Pikitia Press Updates

Moa #2 © 2012 James Davidson

Pikitia Press is now set up as a small publishing concern and I'm proud to announce we'll publishing James Davidson's Moa comics with the first three issues including a new full colour number one due out later this year. Moa is an all ages comic series, each issue a complete story following the exploits of Possum von Tempsky and Kiwi Pukupuku as they journey the land of Aotearoa on giant moa in search of adventure and good times.

Have a look at an eight page preview of Moa #3 here.

Go like the Moa facebook page. Remember every 'like' adds to the chi in James's drawing hand.

 

Moa will be available from selected outlets and The Pikitia Press Shop.

Pikitia Press has a Tumblr. I hope to use Tumblr as a repository for images, ephemera, and small bits and pieces relating to cartooning and comics that I don't have time to elaborate on in the main Pikitia Press blog. The plan is to post daily but we'll see how that goes.

I'm doing a weekly comics link blogging column for the Australian Comics Journal. Should be there most Wednesdays. Might not do this forever but check it out while it's there.

The first two comics published by Pikitia Press this year were Australian cartoonist Peter Foster's Ballantyne: Where Hidden Rivers Flow (Written by James H Kemsley) and Peter's update of the golden age Australian superhero The Eagle in Return of the Night Eagle. Enthused by the response to our first two publications I decided to get some more of Peter's work in print and a second volume of Ballantyne's adventures is due for release in early August. 

 Return of the Night Eagle © 2012 P.Foster. Ballantyne © 2012 P. Foster, J. H. Kemsley

A new edition of Peter's adaption of the Australian literary classic, For The Term of His Natural Life will be launched at The 2012 Melbourne Writers Festival in October. Expanded to 64 pages, this edition will be in full colour, include background material and a foreword by Marcus Clarke scholar Laurie Hergenhan. More details to come.

 

For The Term of His Natural Life © 2012 Peter Foster

New Comics from Peter Foster

 

2012 will see releases and re-issues of comics by Melbourne Cartoonist Peter Foster. Foster has had a distinguished career illustrating thousands of pages of comics for DC Thomson in England as well numerous comics in Australia. In the 1980's it was not uncommon to find a DC Thomson comic with two if not three of Foster's stories in it. The Return of the Night Eagle is Foster's re-invention of Carl Lyon's Australian superhero of the '40s, The Eagle, as a legacy hero.

 

 Carl Lyon's The Eagle

  

Interior page from Peter Foster's The Night Eagle

Early 2012 will also see the publication of Peter Foster's out of print adaption of the classic Australian novel, For The Term of His Natural Life, by Marcus Clarke. Initially released in a black and white edition in 1986, well before the term 'graphic novel' was commonplace, this new edition is in full colour with additional material about the background and genesis of this project. As well as these Foster is currently working on full colour editions of his newspaper strip in collaboration with James Kemsley Snr, Ballantyne.

Peter Foster

I'm preparing a longer piece on Australian cartoonist Peter Foster but I thought it'd be interesting to contrast two bio's I have for him. The first is from Challenge No. 4, an educational journal from 1978 featuring stories, articles, cartoons and games. The second is from almost twenty years later is from Ballantyne No.1, self-published in 1996. This volume collected strips from his Sydney Sunday Sun Herald collaboration with James H. Kemsley. In between these two publications Foster worked in England for DC Thomson and IPC as well as illustrating a graphic novel version of the Australian classic For The Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke published in 1986.