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!

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!

Inky goodness

Hamlet is in progress! I've done eleven pages of the final work (yes, eleven down, 390 to go!) and am so excited about it, I'd work at it 20 hours a day if I were physically capable of doing so. And if I didn't have to go to the office...

I won't show any finished pages here because my illusionist's instinct tells me that until the dove is ready to be flourished out of the hat, I should keep it hidden. Very hard, when I can barely contain my excitement!

Instead, I'll introduce a new favourite product - Pebeo's black "graphic" india ink/encre de chine. Here it is with its perfect partner - a box of fabulous vintage bowl-shaped nibs that I bought on eBay:

The ink was recommended by the very brusque-and-busy manager at Deans Art - clearly a man who knows his ink. I'd complained about the erratic behaviour of my big bottle of Winsor & Newton (my battles with W&N seem to be a recurring theme...) and he seemed completely unsurprised by this report. He tossed this plastic Pebeo bottle at me, saying "this is good stuff, and it's cheap". I didn't actually look at the price, so keen was I to find a black ink that I actually liked.

And I'm very happy to say that this is indeed the goods. Very black, shiny, sits nicely on top of the paper, and with just the right amount of whatever it is that gives it that satiny feel. No bleeding into the paper, and no stickiness. Yippee!

This was also my first try with the new/old nibs from the magic cave of eBay. They took forever to arrive after being caught in a UK postal strike, and then I ignored them for months while continuing my extended romp with the brush pen (which remains my main tool at the moment, as Hamlet is a largely nib-free affair). But it is a pleasure to simultaneously happen upon a superior ink and what seems to be the ideal steel nib! These are large bowl-shaped nibs with a sort of rounded bobble on the upper part of the point, making them slightly less hard and scratchy. They glide, they're not too flexy and they have just the right amount of line variation for my taste. And the best part is, I've got 114 of them! No more wondering if my one-of-a-kind nib will last the distance for an entire book! I used just two nibs for the main drawing work of Gatsby, and after approximately 1,500 drawings, they were both worn away on a very rakish tilt indeed. And by rakish I do mean prone to raking the paper.

In other news, Gatsby has been listed as a "notable book" in the Children's Book Council of Australia awards this year. Lovely! Speaking of the CBC, I'll be on a panel at the CBC conference in Melbourne in May, talking about graphic novels together with Queenie Chan (manga queen) and Neil Gaiman (!!!).

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/.

A Handbag??

Last night I did a talk about Gatsby at the Avid Reader bookshop in West End, Brisbane. It's a gorgeous shop, run by the equally gorgeous Fiona and her lovely crew (special thanks to Anna Krien and Ben), and I had a wonderful time.

The experience was all the sweeter for the fact that it came after an extremely stressful day. I am usually a very organised person. I am also not generally much interested in handbags (unlike my buddy Scootergrrl). But in a brief lapse of judgement when packing on Wednesday night, I decided to transfer all my girly junk from one handbag to the other. All dandy... until two hours into my (delayed) flight, I realised with a sensation not unlike unexpected turbulence that I'd left my data stick - with my Gatsby presenation on it - in the Other Handbag. Cue Lady Bracknell. It didn't just look like carelessness - it looked like a fkn disaster!

There ensued a epic scramble to convey this enormous file (100mb) from a handbag in Fairfield, Melbourne, to a data stick in Brisbane. This involved getting my neighbour to break-and-enter (well, sort of), after which our internet, then hers, failed. She took the stick to her husband's work (is this going beyond the call or what?) where he managed to upload the file to the publisher's ftp site (which took 2 hours) after which the wonderful people in the IT department of my work very, very kindly downloaded it for me and sent it to Brisbane. This entire process took almost seven hours. During which time I also had to do a full day's work at the office. At 5pm on the dot I had my presentation on a borrowed data stick, and I needed a drink.

I left the office, still a bit goggle-eyed and quavery, and who do you think was standing just outside the building? In a beautiful bit of Brisbane serendipity, I almost fell over my favourite cranky bastard, Eddie "thanks for roning" Campbell, patron saint of forgetting stuff when you catch a plane, along with his lovely wife Anne.

Eddie and I then walked to the Avid Reader, where the wonderfully calm and friendly atmosphere of the shop instantly smoothed the day away. I was really tickled that Eddie wanted to attend this talk. We've presented together a few times and both enjoyed it very much, but I've never done a solo presentation with my sometime sparring partner in the audience. Anne had previously said that if she were doing the talk, she'd have him removed from the room before it began, so I have to admit to some trepidation. One mention of the words "graphic novel", I feared, might send him into a frenzy of objection and correction - or worse, he might just look at me from the back row with that pained rictus of horror on his face.

But no. I was very happy to note Eddie nodding in agreement and smiling throughout the talk. Afterwards, over a much-desired glass of pinot gris at a lovely West End bar, he said "That was great. You talked about your book without saying 'graphic novel' once, or getting into the whole business about what these things are called". Well, of course! It's not a topic that I tend to talk about anyway (!), but with Eddie in the audience, well, I'd have to be completely stupid to venture into those waters!

A particularly delightful aspect of this event for me was that it was held outside on the back porch of the shop, in the balmy Brisbane evening. The audience was friendly and enthusiastic and gave some great feedback. I was especially touched by the super-excited reaction of the charmingly-named Lucia Bee of the Somerville School, who asked me if I'd like to be their writer/artist in residence for a few days next year. You bet I would. I love Brisbane.

***

PS - also received this lovely review recently. Beam!

LAUNCHED!

Last night The Great Gatsby was launched at Readings bookstore in Carlton (Melbourne). It was a gorgeous, very exciting and emotionally overwhelming event! The store was packed to the rafters with lovely people, and we all had the privilege of hearing Shaun Tan speak, as he launched the book out into the world.

Here are some photos, taken by my dad, George Greenberg. That's Shaun launching, and Erica Wagner (publisher extraordinaire) and me in an emotional moment. Plus some little shots of the lovely big crowd.

As well as being an unparalleled artist and extraordinary storyteller, Shaun Tan is a great speaker. He shared some important insights into how graphic storytelling works, and explored the sometimes troubled role of illustration. He also astonished me with his very detailed (and generous) discussion of my Gatsby characters. Shaun and I had not talked in depth about these interpretations before, and yet he was able to stand up and explain precisely how their expressions work - the set of Daisy's mouth, the uneven size of Nick's eyes - and so many other observations. I was astonished because although I have drawn these characters hundreds of times and know exactly how I want their faces to behave, I have never actually put these thoughts or intentions into words, even in my own head. It was as if Shaun had crept inside my brain (somehow managing not to trip over all the mess!), taken a snapshot of what was going on in there, and then articulated it in words. He's amazing. It was an absolute honour to have him launch the book.

Shaun was introduced by my wonderful publisher at Allen & Unwin, Erica Wagner. Erica's passionate belief in the possibilities of the graphic novel form is just inspiring, and I am grateful to her beyond words for putting that passion into my book, and bringing it into publication. Erica talked about the buzz of excitement around graphic novels - a buzz that is only getting louder here in Australia. The growing interest in this literary art form owes a great deal to Shaun's prizewinning book The Arrival, but also to Erica's years of sharing her enthusiasm for the form, and helping to bring it into the public consciousness. May it, and A&U, go from strength to strength!

I wish I could have said all these things last night, but of course the emotion got the better of me, and it was all I could do to get out some heartfelt thanks. It was a wonderful evening, a lovely celebration, and I'm so thrilled to have been able to share it with so many dear friends.

Not surprisingly, sleep has been impossible! Thanks so much to everyone who came along, and to those who couldn't make it but sent such warm wishes.