Tango reflections

I'm feeling very sentimental. Last Thursday night saw a very special double launch here in Melbourne: the launch of Tango 9 - Love and War and of The Tango Collection.

For the uninitiated, Tango is an anthology of romance comics. And by romance, we mean the wonderful combination of love-plus-adventure. All kinds of love (zombie love, toaster love, cheese love, pigeon love - you name it) and every colour of adventure, all in magnificent techni-black-and-white. Tango is up to its ninth issue now, and for twelve years these beautiful anthologies have been lovingly tended, edited, brought into the world and distributed by the spectacular Mr Bernard Caleo. Twelve years is a really long time in comics, especially when you're publishing out of your kitchen, hawking it around to bookstores yourself, and doing it all on the smell of an inky rag.

But Bernard is no longer doing it all on his own. Enter the most marvellous and most adventurous of publishing houses, Allen & Unwin. Steered by comics visionary Erica Wagner A&U have published The Tango Collection, a rich, juicy volume of selected goodies from the first eight issues of Tango. Let me just spell this out: a big, highly respected mainstream publishing company has just published a collection of local comic artists, many of whom are totally unknown to the wider reading public. That is adventure! And that is love. (That is also great publishing karma, I would add. I hope they sell kazillions.)

The Tango Collection is fabulous. The comics are funny, moving, gripping, compelling, kooky, challenging, entertaining and mighty impressive. The editing choices are smart and beautifully balanced, thanks to Bernard and to A&U's Elise Jones, and the design by Bruno Herfst is great - inviting to the eye, with a clever nod to Tango's cut-and-paste kitchen table origins. And it's so perfectly in the spirit of Tango, that I have to wipe away a little tear just thinking about it.

Tango has always had a big, big heart - big enough to include the first shy publishings of many a local scribbler. Talk to any Melbourne comic artist, and odds are they started out publishing their work in Tango. And odds are those same scribblers are still submitting their work to Bernard every time a new issue of Tango is conceived. It's eclectic, it's open to play and experimentation, it's generous, and it's a damn fine collection of quality comics. It's very, very exciting seeing it dished up to the wider reading public in such polished and exuberant style.

Tango is also a community. My introduction to the Melbourne comics scene was through Tango back in 1998, and the friendships, inspirations and camaraderie are still going strong. It was a very warm feeling indeed to look around the enormous crowd at the launch and see so many wonderful people - wonderful people whose work I admire so much, too. My date for the evening, darling baby Poppy, wasn't quite up to the heat, noise and press of so many much bigger bodies, so I didn't get a chance to talk with everyone or really get into the swing of the party. But it was great just to see the launch, and one day when she's bigger, Pop Pop can say, "I was there when they launched The Tango Collection".

The launch has been blogged by Bernard here, with photos. Needless to say, I didn't even manage to even get my camera out of my bag!

The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard

La Bug writes from the feverish depths of a hideous flu crossed with chest infection, and is feeling very much less than amazing at the moment. But in my usual "immediate!-No-this-can't-wait!" way (which is possibly what got me into this mess in the first place) I am compelled to get up for a teensy moment to tell anyone who will listen:

Go and get yourself a copy of Eddie Campbell & Dan Best's new book, The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard!

It is absolutely magnificent. Wonderful, funny and moving story. Fabulous characters (the bear is my favourite). Sublime watercolour (or gouache? or a mix?). Layouts that are super-clever in understated ways, and twists that are audacious in over-the-big-top "how did they pull that off?" ways. I loved it. I'm so glad there are books like this in the world.

Ok, that's enough from me. We go overseas in 6 days, and I damn well better get better before then.

Congratulations to Matt Ottley - CBC award for Requiem for a Beast

Congratulations to Matt Ottley, whose powerful book, Requiem for a Beast, has just won the Children's Book Council award for Best Picture Book here in Australia.

Requiem for a Beast tells a wrenching and deeply personal story of a young man who goes outback to work as a stockman, where he tries to come to terms with his family's past, the terrible treatment of indigenous Australians, and his own internal conflicts. The story is told in words and pictures, sometimes separately and sometimes in combination, and also in haunting music: it includes a CD composed by the author, to be played while reading the book.

It's a challenging book to read because of the disturbing nature of the story it tells, and the sense of impending horror that pervades it. But it is not all bleakness - Matt Ottley's glorious oil paintings are a song to the beauty of the Australian landscape, and there is hope for reconciliation, for human goodness, in the story as well. I think it's a hugely well-deserved prize.

But - surprise surprise - the judges' choice has attracted a frazzle of controversy. I haven't followed it terribly closely, but it appears that the complainers are up in arms because the book contains explicit language and themes unsuitable for young children. See this article for example, where a commentator is quoted saying:

"There is no warning. There is nothing on this book which says it contains things that may not be appropriate for children. All there is is the big gold star from the Children's Book Council, which most parents will take as a recommendation".

Now this strikes me as not only silly, but lazy as well. Matt Ottley's book is aimed at adults and older children (who are still children, just not the the smaller variety). It is not aimed at the younger age groups, as any parent, teacher or librarian can tell by simply looking at the blurb, or flicking open any page of the book. But the commentator's assumption is that a picture book - especially if it wins a prize - ought to be presumed suitable for young children, unless clearly indicated otherwise with a big warning sticker on the cover.

This assumption suggests two things to me:

First, an unwillingness to take responsibility when choosing books for one's children. If you are going to borrow or purchase a book for a child, surely you should have a quick look at it first, and decide whether you think that (a) it will appeal to the kid in question; and (b) it is appropriate to their age and level of understanding. If you abrogate this responsibility, it is a bit rich to complain that nobody else picked up your slack by warning you about what was plain to see - if you had cared to look.

Secondly, this attitude suggests real ignorance about the huge developments in picture books for older readers. You just can't assume that all picture books are aimed at littl'uns, any more than you can assume that all TV cartoons are suitable for this audience. Where was this person when The Arrival swept numerous awards in both children's and general book categories?

At the heart of this silly moral panic is something I find particularly tiresome. It's a proprietorial belief that the literary space of picture books is a protected zone solely for young children - and therefore if you dare to "pervert" that space by making a picture book (or one of those degenerate "comic books") that isn't suitable for younger kids, then it is your responsibility to protect them - and apparently their parents - from the risk of stumbling across your "dirty" work.

Too ridiculous for words... let alone for pictures!

Onward Matt Ottley!

More Melbourne, more books, more Gatsby!

That local comic book hero Bernard Caleo is at it again. Or should I say, he's been at it constantly for at least ten years and shows no signs of slowing. Here's an article he wrote recently for Laneway online magazine about the flourishing of Melbourne comic art: Melbourne, home of the comic.

And since Melbourne has just been named the second ever UNESCO World City of Literature, it seems to be a very fortuitous time for us picture/word lit people to keep pouring ink onto our little Melbourne garden and bringing the produce to market. People are broadening their tastes, and realising that there's room in the lit-city for all kinds of books - not just the word-only variety.

I am further encouraged in my optimism because... Gatsby is being reprinted!! Very exciting indeed. It'll be in the shops next year, all dressed up in another gorgeous cover by the brilliant Ms Zoe Sadokierski. Yippee!

Miracleman!

Oh my squidness, I've just seen the most fabulous theatre production. A two-man show by two very, very talented gentlemen, Bernard Caleo and Bruce Woolley. It's called Miracleman.

Miracleman is an adaptation of a comic book of the same name by Alan Moore (which I confess I have not read), and it's being staged for a terribly short time only at the o-so-Melbourne-hidden-laneway bar, the Croft Institute - which is a work of weird art in itself. The room only seats about 20 people, and it ends soon, so get in quick!

It was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Very funny, touching, exciting, super-clever and extremely engrossing - I was literally craned forward in my seat, drawn deeply into the cut-and-paste, back-and-forth-in-time stories of the very human characters.

Our main man is a somewhat worn and weary journalist who, with the use of a magic word - Kimota! - can become the superhero Miracleman. Problem is, he's lost the word, and his memory of being more than human, although terrifying fragments come back to him in his nightmares. The plot has loads of twists and turns and zaps through time and space at mindwarp speed. There are slower, very powerful sequences too, where we are suspended inside the big questions that we share with the protagonist. What are we, really? What should we do? (ah, Hamlet!)

Bernard and Bruce perform a huge cast of characters, as well as playing and singing the music (beautiful) and doing all the cleverly minimal props and the lighting and sound. And they do all this with a level of energy, perfectly pitched emotion, comic timing and expressive physicality that is really amazing.

One of the things that made me want to leap out of my seat and cheer was the frame props. In some of the rapid-fire "voice over" narrative sequences, the guys used a pair of flat, brightly coloured rectangular frames to - well, to frame characters' faces or bits of the action. They were living, moving (fast moving!) comic book frames!! Brilliant! That is adaptation working for its keep - using the idiom of one form and making it talk in another form, in a new and exciting way.

Super stuff. And you don't even have to be into comics to get it. And it includes a cameo by a giant squid. Truly, I couldn't ask for more.

Details of the show here at Bernard Caleo's blog. And another review (warning - it has spoilers) from Australian Stage Online here (so you can see it's not just me who is raving about the show!).

Melbourne is such a comics town!

Ok, we have the sort of winters that fill the trains with hideous bronchial choruses, but we also have veritable explosions of comix goodness here in Melbourne (or MelBOURNE, as our American friends call it).

A small sample of recent newslets:

Queenie Chan, graphic novelist, is doing an appearance and signing at Borders bookstore on 25 June - click on the image of the invite to see the details. Queenie has moved to Melbourne from Sydney - a natural progression!

Does two artists make an exodus? Pat Grant has also moved from Sydney to Melbourne. Pat does some of the funniest comics I've ever read, and he's got a new, very spunky website. Check it out here. Pat is also part of the rude-sounding Special Friend Brings Exciting project

Bernard Caleo, the big, big heart (and hair) of Melbourne comics, and editor of the wonderful Tango anthologies, has a new blog dedicated to the local scene. It's called "An Island Art", and it's here. Bernard has also become the roving comics reporter for Triple R radio's art show, as well as appearing on 3CR's The Comic Spot with John Retallick and Jo Waite.

And of course all of us scribblers are here, working away at our little pictures... and trying to keep the heater close enough to defrost the knees, yet far enough away not to dry out the ink.

Tales from inner and outer suburbia...

It's been quiet on the blog front once again, because we've had some drama here at the Bughouse. Our darling pup Horace has a broken front leg, so there's been a lot of nursing going on. It breaks my heart to see the little thing all splinted and bandaged and wagging his tail so hopefully, because all he wants to do is frolic and play - but of course he can't.

Right, better change subject before I cry all over the desk and short-circuit something. That tiny pup is braver than us big humans. He's wonderful. Get well soon, little Horace.

On Friday night Shaun Tan's new book, Tales from Outer Suburbia was launched at Readings bookshop in Carlton. It really goes without saying that it's another piece of brilliance from the phenomenal Mr Tan. It's gorgeous. It's wonderful. It's published by Allen & Unwin (yay!). Go out right now and get yourself a copy. The beautiful cover, designed by Inari Kiuru (Shaun's partner and super-designer) is shown here.

Traveling further back in time... Sydney Writers' Festival came and went - great fun, and very busy. We got to stay at a wonderful spot right under the Harbour Bridge, with water all around - a bit of a thrill for a Melburnian. I did a couple of talks for high school students and two workshops for kids, followed by one longer workshop for adults. I especially enjoyed the adult workshop, because the participants were all so keen and motivated and engaged and talented ! There was a terrific buzz as everyone exchanged ideas (and email addresses) and sketched out some fabulous stuff.

This Thursday I'll be doing another talk about Gatsby at Northcote library. Details of the event are here, or:

Thursday 5 June
6.30pm
Northcote Library
32-38 Separation St, Northcote
Melways Map 30 F8

Righto. Back to pupster and Hamlet now.

The rest is silence

Well, not quite. But I have been very quiet blogwise the past couple of weeks, and we can thank the Dane for that. I've been madly, passionately - ok, maniacally - absorbed in working on Hamlet, and have barely made time to eat, sleep and otherwise behave like a normal human being. It is cracking along very well, despite the little hitch of my Wacom tablet giving up the ghost and having to be replaced on Monday. I expect the discarded one to return any day now and ask its successor to take revenge on me for killing it.

I'll just pause from my madness to mention that Allen & Unwin are launching Bruce Mutard's new graphic novel, The Sacrifice, on Wednesday 23 April, and it looks like an excellent read. Set in Melbourne in the shadow of WWII, the book deals with war, ideals, family and love. Bruce will appear in conversation with the lovely Bernard Caleo.

Details:
Wednesday 23 April 6.30pm

Readings Carlton - in Lygon Street of course.

Free, but but please book on (03) 9347 6633 or RSVP on Facebook.

Sadly I can't attend, because parent-teacher interviews have been inconveniently scheduled that evening. Damn!

Comic Book Funny

Well, the Hamlet backgrounds are DONE! And have been safely delivered to the wonderful people at Allen & Unwin so they can have them professionally scanned. I also had a fruitful talk with A&U's super-designer, Bruno, to nut out the techno-mysteries of Photoshop modes, colour profiles, scanning and printing. It's a great relief to get these things sorted at the start of a project (well, it's sort of the start - if you call a year's worth of preparatory work the start...) rather than in a state of nailbiting-will-this-work?-horror at the end.

Gatsby was my Photoshop initiation, and as such I had no idea of what kind of pitfalls might open up in front of the innocent scribbler accustomed to nothing more technical than the angle of her steel nib. I did lots of things the long, hard way, and probably took a couple of years off super-editor Jodie's life with the "surprises" that arose when we tried to get my electronic files ready for print. It all worked out in the end, of course, but neither of us needs to go through that kind of suspense again!

So with the backgrounds under my belt, I'm really really looking forward to painting actual characters - in fact, to painting anything that doesn't involve thousands of tiny repetitive patterns, dots, circles, tiles...

In other news, some of us comic types are showing off at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, in a series of panels, live scribbles and exhibitions. It's called Comic Book Funny, it's on for three more Saturdays, and it's free! Here's a short article about it from The Age, featuring Comic Book Funnyman extraordinaire and organiser-of-the-show David Blumenstein, along with this little Bug. Note how I am laughing hysterically in the photo while David just looks cool.

Details for Comic Book Funny:
Saturdays 29 March, 6 April and 12 April - 4pm
Bella Union Bar
Trades Hall
Cnr Victoria and Lygon Streets
South Carlton.

And here's what David says about it:

Stand-up comedy is lovely, but it’s got a Twilight Zone-style mirror world which lives on paper and feeds on ink: the world of the underground cartoonist.

Australia’s vigorous community of independent comic book makers spend their days as clerks, shopgirls, students, teachers, ad artists, animators and telemarketers. By night the spotlight drops onto their drawing boards and their pens and brushes come out to play.

Their work is angry, scatological, satiric, whimsical and just plain funny.

Comic Book Funny is a series of free events presenting the often hilarious, occasionally touching and always purchasable works of Australia’s funniest comics auteurs -- the print analogue to the rest of the Comedy Festival.

Drop by the Bella Union Bar at Trades Hall each Saturday at 4pm and you’ll meet a few more talented cartoonists. See their wares! Ask them questions! Drink with them! Admire their ink-stained fingers!

Featuring Australia’s best and funniest cartoonists: Gerard Ashworth, Neale Blanden, David Blumenstein, Bernard Caleo, Pat Grant, Nicki Greenberg, Ben Hutchings, Dean Rankine, Glenn Smith, Ross Tesoriero, Andrew Weldon and more!

David Blumenstein and Ben Hutchings will be podcasting local comics talk and general silliness during the festival, at http://www.nakedfella.com/blog/.

In the closet

Here's the latest of the Hamlet backgrounds - Queen Gertrude's closet. The photo doesn't really convey the depth of the colours properly - they look richer in real life. Secret internal places, heavy, dripping velvet, muffling, suffocating lushness... these are the things I want to suggest. I also wanted this image to contrast with the cold, calculating-but-vertiginous sense of the King's room.

Call me unsympathetic, but I don't like Gertrude at all. She's sloppy and oozy and easily led. In my more searching, objective moments I wonder why I am quite so harsh on the old slapper. And I suspect that women's cruel judgements of one another may have a trace of insecurity in them: we hate what we fear could be lurking somewhere in us as well.

Compared to the other paintings, each of which took days and days of painstaking patterning, this one was done surprisingly quickly. And I did surprise myself with looser, easier, bigger brush strokes. For this I have to thank the wonderful Terry Denton, children's author and illustrator, and painter, with whom I spent a lovely time at the Perth Writers Festival last week. Terry showed me his sketchbook full of beautiful, loose-and-lively sketches, all splashed with vivid watercolours. They were amazing, and inspired me to set aside a bit more time for playing with colour and wet media. More immediately (because of course I pushed play aside and pounced obsessively onto Hamlet as soon as I hit Melbourne), he inspired me to try a slightly less "controlled" style for Gertrude's chamber. Ok, I'm not exactly flinging the ink about with abandon here, but compared to the extreme control of every milimetre in the other pictures, this one is quite spontaneous! And I enjoyed it immensely.

Here it is at a much earlier stage. I really like looking at work in progress, which is why I've started snapping a few pictures along the way:
In other, much more dramatic and exciting news, my mega-talented cousin, Eva Orner, won the Oscar for best documentary for her film Taxi to the Dark Side. And she called the US government war criminals. She is such a star!!

Variety

On Saturday we had the good fortune to trip over the Linden Postcard Show in St Kilda. This is an exhibition of over 2,000 smallish-size artworks which cover every room of Linden Gallery from floor to ceiling once a year. Anyone can enter (for a small fee) and the result is a truly eye-popping variety of work. Prizes are awarded, and I was delighted to find that my mega-talented friend and fellow comic art grrl Jo (Josephine) Waite (no website, but her work is on Facebook) had won a prize for the second year in a row for one of her beautiful insect girl watercolours. Jo's painting will appear on one of Linden's postcards. Congratulations Madame Jo!

The works are all for sale, mostly at very accessible prices. I was inclined to buy something, but was too overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of pictures, and the gallery closed for the evening before I could make up my mind. Many of my favourites (including Jo's winning entry) had already been snapped up, too, within just a few hours of the show opening.

On the variety theme (sort of), last week I received copies of the Canadian edition of Gatsby! The book is published over there by Penguin Canada, and they have produced it in paperback rather than hardback. And it looks fabulous! They've used a slick, slightly glossy paper for the pages (Allen & Unwin produced the book with a lovely creamy matte paper). I had no say in Penguin's design choices, as I have not dealt with them directly, so this was a surprise for me - and as it turns out, a very pleasant one.

Glossy paper is not something that I would have thought to choose - I would have imagined it would be all wrong for the vintage photo album feel. But in paperback format it actually works really well - perhaps because it makes the pictures look so crisp and solid, and makes the pages feel very substantial. When you open the book, the extreme blackness of the black and the vividness of the sepia (colour is more vivid and bright on the glossy paper) really jump out at you. They've also given it a matte cover, which I like very much.

So I am very happy with it - though there is one little aspect that could perhaps have been done better. Some elements of the design on the back cover have been jostled around to fit the marginally smaller cover size, and this looks like it was done in a bit of a rush. Zoe Sadokierski, the superb designer who did the original cover, took the most wonderful care over every aspect of the design, but some of her beautiful work has been treated a bit carelessly by whoever did the rejigging - there are chunky drop-shadows, a "ghost" shadow that has appeared on top of an image, and some odd resizing. I suspect that noone will actually notice these things (especially if they haven't seen the original Australian edition), but it does alert me to the need to keep an eye on such changes! Call me picky, but I think it's important to treat design with care.

Spot the difference:

Finally, before I get back to work on the Hamlet backgrounds, an event coming up this week:

This Thursday 7 February the Belgrave Library is launching their new graphic novel collection, with hundreds of just-purchased volumes available for borrowing. I have been asked to come and launch the collection, and to give a talk about Gatsby and the process of making a graphic novel. Slow Glass Books will also be there selling various comic delights. Belgrave is a fair hike from the city, but for those who fancy a trip, the details are:

Thursday 7 February, 7pm
Belgrave Library
Reynolds Lane, Belgrave, 3160.
Melways Ref: 75 F10 (map here)

Right, now back to work!