Hackpacker

Almost a year ago I wrote a piece for Meanjin called "The Written Image" about the Australian graphic novel and the developing long-form comics created in Australia. This was followed by a response blog post criticising my article as "defensive and dismissive of comics". From inside comic culture this reading might have some weight, but the article sought to introduce a new audience to Australian graphic novels. I started writing about comics in 1993 when I chose Australian comics and the censorship campaigns of the 1950s as a history thesis topic. The history department was reluctant to take it on and suggested doing it over at the freewheeling postmodern English department. A confused English professor wrinkled his nose and asked "Do you mean a thesis about Ginger Meggs?" Nope, I was looking to research what happened in the mid-1950s that damaged the development of Australian comics for years to come. Most Australian states introduced censorship l

Working from home you develop a special relationship with the postman. Your ears become attuned to the whirr of their motorbikes, the creak of the mail slot and the gentle thump of a letter arriving. This is the symphony of procrastination. This week the thump was not so gentle as a package arrived from the publicity people at Allen & Unwin . It was an advance of the Tango Collection , an anthology of the excellent romance comic that won't be in stores until December. Bernard Caleo is the genius editor/illustrator/writer/male model behind Tango , collecting some of Australia's best comics in a bumper edition that tackles 'Love and...'. This plump package arrived wrapped in brown paper (very much in keeping with the DIY craftiness of the original Tango ) bound in a custom comic strip by Caleo himself. It was a nice little bonus that should make it into bookstores even if booksellers find it an annoying gimmick. The survival of the book as a physical artefact will

Between words and images, illustrator/writer Shaun Tan has found a place for himself and scored some serious awards. George Dunford traces his rise. It’s crowded and hot in a small chamber of Newcastle Town Hall for Shaun Tan’s illustration workshop at the National Young Writer’s Festival. The audience spills out the door listening to his thin dry voice: a napping pair of emo kids leaning on each other twitch with dreams fuelled by the writer/illustrator sketch of a Donnie Darko-esque bunny. The two-hour workshop has run an hour over but Tan keeps scratching at the sweet-yet-menacing rabbit on the flipchart. Every eye is still on him and every ear is listening and every face smiling – even as they doze. This crowd has grown up with Tan from studying The Rabbits (his colonisation collaboration with John Marsden) to his recent wordless graphic novel, The Arrival. “That’s the disturbing thing,” Tan chuckles as the small crowd disperses in search of water, “when people come up to me an

When writer/illustrator Bruce Mutard heard that his publisher wouldn’t be releasing his first comic, Street Smell, he didn’t give up. “I was naturally disappointed but self-publication was always an option,” Mutard says. “My dad helped me out as I didn’t have enough money but I just wanted to get it out there.” Distributing it through the zine networks of the early 1990s, Mutard produced the comic for four years under his own steam, learning to write and draw as he went along. “I wanted to do it on my own terms. I wanted to tell the stories I wanted to tell. They weren’t commercial. They weren’t genre and couldn’t be easily pigeonholed so the perks of fame and fortune never came my way, but I doggedly stuck to my guns.” With the release of his 250-page graphic novel, The Sacrifice, Mutard has both guns blazing. The first of three ambitious volumes, the book follows Robert Wells, a pacifist who finds himself gradually drawn into World War II. The book has already drawn comparisons wit