Tag Archives: The Long Weekend

Pages 89-91 – Sunday, the 3rd Chapter

13 May

So this is chapter 3 of The Long Weekend in Alice Springs. It was initially written in 2003 by Craig San Roque for a book published in the US by Routledge … and, although the themes are universal, I thought it a great shame that it wasn’t more read in Australia where the story was owned. Craig is a beautiful writer, very visual, and it struck a chord that rings in my thoughts continually, even after working on this rendition of his work four the last four years or so. I believe that this is a good beginning for the psychological meditation that we must do together in this country.

I suggest that you go back to the beginning if you’re interested in the comic … and have a damn good read (hopefully).

Incidentally – here is the link to the facebook group for the comic. Since I am nearing the completion of the artwork for this book – I have started to think about printing it physically and making a (*shudder*) ebook version out of it … I never envisaged that when I started making it … but e-books were still in their infancy when I started this project. Share the link with anyone who might be interested in such topics.

Next pages 92-95.
Just as an aside, I aim to finish all the inking of these pages in a the next couple of months (maybe by July 2012) and then in the second half of the year look at ways to turn this into a book with my lovely and talented graphic designer wife Nadine Kessler who’s done some top work in print over the years.

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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 76-83

18 Apr

SO – 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

Next pages 84-88.

The first page here was inspired in part by my beautiful partner Nadine Kessler and her explorations into type and old signage. It occurs to me that the personality of a town is expressed through the many layers of signage that it has gathered. You can get a wonderful snap-shot of a place through its signs. People from the place don’t even notice them after a while, but would know exactly (intuitively?) what the sign relates to.

The rest of the pages here are extremely abstracted versions of the idea that tools slowly form our world-view and our understanding, an interesting thought (says he as he types away on the computer … a machine that is slowly typing away at him).

Adapting this section was difficult to say the least, it was a far wordier part of the essay than I felt would work in comic-form … so I completely edited it, and left it in almost silence … which I felt would work much better after the noise and bluster at the end of the previous section where Craig is in the hospital with the young psychotic Aboriginal girl. The large part of Saturday is very conceptual and I also enjoyed the silent sections so much that I thought I’d put more of them in, to build up the contemplative tone that I had hoped to have throughout the entire piece. Actually … having placed these pages up here and read it again in this different context … I can see that its quite flawed still … I’ll have to think about this section a little more … hmmm works in progress are interesting.

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Pages 73-75

5 Apr

First chapter – FRIDAY
Previous pages in Saturday – 69-72

Next pages

I showed these pages to Craig once a while back and he paused and muttered “hmm, the poor thing”. I thought that I needed a page where his face said those words, so I chucked the third page in here to finish it up nicely. Aaah, mental health wards … what happy places.
I have nothing more to say about them.

I’m glad that I have a new concurrent project that involves me drawing the Carlton Blues players, every week that they play this season I shall stick up a new illustration on this site … it’ll be a relief to do something more light whilst I toil away at The Long Weekend and Sleuth.

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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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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.

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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.

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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!!

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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!!

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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.

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