Come along this Thursday and help celebrate the launch of Mike Johnson’s new novel Travesty, illustrated by the mighty Darren Sheehan (co-creator of The Inhabitants comics). I’ll be there, toasting the good ship Travesty as it sets out on its journey…
Welcome to Travesty, where the stringent laws of purgatory rule and every nerve is put to the test.
AUT Creative Writing Centre
4th floor, Duthie Whyte Building
Corner of Wakefield Street and Mayoral Drive
Auckland
Doujin Overload is Auckland’s annual doujinshi festival – a celebration of manga and anime and a chance for local artists to show off (and sell) their work. It’s been going for 5 years, but every time I’ve tried to go, something would come up and scuttle my plans. This year, however, I will definitely be there, as an invited exhibitor!
There’s a huge list of artists and exhibitors, displays of Dolfies and figures, an art competition, a Cosplay Cafe and plenty of stuff to buy. I’ll have copies of Hicksville there, along with original art and anything else I can throw together before Saturday.
The organisers (among them The Graphic Novel Cafe) are keen to encourage links between the local doujinshi scene and the wider New Zealand comics community, so if you’re unfamiliar with NZ manga come along and discover this thriving and energetic scene.
Yesterday I mentioned my sister’s new feature film, After the Waterfall, which premieres at the New Zealand Film Festival tonight. And now, continuing with the “My family is awesome” theme, my father’s short film about Len Lye, Art That Moves, has just won a prize at the Amsterdam Film Festival.
Roger Horrocks (that’s my Dad) has written various books about New Zealand-born artist and film-maker Len Lye, including the definitive biography. For his latest book, a study of Len’s work as an art of movement, Dad also made an 18-minute film – a dramatisation of key moments in Lye’s childhood and youth, when his fascination with light and motion set him on the path to becoming a pioneering kinetic artist. The film features various family and friends in the role of Lye; my hand has a brief cameo as Len’s hand drawing in a sketchbook and my 4-year old nephew Oscar appears as the Very Young Len.
The film is included on a DVD (along with some of Lye’s own films and footage of his kinetic sculpture in action) that comes with the book, also called Art That Moves (available from Amazon here).
If you’ve never come across Len Lye before, here’s one of my favourite of Lye’s films, which was made by scratching directly onto the celluloid itself:
And this is an excerpt from an earlier documentary about Lye made by my step-mother, showing one of his awe-inspiring sculptures doing its thing:
As well as having an enormous influence on the development of serious, honest, personal comics, Harvey Pekar was also a genuine working-class intellectual, who worked hard to bring some real politics to America’s anemic public discourse.
Watch this great clip from 1987, when Harvey went on Late Night with David Letterman and tried to talk about the corporate crimes of General Electric (the owners of Letterman’s network NBC). Chaos ensued – and, however briefly, the veil was torn away to reveal the power of money over what gets discussed and televised. It’s an awesome thing to watch.
Harvey had a tough life, but he turned it into something beautiful and transformative. Thanks for everything, Harvey.
My very cool sister Simone Horrocks’s new feature film has its New Zealand premiere tomorrow (July 14), at the NZ Film Festival. After the Waterfall is Simone’s first feature, but her short films have done very well, including winning a prestigious prize at the Berlin Film Festival.
Adapted from Stephen Blanchard’s novel Paraffin Child, After the Waterfall is about a man whose young daughter goes missing; itfollows his descent into darkness and slow climb back into daylight. There are many great things about this film: Antony Starr’s extraordinary performance in the lead role (the whole cast are excellent), a powerful sense of place (Auckland’s west coast and suburbs), and an emotional intensity that will leave you reeling, but greatly enriched. I’m very excited about it – and very proud of my awesome sister.
Anyway, if you’re in Auckland or Wellington, you can catch After the Waterfall at the NZ Film Festival (tickets available here). I’ll post any later release news as I hear it.
And here are some interviews with Simone and other news about the film:
A long interview with Simone on Wellywood Woman
A story about the film’s screening at a festival in Beijing, China
An interview with Simone on KiwiFM (via youtube)
After the Waterfall’s Facebook page
After the Waterfall on the NZ Film Festival website
Book tickets for After the Waterfall at the NZ Film Festival (via Ticketek)
After the Waterfall at Flicks.co.nz
You can now hear my interview on bfm‘s Seeded as a podcast, here:
Cartoonist Dylan Horrocks on a peculiar trip through his listening habits, which have informed his own work like Hicksville and Café Underground, and even crept in when he was working on Batman.
He recounts how he managed to introduce a character based on Bjork into a Neil Gaiman spin-off book Hunter; how his passion for “beard music” contrasts with his father’s passion for extreme noise metal; and how creating worlds on paper requires a soundtrack.
Sadly, much of the music is edited out of the podcast for copyright reasons (sigh). So feel free to pause the podcast at the relevant points and insert the music, with the help of these links (thank you, internets!):
Enjoy!
(note: as always some errors crept into the interview. For example, I didn’t draw Batgirl and Batman – I wrote them, of course. But few people outside the comics industry get that distinction, so I’m kinda used to it).
…on Monday 21 June, I’m talking with Ant Sang (and our effervescent host Mike Loder) at Writers on Mondays, at the Auckland Art Gallery at 12 noon. It’s in the Art Lounge (which is in the New gallery). Details here.
If we’re really lucky, Ant might even tell us about his work in progress, a new graphic novel due out next year!
(note: photo of Ant above is from Adrian Kinnaird’s excellent NZ comics blog, From Earth’s End)
The great zine distro Spit and a Half (run by the great John Porcellino) is back – and online. Go look now, and order it all. It’s great!
An interview with me (with music I chose) will play on several student radio stations this Saturday (June 12th). The Listener has details here.
It’s part of a series called Seeded, in which artists talk about their work and music they love. It will be podcast on 95bfm’s site some time next week. I’ll post that link as soon as it’s available.
I filled out a questionnaire for Ricardo Mena’s Spanish Blog de Cómics. Worth a visit for the awesome banner alone.
Adrian Kinnaird covers April’s NZ Comics Weekend and the Wellington Hicksville launch, as well as Wellington Armageddon (all with lots of photos).
Bernard Caleo blogs about my visit to Melbourne, SupaNova, and the week-long cartoonists’ workshop we held at the Wheeler Centre. This is an ongoing series of blog posts by Bernard about that eventful week, so check in again for more installments.
All comics are by Dylan Horrocks and are licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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