an island art

What a MONGREL!

2012-02-10T05:13:00.000-08:00

Yes, MONGREL 1, the first number of a twelve issue series of comics pamphlets that I mean to write, draw and publish this year, is now out in the public domain. It's in some shops (to date: Minotaur, All Star Comics and Sticky, all in the city), but mostly? It's in the mail.

The whole idea with MONGREL is that it be mainly a subscription-based comics reading experience - I'd really prefer you to get it in the mail. To that end, and to begin with, I have tried a crowd funding model with the pozible mob, which is here and which is active until 23 February 2012. I'm trying with this to raise a base amount of money which I need to cover print and postage costs for all 12 issues. If you're reading this after the 23rd of February and are keen to subscribe, go to the MONGREL page of the Cardigan Comics website, which incidentally does have some information about the stories in the book, too.

So, monthly huh? Yes, monthly*. That's the other idea. And yes, it does mean that work has more than begun on number 2, and I thought I'd leave you with the roughs for the first page, though I have pencilled and lettered (but not inked) that page in the interim. I'm putting this up as a sort of confession - I'd envisioned it as a fairly sparse page text-wise, but when I got to really work on it, ahh, those words, they just took OFF -- people who have collaborated with me before (Tolley, John Murphy, I'm looking at you) know Bernard the Prolix only too well...

You may not be able to read this, but it's even titled 'Cath's opening monologue'.

So, then, MONGREL: it's verbal, it's theatrical, it's comical.

And I better get back to the old drawing board. See you soon.

And hey - subscribe!

___________________

*Kevin Patrick, the knower of things Australian and historical and comicsy, thinks it may be the first Australian monthly comic in 40 years! Let me know if you know different...

The last Comic Spot radio show! The first Homecooked Comics Festival!

2012-01-25T05:35:00.000-08:00

No no no, say it ain't so!

But it is so - The Comic Spot, the fortnightly Australian comics hour on radio station 3CR, is coming to an end! John Retallick: the mover, the shaker, the anchor, the rock, the organiser and motive force behind the show, is moving to Hobart (lucky Hobart!). As John says on the blog, The Comic Spot may well take on another form in the future, but this is the end of Volume One.

BUT in an amazing coincidence, the last show will be the first one we record in front of an audience! Yes, this Saturday, 28 January 2012 is The Homecooked Comics Festival to be held at (of course) Batman Park in Northcote, at the corner of Separations Street and Saint Georges Road.

The festival, presented by the City of Darebin, features a great line-up of events from 3 - 7pm, and the final Comic Spot 3CR show with your hosts John, Jo and Bernard will be recorded there and go to air next Thursday 2 February at 5pm on 3CR, 855 on your AM dial. The shows get podcast as well, so go to the blog to find an interview with the Australian comics creator of your dreams.

And come along to the Homecooked Comics Festival this Saturday and help us celebrate the great years of the Comic Spot radio show, to meet comics makers, hear comics music, see kamishibai, and make your own comics: it's going to be a grand day!

Homecooked Comic Festival Program
Main Stage

3pm: Welcome by Darebin City Council’s Mayor, Cr Steven Tsitas.

3.10–4pm: The ComicSpot Podcast.

4.10–4.50pm: Comic/Musical Mashup.

5-5.30pm: Live music by Squid Squad.

5.30–6pm: The Allen & Unwin Quiz Show.

6.30-7pm: Live music by Animaux.

Roving

4,5,6.30pm: Fight Choreography Workshops.

3-5pm: Kamishibai (Japanese paper drama).

4.30pm: Express Media Workshop.

5.30pm: Sticky Institute Talk.

6pm: The greatest comic book parade!

All day entertainment- Newspaper in a day, tattooing, face painting, giant panel painting.

Last day 'At the Frontier' Friday 18 November 2011

2011-11-20T05:21:00.001-08:00

My last morning at Room 418 at the Goodearth Hotel - I got up early (for me), cast a sad backwards glance at my light-flooded room, then jumped on Brian the bike. I cycled quite a ways towards Peppermint Grove - I got past Matilda Bay and the University of Western Australia and up a hill and looked back towards town

and realised, with a catch in my throat, that I wasn't going to be able to make my destination. Not if I wanted to hear this guy

speak. And I did. I really really did. So I turned tail and rode back east along the north bank of the Swan and got to the Heath Ledger Theatre just in time to hear Ross Gibson in excellent form, speaking on 'Systems of Feeling':

How indeed. Art, according to Ross, taking his cue from other root words like 'articulation' and 'arthritis', is a joint, a place where a 'turn' occurs, a point at which some move on the part of the recipient/participant can take place, taking them from their received self to... something, somewhere, someone else. Perhaps museums can be organised, designed, articulated so that these halts can occur, these transformations can be given space.

He then used a bunch of lines from 'All Day Permanent Red' (2003, Faber and Faber) by the poet Christopher Logue, I think these lines:

Drop into it.
Noise so clamourous it sucks.
You rush your pressed-flower hackles out
To the perimeter.
And here it comes:
The unpremeditated joy as you
- The Uzi shuddering warm against your hip
Happy in danger in a dangerous place
Yourself another self you found at Troy -
Squeeze nickel through that rush of Greekoid scum!
Oh wonderful, most wonderful and then again more wonderful
a bond no word or lack of words can break,
Love above love!

(Which made me very happy, this book and Logue's 'War Music' being 2004 birthday presents from Mark Scillio and Bruce Woolley, back when we were reading The Iliad together)

The Logue shows the transformative experience - 'yourself another self you found at Troy' - and eloquently expresses its in-the-moment invulnerability to articulation - 'a bond no word or lack of words can break'. Ross' question was, when the visitor/participant/audience returns from the sublime, 'What happens when the thinking starts again?'

What can be done for the turn from the aesthetic to the semantic? How can it be supported, braced, held?

He gave us a lot more did Ross Gibson, and he left us with an image of Pablo Fernandes de Queiros, a Portuguese navigator who in 1606 went into a forest on a Pacific island and emerged transformed.

"What happened in that forest?"

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

Also speaking on this last morning was Masaaki Morishita, author of 'The Empty Museum', speaking about the beginning of the cultural rescue operation that has been happening in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami of March of this year.

His talk was called 'Rescuing 'cultural properties, etcetera' after the tsumani in north-eastern Japan'.

I initially thought that the 'etcetera' was a bit unwieldy in that title but as Masaaki-san said:

In response to a question about the digitisation (that is, photographs and information about objects being recorded on-line) of the collections being rescued, his response was:

Another question was, 'how can we help?' and he seemed taken aback by that offer. My hand is up.

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

I needed to miss the mid-morning sessions, for the arrival in Perth of three very good reasons:

One

Two

And of course

So off we went to Alternating Currents at PICA, where the lads really enjoyed Taro Izumi's giant messy game. Then they went off to find the first accommodation for our shared holiday, and I returned to the last afternoon of the conference.

In the last session, Frank Howarth mused on the possibility of

that is, a global one, with ICOM (the International Council of Museums) being one contender, and the AAM (the American Association of Museums) being the other.

And the last paper of the conference was very sobering - an account by Professor Peter Read of differing approaches taken in Chile to represent the years of terror under the Pinochet regime. The question being, how do representations help or hinder the process of reconciliation? He particularly looked at a location, 'Londres 38', where horrific torture and murder had taken place, and, post-Pinochet, the difference between the individual and state representations of what had occurred there.

He called for us to consider these complexities when faced with remembering and representing trauma in our local spaces, and reminded us of the message of the voiceless:

"Do not forget me."

This statement was relayed in this conference particularly strongly by Lily Hibberd (her focus is on prisoners and prisons), Andrea Witcomb, Maasaki Morishita, and Peter Read. I salute them all.

Conference over, I sauntered off into the strong West Australian sun for the next adventure.

But that's another story.

Remaining 'At the Frontier' - day 3 Thursday

2011-11-17T05:27:00.001-08:00

So. Funny thing. This evening, after the conference session featuring John Ford (he makes light: see below), I cycled back here to the Goodearth hotel, phoned my favourite people in the world, then sauntered back outside and caught the (free!) Red Cat bus into the centre of town. Carelessly, almost whistling, did I scoot a left off Beaufort, see this

(Nice, eh?) and then with a spring in my step, sashay up to the Western Australian Museum to enter the conference dinner being held there. The pace is abuzz. The girl on the door says, where's your green ticket? Oh, I say, I don't got a green ticket. Step inside, she says, and get your green ticket from my colleague inside (she doesn't really say 'colleague', I have just forgotten the name she did say. Shame does that.) Colleague inside checks my rego and says, well no actually, you were registered for the opening drinks, but not for the dinner. Ah. Great Yap-sized stone penny drops. Ah, that's right. I hadn't registered for the dinner, just for the opening drinks, but by a sort of event dyslexia (tastes like Fruity Lexia) I'd hypnotised myself into believing I'd booked for the dinner as well. And no wonder.

They were having a ball in there.

My subconscious jealousy took on physical form, but just for a moment, and became again a meek mouse just before biting this gentleman's happy drinking head off. So just as well.

So off I toddled. Popped into 'Poppo Korean and Japanese', had a Sapporo and some quite nice tempura. And I gotta say, it's been pretty nice back here.

BUT. What happened today, Bernard, at the actual conference?

Ah well - the Plenary session (ah, I just looked that up - it means that everyone is there, versus the other sessions where you make a choice and see one session of a bunch that are running concurrently - but not in Cloncurry) featured Andrea Witcomb talking first, about the difficulty of 1) 'dark tourism' - sites of horror, depravity and terror (ie prisons, Holocaust memorials) and 2) the problems about roleplay at such sites, which aims for identification and empathy on the part of the audience but often

She spoke of the necessity of making sure that if the audience has the opportunity to FEEL, then that they also have the chance to THINK. That aesthetics and information in tandem can produce disquiet, and in that case, our institutions allow the possibility of transformation. Transformation. Blimey, Andrea, that's what art does.

Oh.

Susan Cross then gave a rousing mid-game talk to us assembled storytellers:

And then we heard from Denis Byrne

who is an archaeologist from the Office of Environment and Heritage in New South Wales. He had amazing things to say about Bali ('our Spain') and the dehistoricising that we practice when we go there for a holiday on 'paradise island', particularly the invisibility of Suharto's military coup which killed half a million people in anti-communist purges in Indonesia in 1965 and 1966.

He also spoke of the mythologising Walter Spies and of his own mapping of Aboriginal alternative cartographies across colonised spaces in southern coastal New South Wales. Amazing stuff.

Around lunchtime I snuck off to the Art Gallery of Western Australia to use my free ticket to see Princely Treasures: European Masterpieces 1600- 1800 from the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was great and really put me in mind of 'Yiwarra Kuju (One Road)', the Canning Stock Route Aboriginal art exhibition of yesterday, Similarly, as a visitor, you were piecing together people and art and families and dynasties, arranging the information and the art and the stories into a big picture of time and place, which, it just occurs to me know, is probably distance-wise the same sort of size in both exhibitions.

While I was there I thought I'd check out their sequential art, so I was tossed about by Sidney Nolan's epic comic strip Desert Storm and amused by David Hockney's 1960s retelling of Hogarth's A Rake's Progress. I said hello to some old friends, William Blake's 'Book of Job' etchings and some ukiyo-e prints from the school of Aktagawa.

Back at the conference, I found out about an amazing web resource which is listing ALL theatre productions done in Australia. Yes, that's right. What an amazing resource, yes? Yes. It's AusStage and it's here. Have a look for that amdram (got that term from John Holden on Tuesday) show you did in the 80s.

Finally, as promised, I saw a session in which my old bud John Ford

who looks nothing like this, spoke about using daylight to illuminate museum and galleries. Once upon a time it was the main light source of course, and it went out of fashion for a century or so but now it's back. Brilliantly, John designed the lighting for the building in which the conference is being held, and these days he works for the great lighting company bluebottle.

And as you know, then I cycled off though the rain to get ready not to go to the conference dinner. I wonder how it's all going over there.

Well, this means that I can go to bed now and hopefully I can get up early enough tomorrow morning for something of a pilgrimmage. If this means something to you, then you might know where I'm off to.

Ah, the sweetest honey's here. Almost.

Still 'At the Frontier' - day 2 Wednesday

2011-11-16T07:25:00.001-08:00

One of the amazing things about the city of block of Perth on which the conference is being held is that, looked at a certain way, EVERYTHING is on it: bordered by Roe, Williams, Francis and Beaufort streets, it contains the State Theatre Centre (where the conference sessions are), AND the Art Gallery of Western Australia AND the Western Australian Museum AND the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA, which I visited yesterday) AND the State Library of Western Australia and something called Arts House too, probably just for good measure.

Above, my afternoon coffee godzillas the Western Australian Museum, which is run by the bloke who spoke first today, Alec Coles. He has been the CEO at WAM for about 18 months, and spoke this morning

about a regional program for the many museums operating in WA, particularly from the viewpoint of his years of experience with a regional approach to museums in the north-east of England. In his talk he was really showing us the many models from which Western Australia might choose to develop the relationships between its museums, particularly those of differing sizes. In this way it echoed John Holden's talk of yesterday, but with the engagement in this case being between museums, rather than museums-to-visitors.

Next up was Margaret Anderson, from the History Trust of South Australia, who spoke brilliantly about their work in raising the profile of history in South Australia, and their grand gamble in creating a 'History Week' program in the mid 1990s, which took off to such an extent that this year they needed to expand it to a history month (!) whose name you can find above. She also spoke about an amazing web history project called Bound for South Australia, which is a blog from 1836. True. Have a look.

I then attended a session about travelling exhibitions, featuring presentations by Catherine Czerw

Jane King, from the Museums Australia WA branch,(but not for very much longer) who delivered the best line I have heard thus far:

And Catherine Belcher from the Geraldton location of the Western Australia Museum whose great-sounding exhibition about mining in the mid-west is going to close on Sunday - I'm going to miss it! Gnn!

All of this talk about shows on the road and remote locations made my feet itchy, so I went over and crunched again on Fujimoto Yuri's 'Broom' at PICA

And checked out the very beautiful 'Perth Cultural Centre Play Space' which is outside the museum, featuring sittable-onnable sculpture and outside musical instruments (David Perkins, these shots are for you...)

And then I cycled Brian down to the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre (actually he and I got lost, and then trapped, in the bus car park underneath it for awhile, but we needn't dwell on that) to go and see

A really quite incredible exhibition which opened in Canberra at the National Museum of Australia earlier in the year, and now it's over here which is its home, because the Canning Stock Route is in WA and so is FORM. These guys - and it turned out that I knew two of them, and how great to meet Carly Davenport and Monique La Fontaine again - have put six years into the Canning Stock Route project, out of which this major and massive exhibition has developed. It features paintings from Aboriginal artists from the many language groups along the Route and their stories and songs and films and objects. It's pretty immersive and amazing and the Canning Stock Route works brilliantly as a central braid that ties together so many stories. Next it's going to Sydney to the Australian Museum 17 December 2011 - 22 April 2012, so all my easterly friends, plan your trip to Sydney. But really, you should see it here. You have until November 27. And over here, it's free.

I reckon this exhibition will come to mind each morning that I cycle into Melbourne Museum along the Canning (Street) Bike Route.

'At the Frontier' day 1 - Tuesday 15 November 2011

2011-11-15T07:39:00.001-08:00

So today was the first day of the Museums Australia/ Interpretation Australia joint conference, 'At the Frontier' - all 500 or so of us delegates set off to sea together in the very new Heath Ledger Theatre in the State Theatre Centre (opened in January of this year).

The conference was introduced, we were welcomed to country, the Western Australian Minister for Culture and the Arts declared the conference open, and then we heard from this guy, John Holden, about 'Next Generation Cultures' - it's anarchy, folks, in the UK!

Yes, apparently everyone is. And museums need less to deliver to their audiences than to find their relationship to their audiences. In fact 'audience' might not be the right word any more, What about 'participants'? This next generation want to: 1) enjoy 2) talk and 3) do, according to John's friend Charlie Leadbeater. So there's that.

Morning tea time! Let's head down the stairs running parallel to Roe Street, shall we? Yes, lets!

Later in the day I attended a panel called 'Ancient', which was brilliant. Kevin Thiele, the head of the WA Herbarium, hails from 'the east' and is always putting his foot in it with his Perth colleagues with statements like

But he was a great speaker about the challenges faced by herbaria in terms of becoming more open to their audiences/participants.

And Ken Mulvaney

spoke passionately and brilliantly about the rock art petroglyphs on the islands of the Dampier Archipelago - he estimates that there are probably about one million pieces, which would make the archipelago the richest area of such art in the world. And he eloquently painted a picture of the destruction of such art that happens when we allow development to occur pell-mell.

In the next session, I delivered a petcha kutcha presentation (20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds) about our theatre work at Melbourne Museum over the last 10 years and rather think I stuffed too much in. Ah well. Also in that session was the wonderful Lily Hibberd, though, talking about her research and writing and artwork interrogating the use of solitary confinement and the persistence of the 'model prison' system in the treatment of prisoners, refugees and mentally ill people for 150 years. It was chilling stuff, Jeremy Bentham's rotting head being used for a football notwithstanding.

At the end of the day I went to PICA to hear the curators of the exhibition 'Alternating Currents: Japanese art after March 2011' talk about the works on show. Above, someone 'plays' Fujimoto Yukio's giant record made of charcoal - you walk on it and it crunches. Great. Curator Hashimoto Azusa commented that Fujimoto-san has said that 'listening is a very creative act'. I tend to agree.

Looking down from the first floor onto Izumi Taro's massive sugoroku board installation - it was described as a game without beginning or end. We ended our tour at the 'Yellow Cake Street' cafe, devised by Nadegata Instant Party, which was the PICA bar remade as a...

cafe place to buy yellow cake (delicious) and beer. I drank and ate and then cycled Brian back home, only realising that I'd overlooked dinner after a phone call to Susan - it's time for a late night visit to the 2 minute noodle shop, folks! Ahh. That's better.

Ready for bed and a sleep and a dream and then day #2.

New Norcia and talking papers

2011-11-14T06:37:00.001-08:00

Artist unknown, early 18th century, head of Saint Benedict. Wood.

Part of the exhibition, 'The Saints: Ancient + New' at the New Norcia Museum and Art Gallery

Today was my first day of conference-related activities - at 9am outside the brand spanking new State Theatre Centre I jumped into a bus, and Martin Moyle drove a bunch of us museum types (hi Edwina and Craig in the picture above) 130 kilometres north of Perth to a place he described as "a most surprising village out in the middle of the wheat belt".

And by gum but he was right.

We were most privileged to be met by Carmel, the CEO of New Norcia, Margie from the New Norcia Museum, and Dom Christopher Power, one of the monks in residence.

Here he is, telling us the story of the way pictorial representations of New Norcia proved a vital means for one of founders, Dom Rosendo Salvado to convince people back in Europe to donate to the monastery town. And throughout his never less than charming, informative and funny narrative, Dom Chris kept reminding us that financial survival remains a constant challenge for the community.

He introduced us to New Norcia's full-time archivist, Peter. Dom Chris explained that the archive was anything but a place for 'old moths', that indeed it was a 'glamour department' of the town. Peter explained that he has plenty to work with because

Sound like my kinda guys. We saw remarkably painted and appointed chapels, we saw an exhibition detailing the interactions of the monks with the local Aboriginal people, the Yuat (Moorara-Moorara) people, whose language Dom Bernard Rooney has compiled a dictionary for, we saw the olive press shed and the olive orchard, the restored blacksmithy, we ate lunch at the New Norcia Hotel (good ale!) and we scooted through the museum because we ran out of time.

And now I sip (swig, you mean!) at a VERY good New Norcia Abbey Vintage Port 2004 - thick and sweet and fruity - and reflect on some words from Dom Rosendo Salvado, really the main founder of the monastery in 1846 (recall that Perth itself was founded in 1829):

"This is an appropriate place to mention the kind of veneration which the natives have for books or any papers with writing - 'talking papers' as they call them. They credit them with an almost magic power of revealing hidden things..."

The title of a plan drawing of the layout of the town - Norcia was the original birthplace of Saint Benedict, so here, two hours drive from Perth, would be the new one.

Back in Perth, it was time for the conference opening/welcome drinks at the Perth Town Hall, and boy, were they welcome! Brian the bike and I swerved back down Adelaide Terrace to my hotel (the Goodearth - thanks Pearl S. Buck) to have a cuppa and prepare for the 'petcha kutcha' (Japanese for 'chit chat') presentation which I'm giving tomorrow afternoon and which is entitled, 'But is it Real?'

Well?

Is it?

Way out West

2011-11-13T07:21:00.000-08:00

Yep, fresh from WA, here comes the news from Perth. I'm over here this week to attend a Museums Australia/ Interpretation Australia conference called 'At The Frontier' - I'm guessing a whole lot of people in the museum world have come to Perth for this, come over like Brownes' cows. I have been part-funded for this by Melbourne Museum, where I work part-time, so that makes sense.

Today was Sunday, and quite blowy - a westerly I think, coming up the Swan River.

I was looking to hire a bike to get me around, so I thought I'd ask at that tall pointy thing ahead.

Turns out that it is The Bell Tower, home of the Swan Bells and "probably the largest musical instrument in the world", and furthermore, because this weekend is Heritage Perth's Heritage Days, it's free to go in. So I go in. It's a pretty amazing place, you can climb stairs all the way to the top of those sail things and look down over the river or over Perth

and see what's been going on here recently - oh, I do love that word, CHOGM.

Some of the bells are pretty big. Pretty big. And today they were ringing constantly, and the whole place was shaking, almost subliminally, underfoot. It was great. And, the people there knew where the bike hire place was!

I dropped into the Old Court House Law Museum to see painter Thomas Hoareau talk about his picture 'John Gaven Parkhurst boy #422 - Appears a very good lad' from the exhibition 'Heroes or Villains of the Swan?' which just opened there last week. 15 year old Gaven was the first European hanged in Western Australia.

There were lots of open public buildings, including the Perth Town Hall where there was an exhibition about Perth hosting the 1962 Commonwealth Games, and 'leaving the lights on' earlier in that year for astronaut John Glenn to glipse as he passed over in Friendship 7.

Some of the public art really grabbed me, too, like Anne Neil's 2006 'Memory Markers'

On the border of the Stirling Gardens on Barrack Street.

As a ink-dip nib user myself, to see these big ones

was pretty exciting. And around the corner on St George's Terrace, I was really amused by these

For which I couldn't find the name of the artist. But look, the tip of the one lying on the ground

is even crumpled! - great, eh? Well enough of all this art and culture and heritage - I need a way to get around, and David Byrne is always talking about how good it is to have a bike in a foreign land. And you know? He's right!

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Brian. As in, "a brown like Brian".

Tomorrow, New Norcia. But not by bike.

Melbourne Writers Festival - August 2011

2011-11-08T04:30:00.000-08:00

Once we got back from GRAPHIC up in Sydney, it was time for the Melbourne Writers Festival in Melbourne. This festival has had more and more comics content over the last few years, which is great to see, and above you can see me, Pat Grant and Mandy Ord talking about graphic novels in general, and their ones in particular, as part of the MWF schools program.

Also for the schools program, I presented a kamishibai session at Artplay, in which I spoke about the form and told 3 kamishibai stories: a new one, 'A Box of Stories' (a kamishibai kamishibai); the Fuji snail story (from 'What It Is' #4), and my very first story, 'The Legend of Rat Boy'. In the lead up to this session, Michael Shirrefs on ABC Radio conducted an interview with me about kamishibai and even filmed (for radio!) the Fuji snail story - and that's all here.

There were cartoonists drawing live outside the National Gallery, there was the launch of a beautiful new comic book from a new-to-comics book publisher (more about this next post), there was a session with the great and terrible Jim Woodring (and anybody who has heard him talk about 'the Age of Cake' will know what I'm talking about here), there was of course the Oslo Davis-edited comics newspaper 'Drawn From Life' and there was the 'Martin Martini In(k) Concert'. Hoo hah!

This last was at the venue The Toff in Town, where Martini and band played a suite of songs from his 'Vienna 1913' cycle (of which I am a big fan), while Jim Woodring -

- and a rotating cast of three fine local cartoonists -

- Pat Grant, Andrew Weldon and Jo Waite - kept drawing live while the band played on. The audience got to listen to music and look at pictures:

Yes, it's some sort of bliss, as this crowd of cartoonists shows. The idea comes from the Angouleme Comics Festival in France, where Mike Shuttleworth had seen some 'Concerts du Dessins' (Drawing Concerts) in January of this year and come back to rave about them to Steve Grimwade, the director of the Melbourne Writers Festival and a hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is, to boot.

Photos in this post are courtesy of Dan Hayward and Stephen Elliott, cinematographers supreme!

Other GRAPHIC 2011 folks...

2011-11-06T06:10:00.000-08:00

The wonderful Peter Kuper, who presented his 'Revolutions and Art' show as part of the 'Wordless Storytelling' panel on the Saturday. Bloody great.

"The revolution will not be televised, but I am convinced it will be illustrated."

Eddie Campbell pointing out another great image in his slideshow, presented on the Sunday, all about his upcoming book, 'The Lovely Horrible Stuff', which is all about money. He even went to Yap.

" Came across this interestin' story..."

Also on the Sunday, Andrew Weldon presented the prizewinners in the 'Air Your Grievances' one-panel cartoon competition, as well as showing us some of his own, quite hilarious work.

****************************

So GRAPHIC #2, another great event for comics. And I just found out today that the conversation that we didn't get, between Gary Groth and Robert Crumb, has just been posted, here, with the non-attendance, amongst other things, discussed. Okay, he didn't make it over, but in the end it all happened.

In the end?

Ha.

GRAPHIC 2011 Day 1: arvo of Saturday August 20/ More Anon

2011-10-10T05:11:00.000-07:00

As mentioned below, the film-maker Dan Hayward grabbed some footage at GRAPHIC.

Here, I'm speaking with Jordan Verzar, the driving force behind GRAPHIC, and one of the 'curators' of the festival. (Virginia Hyam is the other curator, and Ben Marshall the producer).

There, I'm chatting with Scott McCloud about graphic novels.

Thanks to these gentlemen for their time: it was a busy weekend for them both.

(Blimey, I hope that's my good side!)

GRAPHIC 2011 Day 1: Saturday 20 August/ Oz Comics

2011-10-10T03:28:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wanna join the club?

2011-09-12T06:17:00.000-07:00

There's a whole bunch of brilliant comic book activity swirling around Melbourne in one form or another at present, and one of my faves is this one: The Second Wednesday Comic Book Club, or more to the point Comic Book Club, or even more to the point, Comic Club.

The idea of a club has always got me going - a space where you get together with a bunch of other people and in that space you can focus on and discuss some topic which is important to the assembled group. You agree to take whatever-it-is seriously for that period of time and delve into it, to the exclusion of the outside world. I love that. Probably university was at its best for me when it was like that - tutorial discussions in a teacher's room. It's probably why Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History' is such an important book for me, too.

C'mon, Bernard: what about Comic Club?

Well, it's held at City Library every fortnight and every second Wednesday we get together and discuss a particular book comic (as John Retallick describes 'graphic novels'). Week 1 was the Tintin adventure, 'The Secret of the Unicorn' by Herge, Week 2 'Scott Pilgrim' by Bryan Lee O'Malley, Week 3 'Maus' by Art Spiegelman and this week's book (Wednesday 14 September) is 'The Arrival' by Shaun Tan. The pictures in this post were taken of the Scott Pilgrim week by Gregarious Gary Lee (thanks, Gary!) from the City of Melbourne, who, with Laffin' Luke Scully from City Library wrangled me into running the club. (Not that I needed a lot of wrangling, you understand...)

(thanks for lending me your Scott Pilgrim box set, Pat Grant - I'm taking care of them, I promise!)

If you'd like to be part of the club (a club? for comics? are you kidding? where do I sign?) and you're over 15 and a student, then tootle on down to the Comic Club page here and sign up. Then read the comic book in question and come along ready to talk and listen and laugh quite a bit. It's free, it goes from 6 - 7.30pm, and did I say it's every second Wednesday?

We'll be talking 'Akira' Book 1 by Katsuhiro Otomo on Wednesday September 28, and 'Fun Home' by Alison Bechdel on Wednesday October 12.

And hey, Sumisha Naidu interviewed me about the club in meld magazine.

And here we are, comic clubbing. In a world of our own. Brilliant.

What It Is? #4 episode

2011-09-01T07:42:00.000-07:00

Well well well, in amongst a remarkable period of comics events in Melbourne and Sydney, here is a reminder of the fourth and final 'What It Is?' comics conversation/performance evening at Readings bookshop in Carlton on Monday 25 July 2011. As mentioned in a lower post, my collaborator on this one was the wonderful Mister Martin Martini, who this Sunday just gone provided the live songs for an incredible concert for the Melbourne Writers Festival at The Toff In Town where cartoonists Pat Grant, Jo Waite, Andrew Weldon and Jim Woodring drew live as the music played!

Zowee, baby!

The footage above shot and edited by Daniel Hayward, with whom I am working on a feature documentary with the working title: 'Graphic! Novels! Melbourne!' Ahh, it's good to be alive...

Paper Theatre on the road!

2011-08-22T01:26:00.000-07:00

I've really enjoyed making the 'What It Is?' performances using a mixture of kamishibai, masks and 2D puppets, and I'm starting to think of it (to steal a term from last year's comics exhibition in Melbourne Fringe Festival, curated by Jo Waite and produced by me, with art by Jo, Ben Hutchings and Chris Downes) as 'paper theatre'.

Recently I have developed a show about energy saving for Origin, the energy company, and I have tried a paper theatre approach - in the shot above, taken by Iris Baker from Origin (thanks Iris, for all the photos in this post!) you can see a beautiful tree painted by Michael Camilleri, mounted on a couple of large boxes, and behind me, paper whitegoods on the four vertical faces of a couple of stacks of boxes. I turn the 'whitegoods' boxes to change the location of the show (hallway, lounge, kitchen, bathroom).

Here I am at West Manly Public School in Sydney on the 5th of August 2011, performing the show to primary school kids,

and here's me being chased by Energy Bob, the alien robot who has turned up on Earth doing some research about energy production and use on our planet. Kids get to ask him questions, too.

Kid: 'What language do you speak, Bob?'

Then I listen carefully to Bob, who whispers his (its?) answer to me, and I relay it back to the audience.

Answer: 'Indonesian.'

The above photos are from our arvo show in West Manly, and our morning show that day was at Tregear Public School, which was also great fun.

At Tregear we did the show (the world premiere!) for the whole school, on what you can see was a beautiful day...

There's me looking at the contents of a paper fridge with my assistants, Brains and the Vampire Slayer (if you see the show you'll understand). Of course Energy Bob also turned up at Tregear, and was asked to nominate his favourite song.

He thought for a while.

Then whispered his answer, which I relayed to a bemused younger and an amused older audience:

'Eagle Rock.'

Funny thing is, whenever Energy Bob was around, I could never find James Taylor, my other buddy from Origin. Ah, well. Iris and I would always tell him about Bob's antics after the show...

I'm looking forward to doing more of these performances in New South Wales over the next few months, yessiree!

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

2011-08-22T00:21:00.000-07:00

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

The kick-off kamishibai was titled

'Katasuburi
Sorosoro nobore
Fuji no yama.'

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

Oh snail
Climb Mount Fuji
But slowly, slowly!

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

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

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

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

Apparently, we all are.

What's an edicomicorial?

2011-08-21T23:48:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

Go editors! Go comics! Go go go!

Talking Comics and Filthy Lucre!

2011-07-30T06:55:00.000-07:00

Hey there my comic book reading friends! As you know, every second person out there in the 'words-only' book world belongs to a book club, whereby a bunch of people all agree to read the same book and then get together to discuss that book and eat cheese. I agree, it's about time us comic book readers did the same thing, and this Wednesday, thanks to the City of Melbourne and the City Library in Melbourne, we're going to do exactly that! Less cheese though, probably. Sorry, lactose-lovers.

So, if you're over 15 and a student and a reader of comics, hie ye hither here, where you'll find the book list and the dates, and if you'd like to come to one or all of the nights, email Gary Lee and let him know you're interested. Do come, I'd love to see you there. We're beginning with Tintin, of course - 'The Secret of the Unicorn', but we will travel all over the world in the first 6 fortnightly meetings of 'The Second Wednesday Comic Book Club'. Oh yes we will.

And the above is not the only remarkable comics-related thing coming out of City Library. There is also, in the upcoming Lord Mayor's Creative Writing Awards 2011, a category for 'graphic short story'. You need to enter a 4 - 8 page comics story by the end of August 2011 which will put you in the running for a $1000 prize. That's right. A grand. If you won with a 4 page story, that makes a $250 per page rate, which ain't bad. And if you win the overall prize for best piece of writing across all categories for a 5 page story, that would be a $1000 per page rate, which is even less bad.

Draw! Write! Enter!

Graphic Narratives wrap party!

2011-07-18T08:43:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-06-30T08:11:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

Call it what you will.

It is what it is.

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

Yours,

Bernard

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

2011-06-28T06:15:00.000-07:00

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

In this case, the 'we' was me and

Alex McDermott, whose latest book

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

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

Wilhelm at the Port of Adelaide in 1849.

He loves it here.

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

Something...

oooooooo000000000000000ooooooooo

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

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

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

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

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

he's a centaur.

ooooooo000000000000000ooooooo

Our coda to the night was an imagined 1859 meeting

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

And you too can see it, here.

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

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

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

2011-06-20T08:43:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

It starred

Jean-Paul Sartre and

Simone de Beauvoir, who

argued and

made up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Drawn Out' - 3RRR - 12 May 2011

2011-05-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

Every month I have a spot on Richard Watts' weekly arts news, views and interviews radio show on 3RRR FM, Smart Arts. My spot's called 'Drawn Out' and it covers local and international comic books and events.

This Thursday morning just gone, I talked about Jason Lutes' Jar of Fools, credited as 'A Picture Story' on its cover, (a relief to those who revile the term 'graphic novel'). 'Jar of Fools' is kinda venerable now, being first published in its complete edition in 1997. This Faber and Faber edition (yes, Faber and Faber, the big UK poetry publisher - they also publish Adrian Tomine's books, which makes sense) was published 2008, and I'm a big fan of the cover design, and particularly the typography, by Rui Tenreiro (wow, whose drawings are even better - take a look!) which bespeaks a looseness of line that belies Lutes' drawings within. This really is a lovely graphic novel (ghasp!), the story of a washed-up magician, Ernie, and the outcasts who gather around him. The tone is melancholy and sweet, and it's beautifully maintained. Lutes' current work, a long comic book series called Berlin, concerns that city in the 1930s. The first 16 issues have been collected into two big books, the last 8 will be collected some decade soon.

Other things I spoke about: the comics-and-related-arts festival at Sydney Opera House, GRAPHIC, is returning 19/20/21 August 2011. Last year Jordan Verzar got Neil Gaiman, Eddie Campbell, Shaun Tan, Gary Groth to come (wow!), and this year it sounds like another bunch of great guests are coming - the lineup gets announced on May 23, but you can line up for pre-sales here.

I am talking about editing comics at the Australian Society of Editors, Victorian branch, this Wednesday night 18 May in Melbourne town - anyone can attend, and you get a meal and the talk and the society of lovely editor-type folk for $33, with concessions available. I'll be speaking about the history of editing comics, and my own experience of that strange art. You can make a booking here.

And, finally, as mentioned last post (quick! someone play the reveille!), May's 'What It Is?' is coming up on Monday 30 May at 8pm at Readings Carlton, featuring Mike Shuttleworth, Brenton McKenna, and me - more info and a wonky picture of wonky old Jean-Paul Sartre on the Readings website.

What It Is? show #1: Eisenstein and Comics

2011-05-09T01:50:00.000-07:00

Above, Michael Camilleri and I starting our 'What It Is?' show at Readings bookshop in Carlton on Monday 28 March 2011. It was a show about Sergei Eisenstein, the great Soviet film director, and his approach to montage (a way of editing film, a way of presenting film stories), and the ways that this might apply to comics.

Here's me presenting 'Sergei's Pram', a kamishibai which imagined Eisenstein and fellow filmmaker Lev Kuleshov discussing the filming of the famous Odessa steps sequence from 'Battleship Potemkin'.

For this, I was lucky enough to borrow this amazing kamishibai box from Jackie Kerin (for the tale of its construction by Ted, go to Jackie's blog entry here).

Michael and I also wanted to look at mise-en-scene (another, complementary, sometimes oppositional - thanks, Andre Bazin - way of considering film editing), so we enlisted friends Fleur, Mark and Bruce (in the hat) to help us present a scene from 'Citizen Kane' by Orson Welles. With hilarious results.

Finally, Michael presented his epic homage to Soviet-style montage, 'The Two Podlokovs' which may be viewed in all its glory on his website, here.

A remarkable night - thanks to Christine Gordon of Readings for asking for a series of nights looking at the art of comic books. Oh yes folks, there's going to be more What It Is...

Also thanks to Dan Hayward of The Video Factory for the photos in this post, and for shooting and editing together a great video of the night, to be found on youtube here. And thanks to Oliver Montagnat for additional camerawork.

NEXT 'What It Is' show: Monday 30 May, 8pm at Readings Carlton - Mike Shuttleworth and I will build Angouleme, city of comics, out of paper, live on stage (with music too!), and then we'll speak to Brenton McKenna, of Broome, about his new graphic novel for kids, Ubby's Underdogs.

What a night it promises to be...

Kamishibai, out and indoors

2011-04-26T06:49:00.000-07:00

So I've talked a bit about kamishibai, the Japanese art of paper theatre, elsewhere on this blog. Above, the inestimable and highly esteemed Bruce Woolley and I rehearse the story, 'A Very Kamishibai Christmas', which we co-created and first performed in December 2010, and here are getting ready to perform it at Chugnut in March 2011. Chugnut (a weekend away for cartoonists of many stripes) this year, as last, was held at Camp Eureka near Yarra Junction.

One of the distinctive things about 'A Very Kamishibai Christmas' is that there is no narration or dialogue (well, okay, there's two words - yelled), and so the attention of the performers - and hopefully audience - is even more directed at the rhythm of the reveals of the cards. The music of comics, kids.

Of course such playing with the kamishibai form wouldn't even occur to me without the fine guitarship, and even finer friendship, of Bruce Woolley.

(Chugnut photos by Anna Brown, whose astonishing gallery of Australian comics volk, paired with their drawn self-portraits, is called Light vs Line.)

After 'A Very Kamishibai Christmas', I performed the kamishibai produced by Jo Waite ('The White Crow'), Ben Hutchings ('Jupiterian Brain Theatre') and Chris Downes (MR James' 'The Mezzotint') for the 2010 Melbourne Fringe Festival Paper Theatre exhibition. Bernard's t-shirt also by Jo Waite.

A month or so later, on April 11, just before Bruce returned to Berlin by way of Sri Lanka, he and I performed the new epilogue to our 'Miracleman: the two man show' at Fleur's place (thanks Fleur!). This epilogue of course incorporated kamishibai, and attempted to bring the incredibly complex questions of ownership and copyright of 'Miracleman' into our show. Later, from Dohar, Bruce sent me this doctored picture, which I think is an excellent title and image:

In case you're wondering: yes, Bruce IS playing the iPad piano and piano accordion simultaneously. And for a closer look at what's on the teevee, go here.

Next post: more kamishibai.

Footnote: for Free Comic Book Day 2011, the Chugnutteers, under the expert guidance of Mister Anthony Woodward, have produced an online book chock full of fine work, findable here. For FREE.

Big Arse Comics Launch- February 2011

2011-04-01T22:42:00.000-07:00

Hello there! I'm going to play catchup for a few posts, as there are notable Melbourne comic book events over the last couple of months that need blooging, and I have some work deadlines breathing down my neck and need to distract myself from them.

Above, from the left, are: Bruce Mutard, Brendan Halyday, Bobby N., Jason Franks, Matt Emery and James Andre. No, not members of the 'Shaved Head and Glasses' League from a long-lost Sherlock Holmes tale, but the 6 comic book author/artists who launched the nine (yes 9, that's right NINE) comics, graphic novels and illustrated books on Saturday 19 February 2011.

To see Bobby N.'s eye-widening poster, and the covers of the books, go to Gary Chaloner's Comics Journal post about the 'Big Arse Comic Book Launch', as it was named.

Above: a happy punter (and there were MANY - a big arse night it was) leafing through 'The Loneliness Manifesto', written by James Andre and illustrated by Brendan Halyday.

The other place to read about the launch, and to hear a pre-launch chat between the creators, is the always-reliable Bobby N's blog, here.

There's me, who had the very happy job of launching this fine clutch (should I really use that word, given the title of the launch? perhaps not) of graphic fiction. As you can imagine, I made much of the 'big arse' metaphor. And I cannot now imagine why not tucking my purple (in Japanese, 'murasaki') shirt seemed such a good idea at the time. But unlike Han Solo, who can 'imagine quite a bit', there's quite a bit I can't imagine.

The crowd at Eydies (the bar that my lovely and only sister Anna manages) enjoying my 'Star Wars' references. Nah, not really - that speech, it was all about the comics.

Hey: there in the middle of the shot in the white t-shirt is comic book writer Jen Breach, now an resident of NYC - sob! - we miss you, Jen. Have a good time in that large cider town, but come back, y'hear?

Vale, Ralph McLean 1957 - 2010

2010-12-30T03:08:00.000-08:00

Today in the hot sun at La Mama theatre in Carlton we farewelled a true member of Fitzroyalty, Ralph McLean. I have got to know Ralph over the past couple of years doing comics reviews on 'Yartz', the weekly arts programme that he began in 2000 for the community television station Channel 31. On Saturday afternoons a group of folks would arrive at his bedsit in Little Gore Street in Fitzroy and through a haze of cigarette smoke and snappy dialogue, Ralph would pull together a review and interview show about the arts in Melbourne.

There were some euphonious eulogists today - the service was delivered by Liz Jones, the grand wazoo of La Mama, and above, Francis Italiano, these days of Perth but once upon a time, and for eight years, Ralph's partner, spoke warmly of his time with Ralph. When some people would refer to Francis as Ralph's 'handbag' (ie when Ralph brought him along to shows), Ralph would correct them:

"He's not a handbag. He's a mink stole."

Above, on the left, Misha Adair, who spoke on behalf of the Yartzers, with Ralph's principles of 'making stuff' mysteriously appearing on his pin-striped suit. On the right, Scott Gooding, who had organised an extravaganza of 'Yartz' footage that screened on a monitor inside La Mama, which you could go and see before and after the service. Nice work, Scott.

Hermione Gilchrist also spoke beautifully about Ralph, and has blogged about him, with 'Yartz' footage embedded, here.

After the service and a beer with Mary Anne, who is my mum and one of the 'Yartz' theatre reporters, I cycled off through Fitzroy to community radio station 3CR on Smith Street in Collingwood, where I met John Retallick and Jo Waite and together we went to air with the last 2010 show of The Comic Spot. It was the round-up of the year, which has been a pretty remarkable one for Australian comic books.

After the show, we repaired to the Union Club Hotel, Ralph's local and the site of his wake, which was still going, where we drank traditional post-show G&Ts and laughed traditional post-show laffs.

Huzzah for community broadcasting, and huzzah for you, Ralph McLean, and all that you gave to the arts in Melbourne.

It was an honour to know you and work with you.

Comics by Pigeons!

2010-12-16T05:48:00.000-08:00

This Monday just gone, I was at the amphitheatre at the Footscray Community Arts Centre for the launch of a remarkable new book.

'Pigeons: Stories in the Post Vol.2' is a collection of 21 stories by grade five students from Footscray City Primary School. In the making of these stories, each student has been matched with an author and in each case the two have collaborated on the work VIA AN EXCHANGE OF LETTERS.

Yes, paper. Envelopes. Stamps. You know the drill. Or ask your grandma. She'll know.

Lachlan Carter and Jenna Williams are the two enchanted genii behind Pigeons, and they have channelled the greatness of Dave Eggars' 826 Valencia and created their own version of a literacy/reading/writing/fun project, and a damn fine one it is that they have sculpted.

Last year's Pigeons book was all words, which was great, but for this year's, comics flew onto the page too, increasing the all-round brilliance of the publication by 123%, rounded up. Local comic book makers Mirranda Burton, Jen Breach and I each worked with a student, so that 3 of the 21 stories, or 14.3% of the book, is... comics. Shareholders, we will be working to increase that percentage in the years to come but I am sure you will agree, it is a 14% increase on last year. That's all growth!

My Pigeons partner was Jonathan Wu, who I met for the first time on Monday night at the launch, and who is set to make many more great and piercingly funny comics, should he choose that over a career in astrophysics. I hope he does. Below: two panels from page 4 of 'Odie & the Exploding Toilet', which we both worked on. That's Mr Rock ad Mr Blowtish in panel 1.

I enjoin you to purchase a copy of 'Pigeons: Stories in the Post Vol.2' and support the brilliant work by the Pigeons.

Coo!

2011 approacheth, as does Cardigan Comics Magazine

2010-11-25T18:24:00.000-08:00

The above sobriquet bestowed upon me by the esteemed Peter Bodin, Esquire.

A fez, a pipe, a dressing gown and slippers: that's my preferred get-up for the new year.

Kamishibai in North Melbourne

2010-09-27T07:21:00.001-07:00

Tonight begins a great experiment conducted by Jo Waite and I, with the willing collaboration of three other great comic book people: Ben Hutchings, Sarah Howell and Chris Downes.

All four of the abovenamed are producing a kamishibai (or 'paper theatre') story (a series of pictures which tell a tale) and they are being exhibited in the window of Kids in Berlin (472 Victoria Street North Melbourne) as part of Melbourne Fringe Festival 2010. They will be there from Tuesday 28 September to Sunday 10 October.

This is the fourth Fringe comics exhibition which Jo has curated and I have produced.

(above image by Jo Waite)

On each of the Tuesday nights (today the opening 28 September, October 5 and 12), from 6 - 8pm, I will perform each of the stories and hand out Japanese lollies.

Come along!

Mandy Ord and Dillon Naylor exhibition!

2010-09-03T06:19:00.000-07:00

Last night I did a launch talk at the Town Hall Gallery in Booroondara (corner of Burwood and Glenferrie Roads Hawthorn) for THIS:

Yes, folks, a comics exhibition of work by Dillon Naylor and Mandy Ord! Superbo!

It's on until Sat 25 September and on Saturday 11 from 2 - 3pm Mandy and Dillon will be there, 'in conversation' as they say, in amongst the works on the walls, which for both of them goes back quite a long way in their cartooning and comic book making lives.

It's a great exhibition and I would say an important one, a tandem retrospective of two of the most assured stylists in the Australian comic book making world. As I said in the speech, our Dark Prince and our First Lady of Noir.

I didn't take any photographs, but Bobby N did.

And Mardi Nowak, the curator at the gallery, has info about the exhibition here.

The Big Blandowski - the end of the tour - Traralgon, Sale, Bairnsdale

2010-08-26T04:19:00.000-07:00

So here's the set-up at Traralgon Library, where, with the assistance of librarian Noeline, we presented to three groups from Kosiusko Street Primary School, in three different places. First I did the show in the space behind the borrowing desk, then Rebecca led the drawing exercise in the activity space in the above photo, then I did the show again in their storytelling space, which was a brilliant area for it.

It was at the beginning of the second show that one kid, trying to guess who Blandowski was from the picture of the bearded man in front of him, yelled out: "It's God!"

At the Princeton Motor Inn in Sale, where we stayed for two nights, there was a significant variation in the approach to room decoration. Here, the designs were painted (maybe stencilled?) direct onto the wall. I liked it. (Note self-referential and post-modern presence of photographer in this shot)

Although by this stage of the tour I am getting a bit sick of the sight of naked brick. At least these ones were painted.

Our first gig in Sale was to meet up with Susan Taylor, who had driven from the Department of Sustainability and Environment in Yarram to meet us at O'Neill's, a restaurant in a house. Lovely. We swapped her our Blandowski story for her tale of the Corner Inlet waders, such as the Godwit pictured above, and other Shadridae, including the mellifluously named Eastern Curlew, Whimbrel, and the Red-necked Stint. Between three plates of 'roo and a bottle of Glenmaggie Shiraz, a good night was had, you bet.

As you can plainly see.

Next day at the Gippland Art Gallery in Sale, Louise the Education person there helped us set up in our room and we had some great visitors turn up, watch the show, and draw pictures.

Above: Rebecca in a quite moment.

This morning we drove to Bairnsdale for breakfast, and blow me down if Will Patten, also from the museum, doesn't dash out of a shop calling 'Hey!' He's on a Gippsland tour as well this week, doing community consultations for the redevelopment of the Bunjilaka Gallery at Melbourne Museum. So good to see him, full of enthusiasm and good cheer.

We pull into the East Gippland Art Gallery and Elaine the curator there helps us to set up, finding us some plinths for the animals for this, their 'last stand' of this tour.

Me doing the penultimate show - no, my beard hasn't fallen off, this is one of the 'narrator' parts of the show. In fact it's the mo that's been doing some leaping from the upper lip this week. Le mo juste? Mais non!

Bec and the animals at the end of the day - come on, let's get this stuff stowed away so we can get to our motel and drop gear and get to the Bairnsdale RSL for a darn fine curry laksa and a little Blandowski and great presentation by Johnno and Steve from the Bairnsdale DSE about the Southern Ark Project, which protects East Gippsland's biodiversity through fox control.

Above, Steve delivering and Johnno looking back at the camera.

Steve explaining about hairtubes while the Long-footed Potoroo looks on, entranced.

I was more taken when, trying to illustrate how many carnivores, not just foxes, rely upon Ring Tail Possums as food, Steve referred to them as 'the potatoes of the marsupial world'.

Well, that's it - three weeks on the road in country Victoria as Wilhelm von Blandowski. Now here I am, last night of the tour, in a very nice room at the Bairnsdale Motel. And tomorrow I see my family.

And look: no bricks.

Get GRAPHIC!

2010-08-24T07:27:00.000-07:00

Above: a smile, a look, some bared teeth. Bernard Caleo, Shaun Tan and Neil Gaiman at the 'Evolution of an Idea' panel at the GRAPHIC festival up at the Sydney Opera House, August 7 and 8. You have to imagine Eddie Campbell to the right of Mister Gaiman.

Hey, there's some good photos from GRAPHIC here.

And the Sydney Opera House has posted some video from the festival here.

Wilhelm von Blandowski - interlude

2010-08-24T05:30:00.000-07:00

This arvo Rebecca and I drove into Sale and there was time, as there often is, for a bit of a sit down after checking into our hotel (tonight, The Princeton Motor Lodge).

Ahh, you know?

Soon, though, it occurred to me that the first page of the Blandowski Paperpoint presentation ('Performance today at 11.30 & 1.30') had been getting a bit tatty.

See?

So I thought I'd re-draw and re-letter it for the last two days of the tour, and the new picture ended up looking like this:

Both of them are versions of the classic Blandowski self-portrait, which you can see here. Neither of them really captures him, which is 1) a little bit disappointing and 2) fine. As a maker of comic books, I enjoy (but REALLY. I really enjoy) play with representation. As a maker of theatre, I really enjoy playing historical figures because of the degree of interpretation it invites - that is, people who have seen Blandowski on this tour have really been seeing my Blandowski.

Although in terms of the 'real' Blandowski, I hope that the performance ignites interest in him and that people leave it with another name, another fragment of a piece, of the story of Victoria that we all carry around as a backdrop to our lives. The story of where we are. The story of how we came to be.

Before this all gets too deep, check out this 3 minutes of audio of an interview I did as Wilhelm on Mildura ABC radio with Louise Ray a couple of weeks ago. Oh, yes, it's a pretty funny accent, ze Prussian one...

And here is the very exciting news about the publication of Blandowski's book of illustrations of Australia. The illustrations are actually by Gustav Mutzel, who made them under Blandowski's directions after he had returned to Europe. Blandowski then photographed the illustrations and stuck the photos in albums, as I understand it, in order to self-publish a small number of the book 'Australien in 142 Photographishen Abbildunggen'. A zine, effectively.

The Blandowski Expedition: Wangaratta, Wodonga, Morwell

2010-08-23T03:35:00.000-07:00

This post will take us from the end of week two into the beginning of week three of 'The Art of Scientific Observation' road tour, celebrating weeks scientifical and years biodiverserific. Above, Thursday moning. Puggle the Museum Victoria Discovery Program van has its nose pointed towards Jaycee Island (36°33'18"south, 145°59'14"east if you're that way inclined) on Lake Benalla.

David and I drive to Wangaratta and set up in the Gallery there. In the morning we see lovely locals and visitors, and in the afternoon Valerie Crosse brings in a class of Visual Communication seondary students from Cathedral College across the road. They are great...

...but clearly, Wilhelm is in one of his moods.

That afternoon, David and I stroll the promenades of Wangaratta, and the banks of the Ovens River, which is full to the brim and over. As is usual when with David, we see some great birds, and when it rains, briskly, there is as intense a rainbow as I have ever seen, brilliant against the grey and massy clouds. We do not, however, see the above bird, the Regent Honeyeater, but we do sight Sarah Kelly, from the Department of Sustainability and the Environment, who speaks that evening about the release of Regent Honeyeaters bred in captivity at Toronga Zoo in Sydney and released in Chiltern in Victoria. Below, Sarah demonstates the technology used to track the birds.

That night David I and motor up the Hume past Chiltern (we will drop in to sample their baked goods on the morrow) to stay at the Blazing Stump Motel, and in the morning to set up at the Art Space Wodonga, which is a really lovely room, open to the Wodonga Libray. In the morning we do the show for a group of mums and pre-school kids (the show 'Wilhelm von Blandowski: a curious man' becomes the show 'Thanks, Bill!'), in the afternoon for a class from a local secondary school. Both groups really enjoy the drawing too. The curator of the Art Space, Helen Carter, and gallery helper Cary are great folks and make us very welcome even though they have an exhibition opening that night.

Below: the last pack-up of the week. A man, a van, a space.

Today, Monday 23 August (how about that election hey?), Rebecca Featherstone and I head out east into the Latrobe Valley and the Latrobe Regional Gallery, which is quite a place. The morning show was performed for the ladies of the Morwell Art Group and a class of grade 3/4 students and it went down a treat. Everybody drew, too!

It was great to meet Julie, the education officer at the gallery, who gives us a tour and then takes our picture!

The set

up.

Leaving Morwell to come to Traralgon for tonight, we stop for fuel and at the service station I see one of those yellow plastic warning signs adorned with this:

Caution: men melting.

Blandowski: Echuca, Shepparton, Benalla

2010-08-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

One wakes up in a hotel room with the light fanging in across the ceiling. Let's have some breakfast in the sun, David, and then hit the Murray.

Ah, thar she flows. Somewhere close was the junction of the Murray and Campaspe Rivers, but I couldn't find it before the time came to be on the road in order to get to the Shepparton Library. We had a great time there, particularly with the two classes from Izik College. Below, David. And no, I haven't been showing pictures of the kids because if you take a photo that shows a child's face you need to have their permission. And I didn't.

In fact, I don't have David's permission. Must talk to him about that. But I think the thumbs up indicate a 'yes'.

After finishing up at the library (and boy oh boy, does the Gallery around the corner have a good cafe? Yes, it does) we drive up the road and have a wander along the Goulburn. I see a fox.

The following day is yesterday, and we hurtle through rain to get to Benalla Art Gallery, where we are visited by a couple of groups of students from Benalla East Primary, who are great - really lively!

Okay, so clearly there's people without whom this whole 'Art of Scientific Observation' tour would never have happened, and a couple of them turn up at Benalla. No pressure. (This better be good) One is Vera Gin, from Scienceworks, who arrives with Michelle Saunders, also from Scienceworks. Vera and Sarah Edwards applied for the initial funding for the tour, from Questacon, in Canberra. Also turning up at Benalla was Geoff Crane, from Questacon!

He takes the photo below, of me in Wilhelm mode:

Finishing up, we load the gear into Puggle, the Discovery Program van, as rain continues to plash into Lake Benalla.

And onto the trolleys.

And onto David. (Hey Bernard, care to lend a hand here?)

The evening's biodiversity talk takes place at this very lovely hotel:

And is delivered by Ray Thomas, of The Regent Honeyeater Project, and he speaks to us about his incredible habitat regeneration work which has involved planting - with much farmer and volunteer generosity- stands of box-ironbark, yellow box and white box trees, whose nectar the critically endangered Regent Honeyeater loves.

Above, from left: David, Geof, Vera, Ray, Michelle and Rob, from the commitee of the Regent Honeyeater project - he's a farmer upon whose land some of the planting has been done.

A lovely night - and great food!

As David and I prepare to return to 'The Top of the Town' motel for the night, a question occurs to us:

Well?

Blandowski - week 1 ends, week 2 starts

2010-08-16T06:13:00.000-07:00

Oh, that's right.

I forgot to say in the previous post that there is another element to Museum Victoria's 'The Art of Scientific Observation' regional tour, and that is at night, in pubs (sounds okay eh?), where we continue to celebrate The International Year of Biodiversity and National Science Week by hooking up with people in that part of Victoria who are doing work in the area of biodiversity. On Monday night last, in Ballarat, we met Emma and Janelle who work at Sovereign Hill's working farm, Narmbool.

Below, around the table, from left: Tim Sullivan Deputy CEO and Museums Director at Sovereign Hill; Emma and Janelle from Narmbool; Shane, a local teacher; and Amy Briese, my Week One travelling companion and fellow Museum Victoria person (she also works for Zoos Victoria at the Werribee Open Range Zoo). Emma and Janelle talked about the programs they offer at Narmbool, Shane talked about his experience incorporating animals into his classroom teaching, and Amy talked about her work at the zoo. My main contact with animals is with ones who are dead or extinct (one of the things I love about working at a museum) and all this talk about live animals and what they can teach live humans was amazing to me.

Okay so let's zip forward to Thursday where we drove from Mildura to the Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery where we we very soon met Barry, with his amazing Folio Society edition ofa book of plates by an early star of scientific illustration, Maria Sibylla Merian (April 2, 1647 – January 13, 1717)

which weighed about as much as I do. And I'm no featherweight. Beautiful, eh?

Here's our set-up in the gallery at Swan Hill, which is right next to the Murray River and the Pioneer Settlement.

As we drove away towards Bendigo, we passed Lake Boga, full after many years of dryness. It was significant for us because Blandowski stopped there in early 1857, on his way up to his famed camp Mondellimin, west of Mildura on the Murray. I use a drawing of a Crested Wedge Bill in the show, the original of which was drawn by Blandowski at Lake Boga, so it was great to see the lake looking so healthy.

And so full of bird life. Hello, maggie...

Ah, the open road. The McIvor Highway.

Ah, the Shamrock Hotel in Bendigo, and the view out of the window of the Billy Heffernan Suite by night...

...and by day...

And a view of the hotel itself, foregrounded by the building which is being made into a new socal history centre for Bendigo. (This drawing from the top of the Poppet Head tower in Rosalind (aka Fruit Bat) Park)

We set up in the Bendigo Art Gallery on Friday, and it is a grand building. In the foregound, drawing the magpie, is Margot, who works there and who was great. The painting behind the man's head is called 'Gentlemen..the Queen!' and features a lot of chaps in Edwardian red uniforms toasting their monarch. Work it into the show? You bet! (thanks to Georgie Meyer for pointing it out to me...)

Below, Amy and one of our great Bendigo illustrators.

Bendigo was our last stop last week, and yesterday Monday 16 August was our first day of Week #2. Below, setting up at the Kyabram Fauna Park.

On the left, Rhonda from Campaspe Shire who'd done a great job organising school groups to come along - from St. Patrick's Tongala in the morning (60 students), and Nanneella Estate Primary in the arvo (30 students). It was great to present the drawing program and the show to school groups - they were very enthusisatic!

On the right, that's David Holmes, my travelling companion for this week and a very very nice fellow.

Below: David going into a too-much-Blue-Castello-cheese-for-afternoon-tea catatonia, from which a cup of tea managed to rescue him. Outside Rooms 7 and 8 at the Echuca Hotel.

Last night, in a cellar at the Shamrock Hotel in Echuca, Nickee Freeman from the Department of Primary Industries gives a talk about Biodiversity and Land Management. David is later heard to mutter that it felt like we were part of a Resistance meeting...

C'est vrai, mon ami.

Sur le route mit Wilhelm

2010-08-11T05:22:00.000-07:00

Ecce homo, my friends.

Here is the man.

The man, in this case, being Wilhelm von Blandowski (1822 - 1878, in Australia 1849 - 1859), who I am performing for a program called 'The Art of Scientific Observation'. This program has been developed by Museum Victoria to celebrate The International Year of Biodiversity and National Science Week and is travelling across country Victoria over the next three weeks.

The program has a drawing component, whereby we set out a bunch of drawing materials (pencils, crayons, pens, fineliners) and a whole bunch of museum natural history objects (birds, mammals, reptiles, shells, insects) and visitors can have a go at drawing them. We are at the gallery or art centre in question from 11am to 3pm, and at 11.30am and 1.30pm, I perform a 20 minute illustrated show, 'Wilhelm von Blandowski: a curious man'.

The article above is from Ballarat's 'The Courier', from Tuesday, reporting on the first show of the first day of the tour, at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, on Monday. The article was written by Pat Nolan and the picture taken by Craig Holloway (who made good on his promise NOT to use any of the shots where my moustache was dangling from my upper lip - thanks, Craig!).

One of the great things about visiting the galleries (two so far) has been checking out the exhibitions on display. On Monday I was GUTTED to realise that I had missed an exhibition called 'In Your Face! cartoons about politics and society 1760 - 2010' at the Art Gallery of Ballarat BY ONE DAY.

To console myself I bought the catologue, and what a show I missed! Gillrays! Hogarths! Cruikshanks! Tenniels! Gills! There's a cartoonist in there, Tom Carrington, who does work for the London and then Melbourne Punch, whose work is superb. And there's a bunch of brilliant Australian cartoonists, including Will Dyson, whose 'Anyhow it's cleansing' from 1925 for Melbourne Punch is below.

This guy looks a bit like Henry Lawson, no? And his cravat reads 'Labour Party', the implication being that a positive spin must be put on everything. Timely no?

The next picture is by S.T Gill (1818 - 1880), maybe the best known 'goldfields artist', who was also represented in the exhibition (although I don't know if this image was in it - this is from a postcard) 'The Unlucky Digger that Never Returned' has a desolate melancholy which I really like. There's an Eddie Campbell element to this picture. Yes? Yes.

Tuesday was an 'On The Road' day, Ballarat to Mildura, via Horsham, though grey skies and Mallee scrub.

At Ouyen, the Big Sheaf of Wheat.

Do three stalks make a sheaf?

Me and The Big Mallee Root, which is that massive dark thing that looks like poured concrete. Hectare after hectare of these things were ripped out of the ground so that wheat could be planted up here. This picture is for my dad, Salvatore, who is (still) a Mallee Boy. It was taken by Amy Briese, from the museum's Discovery Program, my travelling companion for this week and a lot of fun to be with.

The sandwich board outside the cafe in Ouyen when Amy and I had lunch yesterday. Nice cartooning and nice colours, Cowards!

Today, Wednesday, outside the Mildura Art Centre. The skies are all day permanent grey, and the winds are high. Last night there was a tornado in Moama. Are we in Kansas? I don't think so.

The Chaffey homestead 'Rio Vista', part of the Mildura Arts Centre. We set up in the drawing room, a lovely room, where Gemma and Joe from WIN TV came to shoot the second show of the day - we (Amy, Wilhelm and I) were the post-weather story on tonight's news!

After we packed up, we had a wander around Rio Vista and the galleries.

Hi, Amy.

When I have a top hat, I will also have a box for it.

The Mildura Arts Centre has a fine collection of works by Frank Brangwyn (1867 - 1956), including many working drawings and a quite overwhelmingly large picture, a study for a church mural back in England. The scale of the piece and the scale of the room are staggering.

Meanwhile, back in Rio Vista, the wood-lined smoking room. Ah. When I establish my Men's Club, the designer will need to visit Mildura to understand the aesthetic I'm after.

Don't worry, the comics gallery/library/atelier comes first. Once it's up and running, THEN the Men's Club.

Don't go to sleep!

2010-08-10T04:24:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

Susan and Andrew practicing rock and roll comics attitude.

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

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

See what I mean? Signage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you, Jordan. An incredible weekend.

Graphic! Novel! And operatic!

2010-07-30T07:06:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

Caleo comics media empire expands!

2010-07-29T06:02:00.000-07:00

Tonight on TheComicSpot we had a special mystery guest, Joseph Ross Bamford Caleo, in his comics review radio debut - he talked about the Captain Congo series (he's a fan) and even suggested a Kid's Tango -hey lad, not a bad idea at all...

John, Jo and I then talked to Anna Brown about her very interesting 'photographing Australian comics artists' project.

And we spoke with 'El Presidente' of the Australian Cartoonist's Association Jules Faber, who announced the new 'comics' category of their annual Stanley Awards - very exciting! You need to be a member to be eligible, so join up. I am! I think this is a pretty exciting moment - 'single-panel and strip' (ie newspaper) cartoonists are extending a warm hand to 'comic book' cartoonists - let's take it and shake enthusiastically! Also, the next Stanley Awards ceremony is in Melbourne in early November, and those parties are the stuff of legend.

So join the ACA and let's get some great comics mixing it up with some great cartoons.

Thursday 22 April, day 4 Dylan Horrocks Masterclass

2010-06-09T05:31:00.000-07:00

Behind? What do you mean, I'm behind? Oh, so it's three and a half months after the event and you're wanting to know why it's taken me so long? Well., you see, it's like this --

LOOK!

OVER THERE!

BEHIND YOU!

Oh, nothing there? Well, as I was saying, the fourth day of the Dylan Horrocks masterclass at the Wheeler Centre in late April began with Jo Waite removing small leaves from my hair and glue sticking (or 'baton de colle'-ing) them into my sketchbook, where I was continuing to work on the story...

Wednesday's questions had been deep dark ones, and Thursday's were higher, and lighter, but no less vital:

What do I love about making comics?

What do I love about my own comics?

Me I love inking, and I love finishing a page. I love it when my drawings start to dance, that is when they start to live on the page, as ink on paper.

Who knows, maybe we would have answered these questions more flippantly without the 'rockbreaking' of the day before.

Anthony Woodward had more questions:

And his then-fellow Ballarattian, now-On-The-Road Mel Rowsell, had these things to say about making comics and looking at her own comics:

Later Dylan talked to us about a sequence that he put in at the end of his big comic book Hicksville, which he included as his (and thus the reader's?) farewell to the book and its world.

One of our show-and-tells this afternoon was Pat Grant, who staggered us with double page spreads from the graphic novel which is also his PhD.

General Pat Ulysses S. Grant shows us how simple it would be for the 10 of us to storm Parliament House.

Mirranda Burton had been busy earlier in the day (amongst other things, she was being contacted by the FUMETTO international comics art festival in Switzerland to be told she had won a prize for her comic 'P.S') but she arrived later to give these great statements about what she loves about comics.

Tim McEwan was getting pretty unshaven by this stage of the week (Interestingly >>> namedrop namedrop>>>) Tim and I were having a drink at the Neil Gaiman afterparty at the Sydney Opera House last Saturday night and he was talking>>> BIGGER namedrop >>> about seeing Will Eisner and Jim Steranko at the Opera House in 1985 when he was in Year 11, which makes Tim -GHASP!!!- a year younger than me!)

AS soon as the masterclass finished for the day, Jo Waite and I spirited (a-HA! See what I did there, Eisner fans?) Dylan away for a chat on yours and mine favouite comics radio show (and podcast) TheComicSpot.

It was a great interview (well I thought so) and you can now listen to it here)

Then it was back into the city to meet the rest of the masterclass gang, and assorted other Melbourne comics folk, at, well really there was only one restaurant that could possibly have housed us all:

Gaylord.

The aforementioned Tim McEwan, his stubbly chin, and a Kingfisher beer. And oh, what's that? A Trevor Bovis drawn onto the linen tablecloth designed to outrage not only the waiting staff but also the attending vegetarians?

I think so.

Finally, a whole lotta comics makers at a table. That's Kirrily Schell front right in front of me, then Dylan, John Retallick, Chris Downes, Tim McEwan and Mirranda Burton. On the left Mel Rowsell, behind her Jo Waite (doing I think some sort of manga sign language), a fuzzy David Blumensteain, a totally obscured Sarah Howell, Anthony Woodward and Neale 'Beautiful Artform' Blanden.

Next (or rather, In Some Time): I WILL get around to blogging Day Five, not my favourite day of the masterclass - Thursday or perhaps Wednesday were that - but the last day, and thus important.

In fact next will be a little GRAPHIC and then me on tour in country Victoria as long-dead Prussian naturalist, Wilhelm von Blandowski.

Intermission

2010-06-01T06:35:00.000-07:00

Hello, yes, I realise that it is the first of June and winter has begun and I am almost ready to write about Thursday, Day Four of the Dylan Horrocks Masterclass, but not quite yet, so in the meanwhile here is a picture for you:

Dylan Horrocks Masterclass, Wednesday 21 April: Go Deep

2010-05-10T04:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, well, continuing this account of this masterclass at the Wheeler Centre with Dylan Horrocks and a roomful of crackerjack comics construction talent, let me embark upon attempting to describe the action on day three, which is where it started to head into Another Realm, at least for me.

As you can probably divine from the figure above (who it is I don't rightly know, but he sure wears a cap/hoodie combo much like Patrick Grant Esquire, MBE, OBE, PhD), this was a day on which -at least internally- one stood up from the drawing table, glanced down at one's single large hand and thought,

"Heck."

The day's discussion began with Dylan asking us all to answer the following questions:

1. What don't you like about making comics?

2. What don't you like about your own comics?

3. What are you afraid of?

These seem like innocuous enough questions, simple even, and you can imagine having them asked in a workshop which you might do for work (and I mean here labour work, work that you don't love but you do for the money etc) and gritting your teeth and answering them in the most painless and/or entertaining way possible and hanging OUT for the morning tea break.

The difference here was that we were all talking about something that we care about dearly, the difference WAS, I suppose, was that here, there was something at stake. It mattered. And it mattered that we tried to get as close to the truth as we could. In this, Dylan fearlessly led us by answering the questions first.

This process hollowed out a new space in the room, a new space between us. Related aside: I am currently enjoying (very much) reading 'The Otaku Encylopedia' by Patrick W.Galbraith (Kodansha 2009). This evening I came across this Japanese word:

Ma: Empty space and time. Also a literary concept describing places in

a story where the reader must fill in what's missing from the narrative.

This is quite common in ANIME and MANGA.

This is not exactly a description of what was created on Wednesday at the Wheeler, after all we were all answering the questions as best we could, words and thoughts were flying, the room was full of them. BUT. We had moved from a primarily technical discussion on the Monday and Tuesday to a more personal one, describing our struggles with comics. What was under scrutiny was our relationship to comics, and more radically our relationship to OUR comics: what do YOUR comics mean to you? What do they say to you? Looking back at you through the paper as the images form, what do they say?

This is less comics-as-communication and more comics-as-exploration. In the definition of 'ma', above, replace the word 'reader with 'cartoonist'.

Anyway I will try to tease this out a little more in further posts, but let's move onto the afternoon. I had begun the week with the thought that I would use the arvos to re-begin work on my long-abandoned graphic novel, I Knew Him. Early in the week though, I got a request for comics from a literary magazine, and a comic began to form out my doodlings and drawing play:

One of the afternoon show and tells was by Michael Camilleri. Now it just so happens that the two folks I have shown doing these, Jo Waite on the Tuesday and Michael today, it just so happens that they were the two people I am most close to, in the room, my closest friends there. And so, with both of them, I was familiar with all of the past work that they presented and showed images of. However, with both of them, I was flabbergasted by the extent and the range of their work, by their dedication and work ethic and high seriousness and gigantic senses of humour about their work. To make this clear - I was struck in this way by everyone's show and tell, but with Jo and Michael, I was wrong-footed by thinking that I knew their body of work. But being shown it it a gigantic volcanic vomit in the space of 20 minutes pretty much blew my mind off, both times.

It is impossible that I know these people. How do they possibly have time for a cup of tea or to share a meal when their surely every minute is concerned with the sculpting of worlds from words and pictures?

The other nice coincidence here is that both Michael and Jo are proponents of the 'biro school' of comics making. The ball point pen that I had rejected as hopelessly low-class, they both wield with ferocity and finesse. And this was the week, in the big chunky 200 page 'Costcutter' A5 Giant Jotter Pad, that I took all my notes and drawings in the wonderful medium of black biro.

And you know what? It's pretty nice to draw with.

Above, a blurry Michael shows us all, but Tim McEwen and Andrew Fulton in particular, an image from his experimental picture story comic book narrative painting fictional autobiography, 'Catholic Boy'.

NEXT: Here comes the sun.

A Word or Two on Curriculum

2010-05-03T04:42:00.000-07:00

So. Day Two. The drawing day. But how, you're asking, how does a comics masterclass GO? How does it run? What happens? Well, in general we'd get to The Wheeler Centre each day at about 9.30am, collect our wits and our morning beverage of choice, then have a chat for about an hour or so, led by Dylan. On this morning he had a slide show (or power point as the young people call them) to show us, of many of his drawing influences.

We'd got a bit of an inkling of this on the Monday, but on the Tuesday Dylan confirmed that yes indeed, he is

That is to say, he is very interested in comics at the point at which they break down, at which they don't work, at which they betray their makers' blind spots. It's an interesting idea and line of enquiry: that the fault lines in an artwork point towards the heart and the humanness of the creator, their fallibility and their shadow. It's a picture of the artist as vulnerable to, rather than as master of, their work.

On some mornings the talking would be followed by an exercise. So it was this morning: we'd been talking about drawing and Dylan suggested we do some life drawing. Rats, I thought, in my organiser mode, I HAD thought of getting a life model in but had jettisoned it from the plan about a month previously.

Luckily it turns out that you don't need a life model if the New Zealander in the room doesn't mind standing still for 2 and 5 minutes at a time. Dylan gave us itty bitty bits of paper (were they A7? A8?) and we drew him. Appropriately for a room full of cartoonists, they were about the size of a comics panel...

The mutt above ain't Dylan, but was lifted from a couple of pix that Dylan showed us from Rudolphe Topffer, the early 19th century schoolteacher and comics pioneer.

It was certainly a week of great t-shirts. Andrew Fulton was wearing this one on Tuesday. It was sort of a warning for the discussion that we were going to have on Wednesday morning.

After a chat and some work, clearly you're going to be hungry and clearly it's around lunchtime, so it's time to head out and grab a bite. Luckily the Wheeler Centre is right next to the QV Centre on Little Lonsdale Street and I quickly discovered the sweet and crazy delights available from Bread Top - deep fried donut anyone? And because the weather was warm you could then sit out on the QV's octagon of fake grass and talk, well talk comics with the other masterclassers.

Upon our return in the afternoons, we'd start in on working on the projects that we had on the go at the time - the idea here was that the masterclass time wouldn't be taking away from valuable drawing/writing time but adding to it.

This particular afternoon, we'd been asked by Anna at the Wheeler Centre if it would be okay if a crew from the ABC TV show 'Stateline' could come in and do some filming to go to air on Friday of that week to promote that weekend's talks/focus on graphic novels, 'Drawing In, Drawing Out'. The masterclass gang graciously agreed, little knowing that one of the crew would be part of the Australian comics world:

(you might need to click on the page above to get it to a readable size)

Yep, Stuart Thorne - Tony Thorne's brother, and writer of some strips from the great Melbourne-based FOX comics anthology from the 80s. Check out 'All Men Are Bastards' on this page from Tony's rather magnificent blog.

Once the press had left and we'd got back to our fart jokes and rude drawings, it was time for Show and Tell. Each afternoon tea time, two folks in the room would get up and talk about their work, show some pictures and speculate on where they were going with it. When we were constructing the program for the week, this seemed like a good 'extra bit' for each day, but in the week itself, these sessions were amazing - revealing and very important, for the artists du jour and for the others of us there, to question, appreciate and suggest.

Above, light floods the room and our consciousnesses, as Jo Waite unfurls her incredibly detailed street map for the town of Maversham.

Above: Chris Downes, Andrew Fulton, Mirranda Burton, Tim McEwan, Jo Waite, Dylan Horrocks and Mel Rowsell huddle around some more of the art from Jo's 'maximum octopus' (I think that's how she describes it), '*Lucky'.

NEXT: Wednesday. The horror, the horror...

Comics Masterclass, Monday: Writing

2010-04-29T05:12:00.000-07:00

WAITaminnit, that's Sam Zabel, a Dylan Horrocks character, drawn BY Dylan Horrocks on a whiteboard in Melbourne's Wheeler Centre (books, writing, ideas), under the word 'writing'. Just how do these sorts of things come to be? Well, THIS thing started with Liz Argall, an Australian comic book writer currently living in Portland, Oregon in the U.S, (an area apparently swarming with cartoonists) nudging me and saying "Hey, we should get some really great comic book person to come to Australia and give a masterclass. Let's apply for some funding from the Copyright Agency Limited Cultural Fund." And I asked Dylan, and he was keen, so apply we did, and award it they did (thanks CAL!) and on the 19th of April 2010 at 9.30am in the Board Room of the Wheeler Centre, the week-long masterclass began.

Our roll-call: Tim McEwen, Michael Camilleri, Jo Waite, Andrew Fulton, Anthony Woodward, Chris Downes, Mel Rowsell, Bernard Caleo, Mirranda Burton, Pat Grant.

I know.

Above, Michael Camilleri (always focussed), Jo Waite on the move, the back of the well-groomed Tim McEwen's head, and Dylan Horrocks.

On that first morning we all gave a sort of a run-down, you know, 'my life in comics' sort of thing. Dylan went first, told us about his comic 'Pickle' that came out in the 90s, his graphic novel 'Hicksville' that came out of that series, and how the subsequent experience working as a comic book writer for DC Comics almost totally squished any love for comics out of him.

Luckily though, he stopped writing for DC and, as he said

to making his own comics.

Phew. We all shared stories, then got onto talking about the ways that comics stories and comics worlds get built, imagined, drawn, and actually probably LAST of all get written. Pretty interesting stuff.

Above, Anthony Woodward talks about comics writing with Jen Breach, a comics writer who joined us just for that Monday morning.

Below, Michael Camilleri shares some advice once given to him by a Russian actress.

Very sage.

NEXT: Tuesday - drawing!

Dylan! Horrocks! Supa! Nova!

2010-04-28T04:44:00.001-07:00

Last week was ten days long.

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

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

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

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

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

NEXT: The Dylan Horrocks Masterclass/ Comics Studio

Legends of Kamishibai

2010-02-20T21:59:00.000-08:00

This week just gone, we enjoyed another visit from staff of Tokyo's National Museum of Nature and Science to Melbourne Museum, where I work. Above, with the lyrebird on his shoulder, is Yoshikazu Ogawa, our visitor and Head of the Education Division back home. The lady who the emu is looking at is one of my colleagues, Priscilla Gaff, Program Coordinator of Life Sciences. The bloke whose bum is being nibbled by a wombat is of course me, the humble Programs Ofiicer.

Yoshikazu was following in the footsteps of Koichi Kubo and Koichiro Harada, all of whom have visited Melbourne Museum since I returned from Tokyo in November 2009. He was particularly interested to talk about pre-service and on-going teacher education, which he and Priscilla discussed in detail, but I was particularly interested when he described the sort of presentations that are done for groups of pre-school children visiting the National Museum. Speaking of these, he used a Japanese word which electrified me.

And the word was this:

Kamishibai

Really? Did my ears deceive me? Turns out they didn't. (Thanks, ears!) Turns out Yoshikazu really did say, 'Kamishibai'. As in, Manga Kamishibai: the art of Japanese paper theater (sic), as in the book that my mother bought me last week (thanks, Mary Anne!) from the Paperback in Bourke Street. Kamishibai is a Japanese storytelling form where the performer presents a series of painted images, much like the storyboard of the tale, and also makes sound effects and provides character voices and the narration.

Before they began the tale, the storyteller would sell lollies to the kids who'd assembled around the kamishibai 'stage' (sometimes mounted on the back of a bicycle!), then tell the kids that week's instalment of a Golden Bat Adventure, or a thrilling episode of the life of the Prince of Gamma, who hails from Atlantis.

Last century's iteration of this tradition began in the 1920s and continued through to the early 1950s, when television brought it down.

BUT.

Those of you who know of my enduring love for both performance and comics will be able to guess how much my temples throbbed when I saw those words, 'paper' and 'theatre', used together. Kamishibai, eh? And then, to have Yoshikazu mention the very word not a week later, well frankly, it's hard for me not to detect the ring of destiny in that word.

Kamishibai.

Watch this space.

That's RRRight folks, we're back!

2010-02-08T05:09:00.000-08:00

Lovely to be back on air with Richard Watts last Thursday morning on his weekly Melbourne cultural roundup 'SmartArts' on 3RRR, 102.7 FM. I join him for the monthly 'Drawn Out' segment, on which we discuss local and international comic book news and releases.

First up this time was 'The Book of Other People' (Penguin 2008), edited by Zadie Smith - a collection of 23 stories by tippety-top writers (including Smith, Nick Hornby, Miranda July, Jonathan Safran Foer, Colm Toibin, Johnathan Lethem and Dave Eggars) - and it's a benefit book, so some of the money goes to Eggars' 826NYC which helps kids to get reading and writing. As Smith says, it's a case of 'real people making fictional people work for real people'.

Each story's title is eponymous (does that work the other way?) and I'm writing about the book here because, in the great McSweeney's tradition, there's comics in them thar words, folks: in this case 'Justin M. Damiano' by Dan 'Ghost World' Clowes and 'Jordan Wellington Lint to the Age 13' by Chris 'Jimmy Corrigan the Smartest Kid on Earth' Ware. Folks, the Clowes 4-pager alone is worth the price of admission. Although I gotta admit, I was loaned the book by my mum after she discovered the comics floating amidst her sea of text. Thanks Mary Anne! Sorry illiterate urchins of New York City!

And hey there's an exhibition of installation comics work on upstairs at Brunswick Bound, the great bookshop at 361 Sydney Road Brunswick. 'Der Stadtschaftschaubild' is a made-up German word made up by Alice Mrongovius, who has also made the works- she reckons it means something like 'the cityscape diagram'. Mrongovius is a fine artist and a comic book artist (and the one does not preclude the other, of course) and in this show, on until March 21, she is expanding the comic book form into installation art and then making a comic from that.

Occasionally, just ever so occasionally, you get something from the work Kris Kringle that you actually really like, in fact sorta blows your tiny mind, but it's gotta be said that that person who has gotten it has usually blown the cut-off point for the money that you're supposed to spend. So it was that, back in December, I received the above book. (Thanks Biana!)

Thomas Ott is Swiss and has been doing these wordless scratchboard comics, as well as caricatures for mags and newspapers over Europe way for some time. (Selected titles: 'Tales of Error', 'The number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8' oh yeah) 'Cinema Panopticum' (Fantagraphics, 2005) is a 100 page hardcover book of 4 short wordless stories framed by a narrative of a little girl going to the fun fair with too little cash. It is a quite remarkable, grostesque, hilarious book, which also performs the moebius-strip trick of actually transforming itself into one of the terrifying Cinema Panopticum machines. Incredibly satisfying.

Another comics exhibition is on in town at the moment: MP Fikaris' show 'Good Sauce' features drawings paintings and a new comic booklet from this local master of the dada/beat/art comics form. It's at Nine on Seven Artspace, Level 7 Curtain House 252 Swanston Street in the city, until February 20, open 7 days 2pm until late.

And in the spirit of last-but-worth-waiting-for:

Linda Foote is from Perth, is remarkably 24 years old and is even more remarkably, not an animator. I could have sworn when I picked up this gorgeous A5 mini at Sticky, that she must be an animator, given the Miyazaki feel of the story but also the incredibly assured quality of the artwork. Harder still to believe, this book is a 24 hour comic (ie, produced in one straight 24-hour stint) - though Foote does let us know that the shading on the drawings came later. This book is a masterpiece of pacing, a glorious example of a comic in which nothing happens. well when I say that, of course things DO happen, it's just that the emphasis is almost totally on the relationship between the creatures (friends? brothers?) Devan and Shaya.

This book is very fine, builds a beautiful world, and leaves you with the feeling that you want to spend more time there. Congratulations to Linda on constructing such an enjoyable comics reading experience, and I look forward to reading more work by her.

Two Tangos: too much?

2010-02-04T04:19:00.001-08:00

Well, it's been a month and a half or so since the big double Tango launch, and it's time to have a bit of a look back at that night and more generally at doing two big books in the one small year.

Night of the launch, 10 December 2009, making some comment that's making Mirranda Burton wince. Probably a pun.

Photo: Peter Jetnikoff

At this point I can say that I'm very proud of both books, but I have to admit that by the time Tango9 rolled around, rose up on its haunches and became the 350 page behemoth that it is today, it had outgrown my capacity to handle, muzzle, or restrain it. The sheer volume of pages and number of contributors flipped a switch somewhere in the tiny tinny little administration centre in my noggin. Mistakes were made. (And still are: only yesterday Greg Holfeld, author of the excellent 'Homefront' (page 124), emailed to say, "Um, could I please have my contributor's copy?" Oh, gosh.)

But the most significant errors on my part were to leave out stories which I had said were in. Yes, that's right. Two stories had been selected for the book, the authors informed, and then, in the utter madness of the final book assembly, I ... misplaced them. One of these, 'Interview with the Dictator's Mother', was a collaboration between Mark Scillio and myself (yep) - I realised it was missing the night before we went to press, and couldn't at that point change things. With the other story, Justin Woolley and Brendan Hayday's 'In the Trenches', it was only on the night of the launch, that this situation was revealed. To these three gentlemen, Mark, Justin, and Brendan, I offer my sincere apologies - I am terribly sorry. What happened with your stories was really the opposite of what I set up Tango to do.

But here's the silver lining: both stories are now available to be read on the Tango9 page on the Cardigan Comics website, here. Thanks to Justin Caleo for making this happen.

Hey look! It's dapper Neale Blanden!

Photo by Peter Jetnikoff

And thanks to brother Luke, it's now possible to buy Tango via Paypal on the website, here. Tango9 sells there for $25 and earlier Tangos for $10, and hey, psst! If you've ever wanted to fill in a hole in your Tango shelf or even if you just have fingers that twitch for a bargain, I'd get in now and make a purchase before I work out how to add a postage amount there.

That's right Tango fans: get in quick while you can, and order your books postage-free!

Animated David Blumenstein and Jovial Jo Waite, skylarking.

Peter Jetnikoff took the picture

And hey. Let's not forget that other fine Tango of last year, 'The Tango Collection'. It has not escaped my attention that having two of us (viz: Elise Jones and I) working the editorial angle of that book meant that it worked out a lot more smoothly. And yes, you're right, it's published, marketed and distributed by Allen and Unwin, too, (all of which is magnificent) but I'm focussing on the administrative aspect here, and I'm thinking that for 'Tango10: Love and Music' (planned for 2011), I will assemble an editorial team...

ANYway, if you're a Melbournite, you should really buy The Age this Saturday (all 16 kilos of it) and open the A2 section and check out the 'Books' section: the word on da street is that there will be a review of 'The Tango Collection' there. Please, stain it with coffee and croissant crumbs, for me.

And cry huzzah!

Finally, himself. Peter Jetnikoff, I think photographed here by David Blumenstein, next to a copy of Peter's biography and his portrait from 'The Tango Collection'. The rest of the group of photos of the launch from which the ones in this post were selected can be found here.

Goodbye, J.D

2010-02-01T06:07:00.000-08:00

Strangely (from the vantagepoint of the events of last week), in the interim between Christmas and New Year of last year, a month ago now, I read again 'Franny and Zooey', by J.D Salinger.

I needed a book.

There it was, to hand.

I read it.

And three weeks later, he died.

Here's the comic that I made a month ago:

Vale, Jerome David Salinger (1919 - 2010), creator of the immortal Glass family.

The Double Tango launch at Dante's!

2009-12-12T18:13:00.000-08:00

Yes, it finally happened, my friends.

Two Tangos were launched last Thursday night at Dante's Emporium in Fitzroy. The photos in this entry are by my son Joseph (and darn fine ones they are too). For another look at the launch, including a very impressive panorama, go to Bobby. N's blog, here.

Above: the editor of both books, and publisher of one of them, at the beginning of the night, in a festive mood.

ONE TANGO

The selfsame editor brandishing 'Tango9: Love and War' during the speech/hoo hah. 'Tango9: Love and War' is published by Cardigan Comics. That is, me.

THE OTHER TANGO

Andrew and Sean (unpictured, but to the left of the piles of books), from Readings bookshop in Carlton, were there vending 'The Tango Collection', a lovely thing because it was at that very shop that Erica Wagner, the publisher at Allen and Unwin, first suggested the idea of the collection, 18 months ago. Thank you, Erica. And thanks to Jenny Nestor for lettering the signs for the selling of the books, there and then at the start of the launch. And thanks to Adrienne Leith for her reprising her award-winnning role as the 'Tango carnie', selling 'Tango9: Love and War' to punters and handing out authors' copies to the contributors.

ONE JOHN

John Murphy, a contributor to both books and a great friend, the curtains to the back room, and the neck of a bottle of Corona.

THE OTHER JOHN

John Retallick, a great friend, comic book correpondent, and anchorman of TheComicSpot, organiser of Comic Camp, and cynosure of many other Melbourne comic book events, who came along early to help set up, then left to interview out-of-towners Chris Downes and J.Marc Schmidt (both in town for the launch), then came back in time to help me through a crisis later in the night. Thank you, John.

Also: John came over to our place the other night and recorded a web-only ComicSpot special, a 'full and frank' interview with Susan and I about the joys and challenges of getting two Tangos out this year. If you can handle the truth, it's here.

Above, the hoo hah in full flight. By this point, I had informed the gathering that 'The Tango Collection' is not a comic book but is, in fact, a walk through a beautiful and time-drenched city. And I'd let them in on the secret that 'Tango9: Love and War' is not a comic book, but is, instead, a postcard from a POW camp to a far-flung and beloved reader.

Both books, in short, are vessels of romance.

Above, a section of the gathering. Most obviously Bruno Herfst, the designer of 'The Tango Collection'. To his left, Jodie Webster (editor of the graphic novels 'The Great Gatsby' by Nicki Greenberg (yes, she was there, with 4-month-old Poppy) and 'The Sacrifice' by Bruce Mutard (there too), all from from Allen and Unwin), and to his right, Elise Jones, my fellow editor of 'The Cardigan Collection'. Thanks Bruno and Elise, it was a real pleasure making the book with you.

The simply staggering image by Michael Camilleri announcing my next project, called (at this point) 'Cardigan Comics'. It will be a magazine. It will feature comics and words-only text. That's what we know. Keep an eye out for it.

Finally, thank you to all of the contributors to Tangos thus far, and particularly 'The Tango Collection' and 'Tango9: Love and War'. You have made the work that makes the making of Tango worthwhile. Important, even. Yeah, important. We're building a comics culture, here. And it's a pretty fine one. Congratulations.

And finally finally, thanks: to all of the very many people for coming along to the launch; to Scott Matthews and Luke Caleo for wrangling files for Tango9; to Justin Caleo for his huge effort on designing the book; to Peter Ra for taking up the 'cover designer' reins from Anita Bacic (she was there! from Istanbul!); to Mary Anne for the hat, and a massive, MASSIVE debt of gratitude is due to Zebedee and Joseph and most of all Susan, for the time and the space and the love and support that I needed to make these books. I love you, my family.

'The Tango Collection' hits the shelves!

2009-12-06T03:49:00.001-08:00

Thanks to my artist friend Torie Nimmervoll for the shots here of 'The Tango Collection' gracing the shelves of fine bookshops up Sydney way, with some great shelfmates. This shot was I think taken in Kinokuniya (hullo Rip Kirby by the great Alex Raymond!),

this one possibly at Ariel Books in Paddington (hallo Charlie Brown and Snoopy by Charles Schulz),

and this, I think, is at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (hello, New Yorker cartoons). But really. Good company, eh?

Also, there's a wonderful online review by Kristen Dagg on the Kluster web site.

A Tale of Two Tangos

2009-11-26T04:11:00.000-08:00

Yes indeedy! The launch is on, the heat is on, it's all on and you should definitely come along to the launch of both 'The Tango Collection' and 'Tango9: Love and War'. Allen and Unwin is publishing the former, Cardigan Comics is publishing the latter, and I've edited both.

Launch where:

Dante's Upstairs Gallery

(Dante's is on the corner of Getrude and Napier Streets Fitzroy -

climb the stairs off Napier Street)

Launch when:

6.30pm start, bit of a speech at 7.30pm or so

Thursday 10 December 2009

Launch what:

The Tango Collection

a 'greatest hits' book selected from the pages of Tango 1 - 8

57 contributors. 70 stories. 248 pages.

$35 on the night

Tango9: Love and War

a whole lot of new work

88 contributors. 76 stories. 352 pages

$20 on the night (usually $25)

Koichi incoming!

2009-11-26T03:33:00.001-08:00

Last Wednesday, which was a week after I'd returned from Tokyo (actually nine days but who was counting such things?) I cycled into work at Melbourne Museum with a lighter heart because I was going in to meet Koichi Kubo, from the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. Below, I and my museum colleague Paola Luz after being showered in gifts by Koichi.

I am holding an extremely rare catalogue from Koichi's museum's exhibition of 'Moyashimon' (see my blog entry here), which Noriko Morii managed to track down for me. I am extremely interested in this exhibition, which used a popular manga as a way 'in' for audiences for an exhibition about fungi and mushrooms. Yes, I'm interested in it because it is comics/manga that provided the window through which the visitors saw this science, but even more because it's fiction though which we gain an experience of fact. As someone who makes theatre in a museum, this is a constant theme for me: bluntly, how much can/do/should you lie in the service of the truth? Although, of course, I don't think of fiction as lies any more than I think of facts as the truth.

We walked Koichi through the museum, showed him our so-new-you-can-still-smell-the-taxidermy exhibition WILD and divers other spaces in which functions (weddings, cocktail parties, corporate events) can be held - this is Paola's department. Why? Kubo-san trained as a biologist, but has been in Australia researching the way that Australian museums hire out their spaces for events, particularly after hours. A fact finding mission.

And if you're after facts at Melbourne Museum, you can't escape this one: that really, the entire gigantic place is really just ONE elaborate case for THIS collection item. Phar Lap. Well, his skin, anyway.

Bernard, Koichi and The Lap, Melbourne Museum November 2009. Photo by Paola Luz.

Sayonara, Koichi! Thanks for coming to Melbourne!

Edo Tokyo and the Amazon

2009-11-16T03:33:00.000-08:00

Back. Very definitely back in Melbourne. But dreams still fever-haunted by images from Japan, like this one, from 8 days ago, a stone statue about 5 metres high, outside the Edo Tokyo Museum. So struck was I by this man, in his hat, with his stick, with his bird (a crow, surely) on his disproportionately large left hand (I must confess, that was my work), standing on his turtle, that I had to stop. As I drew, the cries of children - who sounded like they were playing a game - came over a very high fence. As I drew, the turtle gently lifted off the ground, and slowly floated down the road. No one batted an eyelid. So me, not wanting to be out of place, I didn't either.

In other news, The Tango Collection has been listed on Amazon! Wow. Thanks to John Retallick for bringing my attention to this.

And on the very same day that the selfsame river of books brought to me Logicomix. Look for a review here soon.

Wella wella feel I'm in decay...

2009-11-08T14:32:00.000-08:00

Hulloa, Sydney.

Lost in transit(ion)

2009-11-08T01:33:00.000-08:00

At Narita Airport, about to climb into one of those flying tubes we all love so much.

See you in Australia. Thanks for reading, I've really enjoyed writing this.

'Six views of room 331 at Fukudaya'

Smiling like a loon to cover up the tears.

At Ueno Park this afternoon, my old friends were there in numbers.

This is an art project called 'Overall' by Yoshinari Nishio - he uses unwanted clothes to make big clothes overalls for 'giant lost heritage'. In this case, a 7 metre high Buddha that was destroyed by the '23 earthquke and the WWII bombings.

The Buddha's face survives as a shrine.

Another museum? Pourqoui-pas!

Edward Jenner.

Takamori Saigo.

Astro, Lafcadio, and me

2009-11-07T02:23:00.000-08:00

When my train pulled into Takadanobaba (what a name, eh?) this morning, the 'you've arrived at the station' jingle was very familiar - where DO I know that from? -- of course! It's the theme song to the show featuring Osamu Tezuka's most famous creation, Mighty Atom. Coming down the steps I was greeted by a panoramic frieze featuring the intrepid Astro and other Tezuka creations. Okay, what gives? Did Astro save Takadanobaba in the first episode or something? 'Painted by a grateful public' etc?

Okay, there's one of my odd pan-and-scanimations of the entire frieze at the bottom of this post, or go to this lovely blog where they have much better pictures, as well as the answer to: 'Why Astro? Why here?'

Whiles I was taking my snaps, I heard a GREAT rendition of the Astro theme being played LIVE -drums, sax, maybe even accordion? Whirling around I saw these guys who, while they may have wanted to tell me about god, were great musicians.

Good costumes too. Anyway, I'd come here to find 'The Blue Parrot', a second hand English language bookshop, and after a false street or so, I did locate it. (It occurred to me for the first time today that actually a compass would be really good in Tokyo, maybe any city but particularly one without street names or street numbers, in order to orient your map at least in the right direction... ah well, next trip)

Waitaminnit -- an English language bookshop? A bit pathetic, surely...? Hear me out, hear me out. It all had to do with my NEXT destination. I had read (thanks Time Out) that in the Zoshigaya (another great name, no?) Cemetary, just up the road, the grave of Lafcadio Hearn could be found, under his Japanese name, Koizumi Yakumo. My remarkable wife Susan had given me, maybe a year ago, a book by Hearn and I'd loved it. And now I was going to visit his remains, but if I could I'd take a book of his with me.

And thanks to The Blue Parrot, indeed I could. 'Lafcadio Hearn's Japan: an anthology of his writings on the country and its people', edited and with an introduction by Donald Ritchie (Tuttle, 1997). Armed with this, the autumn 2005 issue of 'Modern Haiku' and (ahem) Gerard Jones' 'Men of Tomorrow: the true story of the birth of the superheroes' (Heinemann, 2005), off I hiked.

OVER the Kandagawa River.

UNDER the traffic lights whose horizontality I love so.

PAST the owl sculpture, through the back streets and finally, into Zoshigawa Cemetary.

Ah.

Tokyo, I would have to say, is very good at hyper-busyness and freneticism.

And also very good at oases.

The orb weaver spiders hung in their webs.

The sun slanted in through the trees on the headstones.

It was cool, and quiet, and calm.

I sat and read my Hearn.

Then went in search of his bones.

I couldn't locate the actual grave, but I did find the row in which it lies.

So I drew that (inked it back at home base this evening).

Then launched myself into the mega-shopper Saturday afternoon craziness of Ikebukoro - hoo! Everybody alive here! A train to Harajuku Station, another busy throbbing shopping mecca where I managed to find KIDDYLAND (Joseph, Zebedee: does that sound good?) and was dragging my feet back towards the station, when another 'Oasis this way' sign appeared. I followed it, and found myself in a pair of white slippers and the 'Ukiyoe Ota Memorial Museum of Art' - a perfect follow-up to yesterday's shin-hanga experience. This museum changes over the pieces that they display EVERY MONTH (imagine that, my curatorial friends), and at the moment the show's focus is on plants, flowers and gardening and its place in old Edo town. Sounds so-so: was fantastic. And was a great intro, for me, to the work of Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 - 1858) -- far and above the pick of the artists on display. Every time a piece hit me with design, colour, particularly composition, I'd bet myself it was a Hiroshige and it would be.

There's a selection of Hiroshige ukiyo-e on this site here (seems to be linked to Monash University, sugoi), but please, do come to Harajuku and put on the slippers and see 'em for real.

Below is a sketch (again, 'no photos', hooray!) of an ukiyo from a series called 'Parodies of Watanabe no Tsuna' by Utagawa Kunioshi (1897 - 1861). 'Parody' must be being used in a sense I'm unfamiliar with, here: maybe it means closer to 'version'... anyone? Bueller?

Looks a bit Matisse-y, eh?

My two oasis experiences had brought a line from a previous post into my mind, and tonight I went back and removed a rather weak joke at the tobacco shredder's expense from a couple of days ago (the Tobacco and Salt Museum visit). It's interesting: in Australia I would think such an exhibit/person/representation fair game, but here, the same approach left a bad taste in my mouth, and I feel better now that I've removed it.

Saturday night in Shibuya. My last night in Tokyo, at least for a while. I feel like I've only scratched the surface of the facet of the dermis of the mantle (of course).

But I think that I'll be back.

Below: the Astro street art

Every haiku leaf that falls

2009-11-06T03:46:00.000-08:00

Ladies and gentlemen, supper tonight is brought to you by the equally wonderfully named and fonted convenience store of

And it looks a little like this:

On one of the nights that we were out with Nahoko from Miraikan, she recommended the Edo-Tokyo Museum as a good place to visit. I had already starred it in my pre-Japan Time Out and Lonely Planet guidebook scanning (thanks Torie, Hayden, Luke) and today was the day.

On the way out of the station I saw this poster and thought, oboy. I really hope THAT exhibition is on at the Edo Tokyo. And you know what?

It was.

This is the Edo-Tokyo museum. Pretty vast. I stood outside it and thought what people think when they arrive at Melbourne Museum: "Where do I get in?"

Having located a ticket counter and a lift and F1, I stood outside 'Beautiful Shin-hanga: Revitalisation of Ukiyo-e', took a deep breath and entered. 'Shin-hanga' means 'new print' and this exhibition tells the story of woodblock prints made from the Taisho to the early Showa periods (1915 - 1942) which were created using techniques developed through the Edo (1603 -1868) period.

In the latter Meiji period (1868 -1912), ukiyo-e (or woodblock prints) were being replaced as a means of image-making by photography. The ukiyo-e genre was in decline locally, although it had begun to generate interest overseas. Wanatabe Shozaburo, a dealer in ukiyo-e, was central
to the revival of this method of making images. He commissioned artists to make them, and shin-gawa as a form peaked from 1916-1923, at which time the great Kanto earthquake and subsequent fire puts a dent in things.

Charles W. Bartlett from the USA holds an exhibition of shin-gawa in New York in 1916.

There was beautiful work in there: the Edo-Tokyo link above has a few images, and you weren't allowed to take pictures, which is a good thing, so I took some quick sketches instead.

This head was from work by Sugiura Hisui, whose design sense was excellent.

The below is from an incredible image by Kawase Hasui, 'Snow at Zojoji Temple' (1922).

Another North American player in the story was Robert Muller who first sees shin-gawa in 1927 and is gob-smacked but gets his first opportunity to come over here and do some scouting in 1940 when he visits, as the text panel delightfully puts it, "...ostensibly for his honeymoon..." but returns to the US with a huge swag of shin-gawa. Below, the ostensible Mister and Mrs Muller check out some Tokyo art action. (Must have been a pretty interesting time for an American to be doing business in Japan, yes?)

I have to credit the National Gallery of Victoria with whetting my appetite for ukiyo-e: they had a great exhibition a few years ago which seems to linger as an online education program, but with lots of good images, here.

Oh, and the picture on the poster is called ' The actor Onoe Matsuke IV as Konori Yasu in the play Yowa Nasake Ukina no Yokogushi' and it was made by Yamamura Koka in 1917.

Then it was up to the 6th floor for the permanent exhibition, telling the story of the history of Tokyo. Above is a model of the facade of the Nakamawa-za Kabuki Theatre. Scale: 1/1. This place was an aeroplane hanger. If, like me, you didn't have much of a bead on Tokyo's history, let me give you my now very basic version.

This guy is Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543 - 1616). He builds a stronghold at Edo and establishes a warrior government, or bakufu. There's the shogun, the bushi (samurai), and the chonin (townspeople).

Then there's the Meiji Restoration in 1868, when Edo becomes Tokyo. Hey, I didn't promise details. Broad strokes! Broad strokes!

The guy below is the American who sails into Tokyo harbor at some point and says, well lookee here!

Aw forget all that facts stuff, you know why we're here --- dioramas!

Below, the chonin area around Nihonbashi Bridge, mid 17th century, scale 1/30.
There were even binoculars around the dioramas so you could see all the lttle people and little street dramas and events that were going on. Wow.

Below, the ohiroma (large chamber), matsu-no-roka (pine coridor) and shiroshin (white study) at Edo Castle, mid nineteenth century, scale 1/30.

At the bottom of this post (I can't seem to put movies mid-post) you will find a slide show tour of the residence of the daimyo of Echizen-Fukui, Matsudaira Iyo-no-kami Tadamasa (1567 - 1645), which was built in front of the Otemon Castle gate of Edo Castle. A huge complex which in the Meireki Fire of 1657 was razed to the ground.

Below, a picture of the 1/1 scale model of the offices of the newspaper Choya Shinbun, from around the 1870s-1880s. This 'Government and People's Newspaper' was founded in 1874 and was significant for its severe criticisms of the Meiji administration.

Below, a 1/30 scale model of the same area, the Ginza 'bricktown' from the same time period. The area had been burn to the ground by the Tsukiji fire of 1872. The Meiji government rebuilt, design supplied by British architect Thomas James Waters. I overheard a man explaining to his compainions that the design was an utter failure as the brick buildings became stifling in the Tokyo heat. The area was destroyed again by the Kanto earthquake of 1923.

This model, which was under our feet under glass, was amazing. I think it depicts a luxury residence constructed to receive honoured overseas guests. Anyway, every 10 minutes or so, some Strauss would strike up, the roof would slide back, and you could look into the ballroom where a circle of couples were waltzing!

This tower was built in 1890 by the British engineer William K Burton. Called Ryounkaku, or '12 stories', it was the first building in Japan with an elevator, contained shops and lounges and was also destroyed by the 1923 earthquake.

The dreadful 20th century was not kind to Tokyo. In 1923 came the 7.9 richter Kanto earthquake, followed by high winds which fanned dreadful fires. 71,000 people were lost, 44,000 in ONE PLACE, the army clothing depot at Ryogoku (the area where the museum stands today).

In World War II, the 'Pacific War' as I saw it referred to a couple of times, air raids on Tokyo began in 1942. On March 10, 1945, 100,000 people died as the result of one raid. This stuff hit me like a brick. As it should. I had to get out, I needed air.

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Another quest for the day had come up yesterday, talking to Skye. He had mentioned a Moomin cafe. A Moomin cafe? Would I be able to order Hattifatteners on toast? I had/hat to find it.

Clutching some admittedly fairly sketcky directions cobbled together from blog references that I'd found, I emerged out of Korakuen station, right next to the Tokyo Dome (or 'big egg' sports stadium and fun park) and followed my little map which got me here:

Really? That's NOT what I'm looking for. A bit downhearted, I listlessly walked along a very long wall until I came to somewhere that Moomins might go on holiday.

A beautiful park.

My spirits lifted. I had yearned, and Tokyo had provided. Not what I wanted, but something better.

I walked, saw the fish splash in the pond, I sat down. A leaf fell.

I lef the gardens and pretty soon found the Moomin cafe. Of course. And unsurprisingly, this was on the front table.

Now I don't think you'll be surprised to hear that the cafe is sort of underwhelming. BUT, there's some good transfers of Tove Jansson's art onto the walls.

And blow me down if that isn't Moominpapa up there in his boat suspended from the ceiling.

And various members of his extended family sitting around waiting for a drink.

Though I don't know, maybe it's me but they more remind me of creatures from the cantina at Mos Eisley in 'Star Wars'. Not the puppets themselves, but I dunno, it's something about the way they are sitting... their attitude.

And this was a BIG mistake: putting a picture of Snufkin on the piece of plastic that they attach the bill to... a Hemulen perhaps, maybe even the Groke, but Snufkin? Never...

Anyway, I went, I saw, I ate, I paid. I'm pretty sure that somewhere Tove (RIP) is rotating at such speeds she could probably generate enough electricity to power Greater Tokyo, but there you go.

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On the way back to Shibuya (and THANK YOU helpful white gloved Tokyo Metro man at Korakuen who was SO KEEN to aid me with my public transport plans) I kept thinking about that scene in the movie 'Barton Fink', where Mad Man Munt (John Goodman) is giving the lowdown to Barton (John Turturro). Maybe it was the mosquito in my hotel room last night, I don't know, but the line keeps repeating in my head:

"You're just a tourist with a typewiter, Barton...

I have to LIVE here."

The tourist

The typewriter

Hm, maybe I should cut down on these long-winded posts.

It's obviously preying on my mind.

Still, If I did live here, I'd be able to get these from LAWSON

every

night.

And finally, the diorama slideshow as promised...