That's RRRight folks, we're back!

Lovely to be back on air with Richard Watts last Thursday morning on his weekly Melbourne cultural roundup 'SmartArts' on 3RRR, 102.7 FM. I join him for the monthly 'Drawn Out' segment, on which we discuss local and international comic book news and releases.

Granny Square Flower Garden keeps growing

Hippity Hoppity Hare admires the arrangement of all 150 squares carefully arranged by Dr Caroline.

Prolungamento sfida + Riapertura iscrizioni

Buongiorno gentil donzelle (e amici nostri)!
Mi scuso per non aver aggiornato il blog per un po' ma almeno ho due buone notizie da darvi.

Innanzitutto abbiamo spostato la scadenza della sfida puscia: mandateci i vostri loghi per Yatta e/o banner entro il 20 febbraio.

L'altra buona notizia è che finalmente riapriamo le iscrizioni al nostro gruppo! :)
Abbiamo già qualche candidata, ma ne aspettiamo numerose! Chi vuole unirsi a noi deve essere (ovviamente) donna, creativa e aver compiuto 14 anni. Basta mandare una mail a
pusciastova-professional@googlegroups.com
presentandosi e mandandoci anche qualche lavoro da visionare e pubblicare qui sul blog quando vi presenteremo alle sorellovske :)

Ultimo appunto personale: NON mandateci per favore richieste di iscrizione tramite l'indirizzo della Mailing List: verranno cestinate senza colpo ferire. L'unico modo è mandare una email all'indirizzo qui sopra!

Grazie a tutte, e a presto!
Kat

Two Tangos: too much?

Well, it's been a month and a half or so since the big double Tango launch, and it's time to have a bit of a look back at that night and more generally at doing two big books in the one small year.

#10: Mike Beggs

Salient Editor 1999

I always wanted to be printed in Salient. In my high school days I used to find copies left behind by students on the train or the bus and read Straitjacket Ninja and Brunswick and feel pretty cool. In '99 I started at Victoria University and I felt like I was finally ready to fulfill my destiny.

I spent a few weeks putting together a portfolio of my work and a script outline for a new serial, and then I plucked up the courage to find the Salient office and go and pitch my idea. I knocked on the door and a hungover and seriously disheveled guy poked his head out the door. Behind him was the messiest office I had (and have still) ever seen - stacks of paper covered every surface, pizza boxes covered the floor and torn posters semi-covered the walls. This was Mike Beggs, the editor. I summoned all of my remaining courage and blurted out that I wanted to do a comic strip. "Sure" mumbled Mike, "deadline is thursdays, 3pm", and he shut the door.

Tales from the Pub: Rooly F*cken' Amazing Stories

Here's a tale from my friend Ben G.

#9: Mr Campbell

6th form Physics Teacher, 1997

Rob Campbell was a likeable Scotsman who taught physics in a science classroom where the desks weren't bolted down. Every time he turned his back to us to write on the board we'd all push our desks forward, a few centimetres at a time. By the end of the lesson we'd be grouped right in tight around him at the front of the room and the look on his face would waver between bemusement and fear that he was finally losing his mind.

Contact Update

A few people have mentioned they'd be interested if I also kept this blog up to date from time to time with any news of people I've drawn in it finding it and getting in touch.

Artie Karras saw his picture - he said it was hilarious. For the last two years he has been working as an account manager at a Melbourne firm that does printing for the Victorian Government. He sounds really good, it was great to catch up with him.

Brendan Moran also sounds really good. He is living in Auckland, doing a Fine Arts degree. He has given up drinking, smoking and playing music. He said about my post "pretty fuckin flattered actually ... you have captured my bitter and twisted cynical side for sure." I asked him about quitting music and he said "for me the voice of music has been lost (hence why i am not an active musician) because it is akin to one finger typing. it's an inarticulate form of expression. when i talk, i like to use both of my fists, not just one finger". Awesome to hear from you Brendan.

That's all I've heard from so far though. My friend Dan reported in the comments as you may have seen than Joe McGregor-McDonald is a workmate of his, but I don't actually know where Dan works right now so that one is still a mystery.

God God…God of Gods!

This Town

My new 48 page comic to be put out by Sure Shot Comics. This book will be launched at the Zine fair in Melbourne on the 13th of February. The comic precedes the subscription comic, 'Good to Go', and documents our move to Canada late 2007, which means this comics has been in the making for around two years!

Das Stadtschaftschaubild

Expanding the comic book form into installation, Das Stadtschaftschaubild, an invented compound word, literally translates to ‘the cityscape diagram’. By unfolding multiple narratives through the gallery space this work continues the themes from Psychogeographies (2009), The Wave Collapses (2006) and Singularity (2002) to investigate and reveal the probabilistic nature of the urban environment.

The viewer is invited to become the absent protagonist through a subjective experience of space, visualising the imprint of our conditioning through architecture and asserting the gaze of the (historically absent) female flâneur.

The installation is then documented and transformed into a comic (of sorts).

So on the news front: I finished up at VCA last year and have been working at expanding the comic book form into installation. What this means is instead of being limited to the page I am using the comics form in the gallery space – and then making a publication from that.

After this I’m off to Berlin for a while, I got accepted into the Culturia artist-in-residency program and going to spend some time in the “fatherland”.

See you soon

Alice Mrongovius


Brunswick Bound
361 Sydney Road
Brunswick

www.banditfox.com

Tags: comics