SLUG GUTS: Milk Shadow Books Launch - James Andre Interview

 

From the press release for this Saturday's Melbourne launch of the latest two comics from Milk Shadow Book:

Hi Everyone,
Just a reminder that next Saturday, October 12,we will be launching two excellent new books, Da 'n' Dill - The Showbag Years by Dillon Naylor and Squirt-Stone by Ben (Sea) Constantine.

Both of the artists will be in attendance, signing and sketching. Plus their books will be sold in showbags containing limited edition prints, cool lollies, and other surprises. Also, Dillon and Ben are giving away a page of original art from the books.

The launch is on at All Star Comics Melbourne from 2pm – 5pm. Then at around 5:30pm if people want to have a drink, or can't make the afternoon launch, we'll be having an afterparty where you can sit and chat to the guys and buy books. This will be at Charlies Bar, 71 Hardware Lane (just down the toad from All Star).

Facebook Launch Event

 

These will be our last books released for a while, so we aim to make this a big one! Hope to see you there, and if you can help spread the word to help us make this launch huge it would be greatly appreciated.

I fired a few questions to Milk Shadow Books Publisher James Andre about the two books launching this weekend and what else has been happening with MSB this year.

James Andre Interview by Matt Emery

Can you talk a bit about what goes into choosing artists and books for Milk Shadow Books? Can you talk about how Ben C and Dillon Naylor's work fit into this equation? How much are your choices guided by 'business' and 'aesthetic'?
 

Milk Shadow Books looks for unique visions and voices. That's about it. Things that will open your mind through paper and ink.

Dillon was recommended to me by Bruce Mutard. At first I was shocked, because Dillon has been around forever. I knew of Da 'n' Dill, Batrisha, and even his stuff such as Pop Culture and Two Minute Noodles. He's a real pro. Bruce said Dillon might contact about publishing some stuff, 'cause he'd mentioned MSB to him. I waited a day or two then contacted Dillon direct. That's how the A Brush With Darkness collected book came about, and with Da 'n' Dill being mentioned early on, we came back to that project as our next one. It's also a good title because of the nostalgia, and all ages aspect.

I've been a fan of Ben's work since picking up a Phatsville comic at a Brisbane Supanova, probably 10 years ago. Plump Oyster was in foetal stages then. At that time I didn't really know an underground/alternative comics scene existed in Australia. I hoped that it did though and that it wasn't all just shoddy superhero/genre knock-offs. Loved Ben's work straight away. Strangely even back then my brain thought, "someone should be publishing this guy."

Most of the other MSB artists are friends who have been self publishing for a long time. I'm a comics nerd/fanboy at heart, and I can generally tell when someone has an interesting style. And it's easy to see different artists who have a strong following online, or at shows. It's not usually a money choice when it comes to publishing, but I don't want to go broke publishing either. A strong sense of style and "something to say" is the main thing. Have some soul basically. Those books usually sell well anyway, as business will follow a good aesthetic.

Both Ben C and Dillon are both well established cartoonists locally, Why do you think other publishers haven't taken an interest in their work prior to you?

That's a good question. I'm not too sure? We're lucky to be working with them. Same as with Tim Molloy, Ben Hutchings, Bobby.N and everybody else really. Both of the guys have worked with larger publishers and publications, but it's usually been in a more restrained sense, or have had short stories published in anthologies/magazines.

We give artists nearly total artistic freedom (with some editorial control/advice being retained by me and the tech people here) to make the best books they can, the way that they envision them. We "package" our books with love, and not to be slathered with tomato sauce and a pickle and pushed down a burger chute. That's probably fairly appealing to artists too.

Were there any difficulties in assembling collections of Ben and Dillon's work, I imagine some of Dillon's work goes back a few years?

The good thing about Ben and Dillon is that they still have a lot of the original art. So it was mainly just waiting for them to scan in the art once we provided them with the technical details. We were originally planning on making Ben's book larger, but most of his early work was drawn A4, so shrinking it down to A5 makes it look a lot tighter than blowing it up to a larger size. While Dillon's Da 'n' Dill comics worked well being collected from different sizes into one uniformly larger book. Then we ran the books through the usual proofing/design process.

How much of your market is divided between local and international sales? Do you have a concentrated focus on either?
 

We're really focused on local sales at moment after getting the Madman distribution deal happening. That was a big deal for us, and we've been trying to co-ordinate as much publicity and sales opportunities as we can with them. Eventually we'd like to expand overseas more, looking at Diamond and Last Gasp as distributors, but we already have Amazon, The Book Depository coverage so that's the main thing. Currently, I feel that if we can keep working to make a strong local scene for local people (Sorry, that sounds kind of like Edward and Tubbs out of The League of Gentlemen) then it will make things more sustainable for everyone

How important was your partnership with Madman for distribution? Are you at a point were you can evaluate this yet?
 

Really important. It's hard to keep on top of self distribution when you work full time. Having Madman take care of that frees up spare time to work on production and other business matters. It saves having to call up/go into shops chasing five bucks from eight months ago. The team there have honestly been great to work with. Plus the promo side of what they can do is so much more than we can do ourselves. I got some initial figures the other day and I think the guys there thought I'd be disappointed, but I'm happy every time even if one book sells, so to me, it's been going well so far.

Are there short term or long term goals you can share for Milk Shadow Books?
 

After these two new books, I'm going to take a break for a while from production. I'm getting married next year so that'll be a priority. But also it would be nice to have some time to go back over the business and catch up with lots of details behind the scenes that are often missed. Walking to Japan was our first major work, and that came out October 2011, so it's been two years. Now is a good time to go back over what's working etc. Even though we'll be toning down our schedule in the future, we've still plenty of really good books lined up.

Do you punch walls when things don't turn out the way you want?
 

Haha, no. Well, a window in Year 8, but that was more for a laugh.

The Ponsonby Rag

 

Earlier this year I got to have a little dig through the Auckland Library and came across five issues of an amazing paper The Ponsonby Rag, created in Auckland during the late seventies. Similar to alternative papers being produced around the world since the sixties and very informed by counter cultural elements, the Rag consisted of poems, stories, illustration and a significant amount of comic strips by a small group of Auckland artists and cartoonists. A lot of the work struck me as very experimental for the time perhaps influenced by the American underground comics of the sixties and seventies.

Cartoonist/Illustrator Joe Wylie shared his recollections of The Ponsonby Rag:

I didn't do anything for the Ponsonby Rag, though I remember it well. I met the people involved through Barry Linton when I went to live in Auckland in 1977. They had their own little offset press, which was a pretty nifty thing to have back then. There was a particularly impressive issue titled Ponsonby Bag, which came in a bag and consisted of various items. It would be amazing if one had survived intact. I know that David Eggleton wrote for it, but I can't, I'm sorry to say, remember the name of the guy who did most of the printing work. I believe he was also responsible for most of the cartoons, which were pretty memorable. What really impressed me was the attempt at handmade colour separation, made by drawing directly on the offset plates.

David Eggleton was involved with the Ponsonby Rag from it's beginning through to it's end. I approached him for some recollections on the production of the Rag and he sent me the following article effectively detailing the history of The Ponsonby Rag.

The Ponsonby Rag by David Eggleton

            The Ponsonby Rag was an offset-press publication, containing original graphics, cartoons, poems, stories and commentaries. It appeared erratically between late 1976 and early 1978, out of a big weatherboard villa opposite the old and very aromatic DYC Vinegar factory at the top of Crummer Road. The anarcho-absurdist  tone was set by the cover graphic of the first issue, which showed a man wearing a newspaper, which he is also reading, crossing the road at the Three Lamps corner while a seven-headed dragon flies above the old Hydra bacon factory and a crowd of good keen Kiwi blokes with short-back-and-sides haircuts look on.

            It ran to five issues and the average print run for each issue was 200 to 250, with  the largest print-run being 300 for the first one.  The border of the first issue’s cover graphic was made up of over 100 possible-but-rejected alternative titles typed-out, ranging from ‘Dehydrange’ to ‘Pun Sun Be’ to ‘Verb with Paper Snack’ to ‘Remember Gypsy Mick’. A lot of people swirled around the making of the magazine, almost as many as there were copies of issues to begin with, in keeping with the mass-demo vibe of the time.

            The Rag grew out of the rich compost that was Ponsonby in the mid-1970s — an inner-city Auckland working class suburb rundown and seedy and home to dissidents and drop-outs of all persuasions in the years before gentrification. The neighbourhood was pullulating with idealists, and every group and its obligatory dogs seemed to be publishing a little magazine, from the Polynesian Panthers to various workers’ unions.

            The product of a loose collective of like-minded contrarians, agitators,  and artists, some of whom had been involved with the Progressive Youth Movement, Auckland’s Resistance Bookshop, or anarchist collectives in the South Island, it was a publication partly inspired by British and American and New Zealand underground magazines and comic books of the Sixties and early Seventies. As such it is one of the missing links between alternative magazines such as Earwig (Auckland), Cock (Wellington), Ferret (Christchurch) and Counter-Culture Free Press (Dunedin) ,and publications of the late 1970s and early Eighties: Strips, and various Kiwi punk and Flying Nun ‘zines.

            Central figures in early stages of its production were artist and cartoonist Alan Harold, his brother, writer Denis Harold, and members of the Auckland Anarchist Activists, including Frank Prebble, Graeme Minchin, John Markie (later John Segovia) and writer Chrissie Duggan. Artistic contributions were provided by writer and poet David Eggleton, cartoonist Barry Linton, the artist Malcolm Ross, collagist Bryan Harold, and local poets Herman Gladwin and Sue Heap, amongst others.

            The offset printing press that was used had had several previous lives. It originally printed newspapers and posters for the American armed forces based in Auckland during World War Two. Later it became the Socialist Unity Party’s printing press. Eventually coming into the possession of the Ponsonby People’s Union and some associated groups, it was installed at 4 Crummer Road at the top of Ponsonby Road in a former clothing factory annex, where it was used to print leaflets. By this time some of machine’s parts were getting quite worn, and main printer Alan Harold proved adept at buying or obtaining replacement parts and he and others used number eight wire techniques to keep it running.

 

            Over the nearly two years of The Ponsonby Rag’s existence the composition of the core group gradually changed. (Those involved funded it —we all had part-time jobs). By the time of the last issue, Ponsonby Rag 5, Denis Harold and David Eggleton did most of the assembling, lay-out and printing between them.

            Printed on A2 sheets of paper, folded and stapled into an A3 format, using a variety of ink colours to obtain a streaky semi-psychedelic effect, the aesthetic of The Rag borrowed from the hippy, organic-community-garden ethos for its pumpkin/cabbage/beetroot colours, and some of the large sheets were pasted-up on walls around Ponsonby in emulation of wall-pasted community newspapers in Red China: the pasted-up images included big Linton cartoons and Eggleton political poster-poems.

            Otherwise, it was sold at cafes and other outlets around Ponsonby for 30 cents a copy, rising to 50 cents for the fifth and final issue, which consisted of a hand-stencilled paper bag containing printed leaflets and pieces of card. This issue was modelled on the notion of the ubiquitous Kleensac: the big, khaki-coloured, all-purpose paper rubbish bag of those days. The idea was that you went through the contents of the paper bag like a homeless street person in search of  literal and cultural sustenance, emerging with poems, graphic, cartoons stories and poems in a rainbow of colours on various pieces of paper and card.

            One reason for this was that the offset-plate machinery had become very erratic and was not inking properly. Consequently, while the images and text of number 5 were consistent, they all looked slightly different because of eccentric printing techniques in the overlaying of colours. The printing press itself became pretty much unusable shortly after, and anyway all principal parties involved had moved on to other things: single-artist comic books done elsewhere by Alan Harold — Kin Oath Comics, The Esoterrorists and Cracking Up; while the anarchist faction put out ‘spasmodical’ anti-newspapers; Barry Linton got involved with the Strips group; and David Eggleton published a series of self-illustrated poetry broadsheets.

            Content-wise, there were three main contributors to The Ponsonby Rag: artist Alan Harold, cartoonist Barry Linton, and writer and graphic artist David Eggleton; while Denis Harold provided editorial direction and the most elbow-grease throughout. Each much-argued-over issue was intended as an anarchic one-off, so it did well to survive, while the eccentricities of its means-of-production remain unique.

 

The Ponsonby Rag article © 2013 David Eggleton, Joe Wylie recollections © 2013 Joe Wylie, Images © 2013 respective artists, Thanks to Auckland Libraries for access to archival copies of The Ponsonby Rag.

Happy 47th Birthday, Dylan Horrocks

Noel Cook Part Two

 
Noel Cook gets caricatured by Tony Rafty circa late 40's.

 
Today is the 116th anniversary of the birth of cartoonist/illustrator Noel Cook. On the Pikitia Press tumblr I'll be posting a series of galleries of Cook's work over the next couple days.

New Zealand Author Witi Ihimaera discovered Cook's work in England during the early seventies, he shared the following recollections:

     I well remember walking through Chelsea, I think it was, and seeing in the front window of an art gallery a painting of a large tekoteko figure. The painting, in blue, red and black was so arresting - and posed in such a dramatic way, the figure almost tearing itself apart - that I went in and bought it. I can't remember how much it cost, but as I was on my honeymoon with Jane and we were on a working holiday, you'll appreciate that it wasn't a purchase to be done lightly! Subsequently I met Noel Cook and his wife - he may have been in the gallery at the time I bought the painting - but I know Jane and I went to another showing of his and also to dinner with him and London friends. He was a friendly generous man to a young Maori boy - as I was then - and we corresponded for a while, somewhere I may have those letters but it would take ages to find them.

     I still have the painting. It's on the wall in my music room. Uncannily, Alan Duff's first edition of his book Once Were Warriors has a similarly posed tekoteko on its cover. Mine is the better version.

  Catalogue from Noel Cook Exhibition

Images © 2013 Estate of Noel Cook

Special thanks to Dylan Horrocks, Witi Ihimaera, Tim Bollinger, Geoff Harrison, Darren Schroeder, Peter Cook and Jonquil Cook.

Deep Park Comic Book Launch

Pikitia Press is proud to announce the debut graphic novel by David C Mahler, Deep Park, debuted a week ago at The Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, Washington with the Melbourne launch party, 6pm this Friday 27th Sept at The Silent Army Storeroom, 110 Franklin Street, Melbourne.

Deep Park launch Facebook Event page.

David C Mahler's tumblr.

About Deep Park
'The beloved amusement park with it all: carousels, drop rides, a hallucinogenic water slide, an orgasm inducing roller coaster and the cult that worships it. Join a colourful cast of characters wasting a day in the sun, exploring the thrills, and terrors, Deep Park has to offer.'

Deep Park is a brand new Australian graphic novel from a fresh young voice. An equal parts amusing and uncomfortable exploration of repercussions and human failings, the story of Deep Park is presented as seemingly separated vignettes; we follow characters for two or four pages before moving on to another scenario. Only as the book progresses is it revealed how interconnected and co-dependent these stories are, all leading towards a climactic clash between a crazed, genocidal Disney-like figure and a roller coaster worshipping cult of desperation! The fun never stops at Deep Park.

About David
David C Mahler was born in Vancouver, Canada, and after a few formative years in Belgium moved to Melbourne at age ten. Raised on a diet of Calvin and Hobbes, Tintin, Archie and Astroboy, drawing was second nature from childhood. He released his first self-published mini-comic at age nine.

After years of experimenting and developing in the Melbourne small press scene, his quarterly short story comic collection Coracle debuted at the 2013 Melbourne Zine Fair. As well, he has contributed to magazines and anthologies such as Voiceworks, The Lifted Brow, Naturegraffix, Victoria Drug Scene, Dailies and the upcoming Paper Trail.

A current film student at the Victorian College of the Arts, David has also completed a number of short films and animations. Outside of his course, he is currently at work on a weekly web comic, Greyvid, a follow up graphic novel and a mini comic for the Andrew Fulton organised Mini Comic of the Month Club.

  

Noel Cook Part One

 

Approaching the anniversary of the birth of Noel Cook (1897-1981) I wanted to post a few excerpts from a feature in my forthcoming Paper Trail book. As a cartoonist and illustrator Cook was one of the most significant and perhaps under-appreciated to come out of New Zealand in the twentieth century. Cook had varied career as a commercial artist/cartoonist/art editor and painter, producing a large body of work in New Zealand, Australia and England. In researching Cook I've found his life to be every bit as fascinating as the work he produced.

I'll be posting samples from Cook's career on the Pikitia Press tumblr over the next few days as well. Read Cook's first installment of Peter for the Sunday News here.

The following recollections are excerpted from an interview conducted 6th May 2013 with Noel's son Peter Cook.

"You know what artist's are like they cut out everything that they see for ideas. Dad never threw anything away you see (Laughs). Except his paintings, they're the things he did throw away because he gave them to so many relations. He never held onto his paintings. There was one I remember as a tiny kid I had that I've never managed to find. There were some pen and ink drawings he did, I must have been about three years old."

 

Some of Cook's earliest work were cartoons and illustrations produced for The NZ Observer. This example from May 29th, 1920.

You know he was in the war? the first War? He called it the great adventure. His father was a newspaper proprietor in Auckland, New Zealand. His relations there have a lot of the history. He went with a whole bunch of friends to the war because they didn't separate you in those days, he stayed in the same platoon with them. They all got killed except him in one shell. The only time I remember him talking about it he must have been drunk we were only kids in bed and he was coming to give us a story. He told us a bit about the boys calling out to him, "Give my love...". It was like a boy's adventure story, he was very angry. Two German prisoners of war were carrying him off on a stretcher 'cause he was badly wounded himself and he threw dirt at them and then he felt sorry 'cause he knew it wasn't their fault. A friend of his, another friend had just lost his brother and Dad had taken a prisoner and this friend put a small bomb in his pocket. Dad took it and threw it away. He could understand that a man had just lost his brother and the German kissed him! He always remembered getting that big kiss. He went to England then for convalescence, then back to New Zealand.

Advertisement for Noel Cook's Peter in Sunday News April 3rd 1932

 Noel Cook Cover for Blue Star comic Valley of Doom. Interior comic by Royce Bradford of whom little is known other than he is rumoured to also have been a New Zealander.

I was pretty close to him although I was often angry with him because he couldn't control his drinking. I began to understand. He never forgot that you see. they were his closest friends. So by the time they got back to New Zealand he did get a job in an architects office. He met some other artists, he was always drawing. He used to draw the Rugby teams , The All Blacks and all that sort of thing. He met a bunch of other artists and they all went to Sydney. He was close to his parents 'cause he got letters but he just wanted to get away from the gung ho thing, 'cause everyone was saying, "Oh you're heroes," and he hated all of that because it was a horrible experience. He couldn't go along with that, although he always went to Anzac Day events, but he wasn't happy about it.

Cartoon for the NZ Observer June 12th 1920

The people that he went to Sydney with were Unk White and George Finey, they were great friends of his. The Finey's were quite close to us when we were young, the whole family. Another chap Alex King, he was a good artist, I remember him. Bill Constable was another one, there were quite a few he had some exhibitions with them over here (England) combined with them. When he went to Sydney it was all that black and white stuff, black and white footballers, or politicians, or you name it.

 Armistice Day illustration from the NZ Observer, 13 November 1920.

One picture he did for Armistice Day was a picture of his friends marching up a hill, Ghostly images of ANZACS advancing  through No Mans Land. I've still got that, it was printed in The New Zealand Observer. He had that on his mind a lot. He wasn't sentimental in another way it was deep down with him.

Later when he was working with the Consolidated Press in Sydney, Frank Packer was the boss you know. Dad kissed him in the lift! (Laughs) Frank jokingly kicked him out of lift. A childhood friend of mine, a cadet reporter Andy MacCullough, witnessed this. He was very fond of Dad who enjoyed a great joke with everybody. He was always in the artists room and that's my memories of going into the artist's room and being sat down and being given paper and a pen and seeing the men that had photographs that they washed in the sink. They were my early memories of him at work.

 Excerpted panels from early installments of Peter in the Sunday News 1932

Then he started the space stuff. I think he named me after his first strip, Roving Peter it was called (laughs). He started those and then I came after or just before. I think it was after. I remember We were living in Vaucluse then up on the hill looking out over the pacific and sunny mornings on Sunday reading the comic as it came in the Sunday Sun.

Without my mum I don't think he'd have survived long. He met her at a Mrs Kneebone's Wine Lodge at Circular Quay. She was quite a brilliant pianist, she was at the Conservatorium, and the girls used go down (they wouldn't go to the pub of course) to this wine place. Very unusual in Sydney, I don't remember any but apparently there was, where ladies could go in just like a continental place. That's where he met my mum. I think her parents were worried but all her siblings loved him, he was very jolly with them, and he helped them out a hell of a lot because he never stopped working you see. Everybody was going out of work with the depression and all that.
 

Images © 2013 Estate of Noel Cook

Text © 2013 Matt Emery

sources: http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/ , http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz , 

Happy 61st Birthday, Chris Knox

Mandrake The Magician Cover Gallery - Feature Productions

Notes on New Zealand comics publisher Feature Productions and covers of first twenty issues of Mandrake the Magician here, #20-#40 here, #41- #60 here,  and #61 - #80 here. Covers from FP editions #81 - #95 of Lee Falk's long enduring character, Mandrake the Magician, featured below.