“The Captain Congo series is one of my favourite series because the characters are funny, smart and… well… amazing.

“My favourite book of the series is ‘Captain Congo and the Maharaja’s Monkey’ because Mr. Pug the penguin dresses up as Lady Flora Pugsley and because the Maharaja has a 164 elephants!! It’s a lot of elephants!

“I still liked the first book though. I loved heaps of things about it, but I can’t say because they are all linked to the ending and I don’t want to ruin it.

“If there was more of the series, I would love to get them all.”

The Melbourne comics community will be hosting a launch party for nine new works orchestrated by authors from the fast-growing local scene.

These books are published by a diverse array of publishers, from the small press to national and overseas publishers with reach into the newsstands and the global comics market.

Saturday, February 19 from 6:00pm

Eydie’s Appreciation Society
86 Lygon St,
Brunswick East, Victoria, Australia.

Facebook page about the event.

THE COMICS:

DIGESTED.04 (Gestalt Comics)
This fourth issue continues Bobby N’s ongoing OXYGEN story, in which we delve further into the past of a man who has a strange 30 foot plant living in his backyard. There are also a bunch of short stories, as well as a letters section where an important question is asked of local comic book creators and publishers. Written and illustrated by Bobby N.

KAGEMONO: FLOWERS AND SKULLS (Blackglass Press)
A horror anthology featuring creators from Australia, the USA, Canada, France, the Netherlands and Japan. Kagemono brings together writers and artists who have worked in the mainstream, the indies and the underground; veterans as well as talented new voices. Edited by Jason Franks.

THE GUZUMO SHOW (Blackhouse Comics)
The Guzumo Show is a 120 page collection of colour gag strips by New Zealand Cartoonist, M. Emery. Published by Blackhouse Comics, The Guzumo Show covers a wide spectrum of subject matter, including political and religious commentary and finely-crafted dick jokes. Created by M. Emery.

THE LONELINESS MANIFESTO (Milk Shadow Books)
Tales and poems of being alone, and being left alone. Some funny, some melancholy, and others simply left to exist on the page. Art by Brendan Halyday, words by James Andre.

A MIND OF LOVE (Blackhouse Comics)
A Mind Of Love follows an adult book store clerk’s obsession with Nancy, a waitress. A series of events bring the two in an unexpected way and transforms Brian’s hitherto cloistered life in porn. This book explores how modern men have harnessed technology to gratify their lust at the expense of both their own and women’s humanity. Written and illustrated by Bruce Mutard.

THE SIXSMITHS (SLG Publishing)
The Sixsmiths are a family of suburban Satanists who’ve fallen prey to the global recession. Now their life is in turmoil: Ralf needs to find a new job; the twins, Cain and Lilith, need to survive the public school system; Annie needs to keep them all sane and under budget. Will the Devil smite their enemies, or will he damn them with hellfire and wrath? Written by Jason Franks, art by J. Marc Schmidt.

WHAT WE DID FOR KICKS (Milk Shadow Books)
Sexual accidents, drugs gone wild, a small dose of violence and general endorphin rushes of madness. Cheaper than a bad pill. Art and design by James Andre, Jacek Zabawa, Luke Pickett and Jase Harper. Words by James Andre.

XXX NEON SIGN (Milk Shadow Books)
Sweaty semi auto-biographic prose work detailing a few nights working the sales counter at an adult shop. Art by Bobby N., words by James Andre.

YUCK! #4 (Milk Shadow Books)
The fourth instalment of this fine, morally upstanding comique publication promoting decent behaviour and kindness amongst all levels of society. Featuring work by Matt Emery, Jason Paulos, Jase Harper, Jacek Zabawa, Scarlette Baccini, Frank Candiloro, Anton Emdin and more.

State Library of Victoria. Free admission.

In this illustrated talk, Shaun Tan takes you through the pages of his sketchbooks and explains how simple images might develop into complex stories like The Arrival and The Lost Thing.

Further information and tickets.

The BIG ARSE COMIC BOOK LAUNCH #1 celebrates the launching of nine new graphic novels and books by James Andre, Matt Emery, Jason Franks, Bruce Mutard, Brendan Halyday and Bobby N.

Bernard Caleo, the Svengali of Melbourne Comics, will be MCing the event.

Books launched include:
XXX NEON SIGN, YUCK! 4 and WHAT WE DID FOR KICKS by James Andre, Bobby N. and many others (Milk Shadow Books)
THE GUZUMO SHOW by Matt Emery (Black House Comics)
KAGEMONO: FLOWERS AND SKULLS anthology ed. by Jason Franks (Blackglass Press)
THE SIXSMITHS by Jason Franks and J. Marc Schmidt (SLG Publishing)
A MIND OF LOVE by Bruce Mutard (Black House Comics)
DIGESTED NO. 4 by Bobby N. (Gestalt Comics)
THE LONELINESS MANIFESTO by James Andre and Brendan Halyday (Milk Shadow Books)

Give your couch a break–get your butt to the first Big Arse Comic book Launch on the 19th of February.

Time: Saturday, February 19 · 6:00pm – 9:00pm

Location: Eydie’s Appreciation Society 86 Lygon St, Brunswick East, Victoria

WHEN it comes to Shakespeare, little is sacred. And there can be few plays in English that have been as routinely reinterpreted as Hamlet.

In recent years the tragic prince of stage, screen and Twitter has also attracted the attention of graphic novelists.

Purists may groan at Hamlet being variously refashioned as a futuristic manga antihero, a surprisingly expressive stick figure, an emo teen rebel with a cause or even faithfully following the (abridged) letter of the lore. However, educators and librarians keen to engage contemporary readers with the Bard’s plays have readily enlisted many of the better examples to the cause.

To these efforts we can now add Nicki Greenberg’s daring and often dazzling take on this standard-bearer of high Shakespearean tragedy. A Melbourne-based artist who seems to delight in radically reconstituting literary classics, Greenberg’s bold makeover of The Great Gatsby, in her 2007 graphic novel debut, recast F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ensemble of lost souls as a bizarre menagerie whose bestial appearance exposed their true nature. Realised through elegant linework, sepia-toned hues and incisive storytelling, the effect was as compelling as it was unique.

With Hamlet, as befits Shakespeare’s longest and arguably best known play, Greenberg unleashes her narrative ambitions on to a sprawling, stylised, 427-page canvas bristling with colour and imaginative brio. And, as with Gatsby, she makes the work her own while honouring the source material, creating a sad, striking and richly layered adaptation.

On stage or the page, and at a distance of 400 years, it takes a while to attune to Shakespeare’s venerated verse. It doesn’t help that his plays carry the baggage of dimly recalled school essays or the sense that, as Fintan O’Toole observes in his 2002 book Shakespeare is Hard, But So is Life, “they are good for you . . . a kind of mental muesli that cleans out the system and purges the soul”.

Recognising these inherent challenges, Greenberg raises the bar, wholly reimagining the players, staging and action to elucidate the drama and rhetoric. It’s a high-wire act that largely pays off.

Read the full review here.

Officially, Reg entered the comics by writing storylines and dialogue for Stan’s strip, Silver Starr in the Flame World, about an Australian serviceman leading an expedition to drill into the centre of the Earth. Like many heroes of Australian comics, the character was a clone of a popular US hero – in this case Flash Gordon. An emerging artistic talent, Reg also drew background scenery for the strip.

Despite its enormous popularity, Silver Starr only lasted two years, withdrawn from the Sun in 1948 after a dispute over page size. Though Stan was given another strip by a rival paper, he was unhappy with the storylines (written by a journalist) and, a year later, joined forces with his brother once again.

The Pitt brothers created Yarmak – The Jungle King for the comic-book publisher Young’s Merchandising. Again the character was highly derived (this time from Tarzan) but was handled with enough flair to make it one of Australia’s most fondly remembered comic books of the time. Again, Reg was both author (co-writing with Frank Ashley) and set designer, providing innovative panel layouts and stylish typography as a backdrop for Stan’s dashing heroes and beautiful women.

Reg continued to work as a graphic designer, while Stan moved to America and drew the adventures of his hero, Flash Gordon. They continued working together for comics and pulp magazines (including a full-colour Silver Starr comic, published in 1956 to compete with the introduction of television).

But despite their success, perhaps their most celebrated work was a series known to connoisseurs of the medium as one of the great “lost” comics.

A science fiction buff, Reg conceived Gully Foyle, a comic strip based on Alfred Bester’s novel The Stars My Destination. “The book made an indelible impression on me for so many years, even though it would be 10 years before we finally got the chance to do it,” he recalled.

The obsession proved contagious, as both brothers devoted several months, beginning in 1963, to the project. After Reg was seriously injured in a car accident, his compensation payout allowed them both to work full-time on the strip.

Read the full obituary here.

You can view or download the show at Byrne’s First Tuesday Book Club website.

[The graphic novel...] trend has only recently become evident in Australia, where, ever since Shaun Tan’s wordless fable, The Arrival (2006), was selected as Book of the Year for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in 2007, graphic novels have enjoyed heightened media attention.  Tan’s high-profile publication was swiftly followed by Nicki Greenberg’s comic adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (2007), Mandy Ord’s meditation on Melbourne’s cityscape, Rooftops (2007), and the first volume of Bruce Mutard’s projected World War II trilogy, The Sacrifice (2008). The near simultaneous appearance of these works, all of which received positive reviews,[2] suggested that Australia’s mainstream book publishers were ‘catching up’ with international trends.

Such concentrated media coverage created the false impression that the Australian graphic novel was an entirely new phenomenon, thereby ignoring earlier Australian examples of the graphic novel[3] and bypassing any mention of Australia’s post-war comic book industry, the scale and diversity of which easily eclipsed the modest output of present-day graphic novel publishing activity.

Yet just as Australian publishers, readers and journalists have lagged behind their overseas counterparts in their critical reappraisal of comics and graphic novels, it would appear that Australian academe has been equally tardy in giving this medium serious consideration. David Walker’s introduction to the landmark 1979 study, Australian Popular Culture, conceded that, despite the breadth of topics covered therein, ‘there remains a wealth of magazine stories, serials, comics [and] cartoons … which also merit analysis’ (1979: 13). Nearly a quarter of a century later, it appeared that few Australian scholars had taken up Walker’s suggestion; as Adam Possamai observes, of the dozen major surveys of Australian popular culture published during 1987-2001, none of them made any reference to comic books or graphic novels (2003: 110). Comics, it seems, remain an invisible medium.

Read the full article.

“I won the gig from Dark Horse’s New Recruits program in 2005, and finished the book in 2010,” creator Follett explains. “Originally conceived as an interactive ‘choose your own adventure’ style Sunday newspaper comic strip where kids could vote to see what happens next, it developed into an all-out sci-fi adventure strip, which to this day has never been serialised in a Sunday newspaper(!).”

Silas Mortimer Mulch is an ecological supergenius, with a laboratory greenhouse holding the keys to countless scientific breakthroughs. But when his niece and nephew, Selena and Tommy, come to visit Silas and find him missing, his organic computer SOFIA tells them that he is lost within the ever-expanding and constantly changing greenhouse. Donning high-tech greenhouse suits, Selena and Tommy must go in after Silas, and are soon confronted with astonishing nanotechnology, fungi that act as hard drives of information about the greenhouse, and plants that can create duplicates of people they encounter.

Follett’s lush, inviting artwork and lively colours suit the premise perfectly and at 72 pages, it’s a chunky, action-packed GN for readers of all ages.

It’s available now.

A visit to the Uncle Silas blog is worthwhile as well, as Follett has comic packages available for sale and lots of interesting posts about the Uncle Silas project and other comic-related items.

David Follett’s Uncle Silas blog:
http://unclesilas.blogspot.com

Uncle Silas at Dark Horse.

Now, Asylum Press in the States will be releasing the first trade paperback volume for the US market. EEEK! Vol. 1 should be in stores soon. This collected edition includes a full color section, cover gallery and sketchbook.

Paulos delivers the goods with over 15 tales of revenge, zombies, vampires, ghouls and monsters. Each tale drawn in a different style reminiscent of the B&W horror mags of the 70′s and 80′s. In “Deadline of Death” we witness rival comic artists dabbling with malevolent forces that arrive in the form of a chain smoking goatee wearing Satan. In “Lights! Camera! Murder!”, a lovesick starlet and a ruthless film director embark on a doomed love affair that ends in pieces.  In “Easy Prey”, a helpless girl, lost in the wilderness … but is she all that she seems? In “Head Trip”, a hippie’s love for music goes horribly wrong.

You get the idea. If you like your comics eerie or creepy, chances are you’ll dig this collection.

Paulos’ love of the genre shines through, but he’s not alone. The book has stories written by Paulos as well as Bodine Amerikah and Daren White (writer of the much-lauded, Eddie Campbell drawn, The Playwright).

EEEK! VOL. 1 will be a soft cover TPB annual anthology.  Standard comic book dimensions. 152 pgs, B&W with COLOR section , perfect bound. Retail Price: $14.95. Ship Date: October 2010. Intended Audience: General Readers. ISBN13: 978-1-61724-010-2

Writers: Jason Paulos, Bodine Amerikah, Daren White
Artist: Jason Paulos

Cover Artist: Aly Fell
Back Cover Artists: Jason Paulos and Daniel Cox

http://www.eeekcomic.com/

http://www.asylumpress.com/