Monday, August 13, 2012
Joe Kubert RIP
Like a lot of folk in Australia I was amazed to find Joe Kubert listed as a guest at the 2010 Sydney Supanova but there he was in the promotional material. He did make the trip all the way out here to meet the wide range of fans he had garnered over one of the longest careers any cartoonist has had in comics. A young friend of mine, Darcy Quinn, made the trip up from Melbourne to see him and Kubert very graciously answered a few questions for a video interview. I'm sure many Australasian fans of Joe Kubert are mourning the loss of one of the giants in the field of American comics.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Bevyn Baker Olympian Cartoonist
1960 Rome Olympic Games Competitor
Bevyn Baker of Victoria - photographer J Tanner
With the 2012 London Olympics almost concluded I wanted to post some work by Melbourne cartoonist, Bevyn Baker who in the early days of his cartooning career represented Australia in sprinting at the 1960 Rome Olympics. In 1960 Baker was Australia's
second best performer over the 100 and 200 metres sprint and regarded as an
excellent Long jumper.
Baker worked for the Argus whilst still in his teens producing a regular gag strip, Richard the Line Shooter.
Baker worked for the Argus whilst still in his teens producing a regular gag strip, Richard the Line Shooter.
The Argus - Monday 24th December
From 1963 - 1969 Baker produced Alex Gurney's Ben Bowyang strip for daily newspapers, The fifth artist to do so.
Later this month I will have a feature interview with Baker about his lengthy career as a cartoonist.
Alex Gurney's Ben Bowyang.
Later this month I will have a feature interview with Baker about his lengthy career as a cartoonist.
Below: A selection of Baker cartoons from Victorian newspaper The Heidelberger January - April 1960.
Sources: The Heidelberger January,April 1960, http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au, http://trove.nla.gov.au/, The State Library of Victoria, Panel By Panel by John Ryan, pub. Cassell 1979.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Parade Magazine
The Australian Parade magazine featured a mixture of historical stories
from Australasia with topical contemporary stories set locally and from
around the world. Interior pages are black and white and issues during
the sixties and seventies featured vibrant painted covers. Australian
cartoonists Stan Pitt, John L Curtis, Virgil Reilly contributed covers during this period.
Virgil Reilly
Virgil Reilly
Virgil Reilly
Virgil Reilly
John L Curtis
Stan Pitt
Stan Pitt
Tom Bishop
Tom Bishop
Tom Bishop
Tom Bishop
Tom Bishop
Tom Bishop
Tom Bishop
Tom Bishop
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Minicomics of the Month - Andrew Fulton Interview
Melbourne cartoonist and Smaller Comics Capo Andrew Fulton has launched Minicomic of the Month an initiative to get Australian comics into the hands of readers that might not otherwise be able to find them.
I asked Andrew a few questions about Minicomic of the Month and the folk involved.
If I recall rightly this is the second year of Minicomic of the Month (MOTM)? What was the initial response like? What has it been like this time?
Yeah this is the second time we are doing this - the
first one Pat Grant kicked off in 2009. You can still see his original
pitch here: http://www.patgrantart. com/mcotm/page.html
I got an email one day asking if I wanted to be in it. At that point I
had been doing the webcomic for a while but really hadn't done much
physical printing of stuff. I think I might have been in a Tango? It
ended up being the first proper mini I actually made and stapled for
real.
What inspired the use of a subscription format for getting your comics to prospective readers?
The first time sold out pretty much
overnight, so the response was great. I think this time it has been a
little slower, but still a great response, and spread a bit wider too -
we have a larger percentage of international subscribers this time
around, which is great.
Not sure that I can
answer directly to 'inspiration' as I have just stolen Pat's idea, but I
think the subscription is a great way to spread work around. It's a
pretty cheap up front cost from people, there's a sort of energy and
excitement that's different from buying something in a store. And people
probably get a mix of things from people whose work they know, and some
they are less familiar with. And just on a practical level it helps
keeps costs down - you know exactly how many you need to print, you
don't end up with the World's Saddest Cupboard, Overflowing With Unsold
Books.
Pat Grant and Ive Sorocuk
Mandy Ord and Megan Nairn
Are the mini-comics in a uniform format? Are the physical comics produced by each individual creator?
Initially I had thought to do a uniform
format, and kind of centralise the production and logistics of things to
make it a bit easier. But in the early stages of discussion we decided
that that took a little bit of the magic out of it. Part of the fun is
that someone is making this little minicomic with mostly their bare
hands, stapling it up and licking the stamps. There's a personal
connection there.
Is the subscription model for MOTM set at a limited run? Will each installment of Minicomic of the month be mailed from the individual creators?
Yeah, we are planning to limit the subscriptions. We
kind of agreed on 100 being the most we wanted to have to physically
put together and mail. I don't really want it to become a burden, but
also I also know it sold out super quick the first time around and a lot
of people missed out.
And yeah, each month the individual is responsible for getting it together and mailing it out -
although a large chunk of us are in Melbourne so we could get together
for a stapling party or two.
Australian Cartoonists in America: Caravan of Comics
Did you take anything from your experiences on the Caravan of Comics from the American indy/alt/minicomic scene that could be applied to Australia?
The Caravan was
probably the biggest inspiration for getting this thing rolling again,
and kind of sustain that momentum of getting Australian Comics out into
the world. It's kind of a downer but one of the big things I
"took" from the Caravan was a reminder of how far away we are from
everything. There's a much larger audience for our work that it's not
all that easy to connect with from here, Facebook and Twitter and all
that aside - $5 shipping on a $3 or whatever is kind of a hard sell. And
I guess even worse if someone wants one of my books and one of yours,
that's even worse maths. I think I may have lost my point in here. I
guess it's maybe that giving people a single point Get a bunch of things
from different people at once is a way to combat that? But
then, in some ways the answer to that is digital distribution- sensibly
we should be doing something like this as ebooks or whatever? Forget
about distance. But that comes back to what I was saying about magic.
It's the personal touch or whatever that makes a project like this work.
Some of the creators involved in MOTM have books
published through large above ground publishers, What do you think is the appeal in producing comics at a minicomic scale?
You'd probably have to ask someone like Pat or Mandy, but again I think it is
about the personal touch, about being able to do something quickly and
send it out directly to your audience. It's not something you have to
spend years toiling over, it's quick, dirty and fun.
Images © 2012 respective artists.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
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
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