String Books

For those of you passing through Braidwood over the next couple of weekends.

Like a Machine

A little while ago I did some illustrations for a video clip for my mate Karuna. The opening sequence with the tunnel and space ship are mine.

Space Invaders Zine Fair

October 29th, Friday night saw the opening to the Space Invaders exhibition opening at the National Gallery of Australia Canberra, the following day saw the zine fair in the new NGA wing: the Gandel Hall. Space Invaders is an exhibition on contemporary street art with some attention being paid to zines. I'm not sure how the story went but Sticky organised the zine fair whilst outside a mural was street arted on a fake wall.

Never having been to a zine fair I was not sure what to expect. I knew James Andre was going but I think it was his first time too so there was no one whose brains I could pick. I arrived on time (10am for 11 start) and set up next to James and his partner Matilde. As I looked around the room I noticed a couple of familiar faces one being Bernie Slater who was a couple of years under me at art school, the other being Marcelo Baez, who I met at Sydnova. 

Not all the tables were filled but a lot of people shared tables, there was no table allocation. Some tables were frothing over the brim but these were zine shops not individuals hawking their personal wares.

The day started off rather slow without a sale for the first half hour but from then on there was a steady trickle past my table and I ended making a decent amount of money. That was pretty much the sum up of the day really: a steady trickle with money being made. The tables were free so everything anyone made was lovely, lovely profit. Well at least for me it was as I live near Canberra.

Here's the  cover to Monster Addict.

This and James' other books can be bought here or here.

Melbourne Armageddon

Last weekend saw the Melbourne leg of the Armageddon "culture expo" which I attended sharing again a table with the illustrious Trevor Wood. Armageddon has been gaining in popularity and while I don't know if this has anything to do with Melbourne or if it's the expo, it didn't have the crowds Sydney Supanova enjoyed. There were some pretty big names there such as Michael Biehn and John Dimaggio but having guests from Survivor seemed a bit weak.

All in all it was a pretty good weekend with roughly the same amount of money earnt on my part but it was made differently. It was a very slow start and after an hour with no sales I was ready to throw in the towel and give up in despair. Slowly but surely the punters started to take an interest and I started to move comics. By the end of the Saturday I'd sold 8 copies of The Dicks Anthology (which wasn't so good compared to Supanova where I sold 13) and shifted another 4 on the Sunday (comparable to the 5 I  sold on Sunday at Supanova). These numbers though pale in comparisson to Paul Bedord selling 50 copies of The List and Jan Scherpenhuizen selling 80 copies of The Twilight Age. I am not a salesman. I might argue that it's not the right crowd but wonders the staggering amounts Paul and Jan would sell if it was the right crowd.

I made up for the loss of comic sales in Melbourne with a few more commissions. Batman, The Phantom, Red Sonja, TV Sherlock and a few of my own designs. Sadly I didn't have a camera and so didn't get any photos of the pictures I'd done. Bobby.N though (who wasn't holding a table) did manage to get a couple of snaps so I've pinched them from his blog.

I didn't do much purchasing this time. Brendan Halyday had promised me a swap but was so caught up doing zombified pictures of paying customers that I missed out. I did grab a little comic by Andrew Fulton and picked up The Time Being part 2 from Trev. Trev is definitely onto a winner here with his new story arc. He and Jen breach are producing a 200 plus page comic and as it's a web comic, updated weekly, Trev virtually has a new part to sell at every convention.

To sum up, if I want to make money at these things I'm going to have to try a different tactic. In the end though as this sort of thing isn't where I want to be making my money, it's just nice to hang with friends, look and laugh at half naked cosplayers and meet people who are genuinely into your comic.

Black Boox Has Dicks

Black Boox has just uploaded the Dicks Anthology for sale! So for those of you who can't get to Comic Kingdom, Minotaur or Impact click the link above to get yourselves some Dicks heaven.

The Left Hand Book

I'll Explain the title of this post later.

9 years ago I had an exhibition, which was part of the residency I was offered after leaving art school, of prints I had done through the year. There were large multy state woodcuts, some crappy self portrait etchings and these (plus 2 others which I dont have a photo).

I was very plaesed with them and wished I'd done more. Ever since I've been thinking back to these etchings and wondering if I might do something like them again. Now the tittle is explained: I was recently asked if I would like to be in an exhibition by a Julian Davies (author and co owner of Finlay Press who published Roof Tops by Mandy Ord) at his new exhibiton space called The Left Hand. Julian had actually bought one of the above print at my exhibition. So after accepting his offer it got me thinking: Maybe I could continue on with the ideas I'd left all those years ago.

The brief was to make a book (of sorts) so I decided to do some more bone drawings (not etchings this time as I don't have the time nor the access to a workshop) but this time mix them up with various arthropods. Not having much time I've kept them simple. Also I've used watered down ink to give them a softer feel and the possiblity of building up various tones. The Moebius influence was not intensional but he being in my thoughts this past while I suppose it was unaviodable.

Here is the drawing process too. I have a whole bunch of bones and arthropods to look at, I make a rough sketch and then go for it.

Monster Addict

  

James Andre asked me to do some covers for a novel he had written called Monster Addict. He wanted a group shot of "vampires, rapists, etc". Vampires, no problem. But how do you draw a rapist? Anyway it wasn't really an issue, I just drew a bunch of monsterish creatures and chucked in a couple people.

For the back cover image I mixed a monkey with a lion and gave it some protruding fangs coz protruding fangs are cool.

Monster Addict should be out soon. Check out James' blog for updates.

Supanova Sydney

Last weekend saw the Sydney stint of Supanova, the huge 'pop culture' expo. I and other comic creators from all over Australia came to sell their wares to the not so interested public. Already you may note a hint of cynicism in my voice which I must apologise for. I knew I wasn't going to be getting an expo like those I attended in England but the punters here were not coming to buy comics. Everything else to do with comics outside the creation and collection of comics is the focus of this expo. TV stars of shows like Buffy, computer games, Manga (I apologise once again as Manga are comics but the comic side aren't the focus here), cosplay (a new word for me: a word to describe those who dress up as their favourite comic, TV, movie, anime, etc character) and wrestling??? All that aside Artist's Alley was a decent size and saw a decent amount of traffic and sales were close to what I expected.

I was sharing a table with Trevor Wood, illustrator of Sawbones, up near the edge of the expo opposite the 501st Legion. Jason Franks and J. Marc Schmidt were at a table to the left, Paul Abstruse and burlesque dance to the right and Burger Force and Brendan Halyday opposite. All together we made a nice little corner and boldly sold our comics, posters and drawings. Paul is a master salesman. There's no way I could do what he does, way too over the top for me, yet it works. All in all we had a successful weekend with Saturday serving some better while others faired better on Sunday. I covered my costs in terms of table rent, insurance and petrol (luckily I had a place to stay free of charge).

What it really comes down to in the end is critical mass. Australia just doesn't have the industry nor buying public to have a large expo designed specifically for comic creators. Or maybe that is what we all assume. An expo centred around comics and their creators may be able to garner enough public interest so as to make a reasonable platform for creators to make some real money, who knows. Avi Bernshaw is attempting this with Doujicon but there are conflicts of purpose in this convention and has thus far remained small. Other not comic specific festivals have been successful (checkout Bobby's Blog).

I have sounded very pessimistic in this post but I did have a really good time. Not only hanging out and catching up with my friends but the getting the satisfaction that people liked my work enough pay for it. I picked up a few local titles from some hot new talent including The Grave Shakers and a poster and sketch of wolverine from Gee Hale. Although I missed out on picking up a copy of Sgt Rock: Between Hell and a hard Place and getting it signed by the one and only Joe Kubert, I did manage, however, to give him a copy of the Dicks Anthology about which he said 'I want to spend time with this comic'. I was over the moon. A thoroughly worth while expo to attend and maybe in time we'll get a stronger position and punters will be there for us.

For Bobby's weekend click here and for J. Marc's click here.

Almost there

Well, it's taken almost 2 years of hard work (not 2 years of steady work coz when I was working on it i went pretty quickly) but Dicks the Anthology will soon be hitting a comic shelf near you. If everything goes according to plan (and so far everything is) I will be launching the anthology at Sydney Supanova on the weekend of June the 18th, 19th, 20th. I will be sharing a table with the illustrious Trevor Wood and selling Back issues of Dicks. All puchases of the anthology will receive a free sketch done on the spot!

The writers who contributed to this anthology are

James Andre - creator of Yuck!
Tom Taylor - writer of Star Wars Invasion
Jason Franks - writer of The Sixsmiths
Jen Breach - writer of Saw Bones and comic reviewer for The Age

Pinups contributed by

Trevor Wood - illustrator of Saw Bones
Daniel Reed - creator of The Crumpleton Experiments
Hayden Fryer - creator of Billy the Demon Slayer
Bobby. N- creator of Digested and Withheld
BMB - creator of Stark Reality
HPop - illustrator of The List

And here's the cover

Other Peoples Pinups

It's been a while since I did any work but luckily other people have been. In the Dicks anthology I'm working on I've got a pinup section which will (I hope) feature the talents of Hpop, Bobby.N, Trevor Wood and others. The others being Daniel Reed and Hayden Fryer who have just sent me their marvellous drawings.
Dan's.

Hayden's

All I have to do now is finish the last 4 pages of Jason Franks' story then I'm 3/5 of the way through. I was aiming to release at Supanova Melbourne but there was no way and Doujicon doesn't look good either so I hope I can get my act together for Supanova Sydney.

Canberra Meetups

Well, it's been a slow year for the old Canberra Meetup. We started off strong but seem to have dwindled down to 4 eager but seldom present participants. So a little bit of publicity may be in order. Here's the flier and poster that I'll put up in Impact comics tomorrow.


To go to the Canberra Comic Meetups on facebook click here.