Showing posts with label ben stenbeck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ben stenbeck. Show all posts

Sunday, August 4, 2013

NZ Comics, Cartoons + Art Sunday Gallery

In an effort to keep up while I'm traveling and in deadline hell over the next couple months expect some image heavy posts.

A couple Dylan Horrocks book covers for Victoria University Press. (Via Dylan's FB)



Roy Hunt depicts a NZ Christmas from The New Zealand Freelance Christmas Annual 1919. (Via Papers Past)


Roger Langridge draws Usagi & Fred for the Baltimore Comic Con fundraiser auction. (via Hotel Fred)



Colin Wilson Dredd/Rogue Trooper commission.




Picturesque Fairlie illustrations from Korero magazine May 8th, 1944 artist unknown.







Series of three John Kent illustrations of Margaret Thatcher and John Bull for BBC Newsnight. (Via The Political Cartoon Society)








Ben Stenbeck pencil drawing from 2003 (Via Monsters and Stuff)



Preview of Tim Molloy's limited edition mini The Origins Of The Sect Of The Bleeding Eye available at Tim's Strange Pageant exhibition.

Crime serial Stephen Clark from by Harry Bennett from The new Supreme Feature Comics #2 circa late '40s.



James Davidson previews pages from Moa #4 (via Moa Blog)




Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Chromacon 2013 and Assorted Auckland Ramblings


A couple months back I had the pleasure of tabling with Pikitia Press at the inaugural Chromacon Illustration and Comic Art Festival in Auckland. This was the first comics event I've made the trek from Australia back to New Zealand for and It was well worthwhile. For a first time comic art festival, organiser Allan Xia and helpers seemed to pull it off without a hitch. This is the sort of event I'd love to fill my calendar with. Amongst the highlights of the couple days I spent in Auckland for Chromacon:
  • Chromacon was a one day event which for my coming-into-middle-age is the perfect duration for a convention.
  • It was nice to attend an event down this part of the world with a focus on comics and illustrators, no commercial retailers, just local creative folk.
  • The audience which I think numbered around 1000 for the day keep a steady flow of people through the venue. Not too busy, but rarely a quiet moment.
  • Chromacon was a veritable who's who of New Zealand Comics, there were some notable absences and I don't believe there were any South Island cartoonists there but on the whole it was a great opportunity to meet and catch up with a large variety of comic folk at one event.
  •  I got to finally meet Tim Danko in person for a few minutes!
  • Getting to meet the cartoonists I publish. It's probably not so much of an odd thing in this day and age but I had never met in person, Sarah Laing or James Davidson, despite having published several of their comics by this point. Lovely hard working easy to deal with folk. They make my work easy.
  • The venue, one floor of The Aotea Centre, in the heart of Auckland, was an ideal place to have Chromacon, easily accessible and a comfortable fit for the amount of exhibitors and audience.
  • Grabbing pizza and gabbing comics with Kelly Sheehan, Ben Stenbeck and Chris Slane after the show. Heck, even the barman at the pizza joint was a cartoonist (look for a Pikitia Press comic from him sometime soon.)
  • Heading into the carpark after pizza this was waiting for us:
 
  • Grabbing coffee and gabbing comics with Timothy Kidd, Kelly Sheehan, Karl Wills and my little bro Sam at the Auckland Public Library.
  • On a quest of New Zealand comics archeology at the Auckland Public Library I found some real gems. Evidence that I suspected existed of a connection between two golden age NZ cartoonists surfaced and a NZ "Kramers Ergot" from the seventies? More to come on these developments...
 Interview with Chromacon Organiser Allan Xia.
 Fuzzy photography of some but not all of the comic folk at Chromacon.

 Theo Macdonald and Richard Fairgray

 Tim Gibson

 Tim Bollinger and Barry Linton

 Toby Morris

  Sophie Oiseau

 Czepta Gold

 Dylan Horrocks


 Chris Slane

 Chris Slane

 Ant Sang, Ben Stenbeck and Adrian Kinnaird

 Jesca Marisa

 Damon Keen

  Karl Wills

Marc Streeter


James Davidson


Michel Mulipola

Kelly and Darren Sheehan

Art in park



No visit to Auckland is complete without a visit to the St Kevin's Arcade Secondhand Bookshop. Piles of FP Phantom comics, Eric Resetar facsimile comics, the first 2000AD annual,  I've bought many a fine comic from here over the years. This time I snapped up some reading for my flight home, an Australian edition of Buck Rogers Annual No. 2. Hundreds of pages of early Buck Rogers adventures compiled in one aromatic pulpy volume.


Before heading to the airport I took a shortcut through the Auckland University Campus to pick up my luggage. My "eagle book eyes" spied a table of old books next to a reception office. A lifelong fascination with old books, (I lived in secondhand bookshop for several months) I was compelled to go in and have a look. The receptionist told me they were donated to the university, who didn't want them, and had put them out for folk to take away. All German texts from the early twentieth century, I couldn't resist the offer of free old books so gathered up as many as I could carry and made my way back through the winding alleys and paths of the University. I'd love to keep all the wonderful paper goods I gather, but I can't, so I sold a selection of these to antiquarian book dealers in Melbourne and Switzerland, which paid for my trip and my coffee bill for the next three months.


A tragic inscription from the inside page of Conrad der Leutnant.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Sunday Gem: Over My Dead Body - Tim Molloy & Ben Stenbeck



Tim Molloy:

So way back in 2001, by buddy Ben Stenbeck ( BPRD, Baltimore) and I watched too many Zombie movies and westerns and as a result we made a comic together, (me writing, him drawing) called Over My Dead Body. It's a zombie story, a last man alive story, and kind of a story about why I don't believe in God, or would even want to... Anyway, it's been gathering dust for more than a decade and Ben has finally decided to release it for our viewing pleasure. It's quite old and a bit mouldy and dusty, but I guess when all is said and done, I am proud of it, and still blown away that I got to direct Ben Stenbecks mighty pen hand for 80 or so pages! Enjoy!

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Paper Trail


 

Elliot Francis Stewart Tumblr.


Sarah Laing's colouring comics.

   
David C. Mahler tumblr.



Waitangi Day drawings gallery by Susan Te Kahurangi King (via facebook).


Brent Willis' reviews David Tulloch's Utterly Rucked. Read Utterly Rucked online here.


Gavin Aung Than's Seneca: Sympathy For The Devil at Zen Pencils.


Simon Hanselmann has a launch for his Floating World broadsheet St Owl's Day at the Silent Army Storeroom on 27th March at 110 Franklin St, Melbourne. "TRUTH ZONE" EXHIBITION: the sixty nine 2012 episodes of the COMICS WORKBOOK "comics criticism comic" will be on display for perusal and buying. Facebook it.

  
Brandon Graham shares an upcoming Prophet cover by Helen Maier.


Ben Stenbeck Blog.



Dan Best writes about the effects of Frederic Wertham's work on the Australian comics industry.