'Graphic Novels! Melbourne!' in Paris!

Back in January 2013, Daniel Hayward and I climbed aboard a big big aeroplane to begin a three-week European tour presenting our documentary feature film, Graphic Novels! Melbourne! in France, Germany and England. International man of mystery Bruce Woolley accompanied us as far as Dubai, where we bid him a fond farewell, but only for a week (more of him anon). Dan and I flew on to Paris.

So, it's been 20 years since I've been in Paris, and Dan had never been before, and it was magnifique. Our lovely friend Dominique lent us an empty apartment in the Rue de Reuilly, near the Gare de Lyon, to stay in for the few nights we were there.

That's me spending some quality time with my good mate Corto Maltese, created by the great Italian cartoonist Hugo Pratt (RIP).

On our first night we rendezvoused at Notre Dame cathedral with our Sydney friends, academics Adam and Alphia and their son Addison (that's Addison looking around Alphia's hair) and talked and ate and walked and talked.

The following morning, early (the streets dark and wet, the smell of the morning baguettes wafting deliciously out of the boulangeries) we rendezvoused at Charonne Metro with Melbourne artist friend Lily and her friend writer Maude and went and had coffee and croissants for our petit dejeuner.

Then returned to our digs, toasted our good luck and went back to bed.

After a snooze (ah, jet lag, you old fiend!), we visited Lily's exhibition in Belleville, and around the corner dropped into a bookshop and marvelled at the selection of comics, or rather BD (bande dessinees) on display. Like true colonials, however, we were most delighted to find Pat Grant's 'BLUE' in its French edition (published by Ankama) and 

some Mandy Ord in an edition of the anthology 'Turkey Comics' (published by The Hoochie Coochie - the French publisher of Gregory Mackay's 'Francis Bear' books too).

We spent a great evening with Gilbert Shelton, who took us to a brilliant tea shop/comic shop 'The-Troc', in the rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, run by his friend Ferid, who took this picture, and by that time, as you can see, things were getting beery...



NEXT: Angouleme

The Mongrel Lives!

At the beginning of last year, 2012, I began a 'monthly comics pamphlet' called MONGREL. I asked people to subscribe to it, and undertook to send them 12 issues in 12 months.

MONGREL is a comic book which when complete will answer the question which keeps me awake at night: 'Is Australia real?'  It stars 'The Uncanny Expats', 'The Creatives', and 'Salvation Jane'.

And during 2012, copies of the issues went to some interesting places: here's MONGREL 5 on Park Street Boston, with the Massachusetts State House in the background, in which, my friend Narayan Khandekar assures me, the sacred cod is kept.

Here's issue 5 again, this time in Braidwood New South Wales, at an exhibition called 'Taking The Piss' curated by Julian Davies at The Left Hand Gallery in September 2012. There's some original artwork displayed next to some working drawings, some writing notes, and an envelope containing all the pencil rubbings that I erased off every page of the 8-page issue in getting it ready for printing.

And yes, to the left there is a selection of work by the wonderful Michael Fikaris, a great Melbourne cartoonist.

I was interviewed by MILK magazine about making comics, and the article featured some artwork from MONGREL 6, showing the stages of a page in progress. The article also featured, as the lead image, a remarkable portrait of me painted by Gina Kalabishis, titled 'Comic Man'

I was the September blogger in residence at Inside a Dog , the Young Adult literature website, in which I wrote and posted pictures about the process of writing MONGREL 7. Now when I say that I am only now getting around to actually drawing that issue, four months later now in January 2013, you will see the slight discrepancy between that pace and publishing a monthly comic.

I blame it all on becoming a filmmaker. In 2012, with Daniel Hayward, I made the film 'Graphic Novels! Melbourne!', which examines comic book culture in Melbourne and which you can find out a lot more about here. We premiered it in November 2012 and next week we are taking the film to the great comic festival in Angouleme, in France. And then on to Berlin, Hamburg and London.

Exciting, yes, but it plays havoc with the MONGREL production schedule!

But never fear - I knew you weren't about to - MONGREL will continue to be made throughout 2013, and by the end of the year, the full 12 issue series will be complete.  And so, particularly if you're a MONGREL subscriber, don't you worry about a thing.  MONGREL issues 7 - 12 are coming.

Unless I start work on another film...

Back on RRR, and Writers Fest 2012 wrap

I was back on 'Smart Arts' on 3RRR FM with Richard Watts this Thursday morning just gone, and I spoke about a few comic books which were part of the 'Skinny Arse Comics Launch', itself part of the Melbourne Writers Festival 2012.

'The Trials of Francis Bear', above, by Gregory Mackay, continues to follow the hapless, sometimes hopeless, inebriate and unemployed stuffed bear. Unlike the previous simply eponymous collection, this new book has more of a narrative arc running through the whole book. Similarly however to the previous book, it is hilarious and beautifully cartooned.

'All You Bastards Can Go Jump Off A Bridge! by J Marc Schmidt is also very funny and also cleanly and confidently drawn, but it is more varied in its offerings - it is a generous compendium of short stories that J. Marc originally posted to the web. Many of them are experimental, with some of them having an almost improvised sense about them.  Here we are watching someone experiment with the medium, stretching it and toying with it - there's great work in this book.

Both of the above have been published by James Andre's excellent Milk Shadow Books - go there and buy multiple copies of both!

Another Melbourne publisher is Matt Emery who publishes under the name of Pikita Press, and he launched 

at Skinny Arse: Peter Foster had his adaptation of the 1874 Australian convict classic published in black and white in 1986 by Greenhouse Press, and it's taken 26 years and a lot of work by Peter on the computer to get it out in colour.

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Also at the Festival I was honoured to be on a panel in the Schools Program, 'Drawn to Stories' with local cartoonist Oslo Davis

And London illustrator/cartoonist/pictorial theorist Joanna Walsh, aka Badaude, whose book 'London Walks' is a remarkable walking guide to many different areas of London.

Joanna, Oslo and I talked about drawing as a way of discovering, as a way of thinking, as a way of writing. Then I threw a whole lot of stalks of silver beet (which Joanna called 'chard') at the audience, which went down surprisingly well.

Licence to Kamishibai!

It's one of those things that I never knew I wanted, indeed needed, but when it was issued to me tonight

something clicked - it is just the thing that I have been waiting for.

I was out west at Dinjerra Primary School in Braybrook, where Lachlann Carter of Pigeons literary literacy projects has been working with kids from prep to Grade 2 over the past school term. About a month ago I went over and did a couple of kamishibai sessions, including a performance and a workshop, and it must have got them really fired up, because when I got there tonight, there were dozens of black-painted cardboard butai (kamishibai stages), with exquisite pictures within them. Tonight we were celebrating the premiere of films of the children performing their stories. There was a red carpet.  There was popcorn.  It was really very exciting.  Very very exciting And very beautiful.

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Boy I'm glad that I (along with 60 Dinjerrah students) now have that licence.  It makes me breathe easier about performing the 'Snail climbs Fuji' story at last week's Graphic Novels! Melbourne! fundraiser.

The above picture, taken by Pigeons' Jenna Williams - shows the title of the kamishibai which in toto reads (in English)

Snail

Slowly slowly climb

Mount Fuji

Sounds great in Japanese though.  It's a haiku by the great poet Issa, a.k.a 'Cup of Tea'

So there was that one, and a couple of weeks before that, I was up at the Woodend library as part of the Woodend Winter Arts Festival and the cartoonist and artist Trace Balla took those shots of me performing there:

This is from my kamishibai, 'A Box of Stories', set in Tokyo in 1931.  It's a kamishibai about kamishibai. Is that going a bit far?  Perhaps.

But blimey.  I'm glad I have that licence, now.  Really glad. Thank you, Dinjerra and Pigeons!

What's Japanese for MONGREL?

Above, our Tokyo correspondent, English teacher, and dem fine cartoonist J M Schmidt peruses MONGREL 4 at the station. His comics novels* Egg Story (currently being translated into Esperanto!), Eating Steve and The Sixsmiths (this last with writer Jason Franks) are all great books, and recommended for your reading eyes.

Seeing a MONGREL being read in this, the emblematic illustration of the ubiquity of manga culture in Japan ( 'In Japan, people read comics On The Trains! Really!') is highly delightful to me.

See? No-one's staring at the comics-reading gaijin like he's out of his mind or anything.  I have written an introduction to JM's collection of hilarious shorter comics stories, 'All You Bastards Can Go Jump Off a Bridge', which will be published by Milk Shadow Books later this year.

Sugoi.  Domo arigato gozaimasu, Schmidt JM!

*a new and entirely satisfactory way of referring to 'graphic novels', invented (I think) by my friend Anne Radvansky last night

The Nun's Priest's Kamishibai

So, a month ago, on May 6 2012, as part of the Williamstown Literary Festival, a group calling ourselves the 'Canterbury Tales Book Club Project' put on an afternoon of performance, song, dance and talk about Geoffrey Chaucer's great bunch of stories written in Middle English at the end of the 1300s.  Above, pre-show, Jackie Kerin (the owner of the kamishibike) and I work out how it's all going to get set up for me to do my bit after the interval. Jackie performed a hilarious 'Pardoner's Tale' in the first half. Jackie also took all of the photos in this blog post - except, of course, this one!

Above, Catherine Ryan, in a wimple of her own design, gives us the 'Canterbury 101' talk.

Author Claire Saxby, our Middle English MC.

Simon Leverton on guitar was the musical director (a lot of bawdiness going down in them thar lyrics it must be said) and behind him?  Yes, absolutely.  Morris dancers.  They got bells that jingle jangle.

This was the first time I'd ever done the kamishibai box + simultaneous projection, and apparently it worked pretty well.  I must say I'd like to see it myself, to be sure.   For my part I had adapted 'The Nun's Priest's Tale', which I studied way back in the Middle Ages of 1984, taught by my beloved HSC English Literature teacher, Marisa Spiller.

Above, my first image of the tale, depicting the 'narwe cottage' in which lives the widow who owns the rooster

called ('cleped') Chaunticleer.  'He was a real cock', as I say in my translation. And of course if there's chickens then there's gotta be a

fox.  Let me hasten to add, it all works out okay, but there's some tense moments along the way, ohhh yes.

..............................

It's good to have another story in my kamishibai repertoire, and I'm thinking that I will deliver the 'G' rated version of the tale this Saturday 9 June up at Woodend library where I am giving a kamishibai storytelling session as part of the Woodend Winter Arts Festival.

After me came Daniel O'Connell, with a filthy, funny version of the Miller's Tale.  Brilliant.

Highlights of the afternoon for me were certainly the other performances, and also seeing Robin Grove, a remarkable English Literature lecturer (more like 'inspirer') from my university days, and meeting Ted Smith, the builder of the beautiful kamishibai box that I borrow off Jackie whenever I need to tell 'paper theatre' stories.

Canines love MONGREL

Simon Barnard's dog, Tuco, was one year old yesterday and given his new-found maturity, ponders the intertextual referencing going on in the latest MONGREL.

IS Jane a prosolar mechanic?  Well IS she?