Showing posts with label chromacon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chromacon. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Chromacon 2013 and Assorted Auckland Ramblings


A couple months back I had the pleasure of tabling with Pikitia Press at the inaugural Chromacon Illustration and Comic Art Festival in Auckland. This was the first comics event I've made the trek from Australia back to New Zealand for and It was well worthwhile. For a first time comic art festival, organiser Allan Xia and helpers seemed to pull it off without a hitch. This is the sort of event I'd love to fill my calendar with. Amongst the highlights of the couple days I spent in Auckland for Chromacon:
  • Chromacon was a one day event which for my coming-into-middle-age is the perfect duration for a convention.
  • It was nice to attend an event down this part of the world with a focus on comics and illustrators, no commercial retailers, just local creative folk.
  • The audience which I think numbered around 1000 for the day keep a steady flow of people through the venue. Not too busy, but rarely a quiet moment.
  • Chromacon was a veritable who's who of New Zealand Comics, there were some notable absences and I don't believe there were any South Island cartoonists there but on the whole it was a great opportunity to meet and catch up with a large variety of comic folk at one event.
  •  I got to finally meet Tim Danko in person for a few minutes!
  • Getting to meet the cartoonists I publish. It's probably not so much of an odd thing in this day and age but I had never met in person, Sarah Laing or James Davidson, despite having published several of their comics by this point. Lovely hard working easy to deal with folk. They make my work easy.
  • The venue, one floor of The Aotea Centre, in the heart of Auckland, was an ideal place to have Chromacon, easily accessible and a comfortable fit for the amount of exhibitors and audience.
  • Grabbing pizza and gabbing comics with Kelly Sheehan, Ben Stenbeck and Chris Slane after the show. Heck, even the barman at the pizza joint was a cartoonist (look for a Pikitia Press comic from him sometime soon.)
  • Heading into the carpark after pizza this was waiting for us:
 
  • Grabbing coffee and gabbing comics with Timothy Kidd, Kelly Sheehan, Karl Wills and my little bro Sam at the Auckland Public Library.
  • On a quest of New Zealand comics archeology at the Auckland Public Library I found some real gems. Evidence that I suspected existed of a connection between two golden age NZ cartoonists surfaced and a NZ "Kramers Ergot" from the seventies? More to come on these developments...
 Interview with Chromacon Organiser Allan Xia.
 Fuzzy photography of some but not all of the comic folk at Chromacon.

 Theo Macdonald and Richard Fairgray

 Tim Gibson

 Tim Bollinger and Barry Linton

 Toby Morris

  Sophie Oiseau

 Czepta Gold

 Dylan Horrocks


 Chris Slane

 Chris Slane

 Ant Sang, Ben Stenbeck and Adrian Kinnaird

 Jesca Marisa

 Damon Keen

  Karl Wills

Marc Streeter


James Davidson


Michel Mulipola

Kelly and Darren Sheehan

Art in park



No visit to Auckland is complete without a visit to the St Kevin's Arcade Secondhand Bookshop. Piles of FP Phantom comics, Eric Resetar facsimile comics, the first 2000AD annual,  I've bought many a fine comic from here over the years. This time I snapped up some reading for my flight home, an Australian edition of Buck Rogers Annual No. 2. Hundreds of pages of early Buck Rogers adventures compiled in one aromatic pulpy volume.


Before heading to the airport I took a shortcut through the Auckland University Campus to pick up my luggage. My "eagle book eyes" spied a table of old books next to a reception office. A lifelong fascination with old books, (I lived in secondhand bookshop for several months) I was compelled to go in and have a look. The receptionist told me they were donated to the university, who didn't want them, and had put them out for folk to take away. All German texts from the early twentieth century, I couldn't resist the offer of free old books so gathered up as many as I could carry and made my way back through the winding alleys and paths of the University. I'd love to keep all the wonderful paper goods I gather, but I can't, so I sold a selection of these to antiquarian book dealers in Melbourne and Switzerland, which paid for my trip and my coffee bill for the next three months.


A tragic inscription from the inside page of Conrad der Leutnant.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Paper Trail



Tonight on the exciting sexually active Melbourne Comic scene from the facebook page for Merv Heers' Salary Man launch:

Listen up you little freaks ! Wednesday May 29th at 6pm Merv Heers will be launching ONE full size salary man comic as well as an attention seeking SEVEN mini comics ! That's right ma'am. The big kahuna. Outta sight !

Tonight at the Slient Army Storeroom 110 Franklin Street CBD, Melbourne, publishers and stockists of many fine Australian and New Zealand comics.

Salary Man comics tumblr.

Silent Army Storeroom.



If like me you were navigating planes, trains, and buses on Free Comic Book Day and missed out you can still enjoy Chugnut Comics Free Comic Book Day Comic #3 here.


Australian history comics from Michael Fikaris, Cannabis Australia.


Preview tumblr for Tim Danko's Comic Book now available for pre-order through Tim's Pozible campaign.


Leigh Riggozi talks about putting together anthology Blood and Thunder Anthology #2 showcasing some of the best comic illustration that Australia and New Zealand have to offer.


Video tour through Chromacon 2013.



Have you checked in with Dylan Horrock's Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen lately? 84 pages in, Dylan has been hitting a weekly schedule of late, a good time to catch up if you've fallen behind.


Brent Willis' Bristle anthology is back as a jumbo size annual featuring David Piper, Bryce Galloway, Ned Wenlock, Robyn Kenealy, David Tulloch, Edward Lynden-Bell, Tim Bollinger, Jerome Bihan, Robbie Neilson, Anders Gronland, Ross Payne, Matt Emery, Sarah Laing, and Lorenzo Van Der Lingen. Wellington launch is on Wednesday night (29th June) at the Bristol.




Simon Hanselmann puts the Problem Solverz into the Truth Zone.


Remember the Problem Solverz?



L S Marquez' The Tremblars.

 

2013 Zine and Indy Comic Symposium in Brisbane.


Is every cartoonist a musician as well? Stream Greg Broadmore and Christian Pearce's influential Hamilton post hardcore band Ghidrah's Invincible Deluxe here.


Haven't mentioned Oglaf in a while.


Alex Thomas interviews Tim Gibson.



Australian Cartoon Mueseum 2010 election showcase.


Gavin Aung Than pays tribute to Jeff Hanneman through the words of John Donne at Zen Pencils.


Daniel Brader and Yi Lang Chen's The Adventures of the Kite Family.


Esther interviews Hookups creator Jess Hansell.


Chris Cudby writes about behind the scenes of Hookups.

 

Anthony Woodward issues a minicomic challenge.  
   

Daniel Best's Rise and Fall of Newton Comics Pozible campaign is almost 2/5ths of the way to it's funding target. Best has recently added original art incentives from his personal collection. From Best's blog 20th Century Danny Boy:  

This was a Melbourne based company after all and has all the right ingredients for a juicy story - sex, drugs, rock and roll, comic books, crime, brothels, politics - you name it, Newton did more than dabble in it. Americans with an interest in comic book history? Well this is the FIRST full length book about an Australian publisher and, don't forget, they managed to take Marvel Comics for over $30,000 in 1975. That wasn't chump change.  Comic books were never like this before, or since.

 Take part in the campaign here.
  
(Not final cover.)

Dean Rankine visits New Zealand.
 

Karl Wills shares a couple more pics from the Connie Radar short film.  
   

Darian Zam's redbubble store of recreated kiwiana designs.
  


Amongst various paper ephemera last weekend, a satchel of original art including AFL cartoons from 1979 by Weg, priced $750-$1500.
 Weg
Ken Maynard
 
Comics of yesteryear showcase: Australian editions of GI Jane originally published in the US by Stanhall Publications. Stanhall published 11 issues of  GI Jane from May 1953 to March 1955. Jane like many comic wartime and post wartime heroines was the story of a G.I. gal who drove the soldier boys crazy, mixing humour with lashings of sexual innuendo.
  
 
Paper Trail masthead courtesy of Toby Morris.