Since retiring from work, having concluded my full-time academic career, I have enjoyed a lot more free time….especially time to read and draw comics, watch films and go for walks. It has been simply wonderful! I have also found more time to work on my art projects…printmaking, creating comics…and doing the odd bit of blogging. I had previously enjoyed doing some guest blogging. Subsequently, I decided to start my own blog, posting reports on my research and comics creation. I initially thought of having two blogs: one formal and critical, as in my academic research work…and the other more playful and creative, about the making of comics. Ultimately, I decided to merge these two approaches into a single interwoven blog that would be both informative and entertaining. So here is my first post…on the new, one and only, Doctor Comics blog. It will include posts critiquing comics art as well as documenting the creation of my own comic. Many thanks to my excellent agent, Andrew Hawkins, for obtaining the Doctor Comics label, website and email…and for his arrangement of media interviews for me. It’s now time to get my website and blog up and running.

_{Doctor Comics aka Dr. Michael Hill…happy to read, research, critique and create comics. (Photo by Alison Van Hees).}

I want to begin my blog by declaring that I absolutely love both reading and creating comics. I have read, collected and studied comics since I was a child. Every Sunday morning after church, I would wait for the opportunity to read the comics section of the Sunday newspaper. My father had first reading rights. He began with the comics section before moving on to the sports pages. He didn’t like to separate the paper into sections, preferring to keep it all together…so the family had to wait till he had finished his complete reading of it. It was good to hear him laughing at the comics. He particularly loved The Potts by Jim Russell, whom I would meet years later at a comics convention in Sydney. He also loved Australian cartoonist Jimmy Bancks’s strip Adventures of Ginger Meggs. It was printed in glorious four tone colour (see my art tribute collage Bancksie Champion Drawer of Jokes, below). He also liked action comics, especially English war tales and American Wild West adventures. He had served as an Australian soldier in the Second World War. Whilst reading the war and western comic strips he would make the sounds of bombing raids and gunfights.

Once he finished his reading he left the newspaper for the rest of the family. That was when it got separated into sections. I was usually the first to follow his reading and, like him, I started with the comics section. Unlike him, I didn’t proceed to the Sports pages but stopped reading there. For me the comics were the highlight of the Sunday paper. News of the world, sporting results and weather reports did not match the joy of reading the comics for me. My mother would buy me a comic when I was ill and absent from school…especially when I was hospitalised to have my tonsils out. It was usually a Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse…sometimes a Denis The Menace. The graphic humour would soothe my illness. I got to know comics by their titles and characters and gradually learned the names of the creators e.g. comics artists Carl Barks and Hank Ketcham. So I can claim that my parents contributed to my developing love of comics.

I also had two kind aunties who would regularly buy me comics weeklies in the 1960s…titles like BEANO or EAGLE. These were shipped to Australia from England and arrived approximately three months after their U.K. publication date. I suspect my interest in space travel, English football and cartoon animals arose from reading and collecting these “boys papers”. Throughout my teenage years I continued to read and collect comics. This continued in adulthood. Some of my friends thought it somewhat childish and that I should grow up and stop reading comics. No way! Never! Eventually I was no longer limited to reading comics after church, after homework or during periods of illness. I had left school, found a job, and left home. This enabled me to stop going to church, buy my own comics and read them in bed!

_{Animating my woodblock prints on the Oxberry animation stand at Sydney College of the Arts.}

My interest in and enthusiasm for comics continued and reached another level at Sydney College of the Arts. As an academic in the Visual Communication Design program…I developed a more formal interest in studying and researching comics and animation. I also learned the technique of printmaking from a colleague…(see photo above…more details to come in future posts). I had always loved to draw and often received colour pencil and paint sets as Birthday and Xmas presents. I had had no art tuition in my primary and secondary schooling…but one year I was awarded the Religious Prize in Primary School that was probably attributed to my artistic skills. My teachers were Nuns. It was for a drawing I did of The Little Flower (Saint Teresa) floating up to Heaven on her death. I drew her literally as a flower. It was my unknowing introduction to visual metaphor. My drawing made the nuns cry! At the time I thought I had done something wrong, upsetting them, but the tears were apparently joyous! I wish I still had that drawing but the nuns ran off with it. In fact they never returned it! I never saw it again and my parents never ever saw it! Those nuns did seemingly compensate me, however, by awarding me the Religious Prize that year! The top student in my class and his parents complained to them on Speech Night (the Prize giving event)…saying “Unfair!..he only got a Credit in the subject but he won the prize!” They just didn’t know about that drawing…and the magic of art. Despite this so-called “injustice” I managed to keep my prize…although I did lose my art! My parents were very proud of my award. They had taught me to never challenge a teacher, especially a Nun. So I had to forget about asking them for the return of my drawing. This proved to be sound advice in the long term.

After Primary School with the Dominican Nuns I came up against the much tougher Christian Brothers in my Secondary education. Their chosen instrument of punishment and persuasion was “the strap!” This consisted of layers of leather strips, stitched together, with which they vigorously struck the student’s open palm. Each Brother had his own particular “strap” and technique of administration. Some preferred fast, repeated strokes from a short distance…whilst others preferred the delayed but vigorous downward stroke from a higher level. It proved more painful than the nuns’ short but hard cane tap. These were rigid disciplinarians with seemingly little interest in art. Any mathematics or science drawing or doodle on the edge of a page was met with a disapproving frown. No extra marks were awarded if you added an illustration to an essay…you might get away with a map in History but not a landscape in Geography…and definitely no art in a composition in English! These were considered an unnecessary waste of word space! Years later, however, I was to experience the joy of visual expression in art and design schools. They absolutely loved it there!

_{My PhD was awarded for my original research into Australian comics art and production. The accompanying brochure refers to my interest in Japanese art.}

Since early adolescence I have been involved in comics art studies and research. First, through leisurely reading of the English comic strips from my aunties…followed by compulsive collecting…some review writing…all leading to the creation of my own comics. Later, working at an Art College I found that comics were considered a valid field of study and research. Oh joy! This ultimately led to my PhD for research into Australian ‘small press’ comics. That is where my alias arose. I’m known as Michael Hill, PhD (a.k.a Doctor Comics). I completed the doctorate in 2003 and acquired the alias in 2006. It was on a radio chat show that my agent, Andrew Hawkins, arranged for me to be interviewed. One caller said he wanted to talk to “that Doctor Comics guy!” To the amusement of listeners the announcer informed them that I actually had a PhD in “comics”! So instead of “Doctor in comics”…or “Doctor of comics”…it was strategically shortened and sharpened in focus to Doctor Comics. My agent formalised this with the registration of my doctorcomics@gmail.com email account and the doctorcomics.com website. This caught on in the local media and led to a chain of interviews.

My intention with this blog is to document my reading, researching, critiquing, creation and celebration of comics art. This is expressed by the Feed On Comics! T-shirt by the artist MAX (see illustration above). I acquired it at the  ICAF (International Comic Arts Festival) at Bethesda, Maryland, USA in 1999. I could not believe there was an academic conference on comics! Not only that…it was followed by a comics convention, the Small Press Expo! It turned out to be an inspiring event being both a conference and a convention. The academic conference was chaired by Gene Kannenberg, Jr., the “big guy” who enthusiastically led proceedings, to a gathering of like-minded souls, i.e. academics researching comics art. Gene made me feel very welcome. Amongst those who attended was Dr. John A. Lent who was selling the first issue of IJOCA, the International Journal of Comic Art Vol. 1, No. 1 Spring/Summer 1999, that he had produced and published as Editor-in-Chief. I became a member of the International Editorial Board of that journal, representing Australia. Other new comics colleagues I met at that event were Michael Rhode, Randy Duncan, Charles Hatfield…and Mike Kidson whose paper “William Hogarth: Printing Techniques and Comics” inspired my later graphic research into Hogarth and printmaking. That introduction to printmaking eventually led to my adoption of it as an artistic practice. Also in attendance were other comics art researchers…Pete Coogan, Pascal Lefèvre, Jeff Miller, Ana Merino, Jeff Williams, Mark Nevins, Guy Spielmann, and Joseph “Rusty” Witek. They were pleased to have another Australian attend (Spiros Tsaousis had attended the previous year). They even let me, as guest, choose the restaurant on the first day…I suggested “Mexican?” a novel choice for me, not familiar with the cuisine. They all smiled and took me to one of the many local Mexican restaurants. I have since, somewhat subliminally, associated dining on Mexican food with researching comics art!

This conference gave me the reassurance to undertake the academic study and research of comics art. It also connected me with other academics from around the world who studied and researched comics art. This ultimately led me to the gaining of my PhD in comics studies. At that Bethesda conference, I made a presentation on Australian indie comics based on the research I had been doing. As the conference concluded the comics expo kicked off downstairs. This convention, known as the Small Press Expo, honoured indie comics (see my 99 EXPO card above). I bought several comics and even sold some I had brought with me from Australian small press creators. I also met Gary Groth, “wow!” the guy who runs The Comics Journal…he seemed to be on the look out for “comics stuff”…and Neil Gaiman, “yes, him!”, in the lift, speaking in his dulcet English tone that was wonderful to hear! They, and many others that I had only read about, were in attendance, wandering around at the event. Comics art was what they studied, created, promoted, traded or researched! In the evening there was an award ceremony at which comics artist James Kochalka performed, surprisingly, absolutely naked! Amazing! Each category winner was awarded a brick,  just like the one Ignatz threw at Krazy. I was most impressed and inspired by the level of comics art interest and the emerging philosophy surrounding it! The event celebrated both the study and creation of comics art. This has had ongoing resonance for me as I start this blog. I also intend continuing my reading, researching and writing about comics art.

So there is my first post….a little lengthy perhaps…but I am off and running along the blogging trail and feeling very excited about it…and I welcome any comments and suggestions from readers of my blog, Michael.

_{(All text, photos and artwork-©2011 Dr. Michael Hill a.k.a. Doctor Comics except where otherwise credited).}