <em>The Sacrifice</em>. Despite the fact that, as you said, it seemed a bit ‘pie in the sky’ that’s exactly what has happened. So how did this come about?<br />BM: Via what some cynics, in particular authors, might describe as the least likely route to publication: the unsolicited submission. After the term of the Australia Council grant had expired, which I think was the end of 2005, I had produced sixty pages which I decided I should use as a sample of a prospective publication. So I consulted the <em>Australian Writer’s Guide</em>, made a list of likely publishers, and sent off the package. Lo and behold, a few weeks later, I got a call from Erica Wagner [pronounced like the composer], a publisher in the Children’s and Education Division of Allen & Unwin (A&U). She expressed a great admiration for the work and a desire to publish it.<br />PB: How many publishers did you approach ?<br />BM: A&U were essentially the first. That occurred in 2006, but it still took me a good year and a half to finish the rest of the work.<br />PB: Over the course of its production the work has expanded to become a WWII trilogy. You are currently at work on the second volume <em>The Fight</em>. What was the thinking behind the expansion?<br />BM: At a fairly late stage of the production of <em>The Sacrifice</em> I realised that there were natural sequels to the story. If the first volume told the story of a man wrestling with his conscience and beliefs with regards to enlisting to fight in WWII, then it seemed logical to follow the consequences of that decision in a second volume. To show him in the army and participating in a combat zone, where he sees and performs dreadful things. And then it seemed appropriate to follow the narrative through to the character’s return home, and to look at the issues surrounding how you come back to being a normal citizen having done such things. In Robert’s case, because he was a reluctant participant to begin with, he finds it quite difficult to deal with. So I approached A&U with the idea late in 2007. They were very receptive to it, but given that <em>The Sacrifice</em> had yet to be released, and they were essentially entering into the unknown as far as finding a market for the graphic story in the mainstream book trade, they didn’t commit to it immediately. But after a month or so Erica agreed, going on gut instinct rather than sales. So that enabled me to start researching and writing <em>The Fight</em>.<br />PB: How have you found A&U to work with? How has the editing process changed both The <em>Sacrifice</em>, which was underway prior to finding a publisher, and <em>The Fight</em>, which A&U have been involved in from the beginning?<br />BM: They’ve been very easy and good to work with. They have had a very light touch in terms of their editorial involvement. I have actually invited them to be more involved because it is quite constructive to get that objective view. Their input definitely improved <em>The Sacrifice</em> and <em>The Silence</em>. But they are not prescriptive in a way that a more commercial publisher, or an educational one might be. Their position has been that this is my work and it is more their job to make suggestions rather than directions. There have been instances where I have gone against their advice, feeling that they didn’t ‘get’ the point I was trying to make. Although that does raise the issue that if they didn’t understand it, perhaps other readers won’t as well. But on the whole it has been a really good working relationship.<br />PB: Has their input been primarily in the story, or the art as well?<br />BM: Primarily with the story. With the art on occasion they may point out some inconsistencies with regard to the appearance of characters. But it is difficult when you are doing a representational style of art. You don’t have the leeway that a more cartoony artist may have with exaggerated characteristics and expressions to describe the internal emotional states of the characters. But most bloopers and errors of continuity I have had to fish out myself. I am aware of some of my failings. I tend to draw fairly masculine looking women with square jaws and can have a certain sameness to character design. Artists tend to have a stock of types and a set way of drawing facial characteristics and it is difficult, especially when you are doing a long work, not to default to easy patterns to reduce your labour. </div><div>PB: What have sales been like? Are A&U satisfied with the results?<br />BM: I’ve only got numbers for <em>The Sacrifice</em>, but they’ve been satisfactory as far as A&U are concerned. Mind you, the bulk of the sales were to some educational marketing firm on release. Traffic since then has slowed to a few dozen every half year, matched by the number of returns. We don’t expect to see any kick along until <em>The Fight</em> is released, which is a long way off yet.<br />PB: What sort of feedback have you had for either <em>The Sacrifice</em> or <em>The Silence</em>? I recall you saying that when you were doing <em>Street Smell</em> you would get regular letters of comment from readers.<br />BM: Primarily only reviews in the media.<br />PB: Do you think that has to do with the greater distance between author and reader in the two forms of production?<br />BM: Undoubtedly.<br />PB: But people could still write to you care of A&U.<br />BM: They could and I was hoping that there might have been a little bit of that. But I do think it has to do with the diminution of letter writing in the modern world. If I had set up a Facebook site or a blog and was regularly contributing to them I probably would have got comments, but I have no interest in doing that.<br />PB: Why is that?<br />BM: Just being lazy and perhaps a degree of animus I have against the whole business of exposing oneself online…like publishing one’s personal diary. It just strikes me as being immodest. I see it as an extension of the general cult of celebrity we’re in: “you too, can be a star”. But I can also see it as a rather broad version of the human need for community and neighbourhood gossip.<br />PB: In the interview you stated that <em>The Silence</em> had been the most challenging work you had done up to that time. How does <em>The Sacrifice</em> or <em>The Fight</em> match up to it? Have they been more challenging?<br />BM: Yes. Each work that I do does present greater challenges because I set the bar a little higher each time. <em>The Silence</em> was challenging because its subject matter required me to find a visual metaphor for a non-visual idea. Something that would avoid too much explanatory dialogue, which my critics have pointed out is a bit of a problem with me. It is something I am trying to iron out. I write books with a point in mind and it is hard not to make them baldly, rather than integrating them into the narrative so the point comes through that instead of merely being stated. But I think with <em>The Silence</em> I came pretty close to achieving this. I worked pretty extensively to iron out a lot of explanatory dialogue that had been in the initial version. PB: You or A&U? </div><div>BM: Largely myself. This is why I really would like the editing to be a little more demanding and robust. I really would like the editing to be an active process. I’m sure it was more so back in the ‘old days’. It may well be the way it’s taught these days and a part of the postmodern discourse where they don’t want to violate the integrity of the artist. I see it often in non-fiction where over-writing and repetitiveness is let go. </div><div>PB: So had <em>The Silence</em> appeared from Image these revisions wouldn’t have occurred. </div><div>BM: No, that’s right. But to get back to your question, <em>The Fight</em> was difficult to write. It took me a year and around ten drafts. But you expect that with an extensive novel. It has a broad canvas and multiple characters and it’s a challenge to sustain a narrative over such a length. But the feedback that I have had from A&U has been positive and they have sent it to a number of independent readers. </div><div>PB: What stage is it currently at? </div><div>BM: I have completed the breakdowns, but they still need to be culled a bit as it’s close to 300 pages. </div><div>PB: I’m interested in the different formats you’ve employed. <em>The Sacrifice</em> was virtually A4, which you would think would be ideal for illustrated work, especially detailed work, yet I was surprised that I didn’t warm to it. Perhaps that was due to the design, perhaps that’s just me. But presumably you must have had some reservations as with <em>The Silence</em> you’ve gone for almost a square format with only two tiers of panels per page, which I think works better. So why the change? </div><div>BM: That was my decision, although it did have a mercenary aspect to it. You once said to me that in its look <em>The Sacrifice</em> resembled a text-book and I tend to agree. In part that was probably intentional on the part of A&U as they had a stated intention of selling it into the educational market. <em>The Silence</em>, on the other hand, was originally in three tiers and around 100 pages and I just thought that a larger book with more pages would appear more substantial, have a better chance of standing out on a bookshelf and seem a better buy. Because each tier was the same size it was easy to reformat. And I liked the option of having some pages with just a single tier. Indeed A&U suggested that I use them as a form of chapter breaks. I liked how that accentuated the wordlessness or ‘silence’ of these panels. So in a way I’m glad that it didn’t come out from Image a few years ago. </div><div>PB: During the interview you also mentioned a number of other projects you would like to produce – biographies of Jesus and Hitler among them. Do you worry that because the WWII trilogy is such a long running project that these and other works are held up? </div><div>BM: Yeeeah... Sometimes I’d like to be working on a project that is contrary to the trilogy just to have some respite from it. </div><div>PB: More to the point are there more stories that are coming to you that are creating a log jam of ideas. </div><div>BM: You can never stay away from new ideas. I have contributed some short stories to the last few <em>Tangos</em> and will also have a strip in an edition of <em>Meanjin</em> [one of Australia's pre-eminent literary journals] next year.</div><div>PB: How did that occur? </div><div>BM: It was a strip I submitted to Gestalt Publishing’s <em>Character Sketches</em> back in 2007. When they knocked it back, I submitted it to another anthology, <em>Rosetta</em>, put out by Alternative Press in the USA. They accepted it, but after some three years and no sign of the book, I assume it was killed off by the GFC and the weak market for anthologies in general. Then I noticed that <em>Meanjin</em> was becoming receptive to graphic stories with their new editor Sophie Cunningham (like the serial by Kate Fielding and Mandy Ord). So I gave it a go and it worked. It’s something that I hope to see more of: graphic stories appearing on an equal footing alongside prose and poetry in literary journals, as a part of literature. </div><div>PB: As well you began a Masters degree at Monash Uni in 2009. In what discipline? </div><div>BM: It began in Fine Arts, but I’ve changed to Design for a variety of reasons. </div><div>PB: Why did you undertake it? </div><div>BM: Because I felt the medium ought to be examined in the academic field from the point of view of the artform itself, rather than from a feminist, Marxist, or post-structuralist position that has previously occurred. My initial idea was to focus on the transition between word and image, as I had discovered that I would often have to change the script when I came to do the breakdowns. There is something about telling stories in images that is qualitatively different to telling stories in words. And I wanted to analyse that dialectic to see if there was any kind of universal system buried in there. Mind you, it has tracked away from that now. Initially I was going to utilise <em>The Fight</em>, but then I realised that it already had a lot of constraints on it in terms of form, and anyway, it was too big as a project for a Masters degree. So I decided that I might do the Hitler story and work on both simultaneously. But that has been complicated by the need to earn a living doing commercial work, so right at this minute I’m not entirely sure where I am with the degree. But the Hitler book and the Jesus story are two I keep needling at. I still hope to produce them eventually. </div><div>PB: Speaking of commercial work you have just completed work on three books for Macmillan Education. </div><div>BM: They are for a new series called Stories from Australia. Macmillan have commissioned an initial series of six books of which I have done three. Two other artists have done the other three, but there’s a single author for them all. They are history texts aimed at Years 4 to 6. The three I have done are on the Anzacs and Gallipoli, Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet, and Vida Goldstein and the Suffrage Movement. </div><div>PB: Did you choose those or did they? </div><div>BM: They did show me the six ideas originally but in the end they chose. They road tested a number of illustrators by giving us all a panel to illustrate to demonstrate our style and how we would interpret the script. </div><div>PB: Illustrators or comic artists? </div><div>BM: The two I’m aware of are Scott Fraser who did the <em>Dollboy</em> comic a few years ago [see Doug Holgate interview WB 10], and Chris Burns, who I think was the artist on <em>Waldo’s</em> <em>Hawaiian Holiday</em> (Gestalt, 2008). </div><div>PB: Did this come about because of <em>The Sacrifice</em>? </div><div>BM: No, again, it was an unsolicited approach. Earlier in the year I just began to contact publishers seeking illustration work. I mentioned that I had special skills in graphic narratives and as it would happen Macmillan were in the process of commissioning a series that was going to use the form. </div><div>PB: How many pages? </div><div>BM: Twelve pages per book. The rest of the books will presumably be bulked out with prose, maps, diagrams, illustrations etc. In this case I was just the hired gun. Although I did have input into the script from the position of what didn’t seem to work. It’s hard for me to switch the writer off. They were, for example, far too overwritten. The author was totally unpractised in writing for the medium and the editor and publisher hadn’t had any contact with it either. Indeed this is the first time Macmillan have used comics in their books. So they are testing the waters as well. I think they’ve learnt a lot from the process, and will undoubtedly get better at it. I gather they are thinking of commissioning another series of six next year. </div><div>PB: When are they being released? </div><div>BM: March 2010, but they will not be available through the general book trade, only to the education market. I hope it works for them, because it’s a very good field for the medium to become a part of. You’d think it would be a natural, but educators have been resistant to the medium up to now because of the old pejorative associations that comics equal too much sex, violence, fantasy and so on, not helped by the big budget films of recent times. </div></div>Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-9131110100705907282009-10-24T11:48:00.004+11:002010-05-07T15:08:14.147+10:00Word Balloons 10, October 2009<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8aHX_M77XJDve8rQQVpAwMJP8Gy72mZ1PExhrVV_cz02v9uVyoPEc_pZMdloHoy3AC2F6Tpen2bPAMECtCJusBxxrZL2Cdh9hiOhCcoI1p1UT7Y3r9EmcUtWt4C72dUJraAlPtFQeaww/s1600-h/wb+10+cover+outlines+low+res+jpg.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5395970790422329234" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 222px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8aHX_M77XJDve8rQQVpAwMJP8Gy72mZ1PExhrVV_cz02v9uVyoPEc_pZMdloHoy3AC2F6Tpen2bPAMECtCJusBxxrZL2Cdh9hiOhCcoI1p1UT7Y3r9EmcUtWt4C72dUJraAlPtFQeaww/s320/wb+10+cover+outlines+low+res+jpg.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Editorial</strong> </span><br /><br />Welcome to the tenth issue of Word Balloons, which comes to you in glorious full colour. And what better person to feature as our interview subject this issue than Douglas Holgate, who has a deft hand with a paint brush, be it sable or electronic. Whether I persevere with the colour remains to be seen as the price was more than I had been led to believe, necessitating a rise in price to $6.00. Whilst this may not affect overall sales that dramatically $5 is certainly a lot easier when it comes to dealing through the mail or in person. Consequently, those who want to pay via sending bank notes in the post can still do so via a AU$5 note.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong></strong></span></div><div><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong></strong></span> </div><div><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong></strong></span> </div><div><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Interview</strong> </span><br /><em>“Comics aren’t just for kids, but I think we can get a bit obsessed with that at times.”</em><br /><strong>An interview with Douglas Holgate.</strong> </div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, September 2009.</span><br /><br />Douglas Holgate is a prime example of someone with a passion for the graphic story medium who has taken his craft and applied it to a variety of commissioned work, be it in toy designs, children’s book illustration or political cartooning.<br /><br />In this interview we cover all of these topics as well as his youth in Sydney, the Australian comics scene of the late 1990s and early 00s, the ups and downs of small-press publishing and how to be a creative freelancer in the modern world.<br /><br />Excerpt</div><div>PB: In 2003 you did <em>Tales From Under Your Bed</em> [<em>TFUYB</em>]. Was that a return to cartooning?<br />DH: Yeah, but in a way, I see it more as the start of my cartooning.<br />PB: Was it also a statement of intent from you? It’s just that as well as it being a step up in your art, it was an all-ages strip. And both that and a cartoony style were in the 70s and 80s seen by many as something of an anathema. It looked as if you were nailing your colours to the mast and saying this is what I believe in.<br />DH: That was part of it, but it was probably a culmination of a few things. I had started a new job at a company called Creata. They were a merchandising and promotions concern where I was basically designing toys to be given away in places like McDonalds. So I was working in cartooning every day turning either the McDonalds characters, or those they had acquired rights to use, like Pixar and Disney, into toys. So <em>TFUYB</em> was the first real comics work I produced during that period and the style just clicked into place. It felt more natural and came more easily. It was also the result of being in the Australian comics community for a few years and forming some opinions about where comics seemed to be heading and where I felt they should be heading. Genre-wise it was saying that there weren’t enough comics being made for kids any more. How are you going to get the next generation interested in reading and making comics if you aren’t providing them something to be introduced to when they’re young. And I still believe that. I agree that comics aren’t just for kids, and it’s great that they are maturing and are finally grabbing the spotlight as a critical form of literature, but I think we can get a bit obsessed with this whole notion of validation and lose sight of the forest for the trees. A kid doesn’t start with <em>The Watchmen</em>. We seem to go to extremes in comics. From either censoring ourselves to almost death in the 1950s to seeking more literate works today. There needs to be a balance.<br />PB: <em>TFUYB</em> was also nicely packaged.<br />DH: That was probably another statement. A somewhat belligerent belief that just because it’s self-published it doesn’t mean it should be at the expense of quality production. You can still produce something of quality that people would like to pick up without compromising your artistic integrity.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />PB: At some point you moved to Melbourne. When was that and why?<br />DH: Around the beginning of 2003. I’d lived in Sydney for more years of my life than not and wanted a change. My folks had moved here about five years earlier. The job that I was in at Creata was a good career and well-paid, but it wasn’t satisfying. It had a lot of grunt work associated with it and it wasn’t what I wanted to do as an illustrator or cartoonist. The whole point of moving here was to start freelancing.<br />PB: How did you go about getting your name out there?<br />DH: Friend and Sydney illustrator [and some time comic artist] Craig Phillips [<em>Flinch</em>], alerted me that his agent in the States was looking for new talent. So I sent them some examples of my work, they liked them and picked me up. At the same time I hit the ground running and sent out portfolios to anyone and everyone I could think of, from book and magazine publishers, to animation and advertising studios. But for probably the first two years of my freelancing the majority of the work I got was off my own bat. The first six to twelve months I was working for companies doing very similar toy and merchandise design jobs to what I was doing in Sydney, with some spot illustration on the side. Only two publishers initially replied to my mail outs, Random House and Penguin, and really only with a form letter to say that they had put my portfolio on file and would get in touch at a later date if anything suitable came up. At the time I thought that probably meant that they had thrown it in the bin, but that’s not true – they actually had put it on file. [Laughs.] So to all aspiring illustrators and cartoonists out there: don’t lose heart. About eighteen months later I got a call out of the blue from Random House offering me the illustrator’s job on the Horror High books. Those were my first commercially published books. And things have grown and grown since then.<br /><br />The rest of the interview can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 10.<br /><br /></div><div></div><div><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong> </div><div><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Article</span></strong></div><br /><div><strong>My Life in Comics</strong> <strong>Part VIII– Fox Comics, the early years 1984-86.</strong><br />by Philip Bentley<br /><br />This chapter deals with the small press beginnings of <em>Fox Comics</em>, a magazine that was the brainchild of David Vodicka, but which I played a hand in directing. In the course of its run from 1984-91 it provided an outlet for many Australian comic creators, such as Dillon Naylor, Greg Gates and Neale Blanden. As well, it had a decided international flavour publishing works from New Zealand’s Dylan Horrocks and the cream of the 1980s British small press scene such as Eddie Campbell, Glenn Dakin and Ed Pinsent.<br /><br />Excerpt</div><div>In Chapters 4 and 5 (<em>WB</em> 5 & 7) I related the at times tortuous path of producing the Australian comic anthology <em>Inkspots</em> in the early 1980s. Whilst not without its twists and turns the saga of <em>Fox Comics</em> was far less angst ridden and, frankly, became something of an antidote to the <em>Inkspots</em> experience for me, as well as a bulwark to the dramas that were occurring at Minotaur at the same time (see Chapter 7, <em>WB</em> 9).<br /><br />The fourth and final issue of <em>Inkspots</em> was released in August 1984. Earlier that year, in April, the first issue of a modest, A5 photocopied anthology entitled <em>Fox Comics</em> had appeared with little fanfare. Its editor/publisher, David Vodicka, was then barely seventeen and still at school, yet he had had a presence in Australian comic fandom since his early teens through his involvement with a couple of similarly entitled fanzines: the <em>Fox Comics Catalogue</em>, a one-man zine and the <em>Fox Comic Collector</em>, produced with Lazarus and Mitchell Dobelsky.<br /><br />By early 1984, after seven sporadic issues, the three editors of the Fox fanzine were running out of steam. As with most Australian comics, works about them in this country tend also to be labours of love as there is little interest from local fans and enthusiasm can only be sustained for so long. David Vodicka, however, saw that there was the possibility of spinning a comic magazine off from the fanzine.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>* * *<br /><br />To begin with <em>Fox Comics</em> utilised the ‘shelfstuf’ of a number of local cartoonists, augmented by Martin Trengove’s Roscoe the Dawg strip. Many other <em>Inkspots</em> alumni appeared in the Fox although for most it was more of a cameo performance. The only artists to really make the transition between the two magazines were Greg Gates and Darrel Merritt. Consequently the Fox’s most prolific contributors had not appeared in Inkspots. Three of the more notable of these from the early issues were Ian Eddy, The Big Simp and Paul Harris.<br /><br />The third issue of the Fox marked the beginning of what would become one of the magazine’s defining aspects, the inclusion of artists from the then fomenting British small press scene such as Eddie Campbell, Phil Elliot and Ed Pinsent. Perhaps it seems strange that English artists should feature in an Australian magazine, but I don’t remember the matter being an issue. I can only assume that like me David was more interested in publishing comics in Australia, rather than Australian comics.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>* * *<br /><br />As time went by we began to receive unsolicited submissions from around the country and overseas. This meant that in nearly every issue we were, able to introduce new artists. Yet there is, to my eye, a consistency to the look of each issue that has something to do with a continuing coterie of contributors, as well as the fact that a lot of the strips had an ‘off the cuff’ style, predicated by our preference for shorter strips to showcase as many artists as possible. To call it a ‘Fox style’ would be to go too far given that each issue was an amalgam of submitted work, but there was still an agreeable element there.<br /><br />The rest of the article can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 10.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><div>Also <strong>reviews</strong> of Bruce Mutard’s <em>The Silence</em> “one of Australia’s leading creators working at the top of his game”, Tom Taylor & Colin Wilson’s <em>The Example</em> “a thought-provoking vignette with some inspired use of panel arrangements” and <em>Star Wars: Invasion</em> 1 & 2 “well-crafted entertainment”. </div>Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-81893123725999189772009-06-02T14:26:00.004+10:002009-06-02T14:47:38.264+10:00Word Balloons 9, May 2009<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjUdJ9sNyXcLpXQYRTa6uF4XWTOlfD6gM4QgztiVD00s-9XnA6DwkOJGapIqbArH86MYQOlwuBxfLBuhd0HmN4jSP4bIT0TUMBb_ufk9ucc8X_tWFogpSipl9zsTfgH1EGjb5HTNetFFI/s1600-h/wb+9+cover.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5342586263165854306" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 226px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjUdJ9sNyXcLpXQYRTa6uF4XWTOlfD6gM4QgztiVD00s-9XnA6DwkOJGapIqbArH86MYQOlwuBxfLBuhd0HmN4jSP4bIT0TUMBb_ufk9ucc8X_tWFogpSipl9zsTfgH1EGjb5HTNetFFI/s320/wb+9+cover.jpg" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Editorial</strong></span><br /><div></div><br /><div>In his interview this issue Bernard Caleo suggests that we are “at a really interesting point where we are about to swing into a new, greater appreciation of the [graphic story] medium”. Whilst I don’t know if I share his belief that we are quite at the tipping point, I have noted in these pages, over past issues, that there has been an encouraging interest in the medium by local book publishers, which has sparked and equally heartening number of articles and reviews in the mass media.<br /><br />Recently the <em>Australian</em> has run two pieces that are worthy of comment. The first of these, “Picture this: the future of fiction” (<em>Australian Literary Review</em> 1/4/09), by long time student of the form Cefn Ridout, is an astute look at recent publications, both here and abroad, wrapped up in a longitudinal commentary on the medium’s development worldwide. The second “In a superhero-free world” by Fiona Gruber (5/5/09) was written to mark the launch of Gestalt’s <em>Flinch</em> anthology (review next issue), but also to highlight a new Star Wars storyline produced by local creators, and Flinch contributors, Tom Taylor and Colin Wilson.<br /><br />Whilst these are positive pieces, they are still both variants on the ‘comics grow up’ articles that have been appearing in the mass media for at least the last twenty-five years. Whilst it is gratifying that the media is willing to acknowledge that the medium is capable of a wide range of subjects, I can’t help wondering if it isn’t time for a change of tack; essentially for articles on comics to ‘grow up’, or beyond, the ‘comics grow up’ angle.<br /><br />Back in the 1970s the only sort of article you were likely to get out of the mass media regarding comics was one slanted to their collectability. A favoured question of journalists then was “Do you read them, or just collect them?” Moreover, the journalists appeared to have their angle already worked out and were just looking for some appropriate quotes to slot in. If you tried to move the interview into other areas, like how not all comics were for kids, you were likely to get a short shrift.<br /><br />An example of this is an article in a suburban news-paper from 1981. As well as some wildly skewed text, it contained a photo of my then partner in Minotaur and <em>Inkspots</em>, Colin Paraskevas, standing in front of the new comic racks at Minotaur holding a copy of <em>Inkspots</em> 2. Colin’s intention was to try and get some publicity for either the publication or store, but the journalist had other ideas. The article made no mention of either entity and captioned the photo “Comics have always held a strange fascination for Colin Paraskevas.”!<br /><br />Not long after this, in I think 1983, the Age ran the first of the ‘comics grow up’ articles that I can recall seeing. Penned by the budding journo Richard Guilliat, who has gone on to make a name for himself as an investigative journalist mainly for the <em>Sydney Morning Herald</em>, it primarily used a then current story line in Captain America that had, I think, something to do with corruption in high places, to demonstrate that comics could deal with more ‘serious’ themes.<br /><br />As the 1980s progressed, and more significant changes were wrought in the medium by the likes of Miller, Moore and the Bros Hernandez, these articles began to appear more frequently, both here and abroad. Whilst it is pleasing that some journalists had realised that not all comics were either for kids, or the preserve of collectors, these articles still marked the medium out as in some way separate from most other creative art-forms. Reviews of new plays or poetry collections, for example, do not generally contain a complete history of the form. There is an assumption that the reader, even if they don’t have a complete knowledge of the medium’s development, can still appreciate a new work regardless.<br /><br />In that way I find the slant of Gruber’s article refreshing in it’s willingness to only give a smattering of the back-story and instead to concentrate on the specifics at hand. This is not to criticise Ridout. Having written my fair share of these sorts of articles over the years I know that the ‘comics grow up’ angle is a convenient hook on which to hang an article. Further, I realise that it is only natural to want to use your knowledge of the medium in an endeavour to make a favourable impression on the casual reader. But I still look forward to the time when comics are treated like any other art form. That, at least, may be in the process of occurring.</div><div></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Interview</strong></span></div><div><em>“Formally I’m qualified to talk about Tintin, that’s it.”</em> </div><div><strong>An interview with Bernard Caleo.</strong></div><div><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, April 2009.</span></div><br /><div></div><div>Prior to this interview I would have described Bernard Caleo as a trained actor with a great passion for comics. But as a consequence of our discussion, I see that the opposite is, technically, more accurate. Regardless, though, ‘passion’ is a most appropriate word when talking about him. </div><br /><div>Bernard is a great advocate for the graphic story medium, both in this country and generally. Through his own strips, either alone or in collaboration, his editorship of the anthology <em>Tango</em>, or even some of his theatrical work, Bernard seeks to convey his love of the medium, both to fellow aficionados and to the general public.<br /><br />In this interview I seek to explore his roots, his collective oeuvre, his publishing ethos for <em>Tango</em>, his theatrical leanings, both his ‘day job’ as an ‘applied’ actor and his singular two-man play based on Alan Moore’s comic <em>Miracleman</em> , and finally the parallels between comics and the theatre.<br /><br /></div><div>Excerpt<br />PB: So when and how did the notion to produce your own comic arise?<br />BC: Towards the end of the 1980s I was broadening my interests in comics. Then I fell in love. In 1990 my girlfriend went to England and I followed. Rather than just occupying myself with being in love, I decided I should do something while I was over there. I found an ad for the London Cartoon Centre who were offering a ten week course. So I wrote a letter in strip format, and they replied saying “Why not”.<br />PB: What was the course like?<br />BC: There was a lot of basic stuff about page layout, photo-copying technique, brushes and nibs. But it was also a prod towards doing your own comics. And that’s when I really began to join some dots about how comics are a great way to tell stories. Significant for the ideas about creating comics that were buzzing around in my head, was the friendship I had made with this guy, Brendan Tolley, [who I had] met at a life-drawing class just before I left Australia. It was clear from the beginning that he was a strong draughtsman. During my time in London we had a constant communication via weekly letters, this being the time before email. Both of us were awash in ‘heartbreak soup’, to borrow Gilbert Hernandez’s phrase. During one of my rambling letters to him I suggested that we should collaborate on a story set in Melbourne. I have always been fascinated by the city as a place, as an architecture, as a culture, as an idea, as an history. So that’s how the <em>Yell Olé</em>! strip began to develop. When I got back, sans girlfriend, I had plenty of time on my hands and a lot of energy to devote to a project. So we leapt into it. At it’s heart it was a strip that was trying to mythologise, to enshrine, to explore the shape, the physical material of Melbourne.<br />PB: It was clearly trying to deal with issues relevant to a spirit of place split into two loci: the city in <em>Yell Olé</em>! and the country in <em>The False Impressionists</em> [the succeeding series].<br />BC: And <em>The False Impressionists</em> is rooted in more of an historical perspective. It’s attempting to be a White Man’s Dreaming sort of story.<br /><br />***<br />PB: You are probably best known for editing <em>Tango</em>, a somewhat annual anthology of romance strips. How did that come about?<br />BC: In 1996, Tolley and I were part of a zines and comics exhibition that was part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. There were a couple of parallel publications, one of which basically contained rants by the various creators. I was asked to write something on the intersection of comics and zines and by the end of my rant I had painted myself into a corner. I had defined the difference between comics and zines, then said that I thought comics had a great future in this country as they weren’t hidebound by genres as comics in other countries are. Then I said that, since the demise of the great anthology <em>Fox Comics</em>, and in the absence of any ongoing anthology, what we needed was a new one, and that somebody should do that. I then realised that that somebody probably needed to be me.<br />PB: One of the most notable things about <em>Tango</em> is that it includes work by people from outside the established comics community and sees this, I gather, as part of its mission statement.<br />BC: Absolutely. In the course of writing that essay I had decided that what we needed was a book that showcased Australian comic work. But not just by people in the established comic culture. If you were a songwriter and you wanted to have a bash at comics I was interested. I wanted that interchange of ideas because I see that as one of the steps to developing a more robust comic culture. To bring people in and help them fall in love with the medium.<br />PB: Whilst that may be one of its strengths, it also could be said to be one of its weaknesses, as you have experienced comic creators rubbing shoulders with neophytes who are learning as they go.<br />BC: <em>Tango</em> was never set up to be the best of Australian comic book makers. That leads to its unevenness, but also, in my mind, to its charm. It’s very accepting, it’s very embracing. For me, it’s an important part of the texture of <em>Tango</em>.<br />PB: There’s going to be a best of <em>Tango</em> coming out from Allen & Unwin. I’m interested in hearing the selection criteria. Are they going to be the same as Tango regular?<br />BC: We’re actually changing the title to <em>The Tango Collection</em> because I felt the draft title ‘The Best of Tango’ cut across the ethos of the anthology. It will be around 200pp released in December 2009 and will feature stories from the first eight issues. I hope to have the next ‘ordinary’ issue (Tango 9: Love and War) out around the same time to capitalise on cross-promotion. Erica Wagner, who is the publisher at A&U in charge of the graphic novel push, will have a hand in the selection, as will the editor Elise Jones. I have provided a rough cut of strips, they have said yes yes yes, no no no, and then I have provided more names, and so on.<br /><br />***<br />PB: You mentioned that you acted at University.<br />BC: I started out doing a Science Degree in 1986 and ended up with an Arts Degree in 1994. Really, I spent only a minimal amount of time studying during that period. Most of my time was spent in the Theatre Department, which is an elective facility like the Sports Union. I basically just did show after show after show because I loved it; the milieu and the people. Out of that came many great friendships, lovers etc. One friendship, in particular, was with Bruce Woolley. I introduced him to comics and he introduced me to various aspects of theatre. He had trained in the Lecoq style of theatre making. That is a French form that goes beyond purely acting, incorporating elements of puppetry, music and multi-media. And it was that training that made Bruce say, when he was reading <em>Miracleman</em>, “Hey Bernard we can make a great play out of this.” To which I replied “Bruce…you’re absolutely out of your mind! It’s a superhero comic book; it’s got flying people and bombs. You can’t do that sort of thing on stage.” So naturally we did.<br />PB: I have to say that initially I was dubious, but to your credit, with little more than a couple of dodgy wigs and some stackable boxes, you make the audience ‘believe that a man can fly’. This despite the issue of copyright, in which it must be the most complicated comic title ever.<br />[The saga of <em>Miracleman</em> is long and winding and readers interested in following it twists and turns are encouraged to access the Wikepedia entry.] It works because you take an unlikely situation and make it succeed by turning the perceived weakness into strengths. By taking a deliberately low-tech approach it becomes part of the process. But it’s clever how it is part spoof, part homage. The respect you feel for the work comes through. I think it’s the most successful thing of yours that I’ve seen.<br /><br />The rest of the interview can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 9.</div><br /><div></div><div></div><div><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Article</span></strong></div><div><strong>My Life in Comics Part VII: Minotaur–the 1980s</strong><br />by Philip Bentley<br /><br />In this instalment I deal with the saga of Minotaur from the opening of the first shop in 1980, though five relocations, to when I left the business at the end of 1989. As with my recollections on the latter days of Inkspots it is a salutary tale of how naïve idealism can be put to the sword on the altar of commercial enterprise.<br /></div><br /><div>Excerpt<br />In the last chapter, I detailed how in 1977 Greg Gates, Colin Paraskevas and myself established the Melbourne comic retailer Minotaur. Although initially begun as a mail order concern, our plans had always been to progress to a shop when it had grown larger and we had resolved the issue of where it would be best located. The city centre had always seemed the optimum position, but we feared the higher rents here would be prohibitive, and we were unsure if an inner-city shop could draw customers from all suburbs.<br /><br />It was Colin who solved this conundrum, suggesting we investigate warehouse space in the city centre that could double as a retail establishment. Admittedly, the first few places we looked at were less than inspiring but then we found a ground floor location in Tattersalls Lane, a small thoroughfare running between Little Bourke and Lonsdale Streets, between Swanston and Russell. Housed in a crumbling tenement, whose upper three floors contained artists’ studios, it was centrally located without commanding a premium rent.<br /><br />The premises opened for business on Thursday 11 September 1980 and initially traded Thursday to Saturday. For customers we relied on circulating our mail order clientele, word of mouth and some small ads placed on the comics page of the <em>Sun</em>. This was never going to produce a stampede, but numbers and sales did gradually climb over the initial weeks and months.<br /><br />Although I had my reservations about the premisis due to it’s crumbling nature, to a person any former customers I have spoken to regarding these times remember the location fondly. They equate the circulative route one had to take to gain access – up the lane, into the stair-well, through the fire door to the shared lobby and finally into the shop – as akin to following the fabled labyrinth to a cavernous treasure trove. And certainly there were many unusual items displayed; the product of three years sourcing stock from around the world: commercial comics both old and new, alternative comics in a variety of formats, French albums, fanzines, art books, prints and portfolios.<br /><br />***<br />We moved to the Mid City Arcade in May 1981. We would be there a bit under two years: another nine months in the original shop (16) and about a year over the arcade in a double shop (11 & 12). In mid-1982 we re-opened shop 16, initially to sell rock books and records, then, after the latter proved to be not a success, added a range of books and merchandise about films and TV series with an SF or adventure slant. By early 1983, though, even with two stores, Mid City Arcade was becoming too small for us. So when Colin spotted an old pizza restaurant for rent in Swanston Street, between Little Bourke and Lonsdale Streets, it wasn’t long before we were engaging in another round of renovations and removals.<br /><br />The rest of the article can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 9.</div><br /><div></div><div></div><div>Also <strong>reviews</strong> of Black House’s <em>The Twilight Age</em> 0 & 1 by Jan Scherpenhuizen “the narrative and layouts are competently handled, but both pencils and inks display an inconsistent level of quality”, <em>The Dark Detective: Sherlock Holmes</em> 0 by Chris Sequiera, Tim McEwan & Phil Cornell “there is no denying the verve with which the work is produced.”, and Pat Grant’s <em>Lumpen Proletariat</em> 5 “his stories are funny and engaging, his art detailed yet clear”.<br /></div>Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-74523793394013778112008-11-10T14:47:00.004+11:002008-11-10T15:09:28.315+11:00Word Balloons 8, October 2008<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4NiDK0aL17vstHA_CqNt3_2wksCL0rS04HJ1wxdeLcuTNrUYGCtUbS6O9l_oWPSvZbPDHD8JiDdHKx6dLZUfObWMW13tTQJy85zMCCYJjselmce3dHkUcrTnQWl7s8Z2Nvpz-BTmjrxA/s1600-h/Superjase_flat-PC_gif.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5266872365002563714" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 279px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4NiDK0aL17vstHA_CqNt3_2wksCL0rS04HJ1wxdeLcuTNrUYGCtUbS6O9l_oWPSvZbPDHD8JiDdHKx6dLZUfObWMW13tTQJy85zMCCYJjselmce3dHkUcrTnQWl7s8Z2Nvpz-BTmjrxA/s320/Superjase_flat-PC_gif.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Interview</span></strong><br /><em>“I’m just too driven to know when to stop.”</em><br /><strong>An interview with Jason Badower.</strong><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, December 2007 and updated before publication.</span><br /><br />Although not a name on every local comic fan’s lips Jason Badower has still forged a career for himself in the US comic industry, working first from Australia, then from 2008 shifting base to Los Angeles. Best known for a number of adaptations of the TV series <em>Heroes</em> (initially online more recently included in the first volume of a trade paperback reprinting) Jason’s career path presents one template for those seeking to establish themselves in the US industry.<br /><br />Along the way Jason has also worked on some of the more notable local comics of the 1990s and early 00s. He has practised martial arts at an elite level, acted in, produced and been a stunt man for movies, and been a partner in a personal training business and gym.<br /><br />As well as more work for <em>Heroes</em> he currently has two strips being published: the SF adventure <em>Zero G</em> from Spacedog and <em>True Blood</em>, a web comic based on the HBO TV series currently screening in the States.<br /><br />Excerpt:<br />PB: How did you crack the US market? Was that always your intention?<br />JB: Yes. Every year I’d go up to the Sydney convention with my portfolio to get some feedback. I remember once [US comic artist] Walt Simonson was there and he said to me “This is nice” and “That is nice”, and I said to him “Walt, if I want to hear it’s nice I’ll ask my Mum. I need to know how I can be sitting in your position”. He looked at me and asked “Really?” and I said ”Really!”. So he gave me some incredible insights into my work. Another great help was meeting [US comic writer and editor] Archie Goodwin at another Sydney Con. I asked him what he looked for in an creator. He said “In this order: reliable, nice and talented. I want to know that you can get the work done. I want to know that I’ll enjoy working with you. And if your work’s good then that’s a help too”. So everything from that meeting with Archie Goodwin has been a work in progress of putting together pieces of that person that I need to be. If he had given me a job at the time I wouldn’t have been ready. I didn’t have the discipline, the energy, the intelligence, the experience or the know-how to produce a commercial job.<br />PB: Had you been submitting work to US publishers?<br />JB: I only began around 2000, but didn’t get much response. I think the only person who replied was Mike Carlin, editor in chief at DC. He only sent back a postcard saying that he didn’t think I was ready, but it was really nice of him to take the trouble. It was around this time Darren Close approached me about doing some work for <em>Killeroo</em>. At this stage I was working pretty exclusively with JAn [writer JAn Napiorkowski] so I asked Darren if we could do a strip together and he agreed. It was originally going to be a back-up story, but ended up being the lead strip in the second issue. I had loads of fun doing it. Darren was hoping to get a cartoon series of the character up so that inspired me to draw it in a more cartoony style.<br />The year it came out (2004) I went up to Sydney and was sitting there doing sketches for the few people wandering by and this guy came up to me and said “Did you draw this?” And I said “Yeah” and he replied “Well, we need to talk”. His name was Roger Mincheff and he runs a company called Space Dog that does a lot of cross-media marketing for Top Cow, Mark Silvestri’s company. He’s responsible for video games, TV Shows, movies etc. He said he only had ten minutes, but we got on so well that we talked for an hour and a half and I ended up bringing JAn into the discussion. So I started working for Space Dog.<br />PB: What sort of jobs?<br />JB: A number of short stories for the anthology <em>Proximity Effect</em>. I also did ads for Top Cow and eventually ended up with my own book <em>Zero G</em> [which premiered in Sepetember 2008].<br />PB: How did your work on the <em>Heroes</em> comic come about?<br />JB: I was doing a lot of art direction for Roger on various books. One of these was drawn by another Australian, Andy Finlayson, and written by Aron Coleite. At some point Aron contacted us and said that he was going to have to give the book away because his TV show had taken off. We said fine, sure, and that was that. But a few months later I was watching <em>Heroes</em> on TV, saw his name and realised this had been what he was talking about. So I sent him a congratulatory email and we got talking. I showed him some of the work I’d been doing, he liked it, and asked if I was interested in doing some issues of the Heroes web comics. I said sure, so he passed my name over to Frank Mastromauro one of the editors at Aspen Comics, who handle the <em>Heroes</em> web comic, and within two hours I had my first script. It was great because I was just getting into the show. To be able to work on something that I really enjoyed and which was becoming a part of the cultural consciousness at the time was a huge kick. People say to me “You’re so lucky”, but there were plenty of people who had his contact details and didn’t follow him up. It was just an example of making your own luck.<br /><br />The rest of the interview can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 8.<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Article</span></strong><br /><strong>My Life in Comics Part VI– Minotaur: the early years 1977-80</strong><br />by Philip Bentley<br /><br />Excerpt:<br />This is the sixth of a series of articles chronicling my path as a comics aficionado in Australia over the past forty years. In this chapter I move onto detailing the steps taken to set up what has become one of Australia’s largest comic shops Minotaur. In this instalment I deal with its establishment phase as a mail-order concern.<br /><br />In previous instalments I have detailed how a friendship between myself and fellow Melbourne comic fans Greg Gates and Colin Paraskevas, in the 1970s, led to the publication of the comic anthology <em>Inkspots</em>. The other fruit of this friendship was the establishment of the retail business Minotaur (initially Minotaur Imports, then Minotaur Books, now just Minotaur).<br /><br />In the second chapter (<em>WB</em> 2) I described the importance of Space Age Books to Melbourne comic aficionados in the 1970s. Space Age, though, was first and foremost a retailer of science fiction books that dabbled in comics on the side. Consequently there was never much system about what the shop stocked, leading many local comic fans to having something of a love/hate relationship with the place.<br /><br />This prompted Colin Paraskevas to float the idea, in September 1976, that the three of us should set up a comic shop to ‘do things properly’. But it wasn’t until the middle of 1977 that we were ready to commit to the project and it was the end of the year before we started officially trading.<br /><br />Rather than launch out immediately into a shopfront with its associated overheads we decided to take the simpler option of establishing ourselves as a mail order company. We acquired a post office box in Doncaster (near Colin), but the nerve-centre of the operation was located in a newly-built room at the back of my parent’s house. Deliveries were largely sent here and Colin would phone through the orders for me to fill. The business name was my invention seeking to evoke a fantasy-tinged mood that still carried some punch.<br /><br />In the next instalment I will reveal details of the transition from mail order to shop in the early 1980s and the rise and rise of the venture thereafter.<br /><br />The rest of the article can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 8.<br /><br />Also reviews of Bobby Nenadovic’s <em>Digested</em> 01“his artwork has developed nicely and is now operating at a professional-looking level”, <em>Sawbones</em> Vol. 1 by Jen Breach & Trevor Wood “owes much to comedic elements found in American situation comedy and newspaper cartoons”, Caanan Grall’s <em>The Middle Ages</em> 1 “a clean, clear, pleasant style” and <em>Crimes to the Face</em> 1 by Ive Sorocuk “has an appealing goofiness”.Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-3143169790644210342008-07-22T14:50:00.005+10:002008-12-11T18:47:50.745+11:00Passionate Nomads<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0L5VlxZjBbVylDBjICx-YE8ykOgSPbzK5Z4HD7ER9wlKQl9OT9RMYe-m1vc7Dg3ZcnQ066IG4M0fOoHFC2XqYpQdkCESTILTIo2ALzv9IgRZ1BkK6uQQXpKVOHkqafMcz7WLngy8PLbk/s1600-h/PN+Cover.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225697318971995442" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0L5VlxZjBbVylDBjICx-YE8ykOgSPbzK5Z4HD7ER9wlKQl9OT9RMYe-m1vc7Dg3ZcnQ066IG4M0fOoHFC2XqYpQdkCESTILTIo2ALzv9IgRZ1BkK6uQQXpKVOHkqafMcz7WLngy8PLbk/s320/PN+Cover.JPG" border="0" /></a><br />Second Shore’s other publication to date (in collaboration with Paper Tableaux) has been <em><strong>Passionate Nomads</strong></em> a graphic story collection containing four tales of women who travelled, lived and loved in the Middle East of the nineteenth century. It is written by myself, with sequentials by some of the finest comic artists in Australia and New Zealand. With a forward by Dylan Horrocks. 44pp, $15.00 + $1.00 post.<br /><br /><strong><em>Passionate Nomads</em></strong> comprises:<br /><strong>The Amorous Adventures of Jane Digby</strong> Her passionate peregrinations through ten countries and as many lovers as told by those who knew her. Twelve self-contained one page strips by twelve artists: Jason Badower, Stephen Campbell, Andrew Finlayson, Greg Gates, Chris Johnston, Jared Lane, Angelo Madrid, Darrel Merritt, Bruce Mutard, Michael Nason, Maria Pena, and Martin Trengove.<br /><strong>The Odalisque and the Tumbler</strong> A glimpse behind the curtain into an Ottoman harem. Art by Maria Pena.<br /><strong>Scenes from my Life</strong> Lady Isabelle Burton recounts tales of her colourful life at the side of her husband, the explorer Sir Richard Burton. Art by Darrel Merritt.<br /><strong>Mektoub</strong> The short but remarkable life of Isabelle Eberhardt: romantic and mystic of the Sahara. Art by Maria Pena.<br /><br />Samples of the strips can be found at <a href="http://www.users.on.net/~dmerritt/nomads/gallery/Introduction.html">http://www.users.on.net/~dmerritt/nomads/gallery/Introduction.html</a><br /><br /><strong><em>Passionate Nomads</em></strong> or its participants gained four <strong>Ledger</strong> <strong>Awards</strong> (Australian comics' equivalent of the Oscars) in 2006:<br /><strong>Best Book</strong>- <em>Passionate Nomads</em><br /><strong>Best Story</strong>- "The Amourous Adventures of Jane Digby"<br /><strong>Best Writer</strong>- Philip Bentley<br /><strong>Best Design</strong>- Darrel Merritt<br /><br /><br />The introduction follows below…<br /><br />The stories in this book detail journeys made geographically, culturally and spiritually by four remarkable women. At a time when Western women were largely excluded from intellectual and social discourse, these women pushed the bounds to live more fully and passionately. To do so, they took a step outside of their own culture and embraced elements of trans-cultural identity, even if, at the same time, they remained within another discourse, that of Orientalism: the way the West has perceived the East as dark, mysterious and exotic.<br /><br />For me, personally, the work also represents a journey that I wasn’t really aware I was on until recently. As a devotee of the graphic story (or comic) medium, I have long been interested in works which push the boundaries of the art-form. During the 1980s, I sought to make a contribution to this cause through contributing to, and helping to publish, two Australian ‘alternative’ comics: <strong><em>Inkspots</em></strong> (1980-84) and <strong><em>Fox Comics</em></strong> (1984-1991). Whilst at times, in the former, we allowed readability to be sacrificed in the pursuit of ‘Art’, with the latter, I discovered that innovation could be combined with a satisfying story; that boundaries can be pushed thematically as well as via technique.<br /><br />It was thinking such as this that led me, in the late 1980s, to begin producing graphic story biographies on the four women whose lives were documented in Lesley Blanch’s <strong><em>The</em></strong> <strong><em>Wilder</em> <em>Shores of Love</em></strong> (1954). There was no great agenda in choosing this book or subject – it was the one that was to hand and I liked her colourful turn of phrase. But I was also interested in dealing with a genre rarely attempted in the comic medium. As a challenge, I decided to write the strips using four different narrative techniques. I started fairly simply, utilising an aside from the life of Aimée Dubucq de Rivery, which, drawn by Maria Pena, saw print as “The Odalisque and the Tumbler” in <strong><em>Fox</em></strong> 16 (1987). From there things became more involved. The strip on Isabel Burton detailed her entire life as a first person reflection, whilst that on Isabelle Eberhardt, not only covered her entire life, but drew on biographical sources other than Blanch as well. As chance would have it, the latter strip, “Mektoub”, also drawn by Maria, appeared first, in <strong><em>Fox</em></strong> 23 (1989). The piece on Isabel Burton, “Scenes From My Life”, passed through a number of artists before reaching Darrel Merritt. Unfortunately, he had not completed it by the time the <strong><em>Fox</em></strong> was discontinued in the early 1990s. Instead, it was printed in another local anthology, <strong><em>Cyclone Comics Quarterly</em></strong> 3 (1994).<br /><br />The Fox’s demise also put paid to any thoughts I had of completing the quartet. Indeed, at this time, my own life took a divergence from comics. I left the comic shop I had helped to found, Minotaur Books, and entered university as a mature-age student. For ten odd years I had only a casual interest in comics. Then, around the turn of the century, I found my interest growing again. Despite feeling a bit like Rip Van Winkle, I found that re-entering the field as an uninformed outsider was a liberating experience. In the interim, David Bird, whom I had worked with on the Fox, had started his own small comic company, Paper Tableaux. Inspired by a collection he published of another <strong><em>Inkspots/Fox</em></strong> alumni, Greg Gates, [<strong><em>Strange Worlds</em></strong>, 2003], I realised that I too had a collection of my own to hand; although it needed the addition of the final biography to complete it. Thus, without really intending to, I found myself returning to comics writing.<br /><br />Ironically, my trajectory at university had seen me end up with a MA in history, and go on to practice as a professional historian. However, I quickly realised that there was a difference between the history I write for a living and these works which I see more as drama than documentary. Whilst I have generally endeavoured to remain truthful to the ‘facts’, with time, there has still been a subtle shift in orientation. With the final story, “The Amorous Adventures of Jane Digby”, I have not let the ‘facts’ impede the narrative. In fact, I have found the ability to alter events to suit to be a pleasing antidote to the straight-jacket imposed by history writing.<br /><br />The other distinctive element with the Digby strip, is how it has been adapted. Drawing comics is a labour intensive activity, and since there weren’t great prospects of financial remuneration from this project, I could see it taking years to produce if it was undertaken by an artist working on it after-hours. Given that biography lends itself to an episodic structure, I came up with the notion of producing a series of self-contained, one-page strips which could be illustrated by separate artists. Inspired by a trend in current TV documentaries, I decided to have each page narrated by a different person who had known Digby, as if they were being interviewed about her life.<br /><br />Unless you are a writer/artist, the process of comic creation is going to be a collaborative affair. Anyone who has collaborated in any endeavour will know how it can be both frustrating and rewarding. Whilst the ideal outcome is a synergistic melding of talents, there is always the danger of the results will display the worst of both worlds. This has certainly been the case in comic strips I have worked on. In some cases the story has been given flight by a sensitive adaptation, in others, artists have trampled all over the script. In this case though, I was proposing juggling no less than twelve artists in a format that, to the best of my knowledge, has never been tried before. If it worked I would hopefully gain an integrated number of takes on a shared subject, if it didn’t, I could end up with a collection of uncohesive pages.<br /><br />In choosing artists, I initially tapped into to old <strong><em>Inkspots</em>/<em>Fox</em></strong> network and was gratified by the number who were prepared to participate. However, from the outset, I had decided that I didn’t want this to be a comic version of the <strong><em>Return of the Magnificent Seven</em></strong>. It needed contemporary artists as well. In choosing these, I was swayed both by work seen and recommendations from those I knew. Undoubtedly, there were many more that I could have approached, but having been out of the loop for over a decade I admit to being self-conscious in approaching strangers out-of-the-blue.<br /><br />As the work has progressed, the book has become something of an outlet for local artists who have something to prove. Australia only had a commercial comic industry in the 1940s and 1950s, pre-TV and when war-time import bans prevented US comics from being locally distributed. Since that time, aspiring comic creators have largely had to be satisfied by whatever amateur and semi-professional publications were around. Until recently, working overseas really required you travelling and/or living there. Hence, a whole generation of potential writers and artists have either ceased creating or have moved sideways into allied vocations, such as graphic design or storyboarding. But many clearly still feel they have unfinished business with the field. Moreover, over the past few years, the communications revolution has made it more viable for local artists to work for overseas publishers from home. Therefore, there is now a younger generation looking for exposure. These two groups have come together to work on this project.<br /><br />This work also makes a contribution to a small, but to my mind important, genre of comics which for want of a better word I have termed ‘naturalistic’; that is, stories, be they fictional or not, that are set in the real world, but aren’t necessarily autobiographical or slice-of-life. These days I can summon up little enthusiasm for the larger-than-life tales that have been the mainstay of English-speaking comics for much of their existence. For me, ‘naturalism’ is a viable means of pushing the medium beyond its current bounds.<br /><br />The book has also gained an unexpected resonance as a result of the troubled times in which we live. Twenty years ago I could not have predicted that stories involving the sympathetic treatment of Arab-European relations, including cross-cultural marriage and conversion to Islam would come to possess a heightened political dimension. That it has demonstrates, I feel, how much we still live in the shadow of our xenophobic Victorian forebears.<br /><br />Philip Bentley, November 2005.Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-20745609702804507942008-07-03T15:01:00.005+10:002008-12-11T18:47:50.873+11:00Word Balloons 7, May 2008<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSkWkAJHa8MEzH8Ur444myDAAS7LvFQeNjp-oU_ZzQbCUThVpyEgam8weCWVQT23n5jGZtssuU0aJZQnkZFRjKZ7QMckysfAsRV-oHPMukk32mQ3ilx80AV2lU90sAxRONU80YDqSrvbQ/s1600-h/wb7+cover+outlines+low+res+copy.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218649395060723826" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSkWkAJHa8MEzH8Ur444myDAAS7LvFQeNjp-oU_ZzQbCUThVpyEgam8weCWVQT23n5jGZtssuU0aJZQnkZFRjKZ7QMckysfAsRV-oHPMukk32mQ3ilx80AV2lU90sAxRONU80YDqSrvbQ/s320/wb7+cover+outlines+low+res+copy.jpg" border="0" /></a> <strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Interview</span></strong><br /><div><em>“I want to develop an intimate relationship with the text.”</em></div><div><strong>An interview with Nicki Greenberg.</strong><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, 26/02/08.</span></div><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div><br />Without really planning it Nicki Greenberg has become something of the face of literate graphic stories in this country. Following the successful publication of her unique adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s <em>The Great Gatsby</em> last year she has been feted in the news media and at writers festivals around the country.<br />To discover the path she has followed to reach this point I have placed her under the spotlight (or beside the microphone) as this issue’s feature interview. In the interview you will read of her multi-faceted career as cartoonist, author and lawyer, her youthful creative endeavours, her path to and through the momentous task of adapting one of the major works of twentieth century literature and what she plans to do for an encore.</div><div></div><div><br />Excerpt:</div><div align="left">PB: Tell us something of your childhood. I’m guessing you wrote and drew a lot.<br />NG: I’ve been writing and drawing for as long as I can remember. As a child I was constantly scribbling. I was the kid who would get told off in class for doodling while the teacher was talking. And I loved writing stories.<br />PB: What about comics. Where do they come in?<br />NG: When I was about seventeen I started drawing these little page long cartoon strips. They were semi-autobiographical stories about my character Bug. I loved doing them and soon started doing other strips, gradually getting more and more into it. What really blew open the comic world for me was when I went over to Canada on a student exchange in my final year of Uni, 1996. Over there (in Montreal) I met other cartoonists and got involved in comic jams and anthologies with them. When I got back I started to meet people in the Melbourne indie comics scene and contributed to various anthologies like <em>The Pointy End</em>, <em>Tango</em> and <em>Silent Army</em>.</div><div align="left"></div><div align="center">* * *</div><div align="left">PB: I gather you first encountered <em>The Great Gatsby</em> at school.<br />NG: I studied it in my Year 12 Literature class. I completely fell in love with it.<br />PB: Was it always your desire to adapt it?<br />NG: No, I probably didn’t get the idea until about 1999.<br />PB: How did the project develop? Were the characters always going to be cartoon creatures?<br />NG: Yes, but the original drawings were much more detailed than what I ended up with. Although they didn’t look like Edward Gorey pictures they still had that level of line work. I don’t know how many decades that would have taken. [Laughs.] I’m glad that I simplified the characters, not simply because it meant I got the work done in six years rather than sixteen, but because it made the characters look more lively and immediate. Their expressions were fresher and I think it helped the look of the book. So the first step was doing all the character studies. I then did a lot of research to get source material for the sort of houses, buildings, gardens and cars of the period.<br />PB: Was it always going to be designed like a photo album?<br />NG: Yes. I love to look of panels on a black page and that’s probably what got me thinking in that direction at the beginning.<br />PB: Was there a concern with doing it like that that you might lose some of the sequential movement from panel to panel?<br />NG: I tried to be very careful to make it easy to read. Quite a bit of thought went into the placement of the panels on the page. There’s a lot of intuitive nudging of frames slightly closer together or a little bit higher or lower so that it feels natural to read. I did want to have a lot of black space around the frames, especially for readers who aren’t used to the very compacted nature of the traditional comic page. I wanted it to act as a sort of breathing space for the eye.<br />PB: Did you look at other examples of comic adaptations of literary works, like Hunt Emerson’s <em>Lady Chatterley’s Lover</em> (Knockabout, 1986) or even Classics Illustrated?<br />NG: No, I didn’t look at anything. Nor did I look at any of the movie adaptations. I wanted to lock myself away with just the text. It wasn’t until I was a good way through it that I read biographies of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I wanted to develop an intimate relationship with the text.<br />PB: When in the creative process did you find a publisher? I’m assuming that at the beginning you just started on spec hoping to find a publisher down the track. And to begin with you must have needed to maintain quite a bit of faith in it and yourself.<br />NG: Yes, it’s a bit like Gatsby’s mad dream. [Laughs.] I always wanted it to be published, but I had been working on it for five years before I found one. During that time I had some other books published, but they weren’t graphic novels. In some ways I tried not to think of the possibility of it not being published. [Laughs.] When I first showed it to Allen & Unwin, which was after I had been at it for a couple of years and had done 100 pages of finished work, they were very enthusiastic, but at that stage to put out a graphic novel in Australia was a big challenge. A major problem was the varying copyright periods around the world. It was out of copyright here, but not in Britain or the US, and if they couldn’t publish it in those markets they didn’t think it would be viable. So it was really exciting when a bit later they decided to do it.<br />PB: What had changed?<br />NG: I think it was a whole cultural shift thing. Partly it was because the market is more receptive now.</div><div align="center">* * *</div><div align="left">PB: The next graphic novel you are working on is <em>Hamlet</em>. Why another adaptation? Why another set text?<br />NG: I love the process of adapting and I find it endlessly fascinating to engage with a brilliant text. You add your own interpretation, but you’re mining something that is very rich. It’s like asking a musician why they keep playing Beethoven. [Laughs.] It’s because it’s something you can draw so much from. I could make up a story of my own, but at the moment I am getting so much out of the dialogue with these amazing texts. Hamlet is an extraordinary play, and one which has been explored and reinterpreted for centuries. It’s inexhaustibly fascinating, because it keeps on making us engage with those huge eternal questions about our existence. Irresistible!<br /><br />The rest of the interview can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 7.<br /><br /></div><div></div><div><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Article</span></strong></div><div><strong>My Life in Comics Part V: Inkspots–the later years 1981-84.</strong><br />by Philip Bentley </div><div><br />This is the fifth of a series of articles chronicling my path as a comics aficionado in Australia over the past forty years. These articles have been inspired partially by a sense of nostalgia, but also to record certain aspects of the local comics scene for posterity. These are firstly, the patterns of comic collecting in the 1960s and 1970s, a process that has been irrevocably changed by the arrival of comic stores; secondly, the beginnings of comic fandom in Melbourne and Australia; and lastly, my reflections on the establishment and running of two comic magazines and a shop (<em>Inkspots</em>, <em>Fox Comics</em> and Minotaur). Primarily these are my recollections alone and make no claims to be the authoritative view. It would be interesting to see more recollections, especially from those in other states.<br /><br />In this chapter I chronicle the later years of the early 80s Australian alternative comic <em>Inkspots</em> ; a salutary reminder of how creative endeavours can go haywire even with the best of intentions<br /></div><div><br />Excerpt:<br />In the last instalment (WB 5) I detailed how in the mid-1970s Greg Gates, Colin Paraskevas and myself undertook to publish a comic anthology initially with the intention of seeing our own work in print, then as the project progressed including others as well.<br /><br />One reason the project expanded was that there weren’t any comparable publications in Australia at this time. Indeed, there were hardly any local comics being published period, neither at a commercial, nor even at a small-press level.<br /><br />Following the release of <em>Inkspots</em> 1, in the middle of 1980, we began to plan the next volume. Whilst the year it took to produce was considerably quicker than the five it had taken for the first one it still seemed to move at a snail’s pace. Again we were hamstrung by all creators working on it after hours given projected sales were not enough to allow us to pay contributors.<br /><br />I am not conscious that our philosophy for the production of issue two was significantly changed. Certainly, from my perspective, I was still looking for works that pushed the envelope creatively. Instead, changes were made in the production values, with the magazine being printed by a major printer on slick paper and with colour inside the cover as well as out (the interior remained in B&W). Once again there were a great diversity of styles on parade, even more than the first issue. This is something I think I saw as a strength at the time, but now tend to feel took the issue in too many directions at once. Carry over creators from issue one included myself, Greg, Colin, Chris Johnston, Stephen Campbell, Darrel Lindquist, Stuart Mann, Martin Trengove, Phil Lyng & Trevor Sumper. They were joined by Russell Edwards, Tony Crooks, Malcolm English & Ian Eddy. However, the most striking new contributions came from Fil Barlow and Phil Kanlides, both then just eighteen and chock full of talent and confidence.<br /><br /><em>Inkspots</em> 1 had primarily been distributed through US comic distributors. With this issue we took the plunge by adding the local newsagent distributor Gordon & Gotch. At the time this was not a difficult task to achieve. From memory we gave them 2,000, keeping another 1,000 for overseas distributors and our own sales. Sales were, however, were modest. From memory we achieved a sell through rate of sixteen percent across Australia, peaking in the mid-twenties in Melbourne and Sydney, but dropping into single digits in more far flung rural areas.<br /><br />Whilst I may not have been surprised by these results it was still a disappointment. Although I think I was more hung up on the ‘comics as art’ ethos than Colin or Greg I was still needled by this perceived failure and for a time became more compelled to achieve higher sales. So our emphasis for issue three became to make the book more accessible by including stories with a greater emphasis on narrative and continuing characters. As time wore on, plans were made, meetings were had, strips were started, but it seemed the harder we pushed the longer things took.<br /><br />The rest of the article can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 7.<br /><br /></div><div>Also, reviews of Bruce Mutard’s The Sacrifice “the first in a trilogy of graphic novels that may indeed dare to dream such a thing as ‘the great Australian graphic novel’ exists”, Rooftops by Mandy Ord “an elegy to inner city life and her own idiosyncratic spiritual search”, Skye Ogden’s Vowels “a gem of a book” and Love Puppets by Grug & Mcleod “a romantic soap opera of the best kind”.<br /></div>Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-18583171436129336022008-06-12T15:23:00.002+10:002008-12-11T18:47:50.991+11:00Word Balloons 6, October 2007<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1cx-7FYxbLso4JZ0lxkaJfgqDBns7KrHFQWhm28k9DOdjhL2MXLUuk5Wuq9ILr_BwdRiMn7Powkkidw_r2Up8mvIZ4V8QFO9cafyWQFRVkqvF_2JWAhGAEKXXBqZjCUC9ENVdsAz-viU/s1600-h/wb6+cover+outlines+copy.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5210862928981648130" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1cx-7FYxbLso4JZ0lxkaJfgqDBns7KrHFQWhm28k9DOdjhL2MXLUuk5Wuq9ILr_BwdRiMn7Powkkidw_r2Up8mvIZ4V8QFO9cafyWQFRVkqvF_2JWAhGAEKXXBqZjCUC9ENVdsAz-viU/s320/wb6+cover+outlines+copy.jpg" border="0" /></a> <strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Interview</span></strong><br /><div><em>“You end up feeling a bit like Indiana Jones at times.”</em> </div><div><strong>An interview with Mick Stone.</strong> </div><div><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, August 2007</span></div><div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div><br />Having interviewed a variety of artists and writers in previous issues, I thought it was high time that I looked at the other end of the scene, namely that of collectors and dealers.<br /><br />Mick Stone has been passion-ate about comics for much of his life and growing up in the 1940s and 50s meant that he had a healthy exposure to home-grown titles, as well as US characters in reprint. His experiences, then, take the saga of collecting comics in this country, that I have been chronicling in my own recollections, back a decade.<br /><br />Mick is the proprietor of Melbourne’s Camberwell Books and Collectables<br />www. camberwellbooks.com.au. He also made a significant contribution to the 1990s history of Australian comics <em>Bonzer</em> (Elgua Media, 1998), in particular through his index of all known titles 1900-60; something I found an invaluable resource in preparing this interview.<br /><br />Excerpt<br />PB: I’m interested in your early experiences with comics. The question of how you discovered them is perhaps a bit redundant given that they were a fairly ubiquitous part of childhood during this period.<br />MS: That’s true. I was a pretty early reader. I can recall around 1949, at the age of four, reading the comic strips in the Herald every night; things like Mandrake the Magician. The other two primary forms of entertainment for kids at this time were radio serials and movies of a Saturday afternoon, and they, and comics, all complemented one another. I can remember sitting next to the radio, it was one of the big furniture style ones in the corner of the lounge room, listening to Tarzan and Superman. I found out later that Leonard Teale [Australian actor who went on to be a mainstay of local TV] played both characters with his rich, mellow voice.<br />PB: And comics?<br />MS: Heaven was to have a bunch of comics. One of the seats of urban power among boys at this time was to have a fantastic collection. There was an old lady over the back fence who had a collection of comics and we used to traipse over there and borrow them. These were titles like <em>Captain Marvel</em> [Australian reprints of the American Fawcett line]. There was also an older girl down the road who had a box full of various titles and I would go there and read them. You would also borrow and swap comics with your friends.<br />PB: What were some of your favourite comics or characters from that period?<br />MS: Well, everyone loved the <em>Phantom</em> [reprints of US newspaper strips, published by Frew from 1948 to the present]. I think I started reading him in the late 1940s when he was in the <em>Women’s Mirror</em>. He’s a sort of a peculiar Australian phenomenon who’s far more popular here than he is in America. And if you had a bunch of comics, the Phantom was always the one your father would want to read. [Laughs.]<br />PB: What other titles did you like?<br />MS: There was <em>Mandrake the Magician</em> [another US newspaper strip reprinted here as both strips and comic books]. I think I was in love with Narda, she was this beautiful, cleanly drawn woman. I was also a great fan of the Disney material [Australian reprints published by Walter Granger, 1946-78], especially the Carl Barks stories, although I wasn’t aware of who he was at the time. [Because Disney didn’t run credits.] He had a luminescent sort of art and favoured stories about lost civilizations and the like. I’ve had a fascination with archaeology ever since, and in the early 1970s saw a lot of ancient ruins on an extended tour of Africa. </div><div align="center">* * *<br /></div><div>PB: Any particularly memorable tales of finding ‘lost’ collections?<br />MS: When I returned from overseas it was clear that there was a prime collection out there because many of my friends had acquired some classic titles: things like <em>Fatty Finns Weekly</em> and other comics from the 1940s, all in mint condition. We were all mates, but no-one wanted to give away their sources. Anyway, [fellow collector] John Melloy’s wife let slip that he had seen an ad in the <em>Age</em>, so I went straight to the State Library and looked in the For Sale column of all the Saturday Ages for the eighteen months that I had been away. Sure enough there it was, an ad saying “Old Comics For Sale”. So I rang the number and explained to the bloke, because he wanted to know, how I had got onto him. He was a travelling salesman and it was clear he had been sourcing the goods from a country town, but he wouldn’t say where. Well, some time later, I was chasing old bottles at a bottle collectors show at Williamstown. In the swap and sell section I saw this collection of old comics and magazines. Don’t ask me how, but I knew instantly that they were from the same mother lode. I overheard the proprietor tell someone that he had stopped off at this shop in Talbot [Central Victoria] and that it was like walking into yesterday. So I rang the Talbot Post Office and described what I was looking for and they said: “Oh, that’ll be the Weilandt’s Store”. As I later discovered, Mr Weilandt had taken the shop over in the 1920s as a going concern and had never returned anything. There were sheds and barns out the back full of stock. He had actually died a few months before, but I made an arrangement with his son to go up and view it. I went up with [fellow collector] Ian Atkinson and there it was; it was like entering Tutankhamen’s tomb, or maybe another pharaoh as it had been ‘raided’ over time and not all the material was still there. There was something like a ten foot high stack of <em>Pals</em> magazine, all with their original football inserts; not so many comics, but lots of old toys. Some time later I compared notes with [another collector] Colin Williams, who had acquired a lot of stock from the traveller while I was overseas. Colin told me how he was looking at them all one night and he decided that the answer must be in the issues themselves: “They know where they’re from”. A lot of them were unclaimed subscription copies that had surnames on them. So he took a note of all the names and then starting from the more unusual surnames began to cross-reference them against the electoral roll. After only three of four names he had locked in to Talbot. I thought that was brilliant deduction. So he started going up there and buying in small portions. Mr Weilandt would say “That’s four pence ha’penny and three more at nine pence, that’s two shillings seven pence ha’penny, that’ll be twenty-seven cents”. He was just charging cover price on everything. </div><div></div><div>The rest of the interview can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 6.</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><strong>Article</strong></div><div><em>“Hearken to Me Faithful Ones!”</em><br /><strong>The Rise & Fall of Newton Comics.</strong> </div><div>by Robert Thomas</div><div></div><div></div><div><br />Editor's introduction</div><div>At first glimpse, the Newton Comics venture may appear to have been little more than a failed attempt to reprint Marvel Comics in Australia. But as Robert Thomas shows in this article the Newton experiment was much more. It was part of a colourful episode in Australia’s publishing history led by the larger than life Maxwell Newton.<br /><br />Whilst those of my generation may have dismissed the line as mere reprints, and those who grew up in the 80s and 90s may have never heard of it, to those children of the ‘70s Newtons may have been their first exposure to Marvels, or indeed comics. Moreover, the fairly eccentric publishing regimen followed means that the line is full of curious twists and turns that do imbue it with a sort of lovable goofiness. And their scarcity today means some are just as rare as those comics of the earlier age mentioned by Mick Stone in his interview. Philip Bentley<br /><br /></div><div>Excerpt:<br />There were some interesting sales in the Australian comic book market on eBay in 2002. A frenzied bidding war resulted in record prices for the following comic books:<br /><br />· <em>Amazing Spider-Man</em> 1 $360<br />· <em>Fantastic Four</em> 1 $204<br />· <em>X-Men</em> 1 $204<br />· <em>Incredible Hulk</em> 1 $202<br />· <em>Silver Surfer</em> 1 $112<br /><br />The Comic Price Guide website comicspriceguide.com currently values a near mint copy of <em>Amazing Spider-Man</em> 1 at around US$40,000, so why is $360 considered a record? More like a bargain price surely? That would be true if referring to the original Marvel version from the USA. However, this is the Australian comic reprint. $360 for a 30¢ black and white reprint? So what’s the story here?<br /><br />The tale begins with the Perth-born journalist and newspaper entrepreneur Maxwell (Max) Newton. The company in question was Newton Comics, which during 1975-76 was licensed to reprint Marvel comics for the Australian market. Maxwell Newton (1929-90) has been described as brilliant, complex, creative, driven, gifted, passionate, unorthodox, excessive, extreme, erratic, and, sadly, ultimately self-destructive. He made friends and enemies, polarising both in equal measure through their loyalty or loathing of him. At the height of his career he rubbed shoulders with politicians and prime ministers, captured the attention of thousands of readers through his news-papers, fought the establishment of the newspaper industry and commanded the respect of his peers with his influential economic and political columns. By contrast, the depths of his career were equally extreme. While constantly battling the life-long demons of booze and prescription drugs, he would endure bankruptcy and police raids on his offices. He also, briefly, boasted the largest brothel and pornographic publishing house Melbourne had ever seen, prior to his self-imposed exile to the US in the 1980s.<br /><br /></div><div> </div><div></div><div align="center">* * *</div><div>In 1971, Maxwell Newton began publishing the <em>Melbourne Observer</em>, later renamed the <em>Sunday Observer</em>, seizing the opportunity to fill a gap left after the paper’s previous owner had closed it down, leaving Melbourne without a locally produced Sunday newspaper.<br /><br />Having secured updated printing facilities, Newton now had to tackle the problem that many new publishers face when publishing a once-a-week newspaper. The <em>Sunday Observer</em> only saw the presses operating on weekends, therefore Newton needed to publish something during the week to keep the presses running. His solution was two-fold: he used the presses to publish soft-core pornography, pop magazines and comics.<br /><br />Marvel Comics had revolutionized the comic world in the early 1960s with characters such as the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Uncanny X-Men and other now heroic icons. However It was unlikely that Newton knew what Marvel Comics were besides being a commodity to feed his presses and generate cash. What he did do was employ people who were in the know. One of these was journalist and wheeler-dealer, Martin (Marty) Dougherty.<br /><br />Dougherty had always had a general interest in comics from a reader’s point of view. Charged with the responsibility of producing comics for Maxwell Newton’s Regal Press, Dougherty travelled to the US and met with Marvel executives, including then publisher Stan Lee, securing a licence to reprint Marvel Comics in Australia. [To be strictly accurate it appears Dougherty met with members of Transworld, the company charged with licensing Marvel characters world-wide, although Stan Lee was apparently in attendance. Ed.] An initial payment of $30,000 was made and Marvel released enough black and white proofs to begin printing the first few comics.<br /><br />In early 1975 an advertisement was placed in the <em>Sunday Observer</em> seeking an experienced comic enthusiast to edit the upcoming Newton Comics series. Nineteen-year-old Melbourne University engineering student, John Corneille, who was looking for a distraction from his studies, was chosen from the respondents. Corneille was already well-versed in Marvel lore and comics fandom in general [see “My Life in Comics” in <em>WB</em> 2 & 4] and his knowledge would prove invaluable in his position as editor.<br /><br />Marty Dougherty was keen to emulate the up-beat Marvel style bulletin and letters pages and so John Corneille became ‘Gentle John’, the editor and respondent for the “Marvel Mailbag” letters page. Corneille recalls, “The name ‘Gentle John’ was coined by Marty. I still cringe when I hear it!”<br /><br />The first Newton Comics titles rolled off the presses in May 1975 accompanied by the biggest advertising campaign for comic books ever seen in Australia. The first titles, published in fortnightly rotation, were <em>Amazing Spider-Man</em>, <em>Planet Of The Apes</em>, <em>Fantastic Four</em>, the <em>Avengers</em>, and the <em>Incredible Hulk</em>. The forty-four page comics sold for 30¢ [as against the imports which were 25¢ for thirty-two pages of which only twenty were story, Ed.] and were published in black and white with colour covers and colour super-hero posters in the centre.<br /><br />Maxwell Newton flooded the market with thousands of comics. The heavy promotion initially paid off with sales of up to 30,000 recorded for the first issues, dropping to around 20,000 for the second and third issues. After a few months sales had dropped to 6,000-8,000 per issue. It soon became apparent that sales projections were grossly overestimated, with print runs being too high and returns from newsagents being substantial. Marty Dougherty returned from the 1975 Christmas holiday break to find Maxwell Newton had closed the venture down during his absence. Dougherty persuaded Newton to resume publishing with a revamp of titles and schedules.</div><div> </div><div></div><div><br />The rest of the articles can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 6.</div><div> </div><div></div><div><br />Also reviews of Nicki Greenberg’s <em>The Great Gatsby</em> “an audacious work”, Something <em>Weird Quarterly</em> 2 “original takes on the notion of ‘horror’”, Bedford & Pop’s <em>The List</em> “a tightly paced psycho thriller” and <em>Shiranui</em> by Gary Lau “a visually striking project let down by some basic flaws in the story”.<br /></div>Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-42870557755177261332008-05-31T12:45:00.005+10:002008-12-11T18:47:51.237+11:00Word Balloons 5, Jun 2007<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC5isq9FijVcU9OT7DU0vIamTPf7meb2H78k0YABzSANnq865HLV12kfm79cwLc58E9WOdUzCczjF7Qd9m3pYv6j1M1QCA2ago4yw5ZSRCeabUVArGUrexEbNur-eD45VorZMGMLkW86c/s1600-h/wb5+cover+outlines+copy.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206372549514599682" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC5isq9FijVcU9OT7DU0vIamTPf7meb2H78k0YABzSANnq865HLV12kfm79cwLc58E9WOdUzCczjF7Qd9m3pYv6j1M1QCA2ago4yw5ZSRCeabUVArGUrexEbNur-eD45VorZMGMLkW86c/s320/wb5+cover+outlines+copy.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Interview<br /></span></strong><em>“I have always considered</em> DeeVee <em>to be an Australian comic.”</em><br /><strong>An interview with Daren White.</strong><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, May 2007.</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><br />As the masthead quote implies there has, at times, been some queries expressed over the nationality of this comic started by two Brits and an Aussie in Brisbane, printed in Canada, distributed worldwide and featuring work by another Australian-based British expatriate Eddie Campbell.<br /><br />In this interview co-editor Daren White makes his position clear along with detailing the book’s genesis and development. He then describes his own path as a part-time comic writer that has seen him work for DC and Dark Horse.<br /><br />Begun in 1996, <em>DeeVee</em> published fourteen issues to a quarterly or bi-monthly schedule until 2000 and have brought out nominal annuals since. During the initial period they mainly used Brisbane-based creators, but since then have showcased work of what could be called the cream of Australian comic talent.<br /><br /><div align="left">Excerpt<br />PB: One of the interesting things about you is, for someone who has played and continues to play a significant role in Australian comics, you were, in fact, born and raised in Britain.<br />DW: Correct. I was born in 1967. My family were from the East End of London, and as a baby we moved to a place called Leigh-on-Sea, in Essex.<br />PB: So how and when did you end up in Australia?<br />DW: My sister had married an Australian and was living in Brisbane. I had visited a couple of times, but had been frustrated with the flight time and costs involved, for what amounted to a visit for only a couple of weeks. Around August 1994 I was offered a move that would have eventually led to my becoming a partner in the firm of accountants where I worked. This, instead, convinced me that I was ready to move on. I had another friend who was in a similar position, so we came out here on a twelve month working holiday visa. I found accounting work immediately and so there was little interruption to normal life.<br />PB: How did you contact Brisbane fandom?<br />DW: On an earlier visit I had gone into [Brisbane comic shop] Comics Etc. looking for the <em>Collected Alec</em> by Eddie Campbell. I had left my copy at an ex-girlfriend’s and decided that buying a replacement was an easier option than asking for it back. [Laughs.] I knew Eddie lived in Brisbane so thought they might stock a copy. They didn’t, but the shop staff knew Eddie had copies and passed my details on to him. We got in contact and when he heard that I was from the Southend area, he invited me over for a drink. After I returned to England, we started an occasional correspondence. When I came out here to live I got back in contact and we began to meet for a drink on a regular basis. I enjoyed it in Brisbane, and had no intention of returning to England before the year was up. A few months later I met my future wife. I subsequently extended my visa for two years and was then granted permanent residency. We eventually married in 1997.<br /></div><div align="center">* * *<br /><div align="left">PB: What was the editorial stance with <em>DeeVee</em> ? What were you trying to achieve with it?<br />DW: Initially just to get as good a line up as possible, and to have a vehicle for the material that was coming out of Brisbane at the time. Eddie had been thinking of doing the <em>How to Be an Artist</em> graphic novel but needed an impetus to get it out. Because Bacchus was a monthly he tore through ideas at a rate of knots, so Marcus [co-editor Marcus Moore] and myself began to help him out with some stories. We worked out a deal whereby there was a trade off between the stories we did for Bacchus and his contributions to <em>DeeVee</em>. He impressed upon us that he would only let us run the strip if the quality of the rest of the book was of a sufficient standard. So that inspired us to lift our game. The criteria was whether the stuff was good enough to be seen. We did reject a lot of stuff, particularly once the issues started to rack up. I think one of the problems with Australian comics today is that there isn’t a critical enough editorial stance. There’s nothing wrong with the small-press ethic, I still contribute to mini-comics and enjoy doing so, but there is a difference between that and something that is going to go through Diamond and get world-wide distribution. With the early issues we probably still set out sights too low. Some of my own stuff, with hindsight, I wish we hadn’t run. It took us to around issue six or seven to get a consistently good line up.<br />PB: One of the most noticeable things for me was that <em>DeeVee</em> was an Australian comic that didn’t proclaim that on the cover.<br />DW: Yeah, that was deliberate. I think I’d already guessed that Australian sales would be a pretty small percentage of the overall figure. But clearly, when you read it, you would see it was an Australian comic. The editorial always spoke of local issues, and everyone involved thought of it as an Australian comic.<br /></div><div align="center">* * *<br /></div><div align="left">PB: How successful was it? I’m primarily thinking financially, but I’m also interested in your thoughts on it as a creative venture.<br />DW: Initially it did very well and we ended up with quite a bit of money in the bank. Starting around issue five or six sales began to drop a few hundred an issue. When we got to issue fourteen we were about down to the break even point. By that time all of our circumstances had changed. I was married and [co-editors] Marcus and Mick were both looking at doing so, so there were things like mortgages and kids beginning to enter the equation. Marcus was also beginning to lose interest. He let us know well in advance that fourteen was going to be his last issue. Doing a bimonthly magazine is essentially a young man’s sport. That’s one of the reasons why we decided to go to the ironically titled ‘annuals’. “Ironic” because we’ve never been able to keep to that schedule.<br />PB: With the annuals there is a different feel about them. It seems that you have actually gone out of your way to use specific creators, rather than utilising a stable of locals.<br />DW: That’s true. We decided that we’d only do one issue a year and make it bigger. I thought that there had been too many one and two page strips.<br />PB: Did you specify the sorts of stories you wanted?<br />DW: I couldn’t exactly spell it out, but I did ask for work that was thematically ‘mature’; that had resonance. Everybody really raised their game. <em>2001</em> is probably the happiest I have been with an issue, but I think <em>Molotov</em> is a better issue. </div><div align="left"><br />The rest of the interview can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 5.<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Article</span></strong><br /><strong>My Life in Comics: Part IV- Inkspots: the early years 1975-1980.</strong><br />by Philip Bentley<br /><br />This is the fourth of a series of articles chronicling my path as a comics aficionado in Australia over the past forty years. These articles have been inspired partially by a sense of nostalgia, but also to record certain aspects of the local comics scene for posterity. These are firstly, the patterns of comic collecting in the 1960s and 1970s, a process that has been irrevocably changed by the arrival of comic stores; secondly, the beginnings of comic fandom in Melbourne and Australia; and lastly, my reflections on the establishment and running of two comic magazines and a shop (Inkspots, Fox Comics and Minotaur). Primarily these are my recollections alone and make no claims to be the authoritative view.<br /><br />This time I move into my entry into comic writing and publishing by detailing the lengthy planning and publish-ing of the first issue of Inkspots – an anthology which ran for four issues 1980-84.<br /><br />Excerpt:<br />In previous instalments I have mentioned my friendship with Greg Gates and his interest in meeting fellow fans. Thus, by the mid-70s, Greg had contact with a diverse group of fans, many of whom would visit him from time to time, often of a weekend. Many of these were artists as Greg was one himself and enjoyed encouraging others in their endeavours.<br /><br />In my own case, I was something of the odd man out as I was a writer rather than an artist. My interest in writing had come about thanks to my adolescent interest in science fiction and fantasy, combined with an English teacher, whom I had for the last three years at school, who encouraged self-expression. In no time I was churning out reams of Conanesque drivel, then graduated to science fiction and more general fantasy.<br /><br />It was only a matter of time before Greg and I began a strip together, an ‘epic’ sword and sorcery piece which thankfully never saw completion. Instead, soon after we were working on some shorter post-apocalypse type tales and I was collaborating on a fantasy strip with another artist fan, Colin Paraskevas. Towards the end of 1975 we decided to publish these strips in a magazine. During the five years it took to bring it out we went through a number of names before, fairly late in the piece, settling on <em>Inkspots</em>. This name and, I fancy, the original notion to publish came from Colin, who was more imbued with ‘the vision thing’ and the get-up-and-go to achieve it than Greg or I at this time. The fact that the first issue took five years to produce was due, firstly, to having no idea what sort of commitment it took to draw a strip on a after-hours basis, secondly, that as we went along we met other artists with strips we wanted to include, but which needed to be begun, finished, or redrawn.<br /><br />Inspiration came from a number of quarters but they were unified by the fact that none of them were local. Whilst we would have been vaguely aware of the situation regarding the indigenous comic industry – that one had flourished in the 1940s and 50s, but was done in by the introduction of television in 1956 and the removal of the wartime ban on the importation of America publications in 1958 – I don’t think we ever identified with being successors to it. There was definitely no intention of trying to kick-start the industry. Instead, our inspiration, both in terms of content and presentation, came from overseas, principally America, and I think we saw ourselves as being an off-shoot of that market.<br /><br />In terms of content, we were inspired by a lot of what we considered to be the cutting edge work of the day throughout the various levels of comic publishing. Mainstream titles, such as Wein and Wrightson’s <em>Swamp Thing</em>, Starlin’s Warlock, and McGregor and Russell’s <em>Killraven</em> were influenetial, as were strips in the more fringe professional area such as those from Warren Publications. Underground comix would also have been of influence, but less the counter-culture tinged ones as those featuring ‘extreme violence’, such as the horror and science fiction titles <em>Fantagor</em>, <em>Skull</em> and <em>Slow Death</em>. However, the most influential publications when it came to format were the slickly produced, semi-professional zines that came out in the early 1970s with names such as <em>Phase</em>, <em>Phantasmagoria</em> and <em>Infinity</em>, and the ‘ground level’1 anthologies they inspired, like <em>Star*Reach</em>, <em>Hot Stuf’</em> and <em>Imagine</em>.<br /><br />These semi-professional and ground-level zines were of especial inspiration because their publishing philosophy appeared similar to ours and many of their contributors seemed to have a shared desire to push the envelope creatively. Put simply, we held that comics, aka graphic stories, could be “a legitimate art form in [their] own right”. To quote further from the editorial of <em>Inkspots</em> 1, we believed that their “boundaries [were] only as restricted as a person’s imagination”, that their “future [lay] with intelligently produced publications aimed at a mature audience”, and that “to be entertaining a story need not be escapist, [one] that stimulates, perplexes, enlightens or enriches could be [just as] entertaining if handled correctly”. However, I doubt that any other ground-level anthology of the time carried such a diverse range of styles and stories as our first issue, something that was both a strength and a weakness for us.<br /><br />The rest of the article can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 5.<br /><br />Also reviews of <em>Character Sketches: Trauma & Joy</em> “a work that rises above its pulp-based roots and demands to be assessed as ‘art’”, <em>Owen: Driver for Hire</em> by Troy Kealley “an action film on paper”, Michael Lombardi’s <em>Lessons Learnt Through Space Travel</em> “a fable of childhood amusingly written and delightfully drawn in an engaging cartoony style” and Wang and Aska’s <em>Prometheus Pan</em> “a modern day, Goth-tinged updating of the Prometheus legend”. </div></div>Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-82729830993280374542008-05-13T15:36:00.004+10:002008-12-11T18:47:51.596+11:00Word Balloons 4, Feb 2007<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTlAL3K4fJH46PO42BugIhTi8AiXmGFLGGffZnFNYqLiK-ONgZy198SLZINkzIOtM0UTRQGRafUtG6TamhbdUWPaGY9ikCgCZgHhhsqrs4xDZPczhGXdF2Dj4GmeyT6sQ5YqQDUzxF9pY/s1600-h/wb4+cover+for+back+page.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5199736745996712690" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTlAL3K4fJH46PO42BugIhTi8AiXmGFLGGffZnFNYqLiK-ONgZy198SLZINkzIOtM0UTRQGRafUtG6TamhbdUWPaGY9ikCgCZgHhhsqrs4xDZPczhGXdF2Dj4GmeyT6sQ5YqQDUzxF9pY/s320/wb4+cover+for+back+page.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Editorial</strong></span><br /><br />Over the summer of 2006-07 the State Library of Victoria ran an exhibition of Australian comics, <strong>Heroes & Villains</strong>, curated by fan identity Kevin Patrick. Whilst you can be assured that not everyone will agree with the choice of exhibits, how they are displayed, or the text used to describe them, I personally feel that it was a worthwhile venture as it has brought the graphic story medium into the public arena in a way that is largely positive and affirming.<br /><br />I admit that as a younger fan I had little interest in Australian comics of the ‘industry era’ of the 1940s and 50s. By the time I started collecting in the early 1960s they had just about disappeared, and when I did become aware of their existence in the 1970s they seemed quaint relics from the past. However, I think I have always had a bit of an inferiority complex when it comes to these earlier publications because they were still a part of a commercial industry, whereas the works produced from the 1980s on have by and large been eclectic self-published books. What this exhibition has revealed, though, thanks in part to its thematic nature, is that there are stronger connections between the two eras than I had realised. Consequently I have a greater respect for the comics of yesterday and I feel less apologetic about the comics of the last twenty-five years. </div><br />Whilst the industry of the 1940s and 50s was fairly small-scale in comparison to that of the US, it’s cessation in the early 1960s has still had far reaching effects on the medium in this country. As budding comic creators in the 1970s most of us were in awe of many of the American artists. This was especially the case with the ‘new wave’ of creators who had come up through fandom and seemingly had talent and attitude to burn. But rather than all being geniuses, I have come to believe that much of their development was influenced, firstly by having a functioning industry in which to hone their craft, and secondly by having seasoned pros from whom to gain advice. In Australia, we have lacked either and so have had to be our own publishers, editors, and critics. This has contributed to the sporadic nature of the current scene. Time and again I have seen people make the same mistakes as those before them, or try to reinvent the wheel because there isn’t that perpetual pool of knowledge to draw upon. In its own small way I am hoping Word Balloons will add to that pool. <em>Philip Bentley</em><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Interview</strong></span><br /><em>“A mix of complete ego and complete insecurity.”</em><br /><strong>An interview with Jason Paulos.</strong><br /><div align="left"><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, October 2006.</span><br /><br />Jason Paulos has been one of the most successful Australian comic artists of the past twenty years. Much of his output over this period has been of Hairbutt the Hippo, many of these stories written in collaboration with Bodine Amerikah. The various formats the character has appeared in reflect the changing fortunes of the Australian comic scene over this period. Beginning in a series of mini-comics, in the late 1980s, Hairbutt went on to star in a number of self-titled, self-published, news-stand distributed comics in the 1990s, then appeared regularly in Australian <em>Mad</em> magazine, before finally being self-published in a print-on-demand title only available online. More recently Jason has begun to produce other titles in the print-on-demand format: the horror anthology <em>EEEK!</em> and the turn of the twentieth century superhero <em>The Harlequin</em>. As someone working at the coal face for twenty odd years Jason has many pointed observations on comics in this country.<br /><br />Excerpts:<br />PB: When did you come up with the idea for Hairbutt the Hippo?<br />JP: It came to me in a dream. I was in a department store…Myer, and I was called up to the manager’s office for some reason. Not sure why, it was a bit like being at school and being called to the headmaster’s office, but I hadn’t done anything wrong. Behind the manager was a large polished wooden cut-out of a proto-Hairbutt figure. And the image moved. When I woke up I thought: “What was that all about?” It was one of those dreams where everything was highly polished like it was all in CG. But it wasn’t drug induced as I hadn’t started smoking dope yet. I thought I could draw the cut-out like Kyle Baker would. So I based Hairbutt on a character in the Kyle Baker story the “Seven Deadly Finns” who was an enormous fat slob in a black suit and Alexei Sayle. The cut-out became the first panel in the first Hairbutt mini comic.<br />PB: I guess you weren’t expecting him to be such an enduring character.<br />JP: Not at all. If I had been trying for that I think I would have tried a different character. To still be working with the same character I created when I was eighteen, at the age of thirty-seven is something many people would probably see as a bit strange.</div><div align="center">* * * </div><div align="left">PB: In the mid-1990s you started producing a Hairbutt strip for the Australian <em>Mad</em> magazine. Who approached who?<br />JP: They approached us. They promised that there would be no copyright on the character, which at the time I was concerned about. That led to three years of actually getting paid. I felt that we needed to get our act together a bit, learn our craft more, and be conscious of our responsibility. We tried our best, I guess.<br />PB: There was certainly a noticeable tightening of the story as for the most part you only had two pages to play with.<br />JP: That was an initial concern and at first I doubted that we could do it.<br />PB: Did you have much editorial direction or interference?<br />JP: Amazingly very little. There was only one occasion where the editor rang and started suggesting plotlines, which horrified me. But I managed to placate Bodine into turning out a strip that incorporated the editor’s ideas, even though the story ended up being fairly mediocre. There was one other instance where I came home, turned on my answering machine, and the editor had left a message: “Jason we’ve got a problem with the words ‘earth-shuddering orgasm’ in the latest strip. Can you ring me and talk?” [Laughs.] I really wish I’d kept that on tape. It’s one of the funniest answering machine messages I’ve had.</div><div align="center">* * * </div><div align="left">JP: Up until the late 1990s I was still putting stuff on the newsstands thinking that the exposure in Mad would help to sell the newsstand comics.<br />PB: You would think it would.<br />JP: Yeah, but what I realised was that Australian comic fans hate Australian <em>Mad</em>, seeing the Australian content as being lame. So it was the kiss of death to put “as featured in Australian Mad” on the cover.<br />PB: So you’ve now transferred over to a print-on-demand publishing process using Lulu. Can you give a brief explanation of how that works?<br />JP: Lulu are an on-line print-on-demand company in the States: www.lulu.com. I upload an issue onto their server and copies are printed as they are ordered on-line. Lulu do a variety of small press productions: books, comics, zines etc. They list all works on their site, but sales are obviously conditional on people either visiting it or me directing people there. However, the set-up costs are negligible.<br />PB: I must say that the quality of the printing and production from Lulu were impressive.<br />JP: That’s what made my mind up. I didn’t know that there were printing machines that could give you that degree of quality affordably. Ditto with the Hairbutt collection which turned up looking not like a comic, but a perfect bound book. It was a real buzz. I may not have sold that many copies, but because I’ve had no overheads I’ve actually made a modest profit for the first time ever. So it’s not true that you can’t make money out of self-published comics.<br />PB: With this more recent print-on-demand work like <em>Hairbutt the Hippo: Private Eye</em>, <em>EEEK!</em> and <em>The Harlequin</em>, there seems to have been an astonishing diversity of your styles occurring. Many artists work towards refining their style to a point where they can pretty much replicate it, but you currently seem to be wanting to try significant variations on a theme. For example, in Hairbutt: <em>Private Eye</em> 5 you have one strip in a Kurtzman/ Elder/Wood style and another in a sort of manga inspired style.<br />JP: Yeah it’s a bit of an ejaculation of ideas.<br />PB: <em>EEEK!</em> looks like a tribute to Warren comics.<br />JP: I call it “A love letter to 70s horror comics”. Bad horror comics, and I mean ‘bad’ affectionately as in kitsch. I’m more into the Batman TV series than <em>Dark Knight Returns</em>. In a sense it’s inspired by the failure of horror comics rather than their success: the predictable endings, the comeuppance tales, the nasty humour.<br /><br />The rest of the interview can be found in Word Balloons 4.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Article</strong></span></div><div align="left"><strong>My Life in Comics: Part III- The development of comics fandom in Australia to 1989.</strong><br />by Philip Bentley </div><div align="left"><br />This is the third of a series of articles chronicling my path as a comics aficionado in Australia over the past forty years. These articles have been inspired partially by a sense of nostalgia, but also to record certain aspects of the local comics scene for posterity. These are firstly, the patterns of comic collecting in the 1960s and 1970s, a process that has been irrevocably changed by the arrival of comic stores; secondly, the beginnings of comic fandom in Melbourne and Australia; and lastly, my reflections on the establishment and running of two comic magazines and a shop (Inkspots, Fox Comics and Minotaur). Primarily these are my recollections alone and make no claims to be the authoritative view. This instalment I expand beyond my own recollections and have endeavoured to record all fanzines and prominent events in Australian comic fandom up to the end of the 1980s.<br /><br />In the previous instalment I detailed the significance of Space Age Books in the Melbourne comic collecting scene of the 1970s. It was also important for providing the location for the first organised meeting of fans in the city, which occurred in 1972.<br /><br />The rather grandly entitled Melbourne Society of Panelologists (MSP) was the brainchild of John Breden, a member of the Space Age ‘inner circle’, who worked at Technical Books a few doors down Swanston Street (and also sported an impressive pair of mutton chops!) Panelology was a term that had been coined to give comic appreciation greater importance, much as coin collecting had been rebranded numismatics. John was particularly interested in “the comic strip medium as art and communication” and used ‘panelologist’ to differentiate the ‘serious’ student of the form from someone simply interested in cheap thrills. </div><div align="center">* * * </div><div align="left">The MSP meetings only ran during 1972 and 1973 for a total of eight events. After the cessation of the MSP the organising of fandom fell to the younger generation. Two of these were the twins Steve and John Corneille. They had become the city’s first fan dealers buying and selling comics by placing advertising slips in comics they sold at Franklins second-hand book shop and through the Trading Post. In 1974 they organised a meeting of comic fans, probably orchestrated as a club through Melbourne University, which was where the sparsely attended one and only meeting was held. Two years later one or both of the Corneilles decided to publish a fanzine: the rather prosaically entitled <em>The Australian Comic Collector</em>, or <em>TACC</em> for short. This was one of the first of its kind in Melbourne, or indeed Australia. John Corneille’s other contribution to comics in Australia came through his editorship of the short-lived Australian Marvel reprints Newton Comics. (A full article on the rise and fall of both the comics line and its publisher, the “brilliant, but erratic” Maxwell Newton, appeared in <em>WB</em> 6.)<br /><br />According the Grant Stone’s article in <em>TACC</em> 5/3 (1983) the first Australian fanzine was John Ryan’s Down Under which began in December 1964. Although Stone is unsure how long it ran Ryan went on the contribute Boomerang to CAPA-Alpha “the US’s premiere APA” (Amateur Press Association). Boomerang ran until 1974 and “much of its material became the basis for <em>Panel By Panel</em>” (Cassells, 1979), John’s history of Australian comics. John, however, died a few months after its release and the book soon ended up on remainder tables (and now sells for a couple of hundred dollars on eBay).<br /><br />The Corneilles only maintained their connection with <em>TACC</em> for six issues. It was subsequently taken over by another Melbourne fan, Joe Italiano, who ran it for another six issues (1979-80). Joe would later found the Melbourne comic shop Alternate Worlds. In the early 1980s Joe passed <em>TACC</em> over to a collective from Perth comprising Cefn Ridout, Chris de Fries and Gordon Wilkinson-Cox. They published four issues (1981-83) before going their separate ways.<br /><br />Joe Italiano, in collaboration with Moris Sztajer, was also responsible for organising the first, true comic convention in Melbourne (or indeed Australia). In 1979 they staged Comicon I at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). Their budget, however, was fairly limited and certainly didn’t run to bringing out overseas professionals. This meant that the convention had to exist on a steady diet of local comic strip and political cartoonists between whom and the audience there was an insurmountable gulf.<br /><br />In 1980 Joe and Moris upped the ante by holding the more substantial Comicon II at the Sheraton Hotel on Spring Street. Although no overseas artists were in attendance they did score an Australian with overseas connections, Peter Ledger, after whom the current Australian comic awards are named. In the following year, 1981, the reins of Comicon were passed to a Sydney collective who ran Comicon III in October. Separate conventions were then held spasmodically in both cities throughout the next two decades.<br /><br />The rest of the article can be found in <em>Word Balloons</em> 4. </div><div align="left"> </div><div align="left"><br />Also reviews of McDonald & Colliton’s <em>After Life</em> “a cautionary tale that speculates on the future both at a personal and societal level”, McDonald & Wells’ <em>Vigil</em> 1 “a laudable concept…let down by the art”, <em>The Dreaming</em> I by Queenie Chan “crisply delineated art, but [with a story that] is a bit underdone”, Mel Stringer’s <em>Girly Pains</em> 10 “sincere and evocative” & <em>Plump Oyster</em> 4 by Ben Constantine “perplexing, disturbing and fascinating”.</div>Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-57435829905913465222008-05-08T14:51:00.007+10:002008-12-11T18:47:52.449+11:00Word Balloons 3, Oct 2006<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdVKffOyXr85TuouOhOENjwBwXXTAjINJHwYL4-bzU2RmaR1znGNh1E-cGJRfW2oj_v2_i_KwTMAux64pxxRaRsLLa48n_5Cy5C5AYx1ngL7_WvsPXNA6Li1kBDhqj_tg25P160xghdfA/s1600-h/wb3+cover+for+back+page.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197867293726385954" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdVKffOyXr85TuouOhOENjwBwXXTAjINJHwYL4-bzU2RmaR1znGNh1E-cGJRfW2oj_v2_i_KwTMAux64pxxRaRsLLa48n_5Cy5C5AYx1ngL7_WvsPXNA6Li1kBDhqj_tg25P160xghdfA/s320/wb3+cover+for+back+page.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Interview</strong></span><br /><em>“Sort of a melding of Jesus and South Park.”</em> </div><div><em><strong>An interview with Dean Rankine</strong></em>. </div><div><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, September 2006</span></div><br /><div></div><div>Dean Rankine is a comic creator who pushes the envelope in a number of directions simultaneously. His art style, which for want of a better word, could be said to be ‘extreme cartooning’, pushes form and anatomy to its limits. His themes also take him into contentious areas. His children’s strips often see him deal with such ‘gross themes’ as the various bodily functions – areas which delight many children, but dismay many adults. And then there are his Christian comics...a statement that has probably sent most readers moving forward to the next interview. It must be said that this is not a genre that has produced any great works in the medium in the past, nor are there huge prospects of it occurring in the future. Yet Dean’s strips have appeal thanks to his very individual adaptations. There is some-thing about a Rankinesque track-suited Jesus talking to a guy in a footy jumper and beanie about daisies that works for me. But Dean’s qualities for an interview are more than his unusual art and stories. Whilst he may not make a total living from his work he still makes a partial living as a cartoonist working for one of those hidden areas of comic production: children’s magazines.<br /><br />Excerpt:</div><div align="left">PB: You’ve ploughed a dual career as a cartoonist and social worker. Could you talk through what led you to both?<br />DR: I initially did an art and design course in 1989-90, then I started freelancing. Always got bits and pieces of work but never enough to survive on. Initially I was working part-time in a library, but I decided that I wanted to do something that was more meaningful. So I started working for the Salvos as a youth worker, then a social worker, and now I work part-time at a needle and syringe programme, driving around at night handing out clean injecting equipment.<br />PB: What led you to try and become a cartoonist?<br />DR: It was always something that I was going to do. As long as I can remember that’s what I wanted to be. So I didn’t feel I had to worry too much about studying at school. [Laughs.]<br />PB: Did you draw comics as a kid or youth?<br />DR: Yes, although I don’t recall finishing many. I was big on drawing superhero parodies. I remember drawing a comic about a superhero termite and another one called Plastic Pig about a pig who was, you know, plastic. [Laughs.] If you look at my stuff now I obviously haven’t moved on very much. To an extent I have reached the goal of being a professional cartoonist, but it doesn’t support me totally financially, and I can’t see that happening in the near future.<br />PB: But it sounds as if you’re perfectly happy to have the social work job. It’s not like it’s a job that you hate.<br />DR: No, I love what I’m doing now. The needle and syringe programme I adore. It probably sounds as if it could be a bit dodgy, and I suppose it can be at times, but it’s not hard work. Everybody’s happy to see you. [Laughs.]<br />PB: A lot of your kids’ cartoons concentrate on what you could call ‘gross themes’, as with your characters Grossgirl and Boogerboy. This is clearly a recognisable trend in kids’ books. So how much of your interest in it is self-generated and how much is trying to tap into the market?<br />DR: A bit of both, but primarily it’s because that’s what I find funny. I like the sort of humour where you start to laugh, then catch yourself and think “I shouldn’t really be laughing”. [Laughs.] But I do want this stuff to be published, so I am aware of making it marketable.<br /></div><br /><div align="center">* * *</div><div align="left">PB: There’s a strong interest in social justice in your faith, isn’t there?<br />DR: Yes.<br />PB: Which is an element you don’t tend to associate with the more evangelical side of Christianity. You do describe yourself as ‘born again’ don’t you?<br />DR: Yes, yes, yep.<br />PB: Which, again, is a style of faith generally perceived as being from the fundamentalist side and holding to a strict interpretation of the Bible; something which you clearly are not that concerned with given that you are happy to portray Jesus in a ‘No Nukes’ t-shirt and set the Last Supper in McDonalds.<br />DR: Gee, er, I don’t know…it’s hard…I mean the biblical narrative of the life of Jesus isn’t written in a conventional, lineal, non-fictional way. I guess I believe in the ‘vibe’, but I can’t say whether I take all the Bible literally or not. I think it’s essential that we look at the life of Jesus and his teachings in a modern setting. You need to be able to find some meaning in it for our lives today.<br />PB: But there are certainly many people out there who believe that, whilst it should perhaps be applied to today, it shouldn’t be clothed in the look of today.<br />DR: I don’t know that I’ve taken it so far out. If Jesus was alive today I think he would wear a ‘No Nukes’ t-shirt. [Laughs.]<br />PB: The most stringent criticism of your work has come from fundamental Christians. In particular, one website from the US. Some of the more memorable comments include: “made me physically nauseated”; “To put a ‘style’ or spin on God is to re-make Him into our pre-conceived image instead of the true image as revealed in Scripture. The Bible calls that idolatry.”; “There is true awe about Christ so where is the reverence in this art.”.<br />DR: It’s ironic because the story that they highlighted was one of my tamer healing stories.<br />PB: I think it was more the depiction of Jesus that they objected to. You stated at the time that you felt both shocked and hurt by the attack. And even more so that it should come from Christians.<br />DR: Yep.<br />PB: I guess I have been a little surprised by your surprise given you have played so fast and loose, as it were, with tradition, and moreover have had at least one other negative experience in the past. [In a youth edition of the Salvation Army journal War Cry, in 1997, a cartoon of Mary and Joseph as dreadlocked, pierced and tattooed produced, according a report in the Age, letters expressing “disgust, shame and revulsion” (16/1/97 p. A4).]<br />DR: But I was and I still am. Yes, it’s set in modern times, and yes, I have a quirky drawing style, but I didn’t feel that it pushed the boundaries so much to provoke that amount of vehement criticism.<br />PB: It’s hard to know if they could have reacted much worse. I guess I just thought that if you were going to go down that line you would have been prepared for some ‘slings and arrows’.<br />DR: But I wasn’t. What I found most distasteful about the comments was that it’s, once again, Christians bagging Christians. I was also shocked by the ferocity of the attacks. It’s okay if people don’t like my work, but one guy cursed me with the ‘pox’ for goodness sakes. I’ve been checking my skin ever since waiting for an outbreak. [Laughs.]<br /><br />The rest of the interview can be found in Word Balloons 3.<br /><br /></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Interview<br /></span></strong><em>“I’ve still found a small niche in the corner of the market.”</em> </div><div align="left"><strong><em>An interview with Colin Wilson, Part II.<br /></em></strong><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, May & June 2003, January 2004 and updated before publication.<br /><br /></span></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">In the initial instalment we firstly dealt with Colin’s youth in New Zealand, his involvement with the seminal New Zealand comic Strips , and how he became interested in French comics. After his move to Europe in 1980, we followed his peripatetic path from London to Paris to Amsterdam to Brussels, and watched his career grow from drawing Judge Dredd for 2000AD, to producing his own comic series “Dans L'Ombre du Soleil” [Into the Shadow of the Sun] for Glenat, and then his big break being offered “La Jeunesse de Blueberry” [The Youth of Blueberry] a spin-off of one of France’s most popular comic characters, Lt Blueberry. In this installment we cover the highs and lows of working on an iconic title, the reasons for his move to Australia in the mid 1990s and how he has combined working on comics for four separate markets since then: France, UK, Italy and US.<br /><br />Excerpt:<br />PB: Despite your stated preference for working in the French market, over the past few years you have worked on two series for DC or its affiliates: The Losers 26-28 in 2005, and then in 2006 the five part Battler Britton [and at the time of printing is at work on a Star Wars story for Dark Horse]. So what has changed?<br />CW: Well, I’m still happier in the French market, but having seen what the competition is like there during three months in Europe, early in 2006, I’ll take the work where I can find it. With so much material being published in Europe, it is now very hard to launch and sustain a successful series there. And unless you are selling big numbers, the publishers will happily let a title drop because they are always looking for the next big thing. It is also ironic that by sticking with the work-for-hire model the US market actually pays better than the French.<br />PB: I assume that the fact that both these comics are written by Britons has something to do with their appeal for you?<br />CW: Yes, and also that they are not mainstream comics.<br />PB: So how come you were asked to do them?<br />CW: On The Losers, the regular artist, Jock, was doing both pencils and inks, and I imagine he needed the occasional break. So they have used other artists to do the occasional story-arcs within the overall framework of the series. My name probably came up because of my previous connection with the writer, Andy Diggle. We had worked together when Andy was the editor of 2000AD and have talked about doing something together ever since. In my usual fashion I initially declined, [Laughs.] realising that it would require twenty-two pages a month, but in the end I was able to do it and I had a lot of fun with it. It was done in a completely opposite manner to the slow, laborious way of doing European comics. It opened up a lot of possibilities to me artistically, that I didn’t think I was capable of. I discovered that I could have fun working quickly and taking short-cuts.<br />PB: What about Battler Britton?<br />CW: The link with that is more to [a previous project] Point Blank as it is for the same publisher (Wildstorm) and editor (Scott Dunbier). He got in touch towards the end of 2005 with the proposal of working with Garth Ennis, which would have been interesting regardless, as long as it wasn’t something like the Punisher. When I heard that it was a WWII story, in fact a WWII aviation story, I knew it was up my alley, but that it should be a revival of a British strip which I remember from my childhood was a great opportunity. One of the original artists on Battler, Ian Kennedy, was initially approached, but he’s quite old now, so it was passed on to me. I was a great fan of Kennedy back in the 60s and got a real charge when one of my first strips for 2000AD, in the early 80s, appeared in the same magazine as one of his. So this is something of my artistic tribute to what I have learnt from him, as the whole series is a tribute to the IPC war strips.</div><div align="center"><br />* * *</div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">PB: Given the unique position you occupy in the international comics industry the question that arises is whether it’s possible for others to follow your path, or has your experience been a one-off combination of being in the right place at the right time?<br />CW: Of course it’s possible. You’ve got the language problems and all the other annoyances, but the European market is big enough that if you’re determined enough to overcome the obstacles there’s room there to succeed on many different levels.<br />PB: Do you need to go over there and live?<br />CW: I would think so, at least to begin with. It’s no big deal to do that. But you need to meet the industry half way. You have to realise that no matter how good you are you’re up against some pretty fierce competition. The standard is very high. You have a couple of universities turning out twenty to thirty graduates a year with a degree of comic creation of one sort or another. So you’ve got to convince editors that they should be investing in you. They won’t know your background, your reliability, your output. They aren’t going to want to make a commitment in you if you are going to disappear back to Australia, or wherever. You’ve got to be prepared to stay there for a time. For me, in the 1980s, that didn’t seem like a big comm-itment. I didn’t go over there deliberately planning to do it, but I’ve still found a small niche in the corner of the European market wherein I can work twenty-five years later. You can do anything if you’re determined enough. You've got to be believe in yourself; that you can do it. But it’s not going to happen overnight, you’ve got to be able to put in the time.<br />PB: And you’ve surely got to be able to speak French.<br />CW: It certainly would help. There are ways around it.<br />PB: Having a partner that does; business or otherwise?<br />CW: It worked for me. [Laughs.] I’m still amazed at how little cross-fertilisation goes on. It’s not just the language barrier, it’s the cultural difference as well. But there are some favourable signs. The deal between the successors to Les Humananoïdes, Los Humanos, and DC may lead to more interest in Americans working in Europe.<br />PB: NBM still bring stuff out…<br />CW: …and probably Dark Horse too. So inevitably I think you’re going to get younger artists having the realisation that I had when I first saw Jean Giraud’s work in the late 1970s; something along the lines of “I didn’t know you could do this in comics. I want to go and work over there”.<br /><br />The rest of the interview can be found in Word Balloons 3.<br /><br /></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Also <strong>reviews</strong> of <em>Sure Shot Presents</em> 1 “Crab Allan – Gothic Boogaloo” by L. Frank Weber “John Woo directs Tintin”, and <em>Sure Shot Presents</em> 2 Mandy Ord’s “Ordinary Eyeball” “[someone who is] developing into this country’s finest exponents of the graphic story”.</div>Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-74121947627463005462008-05-02T12:20:00.010+10:002008-12-11T18:47:52.510+11:00Word Balloons 2, Jun 2006<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhExxRO7C-tSqeJGdc0YwYYCUbiNzEWqA8rRlZrO1u2Dy_dFWgMPpxLe99bVqvFuJ1wrLq7koaT0KNW-AU8paAdKAvc8h3O_7h_gFgQ-VVFk7gswvS4nhei0QdevL2cYb89lY4Ra2G57oM/s1600-h/wb2+cover+for+back+page.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5195605222161956962" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhExxRO7C-tSqeJGdc0YwYYCUbiNzEWqA8rRlZrO1u2Dy_dFWgMPpxLe99bVqvFuJ1wrLq7koaT0KNW-AU8paAdKAvc8h3O_7h_gFgQ-VVFk7gswvS4nhei0QdevL2cYb89lY4Ra2G57oM/s320/wb2+cover+for+back+page.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Editorial:</strong> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Philip Bentley</span></div><div></div><br /><div>“The graphic story is coming of age. In America, Japan, France, Italy and all across the world, unique and creative new stories are being told, and outstanding stories of the past are receiving fresh recognition. Once, the graphic story could be found only in children’s comic books. Today, it appears in mass circulation slick magazines, hardcover books and paperbacks, underground ‘comix’ and the limited edition experimental magazines, as well as in the four-colour comic books and the newer black-&-white graphics. There is nothing more powerful, it is said, than an idea whose time has come. The time has come for the graphic story and the great promise of the first ‘Golden Age’ of comic books is about to be realized.”<br /><br />With only a few words changed the above could easily be taken for the opening of one of those ‘comics are no longer for kids’ articles that pop up from time-to-time in the mainstream media. However, as you have probably guessed, this is not where it hails from. Rather, it was written by the American Richard Kyle in the editorial for the first issue of Graphic Story World (GSW), in May 1971 – nigh on 35 years ago! I have used it here because the sentiments expressed, both this in extract and GSW itself, are relevant to the contents of this issue and the philosophy behind Word Balloons in general.<br /><br />The positivist tenor of Kyle’s text may, in the light of the less than glorious path that the medium has taken since, seem a little quaint. But as well as perhaps an optimistic mien Kyle was simply picking up on the zeitgeist of his era. There was a belief abroad that far more than the graphic story had come of age and many expected the whole of western culture would soon be morphing into something more liberated. The reasons why neither society nor comics changed as much as expected are many and more than I can adequately handle here. However, the issue of the development of the medium will be an ongoing theme of the magazine as it has been an issue of enduring interest to me.<br /><br />Apart from all of this I have mentioned GSW because I have resuscitated the issue of the term ‘graphic story’ as a synonym for ‘comics’. According to Paul Gravett (in his book Graphic Novels – stories to change your life, Aurum 2005) it was Kyle who came up with both the terms ‘graphic story’ and ‘graphic novel’. I’ve always liked the former, despite the fact that some have seen it as pretentious. The problem with ‘comic’ is that it neither fully describes the medium (which isn’t all funny) and is also another term for ‘comedian’. I know that I am stretching the pretentious banner by the use of the by-line ‘graphic story arts’, but this, again, was the subtitle of GSW and the term ‘comic arts’ very much puts me in mind of the craft of being a stand-up comic.<br /><br />Over the course of its four year run (1971-74) GSW championed the cause of international comics especially those from France. The Australian fan John Ryan was their Australian correspondent and handled local subscriptions. It was undoubtedly as a direct result that I came into contact with French comics at Space Age Books (see the My Life in Comics article this issue). This interest led to a friendship with Colin Wilson, the subject of this issue’s interview. See how everything is related! </div><div align="left">In the world of the graphic story Colin Wilson occupies an unique position. Born in New Zealand, a country which has had little in the way of an indiginous comic industry, he nevertheless found himself drawn to working in this field. Rather than aspiring to the USA, as has been the norm in Australia and New Zealand, though, he was attracted to the European market on the strength of the diverse and literate comics produced there. Turning a wish into reality, he moved to Europe in 1980 where through a combination of luck and hard work he ended up drawing one of France’s most popular characters, the Western hero Lt Blueberry. Since the mid-1990s he has lived in Australia, working on projects for four of the worlds largest comic markets: UK – Judge Dredd & Rain Dogs, France – “La Plombe du la Tete”, Italy – “Tex”, and America – Point Blank (with Ed Brubaker), Battler Britton (with Grant Morrison) and Star Wars: Legends (with John Ostrander).<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Interview</strong></span></div><div align="left"><em>"No-one really told me to go out and get a 'real' job."</em></div><div align="left"><strong><em>An interview with Colin Wilson Part 1.</em></strong></div><div align="left"><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley May & June 2003, January 2004 and updated before publication.<br /><br /></span></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">In the world of the graphic story Colin Wilson occupies an unique position. Born in New Zealand, a country which has had little in the way of an indiginous comic industry, he nevertheless found himself drawn to working in this field. Rather than aspiring to the USA, as has been the norm in Australia and New Zealand, though, he was attracted to the European market on the strength of the diverse and literate comics produced there. Turning a wish into reality, he moved to Europe in 1980 where through a combination of luck and hard work he ended up drawing one of France’s most popular characters, the Western hero Lt Blueberry. Since the mid-1990s he has lived in Australia, working on projects for four of the worlds largest comic markets: UK – Judge Dredd & Rain Dogs, France – “La Plombe du la Tete”, Italy – “Tex”, and America – Point Blank (with Ed Brubaker), Battler Britton (with Grant Morrison) and Star Wars: Legends (with John Ostrander).<br /><br /></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Excerpt:<br />PB: You jetted out of New Zealand in early 1980 with your first port of call being London.<br />CW: Yes, I stayed with friends for first few months. When the money began to run out I started to think about how I could support myself to stay there longer. I had made contact with Martin Lock, the editor of the British fanzine Fantasy Advertiser. He suggested that I should try out for 2000AD, which, believe it or not, I had never heard of. He put me on to one of their artists, Brian Bolland, who looked at my work and thought I could make the grade there. He invited me to accompany him next time he visited them to deliver work. They liked the look of my work and gave me a ten page Judge Dredd strip as a try out. It went over well enough, but the initial plan was that it would not be printed until the 1982 Summer Special and it was then the end of 1980. Thankfully, they got back in touch early in 1981 and I was soon doing some one-off strips [“Future Shocks”] for the weekly magazine. I certainly wasn’t making a living out of it though and was doing other odd-jobs like making deliveries.<br />PB: I think you wrote at the time that you worked on the ten page strip for 106 hours over three days with six hours sleep.<br />CW: Kids, don’t try this at home. [Laughs.] Thankfully, its publication was brought forward and it appeared in the 1981 Summer Special. That was my first printed work for them. Later in the year came my big break when a Judge Dredd story regarding riots [“Block Wars”] was pulled due the race riots that summer, and they asked me to do a replacement strip at short notice.<br />PB: Then you graduated to Rogue Trooper which Dave Gibbons had started.<br />CW: Yes. They were looking to create a character to rival the popularity of Judge Dredd. Dave did the character designs and as many of the initial run of stories as he could handle. Dave and I then alternated for a year or so before we both became a bit jaded with the strip. Dave felt it was going places that he wasn’t interested in so he left. Both he and Brian Bolland were more interested in working in the States, which they subsequently did. [Bolland on Camelot 3000 and Gibbons on the Watchmen.] Meanwhile, I was still interested in working on the Continent and couldn’t understand why none of these guys didn’t want to do likewise; they were so close in terms of distance. What I underestimated was the impact of American comics and how Britain was culturally far closer to America than France. So the plan was to go to France and start knocking on a few doors. By this time my partner, Janet [Gale], had arrived from New Zealand. We were living in a squat, having friends from New Zealand stay with us, and seeing them dragged away and put on a plane for overstaying their visa, while I was hiding in a closet upstairs. So we needed to take steps to realise my ultimate goal. At the beginning of 1982, we got the opportunity to stay in a friend’s apartment in Paris, so we left London and for the first six months I continued to work on Rogue Trooper.</div><div align="center">* * *</div><div align="left">PB: How did the Lt Blueberry venture come about?<br />CW: François Cortegianni, who was another writer for [publisher] Glenat, had shown some of my pages of Rael [Colin’s first French comic album] to [artist on Lt Blueberry] Jean Giraud and told us that he was interested in meeting us to discuss working on something together. As it sounded too good to be true we were initially sceptical. And in fact the meeting took more than six months to occur in September of 1983. By this time the motivation had moved to [Lt Blueberry writer] Jean-Michel Charlier as it looked like Gir was going to be moving to Tahiti. Thus the prospects for Blueberry were a bit unclear. A new publishing company, Novedi, and magazine, Wham, had been formed in Brussels around the work of Charlier. The plan was for them to be the sole outlet for the number of popular series he was producing. Given that financial stability was paramount the last thing they wanted was for Giraud to become unavailable. So the publisher and Charlier were looking for some way to ensure a constant Blueberry presence in the market. They hit upon the idea of resuscitating the “Jeunesse de Blueberry” [Youth of Blueberry, a series of shorter stories produced in the late 1960s].<br />PB: You were no doubt unaware of the publishing moves in Brussells when you went for the interview with Charlier.<br />CW: Completely unaware. We thought I was going to be offered a short story or something. Instead, Charlier and Gir offered me Jeunesse. I initially declined because I was so overwhelmed by the concept of embarking on a whole spin-off series of my own.<br />PB: Especially as it was working in shadow of the artist you idealised above all others.<br />CW: Absolutely. The exact words I would use. And with the added disincentive that he wasn’t going to be around. [Laughs.] He was going to be living halfway around the world in the Pacific, rather ironically. I was taken aback and a little bit frightened by the prospect. And it was only through a lot of elbowing and kicking under the table from Janet and François Cortegianni, who was also at the meeting, that I realised that I was being made an offer I couldn’t refuse.<br /><br />The rest of the interview covering Colin’s youth in New Zealand, his involvement in the seminal NZ comic, Strips, and his first French album Rael can be found in Word Balloons 2.</div><div align="left"><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong></div><div align="left"><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong><br />Article</strong></span> </div><div><strong><em>My Life in Comics: Part II- Comic collecting in Melbourne, Australia in the 1970s</em></strong> </div><div>by Philip Bentley </div><div></div><div>This is the second of a series of articles chronicling my path as a comics aficionado in Australia over the past forty years. These articles have been inspired partially by a sense of nostalgia, but also to record certain aspects of the local comics scene for posterity. Primarily these are my recollections alone and make no claims to be the authoritative view.<br /><br />In Part I, I detailed my path collecting comics in Melbourne during the 1960s. In December 1969, however, changes in my interests and the comics themselves saw me give up collecting. For two years I occupied myself with other pursuits, but inexorably I found myself returning to the fold.<br /><br />A major difference in the form my collecting took at this time was that, whereas previously my emphasis had been principally on Marvels, and more to the point the storylines, now I was more interested in the art-work. I was particularly drawn to comics and creators who were trying to push the envelope of the form. At this time there were quite a few whose agenda was to do just that. Beginning in the late 1960s, with artists like Jim Steranko and Neal Adams, there was an influx into the field of younger creators with high ideals and often talent to match, such as, Barry Smith (later Windsor-Smith), Berni Wrightson, Mike Kaluta, Howard Chaykin, Jim Starlin, Richard Corben et al. Many of them had come up through contributing to amateur and semi-professional comics and the then burgeoning underground comix movement. Their path at the majors, though, tended to be more transitory as their idealism came up against harsh publishing realities.<br /><br />Comic distribution through newsagents during the 1970s remained similar to the previous decade, with comics on sale on Fridays and distribution erratic. With the surfeit of new titles being published the unpredict-ability of the local release of initial issues became more annoying. Very occasionally a title would begin with the first issue, such as Jack Kirby’s Kamandi (DC) in 1973, but generally it would take three to five issues for new titles to be locally released. There were also some strange anomalies, such as all three of Kirby’s Fourth World titles (New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle), and later, X-Men 120, 121 and 125 (1979), all of which had very poor distribution. Whilst most DC superhero titles continued not to be released, as they were subject to local reprints, a smattering were, and more appeared as they expanded their line.<br /><br />However, the principal change to the collecting process at this time was the arrival of Space Age Books, established by long-time science fiction fan Merv Binns and located for most of its time in Swanton Street, Melbourne. To a naive kid from the ‘burbs, Space Age was a passport to another world – a dim, incense-filled Aladdin’s cave of wondrous delights. SF occupied the left hand side of the shop, with books generally referred to as from the ‘counter-culture’ (alternative ideas/lifestyles, drugs, mysticism etc.) on the right. Comics got a look-in, albeit on racks and shelves surrounding a pillar at the back of the shop.<br /><br />Whilst the great advantage of Space Age was that they imported limited quantities of new comics directly from the States, and hence carried copies of non-distributed titles, there was never any sense of reliability about the operation. Thus it was common for only between one to five copies of any given title to go on sale. Space Age also began to buy and sell second hand comics charging then current new comic prices (20c) for them, rather than half cover price as was the standard at second-hand shops. Imported new issues commanded an even greater sum (25c or 30c) and premium imported back issues of, say, Conan or the New Gods, might be as much as <shock>50c!<br /><br />To read the rest of the article purchase Word Balloons 2. </div><div><br /></div><div>Also <strong>reviews</strong> of Dylan Horrocks’ <em>Atlas</em> 2 “another deftly told tale full of intriguing characters and intersecting narratives” and Butcher & Wood’s <em>Pox</em> 6 “a cleverly contrived commentary on many aspects of life and popular culture”.</div>Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5219607645264845030.post-86571779887555028932008-04-21T15:31:00.009+10:002008-12-11T18:47:52.707+11:00Word Balloons 1, Feb 2006<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5MXkEnANqNgvv8SYW2G_-u0H8aopCiOna368UmBeCdi9-7IxlTD8DEemJidVmCu8NzW_qF0rM0NJ8r7UKcasQ9WCAkNmNbNmKqN1aTMHDe6A52KidDYgixLY3yaxEUJ24vO_zIeqvTt4/s1600-h/wb1+cover+for+back+page.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191569833294504946" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5MXkEnANqNgvv8SYW2G_-u0H8aopCiOna368UmBeCdi9-7IxlTD8DEemJidVmCu8NzW_qF0rM0NJ8r7UKcasQ9WCAkNmNbNmKqN1aTMHDe6A52KidDYgixLY3yaxEUJ24vO_zIeqvTt4/s320/wb1+cover+for+back+page.jpg" border="0" /></a> <strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Editorial</span><br /></strong><div>Welcome to <em>Word Balloons</em>, an Australian-based fanzine on comics that will deal with the medium in this country, but with an international perspective. It is largely the work of one person, myself, and is intended to reflect my interests in the medium. Whilst I do print the work of others my primary position is self-generated work.<br /><br />Despite a long history in the medium as reader, retailer, occasional writer, and editor ‘fanzine publisher’ was not a title I was expecting to add to the CV. At the end of the 1980s my contact with the medium decreased when <em>Fox Comics</em> ceased publication and I left Minotaur. For much of the 1990s I had only a limited interest in comics. Around the turn of the century, I found my interest growing again, but this time with a some-what different angle. With the perspective of middle age, to say nothing of a history degree, I have become sharply aware of the need to preserve aspects of the past to hopefully inform those in the present and the future. To my mind, fandom in this country has never been particularly good at this, leading to a lot of reinvention of the wheel occurring, especially when it comes to creating and publishing comics.<br /><br />During the early years of the century I conducted interviews with a couple of locally-based creators active on the international stage (Bruce Mutard and Colin Wilson). Then, started yo write up my recollections of my involvement with the medium. There were a number of reasons for doing this. Firstly, I wanted to document the patterns of comic collecting in the 1960s and 1970s, a process that has been irrevocably changed by the arrival of comic stores. Secondly, I wished to chronicle the beginnings of comic fandom in Melbourne. Lastly, I thought it would be worthwhile recording my reflections on the establishment and running of two comic mags and a shop. However, when I began looking for likely repositories for these works I found that even with the internet suitable locations were not plentiful. So I decided to publish them myself.<br /><br />Now I know in these days of electronic communication print-based media can seem megalithic by comparison. You may ask why a fanzine, not a website or blog where the works would undoubtedly reach more people. Essentially, two reasons. Firstly, for all its immediacy electronic publishing is still less permanent. Huge databases can disappear in a blink of the eye and given that few people probably bother to save, let alone print information from web sites a small-run magazine may still end up in more peoples’ hands. Secondly, having grown up with print-based fanzines it is my medium of choice. What I am basically resurrecting is the ‘personal-zine’ i.e. a vehicle for one person’s likes and opinions which has been largely superseded these days by blogging.<br /><br />As for the title, well it is a bit cheesy but it does tell you the mag is about comics without needing to put it in the title. It also has a bit of a history as in the mid-1970s, one Gary Groth published a single issue of a fanzine on the same name a few years before taking control of the <em>Nostalgia</em> <em>Journal</em> and renaming it the <em>Comics Journal</em>. </div><div>Philip Bentley </div><div></div><div></div><div><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />Interview.</span></strong></div><div>“<em>It’s a thankless bloody job, but someone’s got to do it.”</em> </div><div><strong>An interview with</strong> <strong>Bruce Mutard</strong>. </div><div><span style="font-size:85%;">Conducted by Philip Bentley, October 2004 & August 2005</span></div><div></div><div>Bruce Mutard is a Melbourne–based writer-artist committed to telling stories that have a deeper meaning. From early socio-political works for street zines he has progressed through his self-published <em>Street Smell</em>, contributions to local and overseas anthologies such as <em>DeeVee</em>, <em>Tango</em> and <em>SPX</em>, to substantial graphic novels: <em>The Bunker</em> (Image 2002), <em>The Sacrifice</em> (Allen & Unwin, 2008) and <em>The Silence</em> (Allen & Unwin, scheduled 2009). The focus required to turn out hundreds of pages of detailed artwork is impressive, whilst a commitment to this path also requires considerable personal and financial sacrifice. In this interview Bruce chronicles his successes and failures and gives an insight into what it takes to work as a comic artist committed to a personal vision. (N.B. this interview was conducted when Bruce’s recently published The Sacrifice was still in the developmental stage.)<br /><br />Excerpt:<br />PB: A lot of your early work had quite a strong socio-political agenda, often with a vigorous polemical angle. Would you say you have a social conscience?<br />BM: Yeah, definitely.<br />PB: Your presence in your work at this time also seems fairly in-your-face. Would you describe yourself then, or now, as an ‘angry young man’?<br />BM: Back then, yes: a lot of angst not thought through or well directed. I guess I was looking for a sort of ‘angry humour’.<br />PB: Not so satirical though. A lot of underground artists worked with satire, but with you the polemic tended to cut across this.<br />BM: I was aspiring to satire, but it’s a difficult art to master. Also, the restrictions of only having a few pages to work with didn’t help.<br />PB: The enduring aspect of your work from this time, that has carried through into your work today, is the inner dialogue; whether externalised in a conversation between two people, or as an inner debate with oneself. Was that a planned approach?<br />BM: It was more organic. I took the line that the message was important, but I could see both sides of it. To use multiple voices was an easier form of storytelling. I have learnt to take a more considered approach to my socio-political work. That’s where you get the lengthier narratives which now predominate, where I am trying to develop a theme through drama.<br />PB: You still use the externalised inner dialogue, but in a more refined sense: Robert Wells and his various friends and relations in <em>The Sacrifice</em> [Allen & Unwin, 2008], Sir John and Abdul in “The Holy Kingdom” [<em>SPX</em> 2004]. But now it’s less of a slap in the face.<br />BM: I felt that the overly polemical work could put people off. I guess my move away from it was a part of the maturation process. I don’t like to be yelled at and I realised I was yelling at people too.<br />PB: The refinement works particularly well in “The Holy Kingdom” [a twelve page strip set in the Holy Land during the Third Crusade at the end of the twelfth century]. It is a political work, but its message is delivered with some subtlety.<br />BM: I didn’t want to do a polemic because it was going to appear in a themed volume which undoubtedly was going to feature other polemics. [At this time, each issue of SPX had a theme and the one for 2004 was war.] And the whole issue itself: war in general, and the War on Terror in particular, are highly polemicised subjects at the moment. I certainly have firm opinions on them but to engage the reader I wanted another perspective. I felt that drama threaded with the points I wanted to make would be more effective. Setting the work in the past was both to help identify the general themes, but also because the protagonists on both sides of the War on Terror refer back to the Crusades as a motivating factor. I believe that there is quite a strong religious thread to this current war, although it isn’t that explicit. But I had been tossing around the idea of doing a story set during the Crusades for a long time. I’m interested in exploring the institutional abuse of faith using that theatre of war as a background. The original plan was for it to be a graphic novel.</div><div align="center"><br />* * *</div><div align="left">PB: What are you working on next?<br />BM: The next graphic novel that I’m doing is <em>The Sacrifice</em>, for which I have received an Australia Council grant. I expect it to take a couple of years. It’s set in Melbourne between 1939 and 1942 following the political and personal transformation of the protagonist who starts out as a committed socialist, pacifist, humanist and fairly tight-fisted moralist, but finds his beliefs increasingly in conflict with the demands of a society in a state of war. On the way he also has to grapple with family dramas, romance etc. – the usual staples of drama. I have been using this story as an analogy to explore the topical issues arising from the War on Terror, refugee immigration, neo-conservatism and neo-liberal economic policy. The reason for this historical approach is to give the book a permanency that the actual subject possesses, without losing it in topical detail which will have faded in five years time. It’s been a substantial battle to write and will take me a few years to finish. Given that the book has an Australian setting, with use of local vernacular, I would like to secure a local book publisher for it. I don’t know how high in the sky this pie is, but it’s worth a shot. [<em>The Sacrifice</em> was indeed picked up by a local publisher (Allen & Unwin) and is now available "from all good bookshops".]<br /><br />To read the rest of the interview covering Bruce’s self-published <em>Street Smells</em>, his upcoming graphic novel on the intersection of art and spirtuality <em>The Silence</em> and lots more besides purchase <em>Word Balloons</em> 1. </div><div align="left"><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />Article</span></strong></div><div><strong><em>My Life in Comics<br />Part I- Collecting comics in Melbourne, Australia in the 1960s</em></strong></div><div>by Philip Bentley</div><div><br />Although, in one sense, the 1960s don’t seem that long ago to me they were, after all, forty years ago. Long enough for memories to start to fade and a new generation to arise who may well be largely unaware of how it was to a comic aficionado at a time before comics shops, deluxe formats, and organised fandom. So because I have a predilection for such things I have decided to set down my own recollections. They are part personal memoir, part detailed exposition on the mechanics of comic collecting at this time which may bore the pants off some. If this is the case, then succeeding parts which will take the story into the 1970s and 80s, and detail the beginnings of comic fandom in the city, may be of more interest. These will be followed by dissertations on my involvement in the establishment of Melbourne’s pop culture Mecca, Minotaur, and the Australian comics <em>Inkspots</em> and <em>Fox Comics</em>. All this is obviously my recollections alone and makes no claims to be the authoritative view. Others may have seen things differently. It would be interesting to see more recollections, especially from those in other states.<br /><br />You can blame it on the measles. When I contracted them, aged four, my kindly next door neighbour gave me some comics to aid the convalescence. The rest, as they say, is history. These were not comics in the true sense, but English children’s magazines (<em>Jack and Jill</em> and <em>Playhour</em>) that contained stories and puzzles as well as some strips with text beneath the panels, rather than word balloons.<br /><br />Over the next few years I discovered American comics both in original editions and local reprints. I first gravitated to local reprints of Walt Disney strips, then a year later discovered superheroes through local B&W reprints of the <em>Phantom</em> (Frew Publishing) and <em>Batman</em> (K G Murray). <em>The Phantom</em>, despite being a fairly minor league US newspaper strip that had its finest moments in the 1930s, has become an Australian icon read by far more than comic fans. Produced as a comic book starting in the mid-1940s it edited together complete storylines from newspaper strips. Its appeal has had something to do with the Phantom’s taciturn demeanour and the strip’s all-round kitsch sensibility, accentuated by the repetitive nature of newspaper strips. It still continues to this day and is well past the thousand issue mark. The KG Murray <em>Batman</em> reprint was one of many DC reprints they published from the mid-1940s right through to the 1980s. These were, however, in editions that combined a variety of stories in one book. I was fascinated by the concept of superheroes, although initially I had trouble telling the two characters apart because they both wore masks!<br /><br />A far more significant event occurred towards the end of 1963 when I was seven. I still remember the circumstances fairly well. It was probably the start of the summer holidays, in early December, as I had accompanied my mother on an expedition to a number of shopping centres. At each I had looked into the newsagent seeking a new issue of a known series. However, there was nothing along these lines to be found. Instead, at every shop visited, I was presented with multiple copies of an issue of a superhero comic that I had never seen before. It looked a bit bizarre with a completely masked hero confronting an elderly looking villain dressed like a bird. In the end, determined to return with something to show for my efforts, I decided that if there were so many of them around I should see what all the fuss was about. The comic was <em>Spiderman</em> 7 and I became an instant convert to the dawning Marvel Age of Comics.<br /><br />I liked the wisecracking style of Stan Lee’s script, so much more appealing than the staid verbiage of the DC heroes. I also liked the editorial presence in the form of a letters page and announcements (the DC reprints had none of these), but I think the thing that I most appreciated was the sense of the wider Marvel universe, most clearly seen in the various advertisements for other titles contained in the issue. I was particularly intrigued by the cover of <em>Avengers</em> 2. When I found a copy of it a few weeks later my fate was sealed.<br /><br />Comics were then, as they still are to a lesser degree today, sold at newsagents and sub-newsagents aka milk bars. Newsagents, then as now, sold newspapers, magazines, stationary and greeting cards, although these days I fancy their biggest revenue raiser is lottery sales. In the highly regulated shop opening hours of this time milk bars were one of the few shops allowed to open after 5.30pm weekdays and 12.00 noon Saturdays. Apart from milk they sold confectionary, necessities and some sold newspapers and magazines. Comics were distributed by Gordon & Gotch, the book and magazine distributor which to this day carries the lion’s share of magazines nationwide. Whilst some of the bigger national mags, like <em>Women’s Weekly</em> and <em>New</em> <em>Idea</em>, use other distributors, Gotch handle nearly all imported magazines.<br /><br />In the mid-60s, comics, and presumably other American mags, went on sale on Friday (over the years this moved around between Thursday and Friday). Whilst there was a clearly defined release date in America, the vagaries of trans-Pacific shipping meant that anomalies would occur. The whole release date issue was further clouded by each title bearing a month on its cover which broadly corresponded to the date it came out in Australia. Of course, given that the comics were published in America some months before, this had no actual bearing to an Australian release date. I gather it had been part of an attempt by the US publishers, many years previously, to beguile newsvendors into keeping their titles on display for a few more months. My early days of collecting Marvels were thus far more miss than hit, which given the increasing prevalence of multi-part continuity made for some frustrating reading. </div><div><br /></div><div>To read the rest of the article purchase <em>Word Balloons</em> 1<br /><br /></div><div></div><div>Also <strong>reviews</strong> of <em>DeeVee Flange</em> and <em>DeeVee 2001</em> “one of the best anthologies I’ve seen anywhere”.</div>Second Shorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18095304768882217909noreply@blogger.com5