Happy Birthday 48th Birthday Dylan Horrocks

Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen - Dylan Horrocks

 

Dylan Horrocks' forthcoming graphic novel Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen is now available for preorder as part of Fantagraphics Fall schedule. I don't think an official announcement has been made yet other than Publishers Weekly mentioning last month that Fantagraphics had taken on publishing. I believe the Magic Pen was originally planned as a trilogy of books but will now be a single 210 page hardcover volume.

Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen online.
 
From Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen book description:

Acclaimed cartoonist Dylan Horrocks returns with a long-awaited new graphic novel, the first since his perennial classic, 1998’s Hicksville. Cartoonist Sam Zabel hasn’t drawn a comic in years. Stuck in a nightmare of creative block and despair, Sam spends his days writing superhero stories for a large American comics publisher and staring at a blank piece of paper, unable to draw a single line. Then one day he finds a mysterious old comic book set on Mars and is suddenly thrown headlong into a wild, fantastic journey through centuries of comics, stories, and imaginary worlds. Accompanied by a young webcomic creator named Alice and an enigmatic schoolgirl with rocket boots and a bag full of comics, Sam goes in search of the Magic Pen, encountering sex-crazed aliens, medieval monks, pirates, pixies and — of course — cartoonists. Funny, erotic, and thoughtful, Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen explores the pleasures, dangers, and moral consequences of fantasy.

As part of the New Zealand festival Dylan's collection of shorts Incomplete Works launches from Victoria University Press on Saturday 8th March, 7:30pm at the Exchange Atrium. More details here.

Paper Trail

Peter Dornauf writes about Comic Artists in Hamilton.

Thinking is hard.

The Adventures of Tintin Contact.

Bright Threadz #7.

Die Popular: Summer Advice Series.

Rob Clough reviews Faction Volume One.

Pop Culture 1945 to present at the Australian Cartoon Museum.

Karl Wills teases a new collaboration with Timothy Kidd.

Sam Cooney collaboration with Katie Parrish.

Slow News Day: Book shelved in wrong section.

Just Indie Comics reviews Life Zone.

It ain't comics but what what: Andrew Nette writes about the closing of second bookshops in Melbourne. 

Nat Karmichael writes about recent and future Comicoz publications.

Throwing up a few illustration and comics galleries this week:

  Russell Clark

Des Condon

 Conrad Freiboe

 Phil Belbin Cavalcade Illustrations

Paper Trail masthead courtesy of Toby Morris.

Peeper Trail

Victory University Press have announced Incomplete Works, a forthcoming collection of Dylan Horrocks shorter comics.

"Daydreams, fantasy, true love and procrastination feature strongly in this marvellous selection of Dylan Horrocks’s shorter comics. Running from 1986 to 2012, Incomplete Works is both the chronicle of an age and a portrait of one man’s heroic struggle to get some work done."

Maralinga by Jen Breach and Doug Holgate.

"Maralinga spins an alternative history from the 1956 British nuclear tests in the Woomera. Three hundred years later a ruined, irradiated, post-apocalyptic Australia is a place where monsters are real and one girl, the last of an isolated and dying community in Melbourne's south, launches a desperate journey to find sanctuary and a mythical inland sea."
 

Pat Grant talks to Dan Berry on Make It and Tell Somebody.

Happy Together Forever by Katie Parrish

Sarah Laing's Helmet Lady.

Canberra Times Obituary for Australian science fiction, librarian and bibliographer Graham Stone.

Comics workshops in January 2014 at the State Library of Queensland with Paul Mason. Details here.

Hannah Lee Writes about the New Zealand Cartoon Archive.

I like the cut of Jason Chatfield's jib on television.

Beardy and the Geek talk to Gary Chaloner.

Meet the Makers: Katie Parrish

 Three Thousand profile Simon Hanselmann.

Paper Trail masthead courtesy of Toby Morris.

Paper Trail

 
More comics link blogging dashed off in a haphazard fashion... 

Michael Fikaris project, Arte Moris, is in it's last couple hours of crowdfunding.

Michael & Death Flatmates by Ralphie.

Josh Perks reviews James Davidson's Moa Vol One.
 

David C Mahler is currently on an international comics traipse through North America with a hobo's bindle full of a new anthology Flying Fox. Marc Pearson, Katie Parrish, Ben Sea, Leonie Brialey, Ruskidd, J.R Blue, Michael Hawkins, Merv Heers, Sam Wallman and David feature in this spunky little package. Read about Flying Fox on David's tumblr.

  
Roger Langridge writes about convention sketching.

Brian Lawry writes about Sarah Laing's The Fall of Light.

Bruce Mutard features on Double Spread.

 

Selection of Australian landscape reprint comics from the 1940's - 1950's on the Pikitia Press tumblr.

RM Rhodes dissects American Captain.

  

Aru Singh interviews Faction Comics' Amie Maxwell and Damon Keen

Daniel Best chronicles the production of the Pitt Brother's ill-fated adaption of Gully Foyle.

David Blumenstein writes up the 2013 Stanley Awards conference. Part one and part two.

Robert Smith reviews Adrian Kinnaird's From Earth's End: The Best of New Zealand Comics.

Elliot Francis Stewart: Back to the Wall.

Pat Grant performs Toormina Video at the Sydney Opera House.

Dylan Horrocks and Bryan Crump discuss children's comics including James Davidson's Moa.

Paper Trail masthead courtesy of Toby Morris.