Walking to Japan Comic Launch

Melbourne Cartoonist Ben Hutchings launches his new comic, Walking To Japan, this Tuesday at the Toff in Town. Walking To Japan is the first of a few projects he has lined up with Milk Shadow Books. I had a quick chat via email with Ben about his new work.

What was the basis behind publishing Walking To Japan in Newspaper format?

We were thinking of alternative sizes. The mini size is too small.  Normal American size is annoying, and A4 is ugly. Then I suddenly remembered newspaperclub.com and thought that would be a novelty, and great for the detailed panels. It's a 16 page story I think, and the whole comic is 20 pages. There are a few full page panels that I spent one or two days on.   

What else do you have lined up with Milk Shadow Books?

You Stink #10 is underway. I had already posted most of it online though, and I thought that would be disappointing for a lot of people. So I am replacing most of it with new content except for one or two of my favorite stories that people will have read online. The style of most of the strips in #10 is that really loud, ridiculous style with fairly crude drawings. So we are talking about releasing that within the next couple of months. Milk Shadow will also be doing the third Lesson Master reprint, and Handball Heaven too! We even talked about the possibility of doing the second You Stink collection 6-10. How rad would that be, eh?  

What do you have prepared for the Walking To Japan launch party ?

Yeah, the first hour will be just be us selling our comics, and swanning about chatting and being charming to everybody, so turn up on the dot OK? But i wanna recommend people do stay for the bands and burlesque. The reason is that after chattin' comix, we'll be sitting and drawing while the bands play with the lights down and I get such a kick out of drawing stupid drawings for people, especially when they actually look good, ho ho.

Do you think you'll publish in newspaper format again?

Wow, I haven't even seen it yet. Gotta touch it and smell it and inspect the line quality close up. James sounded excited by it on email, and the process of making it was really fun.  Ask me again after the launch!

Walking To Japan preview here.