Adrian Kinnaird’s wonderful NZ comics blog From Earth’s End has a heap of photos from last week’s launch of the NZ edition of Hicksville at The High Seas. Big thanks to Sophie, Nigel and Stefan, Fergus and Craig, and everyone who came along and helped toast the baby. Special thanks, too, to everyone who bought books and/or artwork!
We’re having another little launch party this Saturday (April 3rd), as part of the NZ Comics Festival in Wellington. I’ll post the details later today.
In the course of finding something for a rather nifty project Lark Pien is putting together, I found myself looking through various sketchbooks and notebooks looking for doodles. So I thought I’d put some of it online, because… well, just because.
The following, then, were all drawn during two Roleplaying Games: a Bushido game run by my friend John, and a Fudge-based game set during the First Crusade, run by my friend Matthew. I do a lot of doodling during games, and I often love what comes out. These pictures have nothing whatsoever to do with what’s going on in the games – it’s really just stream-of-consciousness stuff, letting my hand draw while my mind is busy elsewhere.
I wish I could draw comics that looked like this…
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David Beattie’s excellent book blog raises an interesting question. David was wondering whether the Victoria University Press edition of Hicksville was the first NZ published graphic novel, and passed on his wonderings to VUP, who passed them on to me. He ended up posting my reply in full.
Would anyone like to correct my off-the-cuff response – or add any titles to the list?
…which you can read here.
Click here for new page
I promise at leat one actual story page by the end of this week.
Yay! We’re having a launch for the NZ edition of Hicksville at The High Seas (12 Beresford Square, Auckland) on Friday 19th March (6pm). It’s also an exhibition of original art from Hicksville, which will stay open through Saturday 20th March (when Beresford Square is also hosting the fabulous Aroha Day!).
So spread the word – and come join the party!
Here’s an interview I did a couple of days ago with Rina Ayuyang and Thien Pham, for their entertaining podcast series The Comix Claptrap. We talked for a long time, about all kinds of things – from babies to felt-tip pens to the comfort of eventual cosmic doom. Oh, and comics, of course. In fact, I got rather embarrassingly candid about my ambivalent relationship with stories and comics, and why I think Batman should be in jail.
Anyway, you can listen to it as streaming audio, or download an mp3 from The Comix Claptrap’s site. And then make sure you check out Rina’s and Thien’s gorgeous work.
Update: the page sold (to a very generous Wellingtonian who added an additional donation to his winning bid!). And Ella’s family have indeed raised enough money to take her to the conference. A big thanks to everyone who helped out!
This week I’m selling a page of original art from Atlas #1 on TradeMe to help raise money for some very dear friends of ours, whose daughter Ella has growing problems with her eyesight. Ella is one of the loveliest, sweetest kids I know, but her case is unusual enough that numerous tests and treatments have failed to nail the problem.
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I recently wrote a foreword for The Tango Collection – a big fat book of comics about love by over 50 Australian cartoonists (plus a few New Zealanders, including Jared Lane, Tim Molloy and Toby Morris). The comics are selected from eight issues of Bernard Caleo’s love comics anthology Tango, each issue of which is organised around a theme (Love & Death, Love & Food, Love & Sedition, etc). The book is published by Allen & Unwin and is available now!
You can read my foreword below, or else just buy the book and read it in the comfort of your own (or a loved one’s) soft warm bed…
A page from Hicksville (the ‘Bushells Dairy’ page) is in this show at the Auckland Art Gallery until 14 February 2010. The exhibition brings together a bunch of art about food, from some lovely Robin White weavings to work by Andy Warhol, Breughel and Ed Ruscha. There’s even a huge crocheted octopus and a wall of chocolate fish – which you’re supposed to eat!
The ‘Bushells’ dairy I based my drawing on is a famous landmark of Auckland, photographed by Robin Morrison and painted by other local artists (my memory tells me Dick Frizzell, but I can’t now find any reference to such a work. Can anyone confirm that?). The Freemans Bay dairy (on the corner of Wellington St and Hepburn St) has been owned by the Rupa family since 1953 and was turned into a delicatessen and cafe in 2001. The old flaking Bushells sign was moved inside, and replaced with a rather garish new “replica” – which caused considerable consternation at the time, as I recall. People had grown to really love that old sign…
All comics are by Dylan Horrocks and are licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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