Local superstar and all round nice guy, Bruce Mutard sent us a wonderful email this morning. It contained a detailed rundown of comic panels and events being held during the current
Melbourne Writers Festival from August 22nd to September 1st. We highly recommend you have a look over this line up and get yourself some tickets for a great few days out discussing comics. Massive thanks again to Bruce for all his hard work putting this post together. Now over to Bruce!
Firstly, I am giving a talk at the RMIT Lunchbox
design Talks on Wednesday the 21st at 12:30pm about my career in comics.
It’s for students, but also for the public and FREE. building 514.1.001
Brunswick Campus, Dawson Street. Will probably skip over to Squishface
afterwards given it’s nearby.
http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse;ID=9smnrkhohzsx
It’s
Melbourne Writers Festival time from next week and on SATURDAY the
24th, there are a bunch of comics themed events that y’all might be
interested in. Okay, I’m in some of them so that makes it potentially
more interesting or less, depending on you...
My $1 question is: when will The Fight come out? Or, how’s The Fight coming
along? Well, at this session I will show you what it is, where it’s at
and maybe guess when it’ll come out. It’s taking a long time for a lot
of reasons, but it is happening and it is going to go places you can’t
imagine if you’ve read The Sacrifice. Joining me will be Sarah
Howell, who is working on a book about Enid Lyons and the three men she
knew who died in office: her husband, Joe Lyons; John Curtin and Harold
Holt. One is an accident, two is a coincidence, but three is a
conspiracy. A remarkable woman by a remarkable talent featuring in what
is certainly the GN I am most eagerly anticipating. Also on stage will
be Mirranda Burton, another amazing talent - witness her book Hidden - but
now working on a wordless book that is made up from her exquisite
hand-cut Lino prints. It’s all about the 99% perspiration folks, so
bring a towel.
Picture
this (clue: imagination): two easels, blank paper and sharpies in a
rack. Two blokes and two sheilas who also happen be illustrators and
cartoonists are confronted with the dreaded blank page and are thereby
compelled to fill it with spontaneous comic story-making on the fly,
directed by the man who can make something out of nothing, sensible:
Bernard Caleo. I, along with Alexis Sudgen (the delightful My Sisters Voice also
being launched at Skinny Arse below), David Blumenstein and Lesley
Vamos (ex Disney animator and prolific illustrator) will battle to make
nothing sensible! Probably going to be pretty hilarious. If that doesn’t
happen I’ll show my bum.
Following
the success of the Skinny Arse launch at last years festival and in the
spirit of Big Arse, this year we launch four new comics onto the
Melbourne literary scene and they’re all debut books too! Firstly, there
is Alexis Sudgen’ delightful, wistful
My Sister’s Voice, a tale
of a lighthouse keepers years long search for her sister supposedly
lost at sea. Then there is Lauren Hills and Ceili Braidwood’
Good Hordekeeping which
you have to imagine as good housewife’s guide to etiquette in dealing
with zombies. Yes. Then there’s Caitlin Major and Matthew Hoddy’
Space Pyrates,
a collection of a web comic featuring, un-muscled hipster couple who
nevertheless are a very dynamic duo roaming about space; think Jack
Sparrow crossed with Douglas Adams. Then there is the fascinating
Neomad, a science fiction dreaming conjured up by Melbourne chap Sutu
collaborating with 30 kids from the Leramudgu area of the Pilbara. Yep,
they created and coloured it. It’s actually an interactive comic that
first made its appearance on itunes (see:
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/neomad-interactive-comic-for/id549058981?mt=8).
This is probably where comics are going to go, but for old-schoolers
like me, we have print too. This event is the only one that is FREE,
which makes sense, for that way, you can buy the books and get them
signed on the day. Please come along!
There are
several other comics events that will be worth your while to attend too
and since it’s all on the same day, make a day of it!
Jo
Waite, Katie Parrish and Lucy Knisley gather on stage to talk about
whether female comics artists see and draw the world different from
blokes. I say they do and the world and the medium is all the better for
it! Especially these three!
Marjorie
M Liu is well known to many fans of speculative fiction and also to
those who read the Astonishing X-Men comic. Here the spotlight is shone
on her talking to Joey Morris of Non-Canonical about what it is to work
with a franchised intellectual property such as this one. Obviously
being a woman in a male dominated domain will matter at some level, but
hopefully we’ll get insight into the machine that is
Marvel/Disney/Pixar/Lucasfilm. Will we see X-men team up with the
Incredibles and Pocahontas to fight Darth Maul? And why are they always
bloody fighting? Can’t they all just get along?
Cartoonists
Andrew Marlton and Judy Horacek talk to Jason Chatfield make a living
making fun of everything around them in black lines on paper. Nice gig,
but it must be hard to get inspired to punchlines and gags every day, so
in this session, apparently they’re going to tell us that being funny
ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, but they’d be cracked if they were to
do anything else. I understand completely, as I’m a cracker who’s also
cracked, but I don’t take crack.
Lastly, my
erstwhile friend Phil Bentley will be manning the Australian comics
table in the book fair in the atrium at Federation square on this day,
the 24th, but also the following Saturday, the 31st August, when I will
be present as well for the whole day. If there are holes in your
collection, then this is the time and place to get them filled. So you
need a filling from the dentist? bugger that, get your comics fill
instead: cheaper and less painful.
xo
Bruce Mutard
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