Tag Archives: Alice Springs

Pages 65-68 (silent comics)

12 Mar

You are currently reading pages from Chapter two (of three),
– go here for the First chapter – Friday.
– Previous pages in Chapter two – Saturday
– or go back to the beginning of Saturday.




By and large – the most enjoyable and satisfying part of doing a wordy comic are the silent bits.
Go here for the next pages – 69-72

I s’pose technically this comic is mostly silent bits as there is narration as written by the main character, which is separate from the images BUT the nicest bits to draw were the quiet parts with no words. I figure that it also gives the reader a bit of a reprieve and some silence to digest the intense flow of ideas, and perhaps what is happening. It also helps to remind me and the reader that the place this is set in is Alice Springs …and there’s lots of places and people floating in and around the desert-town in the worn-down nubs of the Macdonnell ranges.

Silent comics are not things that I’ve ever done much of … but there is a different focus when it’s about movement, action and dynamism are fun too … I haven’t had much of them in this comic … just a few moments here and there to punctuate the stillness, which reminds me living in Alice. Long weeks of seeming stillness, but acts of violence or extreme behaviour occurring in some strange symbiosis with the quiet. Perhaps that’s why I found the place so intoxicating – it’s … quite frankly … a surreal place to live.

When I flew or drove home to Melbourne from the desert to visit my parents, mum used to listen to me talking and tell me that I should “write this all down” because I would forget it. It was only in those moments that I realised that I had a pretty bizarre job and life in the outback. The humdrum of doing a job can fool you into thinking that everyone experiences things like you.

I just finished reading the USA’s Anders Nilsen’s monolithic Big Questions … I can almost not believe the world he created in that extraordinarily beautiful masterwork of comics … go and get it – it’s bloody big, but if you’re into silence and mood it’s truly magnificent.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Pages 61-64

2 Mar

If you’d like to read the first chapter in its entirety go here – Friday
Previous pages in this chapter (Saturday) – 58-60
Or go back to the start of Saturday

Next pages – 65-68.

So far I’ve managed to complete up to page 84: the end of Chapter Two: Saturday.
Today I begin inking the final chapter … I have to rethink the ending.

The first page here is one of the more important ones to my mind, philosophically speaking that is.
Analysing Indigenous peoples is a little beside the point in this and in many things.
Looking at all of us together, the places of our interaction is more the task at hand.

I suspect that one of the reasons that the topic of Indigenous people is such an explosive topic with so many people (i.e. we are so politically correct, so polarised, so angry on their behalf, so angry the opposite way) is because the majority of us in Australia have mixed feelings about our role in the current state that the large amount of Indigenous people live in. Our role as perpetrators is traumatic for us also. In harming others, we harm ourselves also. In denigrating others we debase ourselves. When people point out our awful deeds as Australians, we are quick to become defensive, quick to blame the victim, quick to place the responsibility elsewhere. I suspect we do this because of our collective sense of guilt.

This is a difficult thing to depict, I hope that my slightly imaginative way of doing is effective.

In many ways, drawing this comic has been my way of unpacking this sense of guilt out and finding a way to think about modern Australia.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Pages 58-60

21 Feb

Synopsis and overview
First chapter – Friday
Previous pages in Saturday

Pages 58-60 (note page 59 is incomplete at this stage)


Next pages – 61-64
This last page is one of my favourites … the fun part about adapting something is that you can pretty much do anything you want with the words because they have no images associated with them. The image of the old man in the backyard singing the Tingari images with Craig’s words about imagination I thought was a great idea … it took me a little by surprise when I’d finished it and stood back to look at the image … as with all things comic based – it’s hard to imagine what it really will look like until you have finished the damn thing. Perhaps the more experienced people have a better sense of whether something won’t work at all … but I still suspect that even experienced people are taken by surprise when their ideas REALLY work.

As I mentioned in the last blog about the long weekend, the image of the map of Iraq is left unfinished at this point until I can get a copy of Craig’s actual map – even though it was only 100 years ago, it’s amazing how many place names look totally different on the modern map versus the old one. I liked the old map sooo much that I wanted to use it in the comic … so I’m waiting on Craig to take a photo and send a copy to me.

The first page here owes a lot to some of the notes in Bardon & Bardon’s amazing Papunya Tula book. It’s a truly monumental book which details so much about the PT movement in the Western Desert that it’s beyond belief – it’s a little like trying to read Strehlow’s works … it sort of saturates the mind and you kind of … implode a little trying to comprehend what it all bloody means … until you put it down to tend the veggie patch.

In other news – Craig San Roque himself is off to America, the land of the free where you shouldn’t forget to tip. He’s going to visit the CG Jung Institute of San Francisco  and he’s going to present some of this comic in a presentation that he’s doing over there … how terribly exciting. I did attempt to send him a booklet of the first 60 or so pages of this comic by Express Post … but apparently Hobart to Alice Springs would still take 5 working days to arrive at Craig’s doorstep (this is EXPRESS post we’re talking about people) and he leaves for the states on Sunday … so no dice! So – digital it is!!

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Pages 51-57

10 Feb

First Chapter – Friday
For general synopsis and whatnot go to the menu bar at the top and click on The Long Weekend (Graphic Novel)
Previous pages in second chapter – Saturday


Next pages – 58-60.

These pages were endlessly interesting for me – doing lots of ridiculous research into Iraq and Lebanon … the map of Mesopotamia is incomplete as I haven’t had the time to look at Craig’s old map as of yet … but for the sake of people reading this I have put it up anyways. It’s at this part of the essay / comic that the scope of the ideas start to branch all over the planet. Perhaps those readers more accustomed the the Western application of archetypal behaviour will be more at home with the presence of Adonis and Inanna / Ishtar / Venus (and all the other goddess analogues you can think of). The drawings of Saddam Hussein were also fun to do … I checked on the web for photos of him and was a little shocked to find millions of copies of the video of his hanging available for anyone to have a gander at … well, I assume it’s not propoganda material and it’s real, happy to be corrected of course if anyone knows of the details of that video … anyway – I chose to use it, one of the flashes of cameras as he was swinging served as a good model for the drawing. i haven’t decided whether or not I wish to spell it out to the reader what it is they’re looking at or to just leave it as an image … though I appreciate that not all will get that that’s the same bloke as the picture above it with the poor Kurdish folks in the background. any thoughts, comments people? Please leave below.

Hope you’re all well.

Incidentally – Australian comics just got better with Pat Grant’s beautiful Blue now available!!

Tags: , , , , , ,

Pages 47-50

8 Jan

Here is the beginning of the second chapter of The Long Weekend – It’s called Saturday.
If you’d like to read the first chapter it’s here – Friday

It has been written and designed to be read as a book rather than online so if you’re the patient sort then you can wait for another year or two whilst I finish off the pages and sort out options for publishing … or alternatively, if you’re the impatient kind of person and you have good connections in the publishing world – you could save me a whole heap of time and send me tips about who to approach.

Next pages – 51-57.

Incidentally, I suggest that some of you who might be interested should check out Palestine by Joe Sacco. It’s from the 90’s, but it suffers from chronic awesomeness. It’s quite related to the LW as Sacco studies the nature of colonisation referencing both Edward Said and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; the latter being directly related to the second chapter of this comic right on this page. I haven’t gotten my dirty hands on Sacco’s new book – Footnotes in Gaza but here’s a good link with an interview with him about it.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Friday

27 Dec

This is the entire first chapter of the Long Weekend from woe to go in a single post … Still undecided about putting up the second and third chapters on the web, perhaps I shall update with the occasional image rather than a whole read. Summer in Australia currently – very nice.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Pages 43-47

14 Dec

Previous pages
1-4, 5-7, 8-9, 10-13, 14-17, 18-22, 23-27, 28-32, 33-37, 38-42


Next pages

Well, well, well! I made it to the next chapter … and so did you!
I shall put all of Friday into the one post next so that anyone who wants a recap can just read it right through if they want … and then carry on with the Long Weekend PART 2 – SATURDAY. Saturday is a lot more conceptual, and it presented some interesting challenges … but I’m a bit of a believer in the ability of comics to be able to convey some pretty complex concepts in really interesting ways … let’s see how it goes.

Incidentally, feel free to comment on this blog at the bottom, I think some of the topics contained in this comic covers some hot areas … (literally, figuratively etc) … It’d be nice to get some discussion going, I’ve received some nice feedback on facebook, I have no objection to nasty feedback or constructive criticism … or anything really. But if there are no comments at the end of it … ah well.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Images from the centre of Australia

7 Dec

Here’s some of the images that I took on several of my trips back to Alice, I needed a lot of reference material to build up enough of a sense of place in the Long Weekend. One of main aims was to flesh out the town a little as the central idea of the essay was about how a place can affect those that live in it, a sort of “pyschogeography” of sorts. Alice is often a town that affects people, passers through are often very taken aback at the obvious disparity in health and behaviour. Are often shocked at the obvious violence that occurs in the streets. People who live there are often bitter about it. The letter section of the Advocate newspaper often has overtly racist tones referring to “people who sleep in the park”. Everyone reading is aware of who the “people” are. The “drunks” etc … the euphemisms are unnecessary. People keep insisting that they have a right to feel safe in their homes. But, as all places on the edge are, the town is surrounded by an incredibly hostile and beautiful landscape. Ancient mountain ranges worn down to their nubs by time. Orange rock that is inflamed for that first ray of sun each day, gnarled trees, rocks, creatures, people. The spikes in the grasses slashes the tires of your bicycle three times on the way home from work, you have to push it along the stinking bitumen through the heat … bugger. 

Tags: , , ,

Pages 38-42

4 Dec

Previous pages
1-4, 5-7, 8-9, 10-13, 14-17, 18-22, 23-27, 28-32, 33-37

Pages 43-47

Jeez!! What a spiteful woman Inanna is! I s’pose that’s the kind of gal that end up being the goddess of sex and war. Well, how does this all end? Surely a girl like this flips and flops a bit about what they want? Maybe Dumuzi stays dead forever? I’m glad she’s back anyhow, the world was missing having sex … and war … hmm, strange dichotomies in action here.

One of the things that the Long Weekend looks at is the link between past mythologies and the present.  Loosely speaking this echoes Jung’s concept of the archetypes and how they relate to structure of our psyche today. One might say that the idea of the Cultural Complex is the logical extension of this idea only it is as applied to a larger group of people, i.e. cultural groups and their behaviours. I shan’t go into this too much since greater minds have covered this in a few other places and I’m not a great person at explaining stuff like this in words … which is why I made a comic instead. The original essay of the Long Weekend in Alice Springs was contained in a book called The Cultural Complex which has numerous essays from all around the world. Each of them explores this idea in different ways, tries to articulate what it might mean for the modern world etc.

The idea goes some way in trying to explore why some culturals/national groups behave in certain ways. Historically it was not a well-covered concept. Jung postulated the idea but his example at the time was controversial – Wotan, the Germanic name for the Norse god Odin, and his possession of the German psyche in the rise of Nazism.

– “Wotan is a restless wanderer who creates unrest and stirs up strife, now here, now there, and works magic. He was soon changed by Christianity into the devil, and only lived on in fading local traditions as a ghostly hunter who was seen with his retinue, flickering like a will o’ the wisp through the stormy night. In the Middle Ages the role of the restless wanderer was taken over by Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, which is not a Jewish but a Christian legend. The motif of the wanderer who has not accepted Christ was projected on the Jews, in the same way as we always rediscover our unconscious psychic contents in other people. At any rate the coincidence of anti-Semitism with the reawakening of Wotan is a psychological subtlety that may perhaps be worth mentioning.”

excerpt from “Essay On Wotan” By Dr. Carl Gustav Jung (1946)

Understandably enough, the idea became somewhat stigmatised and has not really been expanded upon until very recently with the 2004 book The Cultural Complex. The introduction to this book by editors Tom Singer and Samuel Kimbles suggests that the end of the dual superpowers of Communism and Capitalism, the collapse of a binary world view after the fall of the Berlin Wall, has led us to recognise the diverse cultural conflicts that exist across the planet.

“Much of what tears us apart can be understood as the manifestation of autonomous processes in the collective and individual psyche that organize themselves as cultural complexes.” (T Singer and S Kimbles, 2004 from the Cultural Complex)

The story of Inanna’s descent into the Underworld is hinted at in the structure of the essay of Craig’s and I felt that it could be an excellent addition to the story in translating it into comic form. I felt that it would better set the scene for certain ideas that get explored later on, particularly in the second chapter – Saturday. 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Pages 33-37

25 Nov

Previous pages
1-4, 5-7, 8-9, 10-13, 14-17, 18-22, 23-27, 28-32

Next pages – 38-42

Holy mother of the world!! WHat the hell did Erishkigal do to Inanna!!! No more SEX? What will the world DO??? Play computer games until the end I suppose … hm, that’s a pretty good description of what I think limbo must be like.

Doing this section was a breath of fresh air for me after doing all the other pages of the Long Weekend which involve a lot of hatching and much more strict formatting and structure. These 13 or so pages I got to be a lot more stretchy and flexible and experiment with layout a lot more, they were also a lot quicker to draw (being a lot more cartoony) which was a lot of fun. Any ol’ comicer can tell you that it’s a slog to do long-form comics, so I’ll take all the variety I can get! The myth of Inanna is only alluded to in Craig San Roque’s original text for the Long Weekend, I just jumped at the opportunity to mix it up a little … there is a point to it, you might have to wait a little before it becomes more obvious.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →