Neale Blanden T-shirt design for Sick Puppy Comix.

Here I go again with a blog triggered by a T-shirt following my recent post Feed On Comics! that featured a T-shirt design by Max in which I was having my initial rant about comics and my last blog where I happened to be wearing this T-shirt (above) when I bumped into Stratu, the creator of Sick Puppy Comix, at the 2011 MCA Zine Fair. It’s about fifteen years old and still wearable and I really love Neale Blanden’s design. Anyway it’s also a catalyst for me to talk about that particular comic.

Sick Puppy Comix was an anthology of short pieces by Australian and some overseas alternative comics creators that was edited and self-published by Stratu who was motivated to commence small press publishing after visiting OZCON and discoverng the mini-comics on sale there. So he placed an ad in the music press calling for contributions. The submissions he obtained resulted in the first issue of Sick Puppy Comix in 1996. Two other issues followed that year, another three in 1997, two more in 1998 and so on until a total of 13 issues had been published. Each issue collected short pieces either sent to Stratu or solicited by him. The range of artistic expressions of the various contributors gave the comic a plurality of graphic styles. By contrast there was a commonality of content with much of the material dealing with aspects of sex and/or violence, the X in the title denoting some adult oriented and explicit content. At times there was an almost scatalogical celebration through the regular flow of bodily fluids and waste in the stories.

The print and presentation quality of the publication improved with each issue and this, and the desire to be included it, seemed to inspire creators to do good work, such as the illustration above by Neale Blanden that was featured on the cover of the comic at some stage. During its existence some of the best alternative Australian comics creators contributed work e.g. Gerard Ashworth, Neale Blanden, Tim Danko, Anton Emdin, Michael Fikaris, Louise Graber, Maccad, Kieran Mangan, Chris Mikul, Mandy Ord, Pox Girls(Susan Butcher and Carol Wood), David Puckeridge, Q-Ray, SCAR(Steve Carter and Antoinette Rydyr), Glenn Smith, Ross Tesoriero and Ryan Vella as well as Stratu himself.

This is the second in a series of posts called Archives of Australian Comics History documenting moments in the recent history of Australian comics, particularly alternative comics and the Australian Small Press. I started researching this subject in the late 1990s. That research eventually led to my PhD thesis: Ph.D. Macquarie University, Division of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy, by virtue of the thesis, A Study Of Contemporary Australian Alternative Comics 1992-2000 With Particular Reference To The Work Of Naylor, Smith, Danko And Ord, 2003.

The other posts in the Archives of Australian Comics History series are: OZCON4, International Exhibition of Drawings, Mind Rot, 2011 MCA Zine Fair and 2002 Sequential Art Studies Conference. Others will be added in due course.