COFFEE TABLE seventh fix

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Doctor Comics

On the coffee table this month is a large format comic: Brian Chippendale‘s Ninja. It’s big! Try reading it on the train or the bus. Forget planes. In fact try fitting it on your coffee table next to your cup, cake and skeleton doll. It covers your torso and half of your face. You could probably hide behind it. Or it could double as furniture-a tray or portable drawing board. Think of Chippendale and you think of furniture or drawing. It is also the name of a suburb of Sydney quite close to where I live.

Mexican Day of the Dead skeleton reading the oversized Chippendale Ninja comic. (Photo by Michael Hill)

In the photograph there is an actual Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) skeleton doll engrossed with Chippendale’s work. There are lots of densely laid out pages of tiny panels that take some concentrated getting through and giant pages of tangled lines of images that give you no hope of finding the narrative direction home. Going round in circles and getting lost is easy with this guy. You end up making your own arrangements as to meaning and intent. Also on the coffee table is a copy of his IF’N OOF, much smaller than Ninja but a quite chunky 800+ pages. I picked this up during a trip to Adelaide and on the return flight to Sydney it was fun to see that Jack Black was aboard and looking very animated. He had played a sports stadium venue the night before with his band Tenacious D as support act for the Foo Fighters. Jack sat up the pointy end of the plane and we were down the back with the roadies. The one in our row was wearing a Brian Chippendale designed T-shirt and had actually met him at TCAF. Serendipitously, I had bought Chippendale’s IF’N OOF the previous day as my in-flight reading.

This guy really likes to draw. He has put miles of ink into these two books. It might take him awhile but he gets it done. Apparently Ninja took 3 years to draw. Both books shown in the photo were published by Picture Box, an innovative publisher of comics and graphic novels in Brooklyn. Chippendale was educated at the Rhode Island School of Design. A former member of the Fort Thunder collective he is a musician as well as an artist and has played in a couple of Noise rock bands. You can hear his vigorous drumming on the extra track Náttúra on Björk’s recent album Biophilia.

This post was first published on the Doctor Comictopus blog that has now been merged with this one, the Doctor Comics blog.

Doctor Comictopus avatar for Michael Hill Ph.D (a.k.a. Doctor Comics) designed by Michelle Park.

Read all the coffee table entries imported from Doctor Comictopus and now on the Doctor Comics blog: COFFEE TABLE first fix COFFEE TABLE second fix COFFEE TABLE third fix COFFEE TABLE fourth fix COFFEE TABLE fifth fix COFFEE TABLE sixth fix COFFEE TABLE seventh fix

BLOTTING PAPER The Comic: Production Report No.3

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Doctor Comics

Things continue to progress with the production of my comic Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions Of Doctor Comics although somewhat erratically due to digressions, delays and interruptions. I’m still managing to keep it moving along with the intention of having the first chapter finished by the end of the year. In my transition from comics studies to comics production the most striking discovery has been the amount of time required to create the artwork. Whereas I can sit down and write a thousand words about someone else’s comic in a reasonably short space of time, to create a page of art seems to take hours and hours and days. From all of the comics creators that I have interviewed in Australia the common rate denominator was “a day per page”. I wish!

In addition to the use of printmaking as a means of image-making I am doing quite a bit of drawing. I love this process and the mental spaces it takes me into. I find that I enjoy getting lost in those places that only seem like twenty minutes but are actually closer to two hours.

The story is set in Sydney when ‘my’ character is older than I am now but contains flashes backward to earlier times. It’s been quite fun trying to imagine what I shall look like then and trying to recall via photos how I appeared when I was in my twenties. In any case as it is both partly autobiographical and partly fictitious, the character doesn’t look exactly like me. It goes on.

For a visual diary record and time-line overview of this project, see all of the BLOTTING PAPER: The Comic production reports: No.1 No.2 No.3 No.4 No.5 No.6 No.7 No.8 No.9 No.10 No.11 No.12 No.13 No.14 No.15 No.16 No.17 No.18 No.19 No.20 No.21 No.22 No.23

Archive of Australian Comics History: GETTING SMASH(ed)!

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Doctor Comics

Saturday July 16 2011 was a day of anime amusement at SMASH! (the Sydney Manga and Anime Show). Over the past few years the local interest in manga and anime has grown and grown. Initially ignored by existing comics conventions fans created their own event. Some even began learning to read Japanese so that they could translate the manga. The conventions provided opportunities for fans to meet and enjoy these two media. Some local female creators began making their own versions of shōjo manga. Interest continued to grow, as did the events. In Sydney there was Animania, in Melbourne, Manifest. And then there was SMASH!

The SMASH! 2011 program.

Located for the first time in its short 5 year history at the Sydney Convention Centre because it outgrew its previous venues from the Rounhouse at the University of New South Wales to the Sydney Town Hall…

The view from inside the Convention Centre. (Photo by Michael Hill)

Welcome from Box Man. (Photo by Louise Graber)

An occasion to dress up, there were costumes that required weeks of sewing, beading, feathering and functioning, paraded throughout the venue and on the cosplay stage…

A tutu moment… (Photo by Michael Hill)

One happy fan. (Photo by Louise Graber)

Many children there in addition to university, high school and primary school students, some with parents…

Three young cosplay fans. (Photo by Michael Hill)

There were Hobby Rooms for the construction and display of dolls and robots…

Some Dolfie dolls. (Photo by Michael Hill)

and tired doll collectors patiently waiting for a seat in the Maid Cafe.

Lolitas with Dolfie. (Photo by Michael Hill)

There were Art and Doodle Rooms for art and doodling…

Marker art. (Photo by Michael Hill)

and Panels with noisey Guests…

Anime director Shinichi Watanabe. (Photo by Michael Hill)

…and an epic two hours plus Cosplay Competition…

A really big and really, really long Cosplay Competition. (Photo by Michael Hill)

…not to mention a Gundam workshop, Karaoke, videogames, a screening of the excellent anime Summer Wars, sewing, pattern and armour making workshops, and a huge trading floor full of vendors, artists and clubs. And it all glowed in the presence of the patronage of the Japan Foundation, one of the stakeholders in the event. Japanese popular culture positively thrived on a magical, wonderful, fantasy day!

My report on last year’s event can be found on Forbidden Planet International.

This is the third in a series of posts called Archives of Australian Comics History that document 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 and it eventually led to my PhD thesis: Ph.D. Macquarie University, Division of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy, A Study Of Contemporary Australian Alternative Comics 1992-2000 With Particular Reference To The Work Of Naylor, Smith, Danko And Ord, 2003. On completion of the research I donated the materials and comics I had collected to the National Library of Australia: Michael Hill Collection of Australian Comics.

Posts in Archives of Australian Comics History: Comics in Record Shops Comics Workshops Down Under Ground Getting SMASH(ed)! International Exhibition of Drawings OZCON4 Mind Rot Savage Pencils Sick Puppy Comix TiNA Arena 2011 MCA Zine Fair 2002 Sequential Art Studies Conference 2nd Sequential Art Studies Conference

Archive of Australian Comics History: 2011 MCA ZINE FAIR

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Doctor Comics

Sunday 22nd May 2011, in the shadow of the Harbour Bridge and opposite the Opera House, the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) hosted a zine fair as part of the 2011 Sydney Writers’ Festival. 50 tables plus 1 bar were trading to a reasonably sizable crowd. It was a good fusion of the literary and the artistic being a collaboration between a writers’ festival and a contemporary art gallery. Increasingly comics are being seen in art galleries due to comics increased cultural status, their literary and artistic elements, and the growing popularity of graphic novels.

Opposite the Sydney Opera House… (Photo by Michael Hill)

…in the shadow of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and construction of the new MCA building… (Photo by Michael Hill)

…at the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art)… (Photo by Michael Hill)

The make-up of the stall-holders on the trading floor was a bit of a mystery with a notable presence of craft makers selling jewellery and accessories that led to complaints by some comics creators who were unable to acquire a table and there was the inevitable grumbling from some of those about the application and selection process not being all that transparent.

ma poulette- It’s the MCA Zine Fair program!

This is an architecturally and culturally significant site. The distinctive MCA building is located on the edge of the harbour at Circular Quay and in sight of the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House. You can even arrive at the MCA by ferry as was the fashion last year during the Sydney Biennale.

…2011 Sydney Writers’ Festival-MCA Zine Fair. (Photo by Louise Graber)

L to R: Tim McEwen(c0-creator of Greener Pastures), Doctor Comics(wearing Sick Puppy Comix T-shirt) and Cefn Ridout(comics critic and designer). (Photo by Louise Graber)

Busy trading in the marbled walled Foundation Hall. (Photo by Louise Graber)

Stallholders/publications included Naomi Hatchman and Zeera the Space Pirate, the Sticky Institute, Chris Mikul and Bizarrism, Black Mermaid, Stuart Stratu and Blackguard, Steve Carter and Antoinette Rydyr and SCAR, Milk Shadow and Tough Titties.

Comics creator David Puckeridge with his publication “BOX”. (Photo by Louise Graber)

Sick Puppy Comix creator Stuart Stratu. (Photo by Louise Graber)

Through the publication of his anthology Sick Puppy Comix Stratu displayed a plurality of graphic styles from a range of alternative comics contributors whose content was both provocative and oppositional.

Doctor Comics with comics creator Antoinette Rydyr of SCAR. (Photo by Louise Graber)

This is the first in a series of posts called Archives of Australian Comics History that document 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 and it eventually led to my PhD thesis: Ph.D. Macquarie University, Division of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy, A Study Of Contemporary Australian Alternative Comics 1992-2000 With Particular Reference To The Work Of Naylor, Smith, Danko And Ord, 2003. On completion of the research I donated the materials and comics I had collected to the National Library of Australia: Michael Hill Collection of Australian Comics.

Doctor Comics

Creating and Critiquing Comics Art

Tag Archives: Sydney

COFFEE TABLE seventh fix

BLOTTING PAPER The Comic: Production Report No.3

Archive of Australian Comics History: GETTING SMASH(ed)!

Archive of Australian Comics History: 2011 MCA ZINE FAIR

Follow “Doctor Comics”