Aaar, here be Pirates, a thick (no, not like a plank!) mini comic, edited by Tonia Walden and with an excellent cover by Jase Harper.

This marvel can be bought for a mere $6 from the good people at Phase Two Comics. Inside you'll find space pirates, video pirates, fancy dress party pirates, dog pirates, disabled pirates, (non G-rated) teddy bear pirates and plenty of the more traditional sort.

Anyone who has been around here for a while will have already seen the first full page of my story, Over the Reef (that page is in the Archives here), so I'm not planning to feature anymore full pages... here's a couple of snippets though.

My inspiration was drawn from a couple of classic old Jeffrey Farnol novels - adventurous swashbuckling pirate yarns - thus the dedication on the first page. The style is a kind of romantic/realistic stark black and white look. I really like pure black and white. It's related to the way I drew Riffin' to Oblivion and it was fun and a bit of relief to be drawing in a completely non-Manga style again.

On the anthology itself: it's kind of a followup to Tonia's earlier two anthologies, Once Upon a Time and Eat Comics (which featured The Bunyip and the Whistling Kettle by me).

Most of the pieces in Pirates are short, humorous pastiches, with a few longer more dramatic stories thrown in for good measure (mine is a five pager). I think it's a balanced anthology with plenty of substance: a lot of different styles and, most pleasing of all, some unfamiliar Australian artists who don't usually appear in these books!

Labels: Australian comics, Comic anthologies, Miscellaneous comic pieces, Pirates

Here's the first page of my five page Pirate mini-epic for the Pirates anthology, which has a deadline of tomorrow. Comments welcomed!



I finished this off over Easter, and also got a final draft for the script of Moth & Tanuki #4 done. There was a bit of editing on that M&T, which ended up with me adding 2 pages, so it'll be an 8 pager. Now I'm just waiting on that Bristol board in the mail to get started, but in the meantime I'm working on two other projects that I'm trying to get going.

Paul Hester

I was greatly saddened to hear of the death over Easter of Paul Hester, Crowded House drummer, singer, songwriter, TV presenter and comedian. I first saw him drumming on the final Split Enz show, when Neil Finn announced that he and Paul would be working together on whatever his next project would be (initially The Mullanes, then later CH). I really enjoyed all his work, particularly his show, Hessie's Shed, on the ABC a few years ago and seeing him on a Wiggles cooking segment on kids TV one-time. The circumstances of his death are particularly grim, and I'm really sorry he lost his battle with depression - a great loss. Frenz.com - Split Enz, Crowded House, etc.

Labels: Comic anthologies, Pirates

The comic piece I'm currently working on for Tonia's Pirate anthology is coming along nicely. I feel a bit logjammed on other work, given that I have six pieces now awaiting publication in eight different anthologies.

What I need is a title! I've come up with some pretty corny ideas so far! It's a traditional adventure/romance tale with a bad pirate captain, his heroic offsider and a beautiful girl. Any suggestions welcomed!

I've been searching for appropriate music to play while working on this, and have fallen back on The Turn of a Friendly Card, and Tales of Mystery & Imagination, by The Alan Parsons Project, and Poe: More Tales of M&I, by Eric Woolfson (Parson's main songwriter). Somehow they have a kind of epic, nautical feel that is appropriate - ToaFC contains my favourite instrumental ever, "The Gold Bug," named after Poe's story about pirates!

Tales, of course, contains "The Raven," based on Poe's classic poem. I hadn't thought much about the inspiration for this until the other day, when there was lots of banging on the metal roof and high window of the building I was working in. When I waited a while and watched, there was a large raven, tap, tap, tapping on the window, which he kept up for hours, until it was almost dark. I don't know if it was the bird's reflection that inspired this behaviour, though it seemed keen to pull out the lining around the window as well! It did make what Poe described - in his perfect iambic pentameter - only too clear though.

Here's a link to a piece I wrote called Australian Manga: Moshi Moshi, Xuan Xuan, Oztaku, Generation & Internatinal Manga, which appears in Inkspot, magazine of The Australian Cartoonists' Association, #43. It's on page 26, but careful, this is a pdf file:

http://www.abwac.org.au/downloads/Inkspot43.pdf

Labels: Pirates