Interviews
Pulp Faction Interviews
Andrea Bresciani - October 2007
Andrea Bresciani: An Artist between Two Worlds
By Giuseppe Trovato
Re-Print Permission Secured by Kevin Patrick
(Click images to see a larger version.)
The following interview with Andrea Bresciani was recorded by Giuseppe Trovato in February 1997. It was first published in Italy by ANAFI (National Association of Friends of Comics and Illustration) in their quarterly fanzine, Fumetto (‘Balloon’), No.25, March 1998, and appeared as part of a 20-page insert devoted to the work of Andrea Bresciani.
The English translation of this interview1 was prepared by Vittorio and Giuseppe Trovato, Melbourne, August 2007. Additional background research and preparation for online publication was provided by Kevin Patrick.
Giuseppe Trovato (GT): Mr. Bresciani, your career in the comic book world has many dark spots. We lose track of you in the 1950s, after the success of Tony Falco and Geky Dor. Shall we start with your date and place of birth?
Andrea Bresciani (AB): I was born on 29 January 19232 in Tolmino, located in the province of Gorizia, which was later ceded to Yugoslavia.
Although his name sounds Italian, Andrea Bresciani was actually born into a Slovenian family – his Slovenian name was Dušan Brešan. The town of his birth, Tolmin, was originally part of Slovenia, but, with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the First World War (1914-18), large tracts of Slovenian territory were ceded to Italy. As a result, Tolmin became known as Tolmino, and formed part of the Italian province of Gorizia.
GT: Did you have any formal artistic training?
AB: No, none.
GT: Was your passion for comics inspired by the work of other artists?
AB: No, I worked for an architect, where I designed furniture. I didn’t attend any drawing classes, nobody taught me. After the war, there was not much money. I worked in Milano, but I lived in Pavia.
One day, on the train, somebody left behind a comic magazine. I started to read it, out of curiousity. That was the first time I saw a comic book. Then I started thinking: “If I could draw comic books, I could earn some extra money!”
Every night, returning from work, I started drawing. After three months, I took my best drawings and went to see a publisher in Milano and asked his opinion of my work. Luckily, when I went to see this publisher, his artist had just resigned. When a comic series [was] started, the publisher is supplied with ten episodes in advance, in case the artist gets sick, etc – a supply of ten weeks is reasonable. But this publisher was at the end of the last two weeks [of work], and if he did not find another artist…So, after three months of personal experiments, I found full-time work as a comic artist.
Throughout the 1920s and 30s, Italy became home to a vibrant comics publishing industry, issuing both translated reprints of imported comics (particularly American) and locally-produced comics.
During the 1930s and 40s, Benito Mussolini’s fascist government banned American comics (fearing their ‘corrupting’ influence), but Italian publishers continued to produce unauthorised ‘pirate’ editions of American comic strips, as well as original Italian comics.
The postwar years saw the new format of ‘piccolo’ comics – small, pocket-sized magazines, usually numbering less than 20 pages – became immensely popular in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Both Tony Falco and Geky Dor were examples of ‘piccolo’ comics.
GT: Do you remember which comic strip that was? Perhaps they were some episodes of Saette? [Published by Edizioni Alpe]
AB: Yes, I think so, yes. But my memories are very confused.
GT: Did you also draw episodes of the humourous comic strip, Poldo?
AB: I did so many things that I do not remember. You showed me the collection of Tony Falco, but I have forgotten everything. Truly, you are awakening the past.
GT: What do you remember of the late 1940s-early 1950s, when you drew Tony Falco?
AB: For me, it was a job. I liked drawing for money and for fun. This is all; I do not know what else to add.
GT; Still, for [comic strip writer] Andrea Lavezzolo [1905-1981] you drew Geky Dor.
AB: Geky Dor… [Sighs]. It was a job like any other. I worked for a living.
Sadly, there are many gaps in our knowledge of Bresciani’s work for Italian publishers during the immediate postwar period. He drew many stories anonymously (a common policy enforced by publishers at the time), or he used to sign his artwork as ‘BRADUAN’. While exact records do not exist, it appears that, between 1945-50, he did draw some episodes for the weekly comic book,
Albi Dell’Intrepido (Intrepid Comic Books), for the publisher, Universo.
GT: After the 1950s, we lose all trace of you.
AB: I migrated to Australia.
GT: Why Australia? [Was it a] work agreement?
AB: No. I had heard how much comic books were in vogue in America, how much they earned, what was involved. As my town had become part of Yugoslavia, I gained the right to emigrate as a refugee. It would have cost me nothing to go to America.
Again, a brief historical discursion is needed to understand Bresciani’s personal circumstances after the war. During the interwar decades, the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was formed in 1918. Renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929, it struggled to remain neutral in the face of Nazi Germany rise to power, but was unable to repel the German invasion of April 1941. Andrea’s mother took him and his two sisters, Bozena (‘Natalia’) and Vera, to northern Italy at the outbreak of the Second World War, where they adopted the Italian name ‘Bresciani’.
Bresciani’s Slovenian homeland was divided up between the ‘Axis Powers’ (Germany, Italy and Nazi-occupied Hungary) and remained an occupied nation until it was liberated in May 1945.
After the war, Slovenia became a ‘constituent republic’ of the larger Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Over 15,000 ethnic Italians were expelled from Slovenia in 1946-47, once the Communists assumed power. Many of these refugees fled back into northern Italy.
AB: I was given a list of jobs available in America – but there was no demand for artists! I was advised that I could not fill any of the listed categories. “I am an artist”, I said. I was asked to find myself a contract. I sent my artwork to five publishers, three of which expressed interest – Fawcett being one of them and they wanted me to come to America. With contract in hand, I went to the office to complete the paperwork. They asked me about my citizenship. “I am Italian,” I said. “That is a pity, [because] our quota of Italians to America is now closed. Why not try Australia?”
Australia? Australia? Who ever heard of it!? “Look,” they told me, “it is a rapidly advancing country, with many things to do.” I asked for information [and thought to myself] ‘well, I will go to Australia, it will cost me nothing, I will get a [free] trip, if it doesn’t work out, we will go back to Italy.’ So, I came to Australia [with my mother and two sisters.]
Beginning in 1947, the Commonwealth of Australia initiated a massive assisted migration programme, to boost Australia’s population (then numbering over 7.5 million) and assist in postwar reconstruction. New migrants (along with wartime refugees) were initially housed in quarantine centres and government-run hostels located around Australia. Migrants carried out work under government direction, until they could secure permanent employment. Approximately 1.68 million new migrants settled in Australia from 1947 to 1960.
GT: Did you disembark in Melbourne or Sydney?
AB: No, we arrived in Perth [Western Australia], and then we drove to the government hostel in Northam, not far from Perth. We had an agreement with the government of two years’ work. We had to accept one of the jobs available. At the hostel, I kept drawing. From Northam, I often went to Perth with my precious bundle of cartoons. I visited an advertising agency and showed them my artwork – they immediately gave me a contract for work, freeing myself from the agreement with the government.
I heard about Sydney, where life was much better, with more possibility for work and a better future for a comic strip artist. So, I moved to Sydney and started working for Atlas Publications. It was 1951.
Atlas Publications was the brainchild of Jack Bellew, the former Editor in Chief of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper (then owned by Frank Packer’s Consolidated Press). Bellew relocated to Melbourne in the mid-1940s, where he formed his new publishing venture with his former Consolidated Press colleagues, George Warnecke and Clive Turnbull. The popularity of its first comic book publication, Captain Atom, drawn by Arthur Mather, allowed Atlas Publications to expand its comic book range and expand into mainstream magazine publishing throughout the 1950s. In addition to his comic book work, Bresciani also provided interior artwork for the company’s other publications, such as Squire (a men’s magazine). Although Bresciani worked for the company while living in Sydney, Atlas Publications was based in Clifton Hill, Melbourne.
AB: I illustrated front covers of various comic books published by Atlas. One comic I remember well was Sergeant Pat of the Radio Patrol, for which I drew a complete story. Radio Patrol was an American series, written by Eddie Sullivan and drawn by Charles Schmidt. Atlas published its own stories of Sergeant Pat under licence. The official artist was the Czech-born Yaroslav Horak, better known as ‘Larry’, who was already famous for such comics as Skyman, Ray Thorpe, Jet Fury [and] Brenda Starr.
The first 30-40 issues of Atlas Publications’ Sergeant Pat comic book contained reprints of the original American newspaper strip, before the comic was initially passed on to Yaroslav Horak, followed by Bresciani, then onto Arthur Mather. Yaroslav Horak’s principal work for Atlas Publications during this period was The Lone Wolf (a western series originally created by Keith Chatto) and Brenda☆, a locally-drawn edition of the American comic strip, Brenda Starr.
AB: [After working for Atlas, I drew] a very popular comic strip series, Frontiers of Science.
GT: Did you draw the whole saga of Frontiers of Science?
AB: Yes, over approximately 12 years, one strip per day, five days per week. The scientific text was provided by Professor Stuart Butler, from the University of Sydney, while the comic strip script was written by Robert Raymond. I am trying to locate the original comic strip artwork and offer them for sale to some collectors.
Around the 1960s, the Australian comic book industry was at the end of its glorious era. A pity to say, but it was true. One of the last comic books I remember doing was drawing a few episodes of Smoky Dawson for KG Murray Publishing, around 1960. Smoky Dawson was originally a daily strip drawn by Albert De Vine for the Sydney Sun [newspaper]. In my spare time, I did illustrations for Adam, Man and Pocket Man, published by KG Murray of Melbourne. The one in Sydney was a branch office.3
GT: After you established yourself in Australia, did you go back to Italy?
AB: I migrated to Australia in 1950. So… [SIGHS], my first marriage broke down! When I remarried, we went to Spain for our honeymoon, where we lived for two-and-a-half years.
GT: While living in Spain, did you draw any comic strips?
AB: Yes, I did something for Brughera Publishing.
Juan Brughera established his publishing company, El Gato Negro, in 1910 and eventually launched his first humour magazine, Pulgaricto, in 1921, which featured comic strips. His sons, Pantaleon and Francisco, changed the company’s name to Editorial Brughera in 1939 and began publishing comic books in 1947, eventually dominating the Spanish comics market until the early 1980s.
GT: From Spain, did you return to Italy?
AB: No. I stayed in Europe until around 1980-81.
During his stay in Europe, Bresciani once again illustrated stories for the Italian comic, Albi Dell’Intrepido, including such stories as Il Sosia (The Double) and La Notte in Cui Nacque Lenny (The Night when Lenny was Born), between 1976-77.
GT: You told me of your stay in Germany. Did you do any work for local publishers there?
AB: No, not for a publisher. It was a bank which published a children’s magazine, which taught them how to save money. I established my residency in Monaco Di Baviera [West Germany], but frequently I went to Trieste, Italy, where I lived with one of my cousins. After living away from Trieste for some time, I telephoned [my cousin] to see if there were any letters for me. My cousin said, yes, there was a letter from Genoa. “From Genoa? But I do not know anyone there!” I told myself. My cousin could not see properly, but she managed to give me a name and a telephone number. The name was unknown; I cannot recall it even now…
I rang the number and I told him “I am Bresciani.” “Bresciani? Do you know that we have been looking for you for years? I have to come and interview you.” I told him, “Look, I am in Germany, in Monaco.” He replied “It doesn’t matter, we will come to Germany.”
I thought it was all a joke. Since I often travelled to Italy, we agreed that I would call them. So I did and we met at the Principe train station in Genoa. When they came, there were three of them. I cannot recall what we said and which magazine they were interviewing [me] for. I do recall, however, that in Italy they held annual comic exhibitions and begged me to participate in one. Each year they gave a trophy to the best artist – and one of these trophies was being kept by them for me, as they were unable to find me. But, since I was always on the move, I could not attend the exhibition and receive the trophy – I think it is still waiting for me in Italy! I remained in Europe, from 1976 until approximately 1981, when I returned to Sydney.
The abovementioned interviewers were Mr. Gian Mario Traverso and his son, Carlo, who met Bresciani on 4 June 1981. The interview, titled ‘Emergono Dal Limbo’ [They Emerge from Limbo] was not published until years later, when it appeared in the December 1998 edition of Fumetto. The trophy referred to by Bresciani was ‘La Targa Di Fumettoamicizia’ (Comic Friendship Plate) which was presented by the International [Comic] Fair of Genoa.
GT: Frontiers of Science was your last comic strip work. What else did you do?
AB: I did men’s and women’s fashion design. I had an office and an advertising agency with a Frenchman, John Tish, who also drew political cartoons for a newspaper. Then I moved away and we lost touch. We met again after ten years and celebrated with a lunch. Tish asked me if I have ever been inside an animated cartoon studio. “No, never,” I said. “Next time, come to lunch half-an-hour earlier and I will take you into the studio. We make animated cartoons for Hanna-Barbera.”
I went along and it was like entering a new world! I was fascinated. I went back to my office, called my workers together and said: “You know the work…there are plenty of clients…the studio is yours! I go now to enter another world!”
So, I left all that for animated cartoons! I started working there around 1970, before going to Spain for my honeymoon. We worked for Hanna-Barbera in an independent studio. Only later did Hanna-Barbera open their studio in Sydney.
During the 1970s and 80s, the American animation production company, Hanna-Barbera, opened a string of international production studios in Europe, South America and Asia. Hanna-Barbera’s Australian animation studio was established in Sydney in 1972 and branched out into animated TV commercial production in 1974. Hanna-Barbera’s Australian operations were eventually bought out by Walt Disney’s Australian subsidiary in 1989.
GT: You mentioned that you stayed in the Philippines.
AB: Yes, I moved to Manila around 1981. The Sydney studio of animated cartoons sent me there to open another studio. In Manila, we worked for the American company, Marvel [Productions]. I remember the TV series we did – Defenders of the Earth.4 It featured the comic strip heroes Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician & Lothar, The Phantom and Ming, Tyrant of the planet Mongo.
The other two [animated] series I remember were Robin Hood and Swiss Family Robinson. I was the artistic director in charge.
Bresciani’s other animated film credits from this period include The New Scooby-Doo Movies (1972); 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1985); Alice through the Looking Glass (1987); Hiawatha (1988); The Corsican Brothers (1989); and Otherzone (1998).
GT: Australia was not your personal choice, but a destination decided by fate, even though you dreamed of living in America. Do you have any regrets?
AB: No, I do not mourn. I take life as it comes, positively.
GT: Professionally and artistically. Sydney would have offered you more job opportunities – so, why did you move to Melbourne when you returned to Australia?
AB: My sisters, my son and my ex-wife lived in Melbourne. I preferred to be close to them.
GT: Have you ever thought of restarting your comic book activities?
AB: No! I don’t believe that such activities would earn [me] a living in Australia today. At my age, one can no longer dream!
******
Towards the end of his career, Andrea Bresciani pursued other creative passions, such as sculpture. He specialised in creating dynamic sculptures of horses, sometimes with an American Indian theme. He received orders for up to 250 of these figures from Japan, France and the United States, but as he was unable to meet such high-volume demands for these figures, he ceased making them. However, he left his family an exquisite collection of statuettes.
Andrea was a modest man who demonstrated an exceptional, natural ability in both his comic book illustrations and all his creative endeavours. He always said, with pride: “The little I have learnt, I have learnt by myself.”
Andrea Bresciani passed away on 7 February 2006 at his home during his afternoon ‘siesta’. He enjoyed every drop of his life; not only did he enjoy travelling and fine food, but loved hang-gliding, which was his favourite sport. He died happily, as if he were dreaming of flying to freedom.
Text of this article is copyright © 1997-2007 Giuseppe Trovato. All artwork reproduced in this interview is copyright © 2007 their respective copyright holders.
******
About the Author
Giuseppe Trovato was born in Italy, but together with his wife and two children, migrated to Australia in October 1973, where he eventually settled in suburban Melbourne. A lifelong comics fan, his personal library includes collections of international comic strip characters specially prepared by Italian publishers (many of which are unavailable in English), along with an extensive collection of Australian comics. He has written extensively on Italian and Australian comics for such publications as the Australian edition of Il Globo, and the Italian comic fanzine, Fumetto.
1 A modified version of Giuseppe Trovato’s original interview with Andrea Bresciani was published in the Australian edition of the Italian-language newspaper, Il Globo, on 2 March 2005 (Melbourne, Victoria.) Other articles on Andrea Bresciani by Giuseppe Trovato include: ‘Addio, Andrea Bresciani’ (Farewell, Andrea Bresciani), Fumeto, March 2006 and Il Globo (Melbourne), 21 April 2006; ‘Tony Falco (In Memory of Andrea Bresciani)’, Il Globo (Melbourne), 27 March 2007.
2 Andrea Bresciani was born on 27 January 1923, but due to a mistaken transcription on his Australian passport, it was recorded as 29 January 1923. It was Andrea’s wish to use only the second date of birth and, out of respect for his wishes, this has been done.
3 KG Murray Publishing Company’s editorial offices were always based in Sydney (Australia), not Melbourne.
4 Although Defenders of the Earth was, a TV showcase for comic strip characters owned by King Features Syndicate, the animated series was produced by Marvel Productions, while a spin-off comic book was briefly published by Marvel Comics in 1987.
Arthur Mather: Man of the Atom
He was responsible for creating Australia’s first successful comic book superhero, yet Captain Atom was just the beginning of
Arthur Mather’s long creative career, as Kevin Patrick discovered.
Arthur Mather: Man of the Atom
“Get a trade behind you.”
For the generation of Australian men who had been scarred by the Great Depression of the 1930s, this was the only path towards secure employment and one that many insisted their sons pursue.
Arthur Mather’s father, a furniture upholsterer raising his family in the inner Melbourne suburb of North Fitzroy, was no exception.
“I finished school at Collingwood Technical School and my father, who saw the worst of the Depression, insisted I get a trade,” he recalls.
Arthur, however, had other ideas. An imaginative child, he was always drawing and making up stories, when he wasn’t poring over the popular newspaper comic strips of his childhood, such as Tim Tyler’s Luck, which was one of his favourites.
“I was also a great fan of David Low’s work, who was probably the most famous political cartoonist Australia turned out,” says Arthur.
“I told my dad I wanted to be a cartoonist, but he said there was no living to be made in being a cartoonist.”
Arthur left school in 1940 and, at 15 years of age, seemingly followed his father’s wishes by becoming a printing apprentice at The Truth, a racy Melbourne tabloid newspaper that also did printing for other newspaper and magazine publishers - including the Australian Army Education Service's wartime magazine, SALT.
“This didn’t stop me from being a cartoonist,” according to Arthur. “While I was working as an apprentice, I used to draw political and joke cartoons for other Melbourne newspapers, as well as national magazines.”
These freelance assignments included weekly cartoons for a long-defunct Melbourne newspaper, The Mid-day Times, before Arthur became a sporting cartoonist for his employer, The Truth newspaper.
It was while working as an apprentice that Arthur met the man who would eventually help launch him on a new career as a comic book artist: Jack Bellew.
The Atomic Age
Jack Bellew was a well-known Sydney journalist and former Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Telegraph, the premier newspaper of Frank Packer’s Consolidated Press publishing empire.
Towards the end of World War Two, Bellew, who had now relocated to Melbourne, visited The Truth to arrange the printing for a new current affairs magazine he was to edit with John Sinclair, called Tomorrow – The Outspoken Monthly.
“It was just one of those extraordinarily lucky things,” according to Arthur.
“I was up in the composing room and the foreman of the composing room was talking to this chap about his magazine and he said ‘Jack, Arthur’s a cartoonist, so if you want some cartoons for your magazine, he’ll do them for you.”
Arthur contributed cartoons to the short-lived Tomorrow magazine (March-December 1946) and thought no more about it, until Jack Bellew later called him at home.
“He had an office in Queen Street and he said ‘I’d like you to come in – we’ve got an idea you might be interested in’,” recalls Arthur.
After the demise of Tomorrow, Jack Bellew, together with his former Consolidated Press colleagues, George Warnecke and Clive Turnbull, had decided to form their own publishing company, Atlas Publications.
With the Commonwealth Government’s wartime ban on imported periodicals (which included comic books) still in place, Bellew decided to launch a new comic book in what he saw as “very dry market.”
“We’d like to do something about the atomic age, which is all the thing now – ‘Atom Man’ or ‘Captain Atom’,” Bellew told Arthur. “Would you like to go away and do some drawings?”
“We could get an artist in Sydney to do this, but it would cost us a fortune,” Bellew continued, “but you’re just starting out, so if you really want to be a cartoonist, here’s your big chance.”
“I didn’t have to be told twice!” says Arthur, who promptly went and drew up 3 or 4 sample pages featuring his first ever comic book superhero – Captain Atom.
“I took them into him and he said ‘This is exactly what we’re looking for’,” according to Arthur.
“He’d written the first [story] and gave me the script for me to draw,” he says. “I’d just finished my apprenticeship, so I could get away and set myself up at my parents’ home.”
“I finished drawing [the first story] and said ‘What do you think?’ and they say said that’s just what they wanted.”
“I’d say they were influenced by the popularity of Superman and Batman,” adds Arthur.
Superman and Batman were, in fact, setting new sales records for locally published comic books. Sydney’s K.G. Murray Publishing Company has acquired the Australian rights to reprint full-colour editions of Superman and other characters from America’s DC Comics line-up, which were soon selling around 150,000 copies per issue during 1947-48.
Captain Atom also became one of the first Australian-made comic books to be published in full-colour.
“That was done with a colour overlay,” says Arthur. “I would draw it in black and white then, with a transparent sheet overlay, the colours would be indicated on that.”
The first issue of Captain Atom, published in January 1948, was a roaring success, selling over 100,000 copies.
“This is was what they [Bellew et. al.] hoped to use as a seed-bed for their publishing company,” says Arthur, “for the publishing of high quality magazines – at least, that’s where they were aiming.”
Captain Atom continued to grow in popularity, spawning a line of merchandise (including a glow-in-the-dark Captain Atom ring), as well as a Captain Atom Fan Club, which had over 75,000 members at the peak of the character’s popularity.
Unlike American comic books of the time, which were created by several artists working on different aspects of each story, Arthur Mather was solely responsible for each entire Captain Atom episode.
“I used to write a synopsis and I’d show it to Jack,” says Arthur. “He’d look at it and usually say ‘Fine’, then I’d go away and write the rest just for myself – dialogue, captions, action directions – just in longhand.”
“I used to knock the script off in a day or two,” he says, “then I’d pencil it in first.”
“I was penciling in the morning, then I’d ink them in the afternoon – then I’d collapse!”
“You do get incredibly fast when you do something like that,” says Arthur, “but I was much younger then!”
Despite the workload, Arthur enjoyed it all: “I thought it was great to be actually doing it – it’s what I wanted to do all my life and now I was.”
The early issues of the Captain Atom comic book also featured back-up strips, including Jim Atlas and Dr. Peril of Iggo, by Sydney artist Stanley Pitt, who would later go on to create the influential science fiction comic strip, Silver Starr.
Michael Trueman contributed several supporting strips as well, including Terry Flynn, Big Paul, ‘Two-Gun’ Barrel, Wildfire McCoy, Dick Hawke and Crackajack Daredevil.
“I remember Stanley Pitt, although I don't recall him working for Atlas” says Arthur. “However, I do remember Michael Trueman, certainly – he was a good artist, but I’ve no idea whatever happened to him.”
More covers:
(Capt. Atom #5)
(Capt. Atom #32)
(Capt. Atom #34)
(Capt. Atom #56)
The Comic Book Boom
The first 16 issues of Captain Atom were published in colour, before it was converted to the standard black and white format typical of virtually all Australian comics of the era: “Atlas Publications stopped producing Captain Atom in colour because it was too expensive for the price.”
The character proved sufficiently popular to withstand the switch and continued to be a strong seller, racking up 63 issues before concluding some time in 1954.
Just as Captain Atom was switching to the black and white format, Atlas Publications was expanding
its comic book line throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s. These included Australian comic book
reprints of American and British newspaper comic strips, including Garth, Jimpy,
Johnny Hazard, Rusty Riley, Jane Arden and Red Ryder.
The overseas reprints were joined by new, locally created comic book series, including Keith Chatto’s Western cowboy, The Lone Wolf, a masked crime fighter called The Grey Domino and another Western gunslinger, The Ghost Rider, both of which were drawn by Terry Trowell.
Some of Atlas Publications’ reprint comics began with the original overseas artwork, before being passed on to local artists, who would create all-new stories featuring the existing characters.
One example of this curious trend was Brenda Starr, which started out reprinting the original newspaper strip installments by its American creator Dale Messick, before being passed on to Australian artists, such as Yaroslav (‘Larry’) Horak.
"I regard Yaroslav as the finest comic strip talent to ever work in this country," says Mather. "Not in the fine art sense, but in the comic book style, with the dramatic use of black developed by the great Milton Canniff."
"To attest to Yaroslav's talent, he went to London and won international fame illustrating the James Bond newspaper strip for London's Daily Mail," he adds. "A wonderful strip and drawn with Yaroslav's exceptional talent."
Arthur Mather inherited two American comic strip characters in a similar fashion:
Sgt. Pat of the Radio Patrol
(image)
and Flynn of the FBI
(image).
Sgt. Pat originally began as a newspaper comic strip called Radio Patrol, created by two employees of the Boston Daily Record, Eddie Sullivan (writer) and Charlie Schmidt (artist). Although well regarded by critics today, Radio Patrol never enjoyed the huge success of Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, the strip it was most frequently compared to, during its American newspaper run between 1933-1950.
Sgt. Pat did, however, enjoy a longer life under the Atlas Publications banner, running for 79 issues until the late 1950s.
The first 30-40 issues contained reprints of the original American newspaper strip, before the comic was initially passed on to Yaroslav Horak, followed by another local artist, Andrea Bresciani, before Arthur Mather took over the title.
“Andrea Bresciani was another very good artist – he was a very natural talent,” according to Arthur. (Bresciani, who originally drew the Tony Falco comic book in his native Italy in 1948-49, immigrated to Australia in the 1950s, where he worked for several local publishers, before illustrating the acclaimed newspaper strip, Frontiers of Science, written by Bob Raymond, in the early 1960s.)
“Flynn of the FBI may have been originally a newspaper strip, because I know I didn’t create the character,” recalls Arthur.
He remains unsure about why Atlas Publications decided to use local artists to illustrate overseas comic strips: “A lot of that stuff at Atlas would have passed me by, because I was working from home at the time. The only time I ever went [to their offices] was to take stuff in.”
“I certainly wrote and drew Flynn of the FBI at the time,” he says. “I didn’t have to follow any guidelines, so I did it as I saw fit.”
The first three issues of Flynn of the FBI apparently contain reprints of the American version, before Mather took over the comic for the rest of its 66 issue run, which ended in the late 1950s.
The Collapse of Atlas
Comic books were just one part of Atlas Publications’ rapidly expanding line of magazines, which included Squire, a men’s magazine based on the American Esquire, along with joke books like Frolic, which also featured the occasional girlie cartoon by Arthur Mather.
Comic books like Captain Atom may have helped get Atlas Publications off the ground, yet by no means were the company’s founders entirely proud of them.
“I don’t think even Jack Bellew or Clive Turnbull liked to be associated with the idea of comic books,” says Arthur.
“While we were never censored, there was a real campaign against comics [during the 1950s], with people claiming they were ‘undermining the morals of the young’,” says Arthur. “It was ridiculous, even then!”
It was during this period of Atlas Publications’ rapid expansion that Arthur found his working relationship with Jack Bellew becoming increasingly strained.
“When we first started, it was a lot of fun,” he recalls. “I can remember Jack had a great laugh and we’d go in there and tell him jokes, throw ideas around – there’d be lots of jocularity.”
“As the company got bigger, we really lost that,” says Arthur. “By now he was the Managing Director, so my work no longer went through him, I’d have to go through an editor.”
Atlas Publications’ biggest attempt to enter mainstream magazine publishing would eventually prove to be both Jack Bellew’s and the company’s undoing.
The Pharmaceutical Guild of Australia, in 1955, contracted Bellew’s former employer, Consolidated Press, to print Family Circle, a monthly magazine to be sold through pharmacies across the country.
Jack Bellew and George Warnecke took over the production of the magazine, but Family Circle did not prove to be the financial success that Atlas Publications’ founders hoped it would be.
“The strain and the stress really killed [Jack],” says Arthur. “He was of an age, when you’ve got to a point in your life where you think you’ve done it all and you can’t get up and run again.”
“There was a Christmas break-up party and someone said to me, ‘This is all a joke, the company’s going to go bust’,” he says, “which it did.”
Jack Bellew died in 1957, shortly after which Family Circle ceased publication, while the entire Atlas Publications business appears to have collapsed some time in 1958.
Farewell to Comics
Atlas Publications’ demise may have ended Arthur Mather’s comic book career, but he was not ready to give up on comics entirely.
Mather got together with Harry Cox, a friend of Jack Bellew and a Sydney journalist who was the former editor of the outspoken newspaper, Smith’s Weekly.
He told Cox that one of Melbourne’s daily newspapers might be interested in running a new daily detective comic strip.
Mather asked him if he would be interested in writing it: “I thought it would have had more chance with Harry Cox writing it than with me writing it.”
“I think I did about two or three months’ worth [of sample artwork] and we took into The Sun [News Pictorial] and they said they were very interested,” recalls Arthur.
“You know the business and you know how daily papers operate more than I do,” Mather told Cox, “so I’ll leave it to you to go and arrange the deal.”
“He came back and told me they liked the strip and they were going to do all the [printing] plates and proof it up on art paper,” says Arthur.
“What did you ask for it,” he recalls, “and Harry said ‘Oh, I thought about £80 per week’ – this was at a time when people were earning £6 or £ 7 per week!”
“I said that’s a bit much, but Harry said ‘Oh, they can afford it’ – but they turned it down flat, just on the money!”
“I turned my back on comics from there,” according to Arthur. “I just wasn’t going to do that anymore, because I worked for about 3-5 months, for no money at all – and I couldn’t afford to do that, especially as I had a young family to support.”
New Horizons
The arrival of television in Australia in 1956 not only changed the leisure habits of Australian households, but it also had a detrimental impact on the fortunes of local cinemas, radio stations, newspapers and book and magazine publishers – all of which, initially at least, lost a big chunk of their established audience to television.
Television played a significant part in hastening the end of Australia’s indigenous comic book industry, but it also provided new opportunities for Arthur Mather.
“I did a children’s program for Channel Two, about a little aboriginal boy, all done with cardboard puppets,” he recalls.
“The show was called Brogli and it was a big hit,” says Arthur. “It was a lot of work, though, because you had to make a lot of cardboard characters and do it live on camera.”
Brogli ran for nearly 18 months on Channel Two, before Mather took the show to a rival station, Channel Seven, where it ran for another six months or so.
Once Brogli ceased broadcasting, Mather got a job as a layout artist with Melbourne’s Herald & Weekly Times’ magazine publishing department, before responding to an advertisement for a layout artist’s position with the advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson.
“I went in and got the job,” says Arthur, “and I sort of fell into the advertising world fairly easily.”
Over the next 20 years, Mather held senior positions with some of Australia’s biggest advertising agencies. He eventually became Art Director at J. Walter Thompson’s (“I enjoyed that and had some big accounts there, including MacRobertson’s Chocolate”), before accepting a generous offer to join D’arcy Massius (“The agency just didn’t work out for me.”)
“Then I went to George Patterson’s,” says Arthur. “By the time I finished working there, I was Senior Creative Director.”
George Patterson’s was to be Arthur’s last agency in the advertising industry. It was while working there that he wrote a dystopian science fiction novel, The Pawn, which was published in1975.
“Dennis Wren, of Wren Publishing, God bless him, loved it,” says Arthur. “I got these fantastic reviews and it sold pretty well at the time.”
Emboldened by the critical success of The Pawn, Arthur decided to retire from the advertising world in the early 1980s. “I thought it was time for me to do something different,” he says, “so I decided to give it a go as a full-time writer.”
Paperback Writer
The first thing Arthur did was to send the manuscript for The Pawn to William Morris, a huge literary agency in New York City: “They sent it back to me in the same package – unopened!”
“When The Pawn was published [in Australia], I sent the published book back to a contact I had there, a lady named Rhoda Weyr,” recalls Arthur.
“I sent it with a note saying, ‘This is the book you didn’t open’,” he adds. “She read it, liked it and said ‘If you do anything else, send it to me’.”
Arthur took her up on the offer, sending Rhoda the manuscript for his next novel, a thriller called Easy Money.
“In some respects, Easy Money was as good as I ever did,” he says, “and [Rhoda] was really over the moon about it.”
Easy Money (1979) was sold to Delacorte Press in America, as well as being picked up by the UK literary agent Ed Victor (“He handled every top writer in the UK”), who in turn sold it to the British publishers Hodder & Stoughton.
“Then there was my next book, called The Mind Breaker (1980), which Ed Victor was also very keen on and he also sold that to Hodder,” says Arthur.
“It went from Hodder in the UK, to Rhoda in New York and she sold it to Delacorte Press, who published it in hardcover,” he says, “but it only sold around 20,000 copies.”
It was during this time that Arthur had a falling out with Rhoda Weyr. “I’m not sure how it happened,” he says, “but she would see things in manuscripts that she said required altering which seemed quite odd to me – and to a number of other people.”
Arthur soon signed up with a new literary agent, Roslyn Targ, whom he describes as “one of the nicest Americans I’ve ever met – and she’d work her butt off for you.”
She took all of Arthur’s next five books: The Duplicate (1985), Deep Gold (1986), The Raid (1986), The Los Alamos Contract (1986) and The Tarantula Hawk (1989).
“[Roslyn] had a good connection with Bantam Books in New York, who published them all,” says Arthur.
All of Mather’s books are taut, exciting thrillers, which usually revolve around plots that are partly based on historical incidents or technical facts, such as new technologies or scientific advances.
“I’ve always been a reasonably imaginative person,” says Arthur, “which is why I find it easy to write thrillers, I suppose.”
“I’ve always liked thrillers and I think The Day of the Jackal is a masterpiece of the thriller genre,” he says, “but I also read other things, like Bertrand Russell.”
Mather briefly returned to the world of comic art during this period, when he became the political cartoonist for the Melbourne Sunday Observer newspaper, a role he retained until 1986.
By the end of the decade, however, Mather’s writing career had reached an impasse. This was partly because his agent, Roslyn Targ, went into semi-retirement to look after her ill husband, and because his editor, Fred Klein, resigned from Bantam Books.
One of the last books Mather wrote for Roslyn Targ was called Donor, a thriller about the illegal trade in human body parts.
“I did an awful lot of research for it and went out to the Austin Hospital [Melbourne] and spoke to the team there about surgical operating techniques,” explains Arthur.
“Ros was very keen on it, but she couldn’t sell it, even though she tried for a number of years,” he adds. “I was very disappointed she couldn’t sell it.”
Arthur does, however, admit that he has a habit of picking controversial subjects for his novels.
“I wrote another [unpublished] book called Blood Relations,” he says, “which was about the discovery of a religious document which denied the resurrection [of Christ] ever took place.”
“That went the rounds and I’d get rejection notices from editors who’d say ‘This is a dramatic and compelling story, but we’re really wondering if we should publish it’!”
Electronic Thrillers
Arthur recalls that, back in 2002, he received an email from Roslyn Targ, saying she wasn’t trying to sell fiction anymore, claiming “it is just too hard” to find a market for novels nowadays.
Undeterred, Mather wrote to another New York-based literary agent, Richard Curtis, with a story idea.
Curtis, who was also the President of the Independent Literary Agents’ Association, responded with a proposition that would take Mather’s books to a whole new audience – on the Internet.
“He had just set up a company called E-Reads (www.ereads.com), which featured electronic versions of previously published books,” explains Arthur, “and he asked me what I would think about putting my existing novels on the Net.”
“I thought they’re only gathering dust on the shelves,” says Arthur, “so why not?”
" I've just signed a contract with Richard Curtis for all my books to go on the Net, starting with Deep Gold" says Arthur. " He believes this is where the future of fiction is."
BIBLIOGRAPY
Comic Books
Captain Atom Nos. 1- 63 (Atlas Publications, Melbourne, c.1948-1954)
Flynn of the FBI, Nos. 4 – 66 (Approx.) (Atlas Publications, Melbourne, early-late 1950s)
Sgt. Pat of the Radio Patrol, Nos. 40 – 79 (approx.) (Atlas Publications, Melbourne, early-late 1950s)
Novels
The Pawn (Wren Publishing, Melbourne, 1975)
Easy Money (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1979)
The Mind Breaker (Delacorte Press, 1980)
The Duplicate (Sphere, London, 1985)
Deep Gold (Bantam, New York, 1986)
The Raid (Bantam, New York, 1986)
The Los Alamos Contract (Bantam, New York, 1986)
The Tarantula Hawk (Bantam, New York, 1989)
Interview ©2004/2005 Kevin Patrick. Images $copy; their respective owners.
Contents should not be quoted in whole without prior consent both Kevin Patrick and the interviewee.
Ben Hutchings - May 2005
By Monkey
Ben Hutchings is creator of You Stink & I Don’t, Buckets of Bile
and Dragon Hurtor, as well as co-creator of the popular title Glenjamin,
to name but a few. To find out more, or order any of his titles, visit
his homepage - http://www.effect.net.au/geeen/ or the Phase Two Comics online shop.
My inside sources tell me that you're contributing to a European anthology this year. Can you give us any details at this point, or is it one of those hush-hush kind of deals?
It is a cute little rhyming strip! I hadn't done a rhymey comic for ages, and the last one I tried was
so hard to write that I had to drop it from You Stink #8. The problem with
it is that they had to split it and do the "To Be Continued" thing. So you
will get 3 pages.... 3 measly pages! Then you have to wait for the next 4.
The comic is a British anthology called Paper Tiger ( Issue 2), and I also did a
nice cover! If you are not in Canberra, you can order it from
Paper Tiger Comix
I've also recently scored a gig doing filthy, dirty cartoons for Picture magazine! So I will be doing that, and the regular strip for BMA. But comics wise, I am working on Glenjamin #3 and Dragon Hurtor #5, and I believe after that I will get around to doing a third Buckets of Bile .
I'd like to try and bring something new out for each Supanova...tho' that is a mighty task indeed! I have just about finished a new zine too, entitled "It ain't a duty, it's a privilege" which is all about my fake war adventures.
You're a full time animator - turning heads (
GameSpot interview) and garnering nominations for all kinds of awards, have a full social life and still somehow manage to self publish comics at an alarming rate. Aside from neo-satanic witchcraft, which I understand you practise, what's your secret?
I only seem to produce one comic a year, and maybe do a couple of other small things! So when you think about it, the rate isn't that alarming. I am alarmed at the fact I am so freaking slow! I try and draw a few hours of drawing every night of the week, and don't spend any time playing computer games or watching shitty television, so that helps. I had to give up witchcraft because of all the hippies getting into it for peaceful, aren't-I-alternative reasons. I now do stitchcraft and make time saving cardigans.
The passion for some local comic creators is with animation, yet due to the costs involved in creating a animation they took up comics as a release valve. As a creator who does both, is this the case with you or just a natural codependency?
Doing animation is pretty cheap compared to doing a comic! Look at the cost... a pirated version of Shockwave, a computer which everyone has anyway, something with the internet so you can upload it... all in all a few days work and the cost of a blank CD.
A comic can cost hundreds of bucks when you think about printing and visiting cons and stuff, but it's not the cash, I just animate coz I love it. I have been animating for as long as I have been comicking. Comics are better because you don't have to go on the computer all the time, like some big loser.
Dragon Hurtor is probably your fans most favourite comic series, are there any plans to release a 5th issue, and does it have a conclusion?
It's actually my fans least favourite comic series! I assumed it would be the most pop, being a genre comic, but lo and behold nobody really buys it. Those that buy it seem to love it however! I am working on #5 slowly. I will wrap up the story in that one, and leave it open for more adventures from him. I like the world of Dragon Hurtor so I might continue the series but with adventures concerning new people. Who knows! Since everyone hates it so much I might just ditch the bloody thing.
Was there any local creator who has retired now you wished you had a chance to work, but never got the opportunity, and why?
I really wanted to draw and write a Greener Pastures story! Some of my friends got the privilege to work on it and they did some great artwork. As you know, they don't really do it any more.
How long have you carried that beard for?
It carries me. Take it away and my head just flops forward! I grew it when my neck stopped working after a headbanging injury at a Missy Higgins concert at the Wallaringa Drop-in centre, Wallaringa, 1976.
What motivates you to do your comics?
A desire to let all my grievances, beliefs and japes be known to all man. That's about it really! I can't imagine not doing comics. I'd probably end up being one of those people who doesn't stop talking. I get a lot of motivation from comics that suck too - I think "I can do better than that!" and I really want to show that I can. And comics that rule provide short bursts of motivation.
How do you stop yourself from procrastinating when having to ink very detailed panels?
I find that after a few minutes of washing my bra or tending the garden, I get restless as I know I am procrastinating! I've become good at bowing to my guilt. To be honest though, the inking part is the fun bit in my opinion. I hate pencilling, that is godboring. That's where I always screw up, see.
Has working in the computer games industry influenced your artistic styles (in either direction, going with or rebelling against the visuals and image making processes of computer games)?
No, and I am glad of it! Have you flicked through a computer game mag lately? These days it is all soulless polygon art from Half-Life or Doom 3 or whatever. It is so bland to look at compared to the clever pixel art of the 90s. No matter how smooth or realistic computer graphics become, they are boring to look at compared with hand drawn art.
How has your creative voice developed/changed over time?
I think just coz I am older I am less preachy and heavy handed with trying to get a point across. But I like to think that I have not gotten less funny, despite doing some more arty and serious stuff in Glenjamin.
What do you think is the most important message your stories convey?
I try to encourage people to love one another, and live together in tolerance, compassion, understanding, love, laughter, joy, acceptance, open mindedness, generosity, wisdom, forgiveness, lochness, giving, sharing, caring, nurturing, shoes, friendliness, mateship and harmony in the one same global village on the same earth under the same stars with the same blood (except for those who have diseased blood who are not to be judged except by whichever god or goddess you happen to feel is the right for you).
Pulp Faction Standard Question
Do you see Australian comics industry as running in place? Is it advancing to a point where it can compare to other markets and carve out its own unique niche? Some say we are stuck in a cycle of derivative regurgitation of mainstream comics, particularly from the US, and narrow self-referential works when trying to make them 'Aussie'. What's your take on this?
To compare to other markets we have to have at least one title being sold on a regular basis in newsagents across the land. Until then, we can't really say we have a proper scene, let alone an industry. And that accusation is quite accurate , but the landscape of our underground scene changes constantly, like the surface of Jupiter. The lineup in the Artist’s Alley at Supanova is totally different from say, six years ago. I wish people would stick with it sometimes.
April, 2005
Contents ©2004 Pulp Faction and respective authors.
Contents should not be quoted in whole without prior consent both Pulp Faction and the interviewee.
Christian Read - December 2004
The following questions were put to comics writer Christian Read via e-mail. They were compiled from questions
asked in the Pulp Faction forums and sent by e-mail. In order to sort them all into a proper interview, some
editing and re-wording occured. Please blame Maggie McFee if you don't like these changes. A big thanks should
go to Christian for further shaping the interview questions as well as for bothering to answer at all.
Thanks and enjoy.
Maggie
Q. - Could you please bring newcomers to your work up to speed by
giving a brief rundown of what your past work includes?
My name is Christian Read. I've written twelve issues of The Watch
with a few in the can. Contributing artists include Image's Doug
Holgate, Dark Horse's Nicola Scott, and Marvel's Andrew McKenny. The
three issue mini Dunwich: A Tale of the Cthulhu Mythos, with Doug
Holgate, Eldritch Kid, a four issue mini with Christopher Burns, and the
long delayed but out next Feburary Witch King, with Paul Abstruse [Ed. - Issue 1 art preview below], as
well as the web comic Criss Cross Jazz with Scott Fraser.
Scott and I also work together semi-regularly on the Dude in the Coat shorts. I also did a few Star
Wars shorts a few years ago. All but four of those books are distributed
internationally. We've had sales in every continent but Antarctica.
As a quick aside, a few days ago I calculated that's around 450
published comic pages since 2000, with another 100 in the next year and
a bit.
Q. - What's coming up?
Finishing Witch King [Ed. - Previews below] and EK. A project with Doug Holgate, and I've
got a few proposals doing the rounds. Expect some announcements soon
concerning the incredible artists on the new Watch mini Cathexes [Ed. - Preview art below] and
possibly a new monthly, with the working-title “Superwicked”. Expect
resumption of Criss Cross Jazz very soon. Plus, Sidereal Kingdom, oh yes.
I've also got some upcoming work with Top Cow and I'm
very excited to be doing a horror short with Tonia
Walden. I've been a fan of her's since I was
seventeen, so that's a bit of a dream.
I'm also doing a commisoned piece with
Chelsea Fritzlaff for the band "Dead Inside the
Chrysalis" [Ed. - Preview art below]. An excursion into surreality for me.
 |
 |
 |
| Preview from The Watch mini Cathexes. |
Preview from 'Dead Inside the Chrysalis' project. |
Preview from Witch King |
Q. - Any mysterious projects you can speak cryptically about and
spark some gossip, rumour and innuendo?
Nah. If I start shooting my mouth of about the work roughly based on
the life of Gesar of Ling or Villanelle, I'll look stupid when it never
comes out. Mind you, the remixed Contractually Obliged that appeared in
the excellent Ink anthology is slouching towards Bethlehem.
Q. - You've done pretty well for yourself in terms of recognition
and continued work on several titles. In other words, you've established
yourself as a 'professional'. So, inquiring minds want to know; Why
don't you "sell out" (Readers: Please note my use of quotation marks
before anyone comes gunning for me)? Why not shoot for a book with one
of the big guys and suck down some cash and instant recognition?
What is selling
out? Do you mean doing work for a professional
company using their characters? I'm fucking trying.
Look, I've never heard anyone use the words ‘sell out' used
by
anyone who actually worked in an industry where your ideas solely decide
if you're eating that week. Did anyone call Eddie Campbell a sell-out
after Order of Beasts or that Green Lantern? No. And if they did, fuck
them. Selling out is a myth people with no talent or no experience
foster.
I would love to write for Marvel or DC or whoever. I have some, if I
say so myself, tops ideas for certain characters. I do not feel the need
to justify that.
But, like any writer worth his salt, my main focus and love is, and
always will be, what I create myself. I fail to see how one diminishes
the other and I very much doubt anyone will be able to explain it to me.
The point is, I'd love to work for a big company. I just don't need
to.
Although, to be fair, Luke Webber has gotten drunk and railed at my
mainstream work. Of course, one day, I'll seduce that mad bastard and
he'll draw for me. Then I will have won.
Q. - Being a writer is generally
viewed by the public as a cerebral
vocation. Good writers tend to prove this out by being well-read and
voracious absorbers of knowledge. With all that goes into writing and
goes into becoming a good writer, how do you respond to the idea that
comics are 'just for kids'?
Writing is a cerebral vocation. It should be. But interesting
writing is good living. I can research the poetry of James Mangan, the
micro-gravity/string implications raised Brane Theory, the history of
the Haitian Uprising until the eyes drop out of my skull. All that stuff
is great, but it's just props, a decoration you know? It's just a
trick.
It's living an interesting life and thinking about interesting
things, and going to interesting places and talking to interesting
people that makes good writing.
Pump as much money into the pokies, play as much X-box as you want,
watch as much children's television as you like, that's not gonna
make a good writer.
Just get out there and experience. That's all you can do.
As for the idea that comics are for kids, well, no one who would say
that with any breadth of knowledge and are talking out their arse. So;
‘fuck you, you non-comic reading motherfuckers.' That's what
I'd say.
Or I'd suggest they enter a comic shop of repute and, on discovering
their taste in other forms of fiction and non-fiction, make
recommendations concerning works that may engage with them.
Q. - What does writing comics give you that other forms of writing
cannot? What's different about writing comics for you as opposed to
other forms? Do you see yourself eventually moving within the profession
(screenplays, novels, etc.), or do you see comics as always being a part
of your life?
You know what?
I don't know for certain, what comics can offer that
is wholly unique. I have suspicions but part of why I work in comics is
to understand the form.
My notions in regards to comics is that there are narrative
structures and conventions that film, prose, music, poetry and
photography can't emulate. But I don't feel qualified to tell you
what those are just yet. It's all a bit complex and theoretical. Check back
in a year and perhaps I'll have a better vocabulary to express what I'm
saying.
Working in comics is good because the artist does all the work. You
can go look at internet pornography and the wrestling while they squint
at a drawing table into the long hours of the night. (My advice to comic
writers is that you don't tell them that)
Seriously, comics writing is a series of complex relationships
between image and alphabet, time and space. One must be aware of
physical limitations in the medium as nowhere else. The page size is
limited, the space to put words is limited.
For a writer who is not an artist, one is constrained (and boosted)
by the artist's aesthetics, commitment, style. Your vision is never,
ever, going to be your own and you rise and fall with the penciller.
Communication of ideas and plot information is in a very real way out of
your hands
That less positive stuff being said… comics are a way to express
complex ideas quickly, and utilize many storytelling techniques and I
like pretty pictures very much indeed.
As for my writing future, I've been working freelance as a
journalist for many years. See my upcoming feature in Hyper Magazine for
a taste of the kind of pop-culture ephemera I discuss.
Novel? One day. Hopefully very soon. Writing a novel is without a
doubt the hardest experience I have had in my artistic life.
Film? Working on getting two out.
Play? Should have had one out in January, but the director pulled
out. Still trying to salvage that. Pray for me.
Q. - Speaking of "craft",
do you keep a writer's journal?
Since the death of my website, I certainly keep a blog using popular
web-based software. See if you can find it! It is, for all intents and
purposes, a writing journal.
Otherwise, my writing journal is called ‘my writing'. See if you
can
pick when I've been drinking. Nicola Scott and I play a game “guess
what
page I did naked”.
Q. - Comics readers are divided along many fault lines, so to speak.
A lot of rumblings come about from the grinding where they meet. One
'plate', if I may run this analogy rapidly and completely into the
ground, views mainstream super-hero books with a less than prideful eye.
However, The Watch seems to have avoided this stigma and been generally
accepted by both the opposing sides. To what, if anything, do you
attribute this?
This stigma about superheroes… I don't understand it. It always
seems a basically false position to take. Critiques against whole genres
always strikes me as ineffective, incoherent and short-sighted. And
almost always comes from people who argue with bloody-high-mindedness
about art. Booooring.
You can either choose to view corporate superhero books as boring
wastes of paper, written by aging hacks or you can dig a little deeper
and see an vast experiment, unique in the history of the world, in
meta-narrative. And if you ignore the good work using supers to examine
a variety of themes, and still dismiss the sub-genre as a whole… then
you're ignorant and have no right to an opinion. Walk on home.
People who make those tired old “adolescent power-fantasy” attacks
are herbivores of the mind. Ignore them in favour of the carnivorous who
see a vital, sexy, magic pop-art when it's in front of them.
That being said, if you defend superhero books mindlessly, refusing
to take criticism from either within the medium, (re: Planetary. That's
not a comic book, that's an extended act of criticism and deep
engagement) or without is a mistake.
All that being said, I think I tried to write a book about people
with super powers, not superheroes. Superpowers have played an important
role in the book as both the basic plot engine and the most basic sub
textual symbol of what's going on really.
If people like The Watch, I think it's because it's smart, there
are
some good jokes in it, and there's stuff exploding on a fairly regular
basis. There's some good characters and hopefully an entertaining
central mystery.
Plus it's one of the best looking books out there. Look at the list
of who has worked on it above. Am I not devastatingly proud of the
incredible people who have and will work on that book? Call me a
terrible hack who molested your pets and stole your wife's undies, I
don't care. But attacking how good that book looks is futile.
As for why people who don't like superheroes, but who do like the
Watch (and we do get correspondence to that effect, especially from
countries where superheroes never took off) I think it's because I never
really worried about writing a genre book. I write about what I want, in
this case, that happens to be about people with amazing skills and
gifts.
It's not just a book about Dr Weaselflaps kidnapping the moon. It's
a heavy dose of shock and awe with a point of view. If it transcends
notions of what a super hero book is capable of then I've done my job,
because people stop viewing it as a “superhero” book and just see
the
story. That's all I want.
I write it for people like me, informed about the world and curious
to know more and I don't really feel the need to have all the tropes of
a superhero book. It's a story about people, about the whole pernicious,
hateful notion heroism, and about what makes someone a good person.
I think that's actually pretty easy to see.
Of course, I'm not the person to talk to about why people read the
Watch. I'm not qualified to speak for them. All I know is I see a lot
of
people at the cons and get a lot of letters and my readers are uniquely
sexy, smart, funny, clever and informed people. If you've bought my
works, and enjoyed them, you can almost guarantee that you're one of
more of those things. Tell people I say so.
Q. - Have you ever or could you ever write [a version of] yourself
or someone very close to you into a story -- even just a thumbnail?
Many, many times. The Dude in the Coat is me, and many times I've
put my opinions into characters mouths. So, I suppose you could argue
they are versions of me. I doubt many writers could, would, or should
help that.
However, I don't think that's what you're asking, so
Dude in the Coat and upcoming and previous Diggsville
for more.
Q. - A very involved question: Tell us about your theories on the
use and integration of space, time and movement in sequential art. Or is
what you do instinctual and innate?
Oh, man, we'd be here for hours and I can't imagine too many people
care. Let me simply say that photographic theory, not film theory, is
the most useful tool we have to inform comic writing and drawing. Comic
art is basically a series of photographic representations, that only
become a story via their relationships to each other, and their
relationships to space. Foremost in writer's and artist's mind should
be, I maintain, the understanding that a story needs to make the most
amount of time that happens in the slippage between panels.
I enjoy, very much, the craft-related underpinnings of any art form.
Comics have very little theoretical cannon and it's something I look
forward to writing about one day.
I think that my approach to the stories I tell is innate. It's all
gut-feeling concerning what's going to be fun to tell and interesting
to
read. But when it comes to the behind the scenes matters of crunch, I'm
all ruthless application of cold, machine like calculation. Oh yes.
As for my own work, I've never been more aware of theory than in the
upcoming Superwicked, but of my published works, examine the Watch,
volume 2, issue 5, and the final issue of Casus Belli. My notions of how
time is expressed in comics are probably best expressed there.
Q. - How do you cope with the notion that nothing is original? Or do
you feel that's nonsense?
Is nothing original? I don't know. I don't have a chronological
table of every thing written ever. And how far can you take that
questions. “Read's use of pictures and words in this comic is
derivative”.
However, if you find yourself saying “it's like the bit in
X, where…” you're probably not original.
If my work reminds me of anyone else's, I scrap it. I'm a firm
believer in telling my stories my way.
Nothing gets me off-side or disinterested quicker than someone
saying “it's meant to remind the reader of” or “it pays
homage too”.
What they're really saying is “I don't have enough faith in
my talents
to tell my own story”. And, brother, if you don't have faith in
yourself, by Christ, I'm not going to. I don't need to read something
that artlessly apes what has happened before. Nor does anyone reading
this.
If you are not consciously trying to create something great, why are
you trying at all? Would you read something that you knew was
half-hearted?
That being said, notions of originality are highly suspect. Even if
you are working in a vacuum, you may unwittingly hit on already used
ideas. Anyway, the human experience has only certain finite expressions.
I don't think succeeding in being original is nearly as important as the
attempt.
So I don't over worry. I just ensure that whatever I'm writing is
an
expression of my concerns, my talent, my voice. If you aren't doing the
same, you're probably not going to be telling a good story.
Rethink. Try again.
Remember, even working with unoriginal material, you can tell
original stories. It's why “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”
is a
powerful comic, masterfully rendered comic about the myths colonial
powers tell themselves, and not a rip-off of Jules Verne.
And be aware the self-conscious art is sooo 1998.
Q. - In a sweeping generalisation, it seems that when Aussies go to
work freelancing for one of the major US publishers, they don't catch as
much slack for working on 'super-hero' books as they seem to when
working on those sorts of titles locally. You've worked in super-herodom
locally (and managed to avoid a good deal of the 'slack'), so what's
your take on this phenomenon?
No one would dismiss David Yardin for doing superhero
works, because
I don't think there's anyone that fucking idiotic in the world.
David
trained as, and wanted to be, and slogged his guts out to become, a
super hero artist. He's one of the best at it. Who could or would attack
someone for living their dream? Are you gonna dismiss Darren White, a
smart guy, just because he wrote some Batman?
I don't know that many people do automatically attack people just
for doing superheroes.
It's like telling Steven Griffin his work is “too Hawaiian,”
or Jason Rand his work is “too much about gods that are small.”
I've had three bad reviews out of some twenty five and the only
review I have ever had that seemed dismissive of my work simply because
it was mainstream was from an Australian. And I didn't pay attention to
that because the reviewer was making a conspicuous big deal about how
little they knew about superhero comics.
I think anyone who says “superheroes aren't my thing and I don't
like them”, should probably not read superhero related work. They have
little useful to say to me, my work, or the readership.
Anyone else working with pop-material who gets this kind of review,
here is my advice. “Fuck em”. Don't ever dismiss criticism,
but always be aware of your reviewer's credentials.
Q. - Do you see Australian comics industry as running in place? Is
it advancing to a point where it can compare to other markets and carve
out its own unique niche? Some say we are stuck in a cycle of derivative
regurgitation of mainstream comics, particularly from the US, and
narrow self-referential works when trying to make them 'Aussie'. What's
your take on this?
[Ed. - I intend to ask this question of all our interviewees.]
Hmmm. OK. I approach this question with a fair amount of care. I've
never noticed this “industry” deals very well with criticism. Any
attack
can be made to seem personal, and people don't care to separate the
dancer from the dance. So, up front, let me say that I have no
intentions of attacking specific people.
But: What comics industry?
There is not an Australian comics industry. Industry indicates
professionalism, indicates commercial consciousness. Tell me, do you
honestly see many comic creators out there sticking to deadlines,
creating markets for their books, printing professionally and all that
other jazz?
Cos I don't.
That's an industry. Phosphorescent is the only commercial comic
concern in this country. That's one company. One. We have very little
peer reviewing that's not fraught with either tentative worry about
hurting feelings, or is cowardly, anonymous bitching.
There is no industry.
What we have here is a scene. A movement, if you will. We have an
intense amateur hobby market. Some of the things that come out of this
scene are very fine indeed. You'd have to go a long way to find someone
who likes the work of, say, Matt ‘Stikman' Hyunh, more than me,
for
instance. I thought Crumpleton Experiments was one of the best comics,
(not Australian comics, comics) I read this year. I've talked many times
how much I liked Violin Girl and Dogs and on and on. It drives me nuts
someone like Mandy Ord isn't enormously well known and reviewed in Heat.
Why isn't Selan's magazine distributed through Gordon and Gotch?
As for the smaller stuff… it's not going to sell. By dint of their
very nature they are not, shall we say, industrial. I suspect two
reasons for that.
One, a lot of those books just aren't up to scratch for a mainstream
audience, who rightly expect high production values. They're not meant
to be, after all. They're not designed as commercial work.
And secondly, comics are already a niche market. A zine is almost
certainly going to be narrowly focused. I don't think I'm being
radical
here when I suggest that indie material is going to find an indie
audience that is, by definition, not mainstream.
There is less readership for
that kind of work because it doesn't
court it. If you produce a book that's meant to be read only by your
mates, don't complain when only they read it. If you rush the art over
the weekend, with no good equipment, don't be surprised if people are
dismissive of it. If you produce a book rife with spelling mistakes,
don't complain when the stores don't buy it. Produce irregular size,
don't freak out when the companies don't distribute it. Produce
ten pages a year, don't be shocked when you can't maintain readership.
Mainstream means, appeals to more people, after all. The difference
between indie and mainstream is that simple. And that useless.
Let me tell you a quick story. My fine friend Doug Holgate did a
book called 'Tales From Under Your Bed' a few years back. Born out of the 24
hour comic challenge, he did 20 page story. It is funny and charming.
Then, when he decided to print it, he took his time, reproduced the art
with a proper scanner. He cleaned it, redrew what didn't work. He
drafted. Then he bound it together and had it printed professionally.
That book had international sales, gathered huge reviews and was loved
by fans retailers and pros alike. It was part of the momentum that
surged him to getting into the prestigious Flight anthology and his own
OGN with Image.
It didn't have superheroes and tits. It was a kid's story about
a worm. That book did well because he worked at making it good. Indie
material, treated to mainstream quality and, golly, look, it did well.
I've been barking in the dark about this for years, and Doug proved me
right.
Make no mistake about what I'm saying, now. It is not talent that
this country lacks. It is application. Forget about the bullshit divides
between mainstream and indie. Only sad bastards who had no friends who
think a Jesus And Mary Chain album makes them interesting buy into that
shit.
Comics will not advance in this country, or create an international
profile as a whole, until we all apply ourselves to creating works that
can and should be seen internationally. And that has nothing to do with
whether or not your comic is about fucking superheroes or menstruation
or your cat.
It has to do with creating quality works in marketable formats.
That, my friends, is the sad reality of this fallen world. Otherwise we
will remain a hobby scene. If that's what you want, fine. But I have
bigger dreams for our talent.
Australian comics should, and can, be seen internationally as a
hothouse of talented an interesting creators. But not until we all agree
to try as hard as we can, every time.
No one quits. Everyone fights.
December 21, 2004
Contents ©2004 Pulp Faction and respective authors.
Titles discussed © their respective publishers, creators or authors.
Contents should not be quoted in whole without prior consent both Pulp Faction and the interviewee.
Doug Holgate - April 2005
-or- Von Hellhammer Speaks
-or- An Anagram for Ghoul Ate God
By Christian Read
Doug Holgate (website) shouldn’t need much of an introduction but here’s one anyway. Doug conquered Newcastle in the early nineties, where he meet Luchador tag-team partner Scott Fraser. The two of them, realizing they’d each found the soul-mate they longed for, created Cowman and Dollboy, which saw publication locally. From there, Scott self-published the solo Dollboy title and Doug did the back up, Lusus.
Soon after, I met Doug and on a rainy, gin-filled night, at the local comic shop, tricked him into doing Dunwich: A tale of the Cthulhu Mythos. Doug followed this up with a variety of zines he and longtime partner Jen Hook wrote and illustrated such as Soda, contributed to the Diggsville anthology, then struck gold with small press work Tales
From Under Your Bed. From there, he ramped up his online presence, took a lot of tangential comic work, (flown domestically on Qantas recently? You may be one of the million or so people who read Doug’s comics for younger readers available there.) As well as working with Australian comics historian “Big” Kevin Patrick. Recently, he struck it big with his inclusion in the second Flight anthology.
After collapsing in his doorway, Doug gave me an interview in returning for leaving his home, and pets, alone.
CR - First up, lets talk about you as the artistic type.
CR - Doug, what attracts you to and keeps you working, and wanting to work in the medium?
Doug - Fortune and glory. Hookers and cocaine. And just playing in an incredibly powerful, over the top crazy medium. Comics are weird things. Speech balloons and sound effects, gutters and pacing, splash pages and time, creating tangible moments and worlds on paper. Something so unique as to be almost more effective than prose and film. There is nothing quite like them...and I think unless you actually have it in your blood...you won’t ever quite get WHY we are drawn to them and why we spend hours and hours and hours on them. Personally it’s the attraction of storytelling. Engaging an audience. Holding them with your work and taking them places. Plus, despite popular belief girls really dig it.
CR - As a creator, what do you think your strengths are?
Doug - I think I’m a pretty good visual storyteller and I’ve got a good sense of pacing. Plus I like to think I’m a relatively good draftsmen.
CR -
Where do you feel you have to improve?
Doug - Story. Art. Story. Art. Story. I’m never satisfied. I can see good bits and I know something is relatively successful as it is. But overall I finish a project I can pick 100 moments I would do differently. Obviously you can’t be too precious about these things, it would never get done and it’s all a learning curve...but I always have a hard time looking at anything more than 3 months old without wondering what the hell I was thinking.
CR -
Know how you feel. I was looking at Dunwich, the first thing I ever wrote and an early job for you and all I could see was technical error after rookie move. Do you think a time will come when you'll look at something and only see the good stuff, or will that voice always haunt the inside of your head?
Doug - HA! Yes. Funnily enough I was flicking through Dunwich #1 a month or so ago. Some nice moments, but it’s all over the place. It physically makes me cringe. 100 different artistic influences that to me are pretty obvious and seem to chop and change from panel to panel. No flow between pages. Nothing really inviting there to make you to want to turn the page. We all have to start somewhere I guess.
I can see the good stuff now. I can tell when something has just gone right to that point and there isn’t much more I could do to make it better. But I actually hope the voice will always haunt me. I devour anything to get me thinking about how things could be utilized better. A technique here and idea there that I can play around with to expand on what I’m doing. I just feel like I’m stagnating otherwise.
CR - You trained as an illustrator at university. What was your specific training there and how do you still use it today?
Doug - Heh...my training was in Plant and Wildlife illustration. A pretty redundant field. Essentially a lot of scientific work, anatomical illustration of plants and animals and just straight illustration of the same subjects. Redundant in the sense that as a fulltime working illustrator I’ve had one job in 5 years that was specifically plant and wildlife based. Unless someone dies and you manage to pry your way into a museum as a fulltime lowly paid scientific illustrator it’s an incredibly narrow field to get work in. Mostly it’s the stuff of folk art and greeting cards.
I met playboy, cartoonist and God King of the Apple Isle Scott Fraser at Uni and we were kind of notorious in our classes for doing as little plant and wildlife as possible to pass the course. Comics with a tree in the background, Dollboy wielding a cat etc.
What I DID take from it all though, was a lot of experience with different materials. I learned to paint properly, draw, photograph etc. And in hindsight basically taught me to get a bit of discipline and get serious about the whole thing of making art for a living.
Plus in my postgraduate year I got to draw Dinosaurs by choice and do a bit of Palaeontology, which is like the comics world of science.
CR - What's the tools of the trade? What specific art tools do you use?
Bright white 250 GSM smooth paper from Paperpoint, takes ink exceptionally well and only has a slight tooth. So you get a great smooth inked line and it doesn’t feel like you are drawing on plastic. A 0.5 mechanical pencil and H leads. 000 to 1 size sable brushes for inking. And then my trusty photoshop and illustrator for colouring toning and lettering. I’ve gotten a taste back recently for painting so i’m looking to play around with a fully painted comic soon. I usually use acrylics, gouache and watercolours depending on the piece.
CR - What's your greatest success in comics to date, on a personal level as well as in your career?
Doug - Being invited to contribute to Flight #2 is both a personal and career success at this stage. Definitely. On a personal level because I don’t think I’ve ever been surrounded with such passionate people devoted to making the best work they can. Inspiring beyond anything I’ve experienced in comics. I’m also overwhelmingly humbled to be involved with people whom I think are some of the best storytellers comics have yet to fully discover. And career wise because Flight has this feeling about it. That something is happening here that will be talked about as a major turning point in comic’s history for a long time and I’m a part of it.
CR - You've worked with writers but seem more comfortable as a writer-artist. What is the appeal of working for? Others? Doing it all yourself?
Doug - I don’t mind working with a writer. It’s something I enjoy, as it’s purely an opportunity to flex artistic muscles. But it’s a different discipline...and lately I think it’s a matter of having to feel really passionate about the script. There is the constraint there of working to the expectation of someone else and working to the constraint of that script, if I’m not a hundred percent into it...I find it easy to get distracted.
Usually when I write...it’s a purely visual stream of consciousness thing. I rarely write a script. If anything just major plot points so that I remember them. But usually I will have an idea and I will just draw it out until it stops talking to me. It adds a freedom to the process that I really, really enjoy. Listening to the characters tell me how to layout a page or tell the story, and letting them dictate where it will lead. It’s something that I’ve only really discovered in the last couple of years.
CR - That's an interesting phrase. Do you really interact heavily with the characters and setting as you create them?
Doug - Definitely. It’s usually where my ideas start. A character. “Right...what is this character doing? Why is he here? Why do I care?” etc. And it usually expands on that. I will do a few finished character illustrations in a scene, engaging with something in their space telling a self-contained story with one picture or two pictures just to get to know them. If it starts to expand easily from that I’ll think more about where they could go. A lot of the time I get nothing and the illustrations on their own are enough. They’re out on paper and they’re story pretty much captured immediately with nowhere else to really go. Other times it all just falls into place and all these doors open up and I’m dragged along for the ride.
CR - I think one of your great skills is actually using the comic medium to great potential. I think especially your decisions to let your characters have enough panels to move around in. How do you decide to lay out panels? Any particular rules or theories you employ?
Doug - I love the 9-panel grid. Especially in this day and age of splash pages and “dynamic” action shots. I usually try and make my comics as easy to read without words as possible. I like to let my characters act...so they basically get the room to do so. I do like to break out every now and then...but the simple panel to panel grid is the simplest and most effective way to engage an audience. Especially to those not particularly well versed in comics language.
It’s a very intuitive thing I find too. I will usually do really rough thumbnails of panel layouts for a page...and its always dictated by what the character wants to do and how each panel will most effectively communicate that. If it’s a 12-panel page or a 3-panel page or one big panel and 15 small ones...that’s what it has to be. I was for a while there trying to get some maddening art composition theory in there, Golden section kind of stuff. How to divide up a page and draw the viewers eye across it through geometry etc. Basically the kind of stuff the French poster artists of the 1920’s came to play with. But it just got too crazy and you really lose the rhythm. Better to read about this stuff and use it subconsciously than go out of your way to include it.
CR - I know lots of artists generally don't enjoy reading comics and are usually happy to look at the art. Where do you stand on that issue?
Doug - In my youth I used to be all about the art. And to an extent now...if I don’t get drawn in visually right off the bat the book will be on the back foot. But as I grow older and surlier I’m definitely more interested in the actual story of a comic now. How the story is told etc. I also think it’s a delicate balance. A lot of people say a beautifully drawn book can make up for a shit story. But not vice versa.
Which I think is utter bollocks. I’ve lost count of the comics I’ve read that would be considered “well drawn comics” that just left me cold and throwing them across the room in disappointment.
We’re meant to be STORYtellers. STORY should always be the driving force. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of nicely drawn pictures dancing around a page not doing much.
CR - What's the Flight Project all about and how did you get involved?
Doug - Flight is a group of animators and comics makers (Mostly from online communities and web comics) that got together online to create an anthology. Originally planned as a direct homage to the likes of Miyazaki and Mobieus it’s grown well beyond that into something truly original and pretty groundbreaking.
CR -
What's your particular story about?
Doug - My story is an alternate history of what might have happened to Laika, the first dog in space, launched by the Russians during the space race in the 50's and 60's. The idea hit me when I put together a painting of Laika sharing a vodka with a space god for an Outer Space exhibition about a year ago.
(Previews: 1, 2, 3)
When I had to start getting serious about putting something together for Flight, she popped up again and the rest pretty much fell into place. Her actual story is really quite sad and moved me to, I guess, explore what would happen if she just kept floating out into space.
It's a bit of rumination on politics, on how destructive and paranoid the human race can be, and how extreme advances in technology are not necessarily the answer to solving these problems. At its heart though it's a fun little doggie adventure.
CR - Can you give us a description of how you actually made Laika in pornographic and crunchy detail?
Doug - Like I mentioned it started with a painting of Laika and Azathoth The Infernal sharing vodka in space a year earlier. I’m not entirely sure what horrid part of my brain that emanated from but that’s where it started. And it was essentially the same theme. Laika didn’t die she floated away into space and saw things that the human race can only dream of.
Then she popped up again around Flight time. I false started once...and it went nowhere. Sat on it for a couple of months ridiculously intimidated by the phenomenal artists that I was being published next to and eventually bit the bullet and launched her back out into space.
One of the hardest comics I’ve ever EVER done. I think both because I wanted it to be 110% better than I could make it...and because I was wrestling with how to tell her story.
No script just the same technique of here she is...where are we going and jumped straight into rough pencils. Polished pencils were then done, re-reading it and with some help from yourself and the Flight Crew...decided we all hated the ending and that it needed to change. It sat right with me at first...but it wasn’t Laika’s ending. More Chuck Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes complete with fist shaking at the sky action. So back to the drawing board and 6 redrawn pages and two completely new pages later she was finished. Inks then colours and now she’s published running around on some crazy arse planet somewhere.
I might actually post up the alternate ending on my website once the book comes out. Just so people can compare and contrast. I would be interested to see what people think of both of them.
CR - Now, convince us to part with our cash and purchase it.
Doug - You could split galaxies with the spine it’s THAT thick. Plus it has, I believe, set an incredibly high precedent for where comics should be looking in the near future to grow as a medium. And you want to know what the future for comic’s looks like don’t you?
The Flight contributors are a strong new voice as far as comic artists and writers go. Do you feel you belong to a movement within comics?
As I mentioned before. I definitely think it’s setting a new benchmark for what comics should and can aspire to. A movement? Probably not at this stage...but definitely a bold statement. It’s success so far is I think testament to the fact that comics peers and audiences are craving something more than flashy gimmicks and film deals to take comics in a new direction.
CR - Tell us of Heidi Hyperwarp?
Doug - Heidi Hyperwarp is an ongoing project that has been picked up by Image. Written by Jai Nitz (Paper Museum, Heaven’s Devils) it’s an all ages western, crime, sci-fi adventure graphic novel. At this stage it’s slow going as freelance work has me in it’s vice like well paying grip. But hopefully we should have something out later this year or early 2006.
(Previews: 1, 2 ,3)
CR - Viewing comics in any commercial aspect is a dicey situation amongst people who view it as a hobby. You and I both have talked about it being an ambition to turn our craft into our living. And we've both worked in related industries doing bill-paying dead work. Do you feel that your professional work has affected your comics work or vice versa? And do you think other can benefit from this kind of attitude? Or, if you make it a job, do you think something is missing from your art?
Doug - A bit of both. I know that the experiences I’ve garnered from some freelance jobs have been invaluable. Other times it’s just dead work because the money is there. And sometimes my comic is what sells a client on the job. “We want what you do in THIS.”
I think though, it’s always important to put your best foot forward and try to make the most of any paying work regardless of how fulfilling (or not) it is artistically. It’s still my voice out there representing me whether it’s my grand personal masterpiece or a job for a pet store.
So I think that dead work can be of definite benefit. It’s all just another arrow in your bow and so forth. But of course there is compromise.
Time wise especially. I was just chatting to Craig Phillips this morning and we were regaling each other with the various things we were working on. We basically said at the same time “Yeah it’s great to be busy and they’re good gigs...but man I just want to go and paint and do MY work.” It’s almost like taking a walk in some fresh air or a shower on a hot day there is just something completely satisfying about it.
CR - From waking up to going to bed is a hard days slog for an illustrator. What keeps you going during those hours?
It’s hard to stay motivated sometimes...you have your good and bad days. I think as you go a long trying to attach yourself to projects you know you will enjoy working on and have a great deal of creative input into helps. Also this sounds really fruity...but since I’ve gone fulltime freelance in the last 2 years there is an almost primal buzz that comes from knowing your skills are such that people WANT to utilise them. And I’m utilising my skills to keep myself alive and the woman of the house in the lifestyle to which she is accustomed. It’s a hard feeling to describe...but it definitely keeps me up till the small hours of the morning before a deadline.
CR - You used to be a con scene regular, then sorta dropped out of sight. Why?
Moving to Melbourne and the fact that the cons don’t come down here to Hobbiton it’s become even MORE of an expense to visit them as a creator and self-publisher. Travel and accommodation costs on top of printing promotion and table costs. It’s a ridiculous amount of money and it’s just not an expense I’m willing to forego twice a year for a fraction of a return. I always feel a little pang of “Ah man it looks like it was fun” homesickness through photos and post con reports...but it’s always for the social aspect rather than the sitting behind a table scowling at people aspect. Which is probably the sole reason.
CR - How useful has the Internet been to your success?
Incredibly so. In fact it’s probably the biggest promotional tool I wield. Most of the work I’m engaged in has come via promoting myself on the web or through someone seeing something I’ve done and tracing it back to my website. Plus especially with things like the Flight message boards and The Drawing Board it’s a fantastic source of inspiration and camaraderie. Working at home with two moth eating cats isn’t exactly the creative hotbed people make it out to be.
So these online communities are the closest things to emulating a studio environment without having to put up with office politics. Bouncing work off each other, getting advice tips or just scouring the web for new artists and inspiration. It’s an invaluable tool.
CR -
Australian comics. The Inevitable Australian comics questions.
CR -
You've been involved in Australian comics for nearly a decade now. What's your impression of the attitude and skills of the average Australian product?
Doug - The average Australian product? Pretty average. A few blips of brilliance here or there, the good can be really great, but overall at the moment pretty much...average. I think we certainly have incredibly talented people here that have made comics in the past, but through one reason or another (mostly that comics here is a hobby and not a bringer of food to the table.) Those few have gone onto bigger and brighter things. Either other creative endeavors or breaking into mainstream comics overseas.
CR - It's a small pond. Who are the big fish?
Doug -The usual suspects. Dillon, Trudy Cooper, Gary Chaloner, Jason Paulos, Tonia Walden, Phosphorescent. Amazingly, (bar Phos) creators who have been in it for what...almost 15 - 20 years and still creating strong bodies of work despite all the woes that Australian comics goes through. There is a reason they are the big fish. On the up and up, Jase Harper, Dean Rankine, Matt Hyunh.
CR - What's your prediction for where things are headed, for the scene as a whole?
Doug - Actually I was thinking about this the other day...and while I’m just as prone as the next person to let fly with doom prophecies...I think 2005 could be a pretty good year. Already we’ve had Deevee: Flange, Sporadic 5, A new Crumpleton Experiments, Eldritch Kid 1 and 2 and Meus Officium Est Abyssuss. I’ve had a 24 page Western printed in France (Mococo) as well as 16 pages in Flight #2. On it’s way is Pirates, Something Wicked, the Operation Funny bone project. Colin Wilson is doing a 3 issue Losers story arc for Vertigo, Ben Templesmith keeps on keeping on. Jason Rand has Small Gods (Image Comics) up to issue...8?? And a trade of the first arc released earlier this year. There are rumors always of a Hairbutt The Hippo Trade. Hopefully we will see a couple more issues of Platinum Grit. Plus crews of ridiculously talented cartoonists are gathering together and in the throes of re-entering the self-publishing arena later this year with the Toon Buggy anthology.
So...it’s not TOO bad. That’s more than a few average blips.
Obviously...in a perfect world we would all be working 24/7 on quarterly graphic albums, lavishly produced and distributed by book publishers, paid handsome up-front wages, royalties and honored with cities named after us.
But all of the work I just mentioned I believe can stand on it’s own two feet against the best any overseas market can offer (some of it already is). I think it’s just a matter of us thinking outside the square a little and making that happen. It’s a hobby sure...but taking that work and approaching publishers can’t hurt. I think if we are seriously keen to make something akin to a self-supporting “industry” here, self-publishing 50 copies and selling them at a con won’t cut it. I’m a firm believer that good work will speak for itself ALWAYS. But that work isn’t much good if it’s stuck in niche comic book shops over crowded by louder and brighter material.
It’s up to us to take the initiative. While Oztaku has its flaws...I think it’s a perfect example of what is possible for us with a bit of savvy when it comes to promotion and production.
CR - Everyone involved in the local industry has some irritations with it. What are yours?
Doug - Lots of things...but they ebb and flow. I think on a broad scale it disappoints me that we can’t keep the best people working on producing great comics, because of the nature of things. It disappoints me that the majority of creators here are pretty apathetic and not particularly interested in a bigger picture. That the same ‘ideas to save comics’ go round and round and round but always with “I’ve got an idea that someone SHOULD...” Not “I’ve got an idea and this is what I’m DOING.” It disappoints me when I see potential but no payoff and opportunities wasted. Something like 60+ people created 24 page comics in 24hrs last year...and we saw something like not even 3 or 4 of those put to good use, finished, polished up printed and sold. It disappoints me that we get caught up really quickly in stupid ‘scene’ controversy that isn’t there and dumb stacks on arguments rather than putting that energy into doing something creative. Screaming at creators, the scene and “rage” is so 2004.
CR - Where do the Australians go right?
Doug - That when we actually DO put comics out there we have no fear about telling stories that we want to tell. And being diverse within that. It’s a great point to be proud of, that each of our works is utterly different. From comedy to romance to all ages to adventure, sci-fi, horror, autobiography and even a superhero or two. And I think one of the reasons that if Australian comics took itself a bit more seriously we could really make a splash.
That’s where we’ll bring it to a close, with a fair chunk cut out of the middle, where we stop to discuss which bullet gauge wound we could survive and theories of bleed/gutter repetition beats.
…
Look, I’ll be honest, in the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you all something. Doug and I had been looking forward to doing this interview for a month. A chance for the both of US to clear the air, hurl around a bit of abuse and invective. Say what we really though. When the time came, though, the two of us agreed that it was actually a great year for genuine quality books and that, for the first time in a long time, the two of us were really quite optimistic about what was happening in Australian comics.
Christian Read - April, 2005
Contents ©2004 Pulp Faction and respective authors.
Contents should not be quoted in whole without prior consent both Pulp Faction and the interviewee.
Gully Foyle: The Best Science-Fiction Comic You’ll Never Read
Gully Foyle: The Best Science-Fiction Comic You’ll Never Read
By Kevin Patrick
The Second World War and its aftermath revealed both the promise and perils of scientific advance.
Physicists had unleashed the power of atomic energy, but in doing so gave mankind a new weapon which could ensure its destruction many times over. Conversely, the Nazi V2 rockets which rained death down on England were now giving the world’s new Cold War adversaries the means to reach the stars.
It was no coincidence that science-fiction was, by this time, breaking free of its pulp magazine shackles and finding favour with a wider, mainstream audience, buoyed by that new publishing phenomenon, the paperback book.
Science-fiction, it seemed, finally had something to say to its readers about the world they now found themselves in – and where their futures might possibly take them.
Alfred Bester (1913-1987) wrote his first short story, ‘The Broken Axiom’, for the April 1939 edition of Thrilling Wonder Stories, but it wasn’t until the early 1950s when he found his ‘true’ voice as a writer and, in doing so, demonstrated just how far the boundaries of science-fiction literature could be stretched.
Bester’s writing apprenticeship began just as the pulp magazines he wrote for were succumbing to the meteoric rise of America’s comic book industry.
Far from spelling the end of his embryonic career, comic books provided a valuable training ground for Bester, who found himself a berth at National Periodical Publications (DC Comics) where, from 1942 onwards, he hammered out scripts for such characters as Superman, Hawkman and Green Lantern.
He continued penning short stories for such magazines as Astounding Science Fiction, while working on his first novel, Who He?, a fictional expose of the television industry which was published in 1953, but renamed The Rat Race when released in paperback three years later.
However, Bester became truly inspired when he began working on his first science-fiction novel, The Demolished Man.
Originally serialised in Galaxy magazine during January – March 1952, The Demolished Man was, on the surface, a futuristic crime story about Ben Reich, a ruthless business magnate who sought to commit murder in a society where telepathy made it impossible for people to conceal their criminal impulses.
Written with a cynical, ‘adult’ sensibility not often seen in science-fiction, The Demolished Man caused a minor sensation when it was published in book form in 1953. It won the inaugural Hugo Award for ‘Best Novel’ in 1953 and has since been recognised as the literary forerunner of many so-called ‘cyberpunk’ novels of the 1980s and 90s.
For his next novel, Bester later revealed that he turned to 19th century literature for creative inspiration.
“I’d been toying with the notion of using