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.
