Category: Archive of Australian Alternative Comics

THE KAPPABASHI CAT: Production Report No.1

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics, Art, Blotting Paper, Cats in Comics, Comics, Japanning October 28, 2017

This is the first in what I intend will be a regular series of reports documenting the production progress of the sequel to my comic/artist book Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions Of Doctor Comics that was completed in 2016. The current draft title of the new book is The Cat Cooking Comics In Kappabashi. It is in a similar vein to Blotting Paper in its graphic approach but different in that this comic will be less autobiographical and less of a graphic memoir and much more fictive…however, several strong links remain between the two titles. It will contain fewer anecdotes of Doctor Comics and much more about his cat Cohl’s adventures. Nevertheless, strong links between Doc and the cats may persist to the extent that, initially, I thought it could fit as an extension to Blotting Paper, even as a further chapter within that title. We’ll see. A first draft of the comic has been written but the design and the artwork have yet to be commenced. As in the earlier comic printmaking will be employed along with other forms of image-making including drawing, typography, handwriting and photography. As with the earlier publication the intention is to make a comic in an artist’s book type of format.

The story begins in Berlin where Cohl, having heard no word from his friend Busch for almost two years, decides to follow him to Tokyo and try to find him. Cohl has been very comfortable in the German city and consequently reluctant to move but his curiosity has awakened him from his cultural slumber.

For details of the production of all five issues of the Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions Of Doctor Comics artist book/comic and a continuing visual history record and time-line overview of the project read all of the production reports on the following posts: Issue #1: 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 Issue #2: No.14 No.15 No.16 No.17 No.18 No.19 No.20 No.21 No.22 No.23 No.24 No.25 No.26 No.27 No.28 No.29 Issue #3: No.30 No.31 No.32 No.33 No.34 No.35 No.36 Issue #4: No.37 No.38 No.39 No.40 No.41 No.42 No.43 No.44 Issue #5: No.45 No.46 No.47 No.48

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics: IMAGINARY WORLDS SYMPOSIUM

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics, Art, Comics, Film January 22, 2014

This symposium continued the association between the University of Technology, Sydney and Supanova of staging comics related academic events. In this case topics were not confined to the study of comics in general nor Australian alternative comics in particular. Rather, the papers reflected a more wide-ranging list of subjects that included connections between comics and fashion, film, animation, literature, calligraphy and computer games. There was even a presentation on the design of comics for young readers with vision impairment. The range of topics reflected a broader range of the university’s teaching and research areas and also had resonance with Supanova’s own broadening interests that had spread from an initial focus on comics (it was originally known as ComicFest) to a wider pop culture spread.

Page from the SUPANOVA program listing the event.

This symposium researchers focused on the use of the design elements of image and space and the manipulation of these in the creation of fantasy worlds in these various media forms. Co-curated by Dr. Vicki Karaminas and I the symposium was staged at the UTS city campus in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building on 14th October 2005 and was opened by the Dean of that faculty. This is the fifteenth 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, however, as stated above, this post has a broader orientation. I started researching this subject in the late 1990s and it eventually led to my PhD thesis and doctorate: 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: Comic-Fest Comics in Record Shops Comics Workshops Down Under Ground Getting SMASH(ed)! Imaginary Worlds Symposium International Exhibition of Drawings OZCON Mind Rot Savage Pencils Sick Puppy Comix TiNA Arena MCA Zine Fair 2002 Sequential Art Studies Conference 2nd Sequential Art Studies Conference

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics: COMIC-FEST

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics, Comics July 18, 2013

Prior to the emergence of one of the larger comics and entertainment media conventions in Australia Supanova Pop Culture Expo the same management team, led by Daniel Zachariou, staged an event called Comic-Fest. This had a largely comics oriented focus compared with the subsequent broader span of Supanova in which comics represents just one of several entertainment media that included films, television series, toys, trading cards, computer games and the internet. There were two stagings in 2001, at Fox Studios in February then followed in September by Comi-Fest 2 at the Sydney Centrepont Convention Centre.

Trevor Bovis in space, the Greener Pastures program cover, design by Tim McEwen.

Saturday seminar details with my involvement in the superheroes panel.

The Comic-Fest panel line-up, L to R, Dillon Naylor, Daniel Gloag, Amber Carvan and Ben Hutchings.

For the September event with approval from the event director Daniel Zachariou I put together a panel discussion on Australian alternative comics by local creators Dillon Naylor, Daniel Gloag, Amber Carvan and Ben Hutchings who each talked about their own comics and answered questions I fired at them from the floor. A general discussion of the Australian comics scene followed.

Another shot of the panel, L to R, Gloag, Carvan and Hutchings.

Aside from the panel discussion the big attraction for the local small press was the opportunity afforded them to set up shop and trade their work on the commercial floor along with the imported comics. There was also the opportunity to meet fellow local creators and exchange comics, contact details and curry recipes.

On the trading floor, Louise Graber and Alex Major.

Also trading, Komala Singh.

Also trading, Daniel McKeown with Alex Major.

Along with the commercial trading there was the social attraction of meeting and chatting with fellow comics creators.

Lewis Morley and Louise Graber.

Two funny blokes and cartoonists, Ross Tesoriero and Ben Hutchings.

Two funny blokes and even funnier cartoonists, Ross Tesoriero and Ben Hutchings.

Ross Tesoriero and Louise Graber.

This is the fourteenth 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: Comic-Fest Comics in Record Shops Comics Workshops Down Under Ground Getting SMASH(ed)! Imaginary Worlds Symposium International Exhibition of Drawings OZCON Mind Rot Savage Pencils Sick Puppy Comix TiNA Arena MCA Zine Fair 2002 Sequential Art Studies Conference 2nd Sequential Art Studies Conference

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics: 2ND SEQUENTIAL ART STUDIES CONFERENCE

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics, Comics, Japanning May 1, 2013

It was ten years ago this month that the second Sequential Art Studies Conference took place at the University of Technology, Sydney. At a time when minicomics, having blossomed throughout the 1990s, made more of an impression in the local alternative comics scene. The event was billed as A Mini Conference on Minicomics and featured presentations by comics creators as well as scholars. The conference was convened by Spiros Tsaousis(now Spiros Xenos) and I and was a sequel to the first Sequential Art Studies conference in 2002, and again held in association with Supanova Pop Culture Expo. Included in the event was a minicomics market.

CALL FOR PAPERS: 2nd Sequential Art Studies Conference May 23, 2003, Sydney. The Interdisciplinary Studies Unit of the Faculty of Design at UTS (University of Technology, Sydney) http://www.uts.edu.au will again host this new scholarly conference that will be held during the same week as the Sydney Writers’ Festival. The inaugural event in 2002 attracted a small but stimulating range of papers from local academics and students and it is hoped that this year’s event will build on that. Scholars are invited to submit 250 word proposals which address alternative approaches to comics, whether local or global, recent or historical, online or offline, artistic or commercial. The conference will adopt an interdisciplinary approach and so welcomes papers from a broad range of areas. Send proposals by email to either of the conference convenors and coordinators by February 28, 2003: Michael.Hill@uts.edu.au Spiros.Tsaousis@bigpond.com

CONFERENCE PROGRAM: Scholarly Papers

4.00pm Opening of Conference and Welcome Assoc. Professor Steve Harfield Assoc. Dean of Research Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building University of Technology, Sydney

4.05pm The Sydney Morning Hell of Glenn Smith, Michael Hill, Interdisciplinary Studies Unit, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building University of Technology, Sydney

4.30pm Fear and yearning of “manga Japan” in Australia, Craig Norris, School of Communication, Design and Media, University of Western Sydney

4.55pm Taming the ‘Superhuman’ Shrew: Identification with Superheroes in Comics and the Popularisation of the Human Potential Ethic, Adam Possamaï, School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Western Sydney

5.20pm The Problem of The Yellow Kid: From Single Panels to Sequential Images, Spiros Tsaousis, La Trobe University

Craig Norris, University of Western Sydney.

Adam Possamaï, University of Western Sydney

CONFERENCE PROGRAM: Artist Presentations

6.00pm Alex Major (Naomi and Poggie)

6.20pm Komala Singh (Moshi Moshi)

6.40pm Bernard Caleo (Big Cardigan Comics)

7.00pm Katarina Knebel (Cult Fiction Comics)

7.20pm Ben Hutchings (Geeen Comix)

7.40pm David McDermott (Glitter Shy)

Bernard Caleo proclaimed his comics manifesto and promoted Tango.

Bernard Caleo ‘performed’ his comics manifesto and promoted Tango.

Komala Singh talked about her minicomic Moshi Moshi.

David McDermott goes Glitter Shy and had some pages ‘performed’ live in his presentation with lines read to projected images of the panels.

Chloe Lyttle introducing David Maccad.

Ben Hutchings going Geeen!

Katarina Knebel talks Cult Fiction Comics.

Alex Major describes his minicomic Naomi and Poggie.

Minicomics market at the conference.

This is the thirteenth 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: Comic-Fest Comics in Record Shops Comics Workshops Down Under Ground Getting SMASH(ed)! Imaginary Worlds Symposium International Exhibition of Drawings OZCON Mind Rot Savage Pencils Sick Puppy Comix TiNA Arena MCA Zine Fair 2002 Sequential Art Studies Conference 2nd Sequential Art Studies Conference

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics: DOWN UNDER GROUND

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics, Art, Comics February 13, 2013

Underground comics are the subject of this post, Australian underground or alternative comics as they are better known: firstly, through an exhibition that Glenn Smith curated called The Ink Runs Deep Down, Down Underground at the Orange Regional Gallery in New South Wales, Australia in 2005, and then at a conference organised by Donald Ault called Underground(s) at the University of Florida in 2003. I was involved with both, writing an essay “Art From The Inkubator”, for the exhibition catalogue in Orange and opening that exhibition, and in the USA at the Florida conference, presenting a research paper titled “Down Under Ground: Emotional and Oppositional Outpourings from Sydney’s Subculture in the Comics of Glenn Smith”.

The Ink Runs Deep...exhibition catalogue. (Design by Glenn Smith)

The successive waves of Australian alternative comics produced since the 1980s feature a raw and spontaneous graphic style, an irreverent attitude and D.I.Y. Punk influenced approach to production, different from mainstream approaches to comics production in that they could be pluralistic, wide-ranging, antagonistic and mocking, containing taboo themes. The exhibition in Orange celebrated the creative expression behind these comics, that much maligned art form usually consigned to the pop culture trash bin, but there elevated up onto the gallery wall.

Back cover of the exhibition catalogue. (Design by Glenn Smith)

Creators featured in the exhibition are listed on the back cover of the exhibition catalogue, above. They exhibited applications of comic art in animation, painting, posters, book covers, and skate boards and a range of mediums from pen and ink to digital imaging.

Display of Anton Emdin comics in the exhibition.

Display of Cruel World minicomics by Anton Emdin.

Display of Black Light Angels minicomics by Louise Graber.

Commenting on the emergence of the underground comix in Australia in his book Panel By Panel, John Ryan pointed to the social context of the 1970’s as a period in which a sense of national pride developed and led to a consequent interest in locally made comics. That first wave of Australian alternative comics was seemingly motivated by the North American Underground Comix movement. Like the Abstract Expressionist art movement of the 1950s, which Australia seemed to have mysteriously imported, rather than organically grown, these comics initially appeared derivative but later developed an Australian style.

Louise Graber with a painting of a panel from her comic Black Light Angels in the exhibition.

These comics can be seen as an echo of the Underground comix of the late 1960s that began in San Francisco, different in style and content to the mainstream North American super-hero themed comics, they opened up the way for autobiographical and artform genres. At the Florida conference it was exciting to hear from some of the creative figures from the original Underground as well as to describe Glenno’s work, and argue that it had some resonance with what they had done.

Front cover of Underground(s) conference program. (Design by William S. Kartalopoulos)

Back cover of Underground(s) conference program. (Design by William S. Kartalopoulos)

Underground(s) poster (detail).

This is the twelth 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.

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics: COMICS WORKSHOPS

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics, Art, Comics November 29, 2012

The Bio-Hazard comics workshop poster. (Poster design by Xander Black)

Back in the 1990s a small number of design students enrolled at Sydney’s University of Technology were fortunate to attend two comics workshops taught by local creators Jason Paulos, Bodine Amerikah, Stuart Hale, Ant Larcombe, Sam Young and Xander Black. The events were organised by the students. Working in the Visual Communication Design program at the time, the course from which one of the creators, Ant Larcombe, was a graduate, I was happy to act as go-between and coordinator of this student initiative. The first workshop was Basick Inkstinct in 1996. This was followed up and developed the following year with the same tutors under the title Bio-Hazard. Both workshops enabled students to have contact with industry practitioners, creators and publishers of titles such as Hairbutt the Hippo, Cyberswine and Zero Assassin. This type of contact can make a valuable contribution to student training. It permitted students to see comics production as a valid form of visual communication within the graphic design field, a course that the majority of those who attended were enrolled.

The Basick Inkstinct comics workshop flyer. (Flyer design by Neil Heymann)

Both workshops were informally structured with the creators sitting at tables with the students demonstrating their skills on paper and engaging in studio banter with each other as they drew. Stuart Hale and Xander Black gave brief talks about comics making and the relative merits of local creators before the comics artists went through a practical session of scripting, thumbnails, page layout, rough and refined pencils, lettering and inking. The visiting creators were very generous with their time and the students appreciated this. These workshops preceded a more formal and official event that I subsequently organised, namely the Mind Rot Australian Comics Seminar & Workshop that I have blogged about previously in this series. That more formal workshop and accompanying symposium represented a further step in the process of formally recognising comics design within the academic curriculum as I was eventually able to offer comics based projects in the subjects Word and Image and Graphic Visualisation in that course and in the Master of Animation course that followed some years later.

This is the eleventh 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.

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics: TiNA ARENA

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics, Art, Comics September 21, 2012

1999 event: Outsider meetings. (Photo by Louise Graber)

On Sunday 27th September 1998, I drove from Sydney to Newcastle to attend the two sessions devoted to the discussion of comics at the inaugural National Young Writers’ Festival. Accompanying me were three active members of the Sydney ‘small press’: Stuart Stratu, Anton Emdin and Ross Tesoriero. With there having been all too few formal attempts to discuss and promote ‘small press’ activity we were impressed with the novelty of the event, its inclusion in a writers’ festival and with the fact that it was actually taking place, if a little curious as to why the organisers had by-passed Sydney and only invited Melbourne and Canberra based creators. Nevertheless we were enthused enough to make the trip as it offered a rare opportunity to meet with colleagues from interstate, many of whom, although familiar with their work, we had never met.

1999 event: Tim Danko, Stuart Stratu, Q-Ray and Kieran Mangan. (Photo by Louise Graber)

1999 event: Michael Fikaris(Froth) reading minicomic. (Photo by Louise Graber).

1999 event: Carol Wood and Susan Butcher aka Pox Girls reading minicomics. (Photo by Louise Graber)

The organizational aspects improved considerably over the next few years and the festival developed, expanded and diversified. Originally called the National Young Writers’ Festival it became part of the umbrella event TiNA, the acronym for This is Not Art. This has become a multidisciplinary event in the week leading up to and across the October holiday weekend and has spread around Newcastle which has become the TiNa Arena. During the weekend the city becomes a catchment area for visiting youth from a range of artistic, literary, music and media fields from all over Australia. I attended five consecutive events from 1998 to 2002 by which time comics discussions had moved into the Town Hall. A high point for comics creators is the annual comic and zine fair held on the Sunday afternoon. This was a busy trading and swapping event first staged in the park across the road then subsequently moved into the Mission theatre with accompanying live music.

1999 event: Anton Emdin(If Pain Persists) with Lewis P. Morley and Marilyn Pride(Red World Komics). (Photo by Louise Graber)

1999 event: Tim Danko(Dead Xerox Press) and Stuart Stratu(Sick Puppy Comix). (Photo by Louise Graber)

On arrival in the city that afternoon in 1998 we easily found the centre of activities laid out in various sumptuously appointed rooms of the Newcastle Town Hall and Civic Centre. There were panels and presentations in the Banquet Room, the Function Rooms and some impressively attired Committee Rooms in the Council Chambers and also at the nearby Wintergarden Cafe. We were, however, unable to find the venue for the discussion of comics, so we asked for that information and were directed out of the main building, out the back and there it was, a modest room with plastic chairs, and an insufficient number of them at that, so a few attendees sat on the floor. No podium, no lectern, no microphone, no monitor, no vcr, no whiteboard, no jug of water, no media nor reporters were present. Furthermore, this was not a seminar but a workshop. Comics were not so much to be discussed as produced and if there was to be any discourse it would be on matters of production rather than on content, or so it seemed. Then I realised how appropriate all of this was in the then current scheme of things. It was the perfect venue at a writers’ festival for the discussion of comics because it indicated just how marginalised the form was. The established, pure literary forms such as the novel and poetry headed the hierarchy. Even emerging word based forms such as e-mail and writing textual content for the Internet and journalism had superior status and were located in the main hall. But comics and zines, not being part of the mainstream, were out the back and out of sight.

1999 event: Happy Pox Girl Susan Butcher. (Photo by Louise Graber)

1999 event: Q-Ray(The Comic Messiah) and Kieran Mangan(Urrgh). (Photo by Louise Graber)

Interested (Photo by Louise Graber)

Things changed over the subsequent years. We’ve had comics events at the Sydney Opera House with international guests but it was so different back then, so ‘underground’, so beneath the radar. Comics were even made during the event in a ramshackle upstairs, cut and paste graphics studio called Octapod where minicomics filled were produced. At the 1999 event I took the opportunity to do a series of interviews with many of the comics creators in attendance. This became research material for my doctoral thesis.

1999 event: Ross Tesoriero(Radiation Sickness). (Photo by Louise Graber)

Event organiser Kylie Purr with Glenn Smith.

This is the tenth 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.

1999 event: Michael Hill aka Doctor Comics. (Photo by Louise Graber)

1999 event: Dr. Michael Hill aka Doctor Comics. (Photo by Louise Graber)

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics: COMICS IN RECORD SHOPS

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics, Art, Comics August 8, 2012

In the 1990s it was not unusual to find alternative comics in record shops in Sydney such as Phantom Records, Red Eye Records and Waterfront Records. You could find an assortment of locally made comics in a corner on the floor or on a shelf or display rack (some of the odd sizes of the comics produced did not fit standard racks and perhaps that is why they found their way onto the floor), along with the standard stock of vinyl and cassettes, CDs, music books, VHS tapes and DVDs. A similar situation could be found in Brisbane at Rocking Horse Records, in Canberra at Impact Records and in Adelaide at Big Star Records and Dominator Records. It was in these record shops that I first found some of the Australian alternative comics that became the subject of my research into comics. There were also specialist bookshops that stocked these comics as well as fantasy and sci-fi and movie material. In Sydney such shops were Land Beyond Beyond, Comic Kingdom, Kings Comics and in my suburb of Glebe, Half A Cow, a really wonderful shop to browse in with its carefully selected subcultural stock. It also had that strange logo of a cow cut in half, across not along like the Damien Hirst version and in cartoon rather than realistic style. There were also mail order distros such as Chewing Gravel that sold Australian comics.

The shop in Glebe. (Photo by Louise Graber)

Half A Cow business card with it’s eye catching sliced cow illustration.

The reason why independent record shops were selling alternative comics was perhaps due to the perceived affinity of both medium’s independent approach to production and distribution. This positioning of the small press in the independent landscape created parallels with the independent music industry that had flowed on from the Punk Rock movement. The term ‘Xerox music’ referred to the independent production of Punk records where the distribution system also employed a D.I.Y. approach with product being delivered to interested shops by hand. Alternatively it could be distributed by mail order. There were similarities in the way alternative comics were produced and distributed. These comics of the 1980s and 1990s, because of their small print runs (usually less than 500), were commonly printed on photocopy machines by their creators rather than by the more costly offset process or digital printing used by professional print technicians for commercial clients. After printing their comics the creators, like their musical colleagues, would normally distribute their work themselves, to comics, books and record shops, doing the rounds on foot, bus, train or bicycle and carrying small amounts of stock in their bags, then returning a week or do later to check on sales. Eventually most of the more mainstream comics shops carried some alternative comics. There were even some musicians who also made comics. Ray Ahn, Ryan Vella and Glenn Smith are examples. Half A Cow’s affinities with independent music ended up changing them from a bookshop into an independent record label.

Louise Graber’s Black Light Angels comic-first sold at Half A Cow in Glebe.

This is the ninth 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.

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics: SAVAGE PENCILS

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics, Art, Comics May 30, 2012

Savage Pencils was an exhibition of contemporary Australian comics cover art that I curated at Silicon Pulp Animation Gallery, Sydney in 2001. It featured original art by Paul Abstruse, Ray Ahn, Gerard Ashworth, Anita Bacic, Xander Black, Neale Blanden, Anna Brown, Bronson Boyd, Susan Butcher, Bernard Caleo, Dakanavar, Tim Danko, Anton Emdin, Michael Fikaris, Edo Fuijkschot, Louise Graber, Ben Hutchings, Scott Johnson, Gregory Mackay, Alex Major, Kieran Mangan, Daniel McKeown, Chris Mikul, Alice Mrongovius, John Murphy, Dillon Naylor, Linzee R. Nold, Mandy Ord, Jason Paulos, Q-Ray, Kirrily Schell, Jan Scherpenhuizen, Shags, Bernie Slater, Glenn Smith, Cipta Tanamas, Dean Tarjavaara, Matt Taylor, Ross Tesoriero, Tolley, Ryan Vella, Kevin Whitfield, Colin Wilson and Carol Wood.

The invitation by Glenn Smith.

The exhibition catalogue contained the essays: “The Broken Pencils of Southeast Asia” by International Journal of Comic Art editor John A. Lent, “Why the Australian Small Press Make Eskimo Comics” by Tim Danko, and my one paper “Sick Puppies With Pencils”.

Neale Blanden illo-also used as the exhibition catalogue cover.

As a fun idea for the catalogue I asked the artists to draw a ‘savage pencil’. Here is a selection. All art is the copyright of the respective creators.

Colin Wilson

Butcher and Wood aka the Pox Girls.

Louise Graber

Ross Tesoriero

Alice Mrongovius

Linzee R. Nold

Shags

Chris Mikul

Matt Taylor

Ben Hutchings

Tolley

Bernard Caleo

Ryan Vella

Kirrily Schell

The notion of collecting comic art was fairly new in Australia at the time. This exhibition offered 50 works ranging from the mainstream to the the avant-garde, from 44 artists representing every State of Australia except the Northern Territory. Some of the cover art was displayed on the gallery’s website.

Exhibition installation view. (Photo by Louise Graber)

The exhibition catalogue with cut-up Neale Blanden illo on the cover.

The title for the exhibition was taken from the alias of Edwin Pouncey, an English comics creator of the early 1980s whose ‘punk’ style of graphics proved inspirational to alternative cartoonists. This show celebrated drawing, a precious commodity in an age of appropriation and scanning, and the creative expression that drawing is given in comics. Here the drawing was both art and pop culture trash and very affordible.

This is the eighth 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.

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics: 2002 SEQUENTIAL ART STUDIES CONFERENCE

Archive of Australian Alternative Comics, Art, Comics, Japanning April 7, 2012

Conference poster designed by BOWB.

Ten years ago almost to the day this event, the first Sequential Art Studies Conference took place on April 19 2002 in Sydney at the University of Technology. The conference was named after the descriptive term for comics, sequential art, introduced by Will Eisner in 1985. Thank you Will! Convened by Jeremy Allen and myself, with panels chaired by Jeremy, Spiros Tsaousis and I the conference was held in association with Supanova Pop Culture Expo with support from Daniel Zachariou. This was, to my knowledge, the first scholarly conference on comics studies to be held in Australia, more than 3 years prior “Men In Tights” conference at Melbourne University in 2005 that also makes this claim! The conference poster was designed by BOWB.

CALL FOR PAPERS

SEQUENTIAL ART STUDIES CONFERENCE, Sydney, Australia, April 19 2002 SUPANOVA POP CULTURE EXPO Sydney Showground, April 20-21 2002 This inaugural scholarly conference on comics will take place on the day preceding Australia’s largest comics convention and will be associated with that event. Scholars are invited to submit 250 word proposals which address alternative approaches to comics, whether local or global, recent or historical, online or offline, artistic or commercial. The conference will adopt a multidisciplinary approach and welcomes papers from a broad range of disciplines. Send enquiries and proposals, by email only, to either of the conference coordinators: Jeremy Allen: Jeremy.S.Allen@uts.edu.au or Michael Hill: Michael.Hill@uts.edu.au Interdisciplinary Studies, Faculty of Design, University of Technology, Sydney. DEADLINE: Friday December 21 2001

PROGRAM

Michael Hill-Bite of the Mongrel Breed: A Study of Satire in Contemporary Australian Alternative Comics

Abstract: This paper involves an examination of the contemporary Australian alternative comics scene as a lively form of lampooning and derision in the late 20th Century. In contrast to the mainstream print media, many of the artists, creators and cartoonists involved antagonise, irritate and ridicule with their graphic humour and horror, provoking irreverent laughter as well as an element of fear and amazement within their limited audience. In so doing, they take advantage of what is a relatively unregulated outlet of creativity and visual communication. As a wide-ranging group of artists, their repertoire houses a mix of graphic styles and comic art genres and their attitude has strains of ‘larrikin’ and ‘ratbag’ humour.

Bio: Michael Hill is Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication and Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Unit at UTS and partner in Graber Hill, publisher of the independent comic B.L.A.CK.

Craig Norris-Manga in Australia: erasing and re-animating Japan

Abstract: The export of manga (Japanese comics) from Japan to Australia is a journey from erasing race and culture to redrawing ideal bodies and communities. Using my two years of field research in Tokyo I argue that the export agenda of Japanese animation distributors is based on the erasure of Japanese racial characteristics and life-style to allow for easier localisation of animation and comics such as Astro Boy, Poke-Mon and Dragonball Z (Iwabuchi, 1998). I compare these producer-dominated ‘erased’ manga with the ‘redrawn’ manga of fan artists throughout Australia. I focus on the work of a number of manga fan-artists based in Sydney whose work appears in fan-zines, online, and on more unusual surfaces such as car-body art work.

Bio: Craig Norris is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Sydney. His research interests include cultural globalisation, audience-studies, and Asian/Australian popular culture flows.

Jeremy Allen-OZ.COM: Australian Comic Creators and the Web

Abstract: Over the last seven years the web has emerged as a focal point for comicsculture. It is a place for fans to connect, for the purchase of latest titles and back issues, for comic news to be broadcast, for upcoming comics to be ‘spoiled’, and for established comic companies to advertise. Significantly, it has also given a mass media voice to aspiring comiccreators. In this respect, the web has become a gallery of online comics to be appreciated by potentially millions of people across the world. It is through this new method of distribution and new form of comics that the Internet has perhaps had its most revolutionary impact on comics, by producing a true alternative to the ‘offline’ comics industry.

Bio: Jeremy Allen is currently researching his Ph.D. on Online Comics on an Australian Postgraduate Award Scholarship in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Zeldz Magnoonis-The sequential art of the skateboard sequence

Abstract: Skateboarding is an activity full of dynamic action and motion. Inevitably, attempts to capture this phenomenon require communication of this movement. Representing movement in print has obvious limitations and the most obvious solution is that of the photographic sequence. In this paper, it will be argued that these sequences can be read much like a comic strip. It will be demonstrated that they not only share characteristics of comic strips, but have developed alternative processes that could be of use to the comic creator.

Bio: After falling into the cauldron of magic comics as a baby, monsieur Magnoonis has been addicted to the medium ever since, currently studying visual communication and creating the mini comic Pepe’s Quest.

Kurt Brereton-From Paper to Pixels: Animating Drawings and Paintings

Abstract: Many artists and new animators work with desktop Mac and PCs at home or in schools and colleges. Great ideas can be well expressed using alternative approaches without resorting to high tech wiz bang special effects. New media and interactive multimedia technical restrictions have forced alternative animators to think big and work small. This talk will focus on practical and conceptual issues at play in working in multimedia.

Bio: Kurt Brereton is Adjunct Professor in Computer Based Art & Design at the University of the Sunshine Coast and the University of Technology, Sydney, Managing Director of Spark Interactive and an internationally represented visual artist, photographer and film maker.

Spiros Tsaousis- The Spatial Logic of Krazy Kat

Abstract: Modernist spatiality evidenced two strains – one orderly, mechanistic, logical and gridbased; the other fluid, dynamic, a transvaluation. However the rational and orderly exhibits the symptoms of anxiety, containing within its formulation the seeds of its unconscious propensity toward disorder and fluidity. Broadly tracing the spatial development of the comic strip from, say, Hogan’s Alley to Little Nemo to Krazy Kat evidences the movement of the medium between the two poles. In this paper I assert that the ‘logic’ of Krazy Kat is made coherent, legible and thematically consistent with appeal to its representation of space and place; and that its spatial presentation – its design and rearrangement of the comics page – is a significant departure from the relatively uniform and stable arrangements of comic strips such as Hogan’s Alley and Little Nemo.

Bio: Spiros Tsaousis has recently completed his thesis, “Disturbance of Distance: Postmodern Spatiality and the Comic Strip, Comic Book and Graphic Novel”. He has presented and published a number of papers on comics.

Adam Possamai-The Social Construction of Comic Books as a (Non) Recognised Form of Art in Australia

Abstract: Even if since the 1990s there is an emergent community of comic book artists, Comic Books in Australia appear to be negatively stigmatised as immature literature in everyday life and in academic spheres. Even if comics started in newspapers as a way to attract working class adults to buy newspapers, and later became a literature form aimed at young readers, this medium has reached its Lettres de Noblesses and has been recognised as an art form since the 1970s in Europe, Japan, and the USA, but NOT – as it appears – in Australia. The aim of this paper is to describe the social construction of comic books as an immature literature in Australia since WW II.

Bio: Adam Possamai lectures in sociology at the University of Western Sydney. His doctoral thesis won the Jean Martin Award for the best PhD in Sociology submitted in Australia during 1998-9.

Note: Jeremy Allen is now known as Jeremy Kerr and Spiros Tsaousis is now Spiros Xenos.

This is the seventh 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.