Tag Archives: literature

The Sleuth Exhibition

5 Nov

November 2012 – I unveiled the beginnings of what I hope to be a long-term evolving project … which no doubt will change and grow and occasionally drop off the face of the planet for a while. It’s basically my BOOK 2. I probably have enough comics to fill a book … but if I were to make a book out of them – they’d all be different sized pages and wonky and the binder would want to kill me.

As part of this ongoing project I have also made the first SLEUTH ZINE !
Which can be purchased here for $AUD 5- +postage (within Australia that’s only 60 cents, outside Australia please add $AUD 1.50).

At the artist talk – I yakked on about comics-form, content … Sleuth came into being, answered some questions … asked some.
Here’s some photos from the the artist talk at the Exhibition opening from November 3rd, 2012.


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Early drafts of the Long Weekend

18 May

Here’s a pic of what is now page 7
… this was to plan out the wordier sections of the essay and see what works and what could be chopped by virtue of the fact that the images contain in the important part of the information. Page 7 is still one that I think needs to have some words chopped out … before the final draft I shall take an axe to some of the words there.

This was another page from the very beginning of the process, it is now pages 1 and 2, two of most powerful pages in the comic (my best efforts to date … 100 pages later and I haven’t topped them yet). This page was made well before I had decided on the 9panel format that came later … it was one of the first things that I showed Craig also. He said that he knew it must be good because his wife Jude was interested in reading it … which normally doesn’t happen with his writings.

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Pages 84-88

1 May

SO – again for those of you coming in late – this is my graphic novel, the pages are being posted up here slowly, as I complete the inking of each page. In good news – I have only about 20 or so pages until its completed … YAY!! Lately I’ve been a little distracted from this project due to another comics-related project Sleuth … but I’m still hopeful that I can do them both at the same time and have this done by about July of this year (2012)

If you want to read from the beginning of the Long Weekend then go here – First chapter – FRIDAY
Previous pages in this chapter (Saturday) – 73-75, 76-83 … then these are the last pages in chapter two – SATURDAY

And that’s the end of Saturday, the second chapter … next up is Chapter three … which is a much different setting … it’s the third day. Next pages go here.

When Craig first sent me a copy of this piece he didn’t realise that he’d sent me a draft copy from his computer … I started drawing it a year or two later just for fun and when I started trying to work out how to end Saturday … I just kept getting frustrated at how it didn’t work. I don’t remember why but I decided to buy the book that the essay was part of and I flicked through it one day only to discover bits taken out and this bit put in … and all of a sudden I was gripped … what a chilling way to end Saturday … it felt like the darkest moment of the story and a fitting point to launch into the lighter and more easy going Sunday. It also featured darkness again … which went well with my decision to put in the Inanna story at the end of Friday … the comic would therefore be punctuated by daylight and night throughout the three parts … which echoed the circular nature of time which I wanted.

It’s funny how when you’re adapting a piece the source material seems to provide everything you need … at least when you have as good a writer as Craig doing it you can say things like that.

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Pages 69-72

24 Mar

For those coming in late – this is my graphic novel that I am slowly inking and putting up here for people to read, my intention is to get it published, either through a publisher or self-published. It is designed to be read on the page, not the screen but I’m putting it here for people’s interest anyway. I’d love for people to leave comments, I was keen to start some discussion on this blog where possible. It has been received quite favourably by a lot of people … which is really great, I was actually expecting some negative feedback and I have been surprised so far that I have received none at all. Given that this has been viewed over 2’000 times (some of those figures may be the same viewed coming back for more) I would have thought that this work would’ve niggled someone’s nerve out there … but not yet.

So – if you’d like to get more context, rather than starting on the pages I have put up here you can read more –
First Chapter – Friday
Previous pages in the second chapter – 65-68
OR go back to the start of the Second Chapter – Saturday which starts at page 47

Next pages here … almost at the end of the second chapter. The third and final chapter is fairly different in its mood, more of a conversation really. I’m looking forward to inking it, though I have another project (Sleuth) that I’m working on concurrently which is eating into the time that I could be spending on this project.
These particular pages were particularly cathartic for me. I used to work in this place, it was … and is still … called the Mental Health Unit in the back of the Alice Springs Hospital. There is nothing identifiable about the girl in the High Dependency Unit part. I have sort of mashed together a whole bunch of the people that I used to work with in the MHU into the nurses in the comic … don’t be offended guys.
I no longer work in hospitals, I don’t particularly like them, though I still work in the area of psychiatry.

When bush people used to come in to the Alice Springs Hospital it used to be … and probably still is … particularly difficult. Having people locked up against their will is always difficult but when you came across people who had no concept of the processes that would lead to their incarceration, massive language barriers, a different way of dealing with adversity and different cultural understandings of mental illnesses it almost always led to conflict between the patient and the staff, sometimes physical. This can sometimes lead to physical conflict that people on both sides feel could be avoided if the other side would just LISTEN!! It was a particularly intense sort of place to work. Understandably this is one of those odd areas where cultural friction is at its most obvious and it can lead to traumatisation of both parties which in turn leads to an inability to want to listen to the other sides perspective.

In a lot of ways I found this place to be something of a microcosm of Australia.

The other interesting part about these pages is that of the Aboriginal communities that dot the region around Alice Springs, not covered in any great detail in this comi-essay but are an important part in the story.

I would be interested in hearing anyone else’s thoughts.

AND – Alice Springsians might notice the inclusion of the OK Sluts who were a FANTASTIC cabaret group whose show was all about the amazing burnout that over enthusiastic white people with ideals get when they work in Aboriginal communities … ridiculously popular … incredibly talented … sadly now defunct … Hannah May Caspar, Beth Sometimes and Matthew Hill PLEASE COME BACK … watch this video here. Ah the unbearable whiteness of being.

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