10 Years Ago (revisited)
27th July, 2008

There have been some excellent responses to the back-to-basics comic meme that Amber tagged me for earlier this month. I've added my response to the "Miscellaneous Strips" area of the Comics section, and there's a list of links to everyone else's ten-panel responses at the bottom of the strip.

(Top: Anthony Woodward, Amber Carvan, LoobyLu, Adi Firth
Bottom: Mandy Ord, Atomic Blondie, Emjie)

I'll keep updating the list as new strips come to hand, but for now there are seven other ten-panel reflections of what people were doing ten years ago. Enjoy the great nostalgic taste, why don't you? And if you spot one in your online travels, drop us a line in the comments and tell us about it.

Comics! Games!
18th July, 2008

In a bid to avoid getting any real work done or doing anything genuinely important or helpful, I've been playing about with this site a bit, adding some new stuff to the comics and design/animation pages - stuff that's been lying around for a while but I just never got around to uploading. Until now.

(click the pic for more vampire sock action)

So there's a whole bunch of new comics in the Comics section, including:

• A new bit called "Miscellaneous Strips", featuring stuff like the "Attack of the Vampire Sock" strip that was published in Black Dog Books's Short this year, as well as comics about trams, doughnuts and faux-philosophical observations
  
• The Rude Boy "Got Any Chandler" strip that appeared last year in Conceived on a Tram
  
• A new bit featuring The Godlings, including easy-to-follow links to the seven-part story I did for Comic Artist Rehab back in April (to be honest, wordpress doesn't seem to be very well set up to archive comic strips, so this way of doing it is better, I reckon)

I've also finally worked out how to get "Apples from the Sky" online. It's a flash game I made as part of the multimedia course I did at RMIT back in 2003/04. It's got The Godlings in it. There's a little cartoon too, and actual devotional chanting. And monkeys.

So yeah. A few new bits and pieces for wasting time at work. I shouldn't be the only person who gets good procrastination mileage out of this site...

10 years ago...
3rd July, 2008

(permalink here)

Written in response to Amber meme-tagging me last month to draw ten panels about ten years ago in one sitting - no pencil, no computer, no planning, no starting again if you make a mistake. Just draw, scan, publish.

And now, to complete the circle, I'm tagging alicia, kirrily, mandy and anthony.

Jutchy sightings!
28th June 2008

Recent evidence that Jutchy Ya Ya actually exists in the real world and not just my bungalow can be found on a not-so-recent entry at Simon Gray's Web Candy, the livejournal of Adelaide zine maven Simon Gray.

Further evidence can be found in the most recent edition of the superlative Erinsborough Exploits, which takes the cast of Neighbours and defies expectation by putting intelligent and funny words into their mouths. It seems issue 36's anti-Facebook rant struck a chord with the Exploiters.

(click for the full page in embiggenatorisated format)

That's Jane Hall there, complimenting my zine. I've had a crush on her since All Together Now. You do the math.

A mini-subscription to of EE can be had by posting five well-concealed dollars to PO Box 4201, Melbourne, Victoria, 3001, or you can download a .pdf of issue 16 from Undergrowth.

Moses and M.O.D.O.K.
12th May 2008

I've got two more diagrams in the latest issue of Diagram. I haven't been able to crack it for an actual poem yet, but I sure do know what they're looking for in a schematic.

One's called "Exodus: The Making of a Miracle" and the other's called "Snap Figure Together as Shown". The former is from a book about UFOs and the latter is from the packaging of an action figure.

Seeing the instructions from a plastic superhero toy on such a literary website gives me the same kind of thrill I got this Saturday past from the session I hosted at the Emerging Writers Festival, in which Shane McCarthy and I got to talk for an hour solid about Batman and the Transformers.

Mashin' up the highbrow and the lowbrow, that's me.

Tagged.
7th May 2008

Simmone Howell has hit me with one of those blog meme things that I often ignore, but this one is kind of interesting. The deal is you find the nearest book, turn to page 123, find the fifth sentence and then copy out the next three sentences, then pass it on.

Okay. The book is Gilgamesh, a new English translation by Stephen Mitchell.

Enkidu answered, "Why dear friend,
do you speak like a coward? What you just said
is unworthy of you. It grieves my heart.

So maybe a little context? Gilgamesh and Enkidu are out in the Cedar Forest just about to fight the monster Humbaba, who is the guardian of the forest. Humbaba's just given the two heroes a piece of his mind and told them exactly how he's going to kill them, and Gilgamesh is wondering whether this whole kill-the-monster thing was such a good idea after all.

Simmone has added a bit extra to the meme, asking all memers to nominate what - if any - reading material is in their smallest room (ie the loo). I'm a loo-reader from way back, so I'll cop to the following:

• The Mammoth book of Space Exploration and Disasters
• The latest issue of unusual work
• A pocket-sized black & white collection of the first four Avengers comics

I'll be tagging the following folks: alicia sometimes, amoir, David Nichols, David Prater and Lili Wilkinson.

PS - Enkidu and Gilgamesh totally kick Humbaba's arse, by the way.

Emerging.
5th May 2008

So it's Emerging Writers Festival time again. Five years and counting now. A celebration of writers who are on their way. A time and a place set aside for writers to gather and inspire each other. A festival that one could easily walk away from with a new sense of purpose and some concrete ideas of how to fulfil that purpose.

I'm pleased to be on the program in a facilitatory capacity, sitting down with WA-based comic writer Shane McCarthy to discuss in detail the processes involved in reinventing Batman baddie The Riddler, who Shane took from being just some guy in goofy green bequestionmarked tights to a sophisticated and suave master criminal.

For those unfamiliar with bat-baddies: The Riddler pre- and post-Shane McCarthy.
Art by Brian Bolland (left) and Tommy Castillo (right)

Said transformation took place on the pages of Legends of the Dark Knight issues 185-189 back in 2005. We're going to be looking closely at the way it all came about in a session called "From Here to There - Reinventing the Riddler". It's on at 12.30pm on Saturday 10 May in the Melbourne Room of the Melbourne Town Hall right there on the corner of Swanston and Collins Streets. In Melbourne.

Even if there wasn't an hour-long conversation about comics in the offing (which there is) it'd still be a pretty damn good looking program. But don't take my word for it - check it out for yourself at www.emergingwritersfestival.org.

A very poetic weekend.
28th April 2008

I've got a poem in the latest issue of Snorkel. It's called The Thing. It was nice to get the email from the Snorkel editors this weekend past, while the very first Harmonic Threads poetry festival was happening in nearby downtown Castlemaine, courtesy the Australian Poetry Centre. It made for a very poetic weekend, and more than made up for the fact that I didn't win the festival's $500-first-prize poetry competition, which I didn't really think I was going to anyway, and don't mind at all that I didn't, because to be honest it was a bit of a stretch to claim that the poem was actually about the requisite theme of climate change, but still.

I didn't get out to as many festival events as I would have liked to - these days I'm a dad first, poet second, and 18-month-olds aren't known for getting their own dinner or putting themselves to bed. I did manage to catch some spoken word from Jayne Fenton-Keane and the dynamic duo of Sean M. Whelan and Emilie Zoey Baker, and then, a day later, a discussion about poetry and spirituality from Robert Adamson, Lorna Crozier and Sam Hamill.

The thing that sticks in my mind from the former is the phrase "sweat in the plasma of my lamenting crucible" (make of that what you will) and the spectacular whistling solo from a mysterious guest-star cowboy. The thing that sticks in my mind from the latter is the amazing way that Robert Adamson fidgeted in his seat as he sat between the two American guests - tucking and untucking one leg underneath himself, passing his fingers through his long, white hair, sighing explosively and dropping his head forward. Amazing stuff.

Oh yeah, and the poetry was pretty good too.

Short
11th April 2008

Today I got my copy of Short in the post. It's an anthology for younger readers edited by the lovely Lili Wilkinson, featuring work by Simmone Howell, alicia sometimes, Steven Herrick, Andy Griffiths and Lucy Sussex. My contribution to Short is a little comic called 'Attack of the Vampire Sock' (you had to be there) starring your friend and mine, The Fish.

I'm very pleased to be sharing the pages with the above-mentioned shining lights of literature, but what gives me even more pleasure is the chance to rub publication shoulders with the genius behind what can only be described as my new favourite superhero ever.

Pickle Man!

Created by Year 7 student Connor O'Brien (back when he was in Grade 5, no less), Pickle Man's tale is the tale of an irradiated pickle who triumphs over prejudice and the adversity of his situation to become the premier crime-fighter of his generation.

And if that's not enough to get you down to the bookstore with your readies in your hand, all proceeds from the sales of Short will go towards Big Brothers Big Sisters, an organisation that matches mentors and role-models with young people who need them.

Now you can fill that a sentient radioactive crime-fighting pickle shaped hole in your life and make a young person's life better by doing it. How often does that opportunity come around? Surely not more than three or four times. Surely.

Rehabilitated
1st April 2008

I uploaded my final four panels to Comic Artist Rehab a couple of days ago, and now it's time for the traditional exit interview and the introduction of the next batch of artists. The Rehab cycle continues, as it were. If you want to read all seven of my strips in sequence, you can just use the Adam Ford tag to do so. You can also use the Neal Blanden, Adi Firth or Sam Twyford-Moore tags, if you're so inclined.

I have to say that was a lot of fun, and it took me places I was resistant about going to, but I went there and it wasn't so bad as I had thought it might be. In fact it was pretty cool getting all pen-and-inky for the first time in freakin' ages.

Okay, I missed the deadline by a day on two separate occasions, but I claim parenthood as an excuse for that, and Rehab viewers were adequately compensated by pictures of monkeys punching dinosaurs on both occasions.

Speaking of which, I've had three submissions to Monkey Punch Dinosaur since my call for contribution, so we're now officially only 17 monkeypunches from 100 in total, with more to come. Stay tuned.

Jutchy Ya Ya - khit-laeo-ko-chai-hai
27th March 2008

You know, sometimes my ability to take a very long time to do something that shouldn't really take as long as it regularly does surprises even me. This latest Jutchy Ya Ya sent me so far down the tunnel of delayed zine shame that there were times I thought I was never coming back.

But come back I did, and with me I brought the thirty-sixth edition of Jutchy Ya Ya, which I like to think of as "the grumpy old complainy man" issue.

So if you're up for reading about why I think Facebook sucks and how I would fix Scrabble, reminiscing about Darryl Hall and John Oates, musing about the point of genre fiction, exploring the world of origami robots and bagging out popular zines, you could do much worse than checking out the zines section for an electronic approximation of the publication in question.

Those of you who like your zines tangible in a paper kind of way are invited, as always, to send me "something interesting" via the email or the post (which I will tell you how to do when you email me), in return for which I will mail you a copy.

Bonus points to anyone who can translate for me the no-doubt weighty phrase that the young ladies on this issue's cover (pictured above) are singing (that's not a trick question - I have no idea what it means).

Counting to 100
24th March 2008

I'm not sure if you knew this, but since mid-2006 I've been running another website on the side, a little picture-blog called Monkey Punch Dinosaur. It's an attempt to take the only good thing about Peter Jackon's pointless King Kong remake (ie, a 45-minute fight between three T-Rexes and a giant ape) and run with it. I'm pretty happy with how it's worked out so far.

To date 82 pictures of monkeys punching dinosaurs have been uploaded, among them contributions from web-luminaries like Chris Sims, Jeffrey Brown, alicia sometimes, David Blumenstein and Andrew Fulton.

MPD has also garnered some favourable reviews from diverse sources ranging from Entertainment Weekly and metafilter to the Belgian humour magazine Humo (which is how I came across the phrase "een aap een dinosaurus een lel verkoopt").

But all good things, as they say. It's time to pack the monkeypunches away and make room on the internet for something else (people punching bears, maybe, or kittens dressed like ninjas, or - hey, how about people dressed like ninja kittens punching people dressed like bears in sexy nurse costumes?) and in an attempt to keep things neat in a base-ten kind of way, I've decided to bring the total number of monkeypunches to a round 100.

Right now we're 18 punches short of that centennial goal. That's where you come in. I want you to draw a picture of a monkey punching a dinosaur and send it to me. It's easy. Just follow the three golden rules:

1) There must be monkeys and dinosaurs.
2) There must be punching.
3) The monkey is the puncher and the dinosaur the punchee.

Once we crack the tonne the doors are closed for good, so get in now while there's still time. Level of drawing ability is no obstacle, as some of my own contributions should prove. Send your monkeypunches to adamatsya@gmail.com and watch the countdown from 18 to 0 right here as the final entries go live.

Going Down Swinging launch
19th March 2008

Okay here's the full extent of what is the haps for the launch of Going Down Swinging 26, which counts the audio version of 'The Battle of Clarendon Street' (starring Bud Tingwell) among its contents. Which is one, but not the only, reason I mention this gig. There's a lot of good writey stuff on the bill, so if you've a spare Tuesday coming up next week, and you're going to be in Melbourne, you could definitely do worse.

On the night in question you'll be treated to readings and performances from Matthue Roth (New York), Tim Richards, Emilie Zoey Baker, Anna Leibzeit, Jen Jewel-Brown & Declan Kelly and Carolyn Connors.

There'll also be a screening of the oft-mentioned-hereabouts 'The Battle of Clarendon Street' in glorious black & white & red, music by Mal Webb and grooves courtesy DJ bP.

Copies of issue #26 will be available on the night, and so will the ultra-limited edition version of said issue, which includes 30 hardback copies of the mag with a bonus fold-out section featuring art by street artists Tom Civil, HaHa, Vexta, ghostpatrol and Miso.

It's all on at the legendary Northcote Social Club (that's 301 High Street, Northcote) between 8pm and 10.30pm on Tuesday 25 March. Might see you there, hey?

Podcast: Vowels (and some other bits)
14th March 2008

Vowels is a lovely little collection of five silent comic short stories by Western Australian artist Skye Ogden. I had a chat to alicia sometimes about the book on RRR last week, and as always it's podcasted here - now in the spanky new podcast box there on the right.

In other news the comics rehab experiment seems to be going well - I've revisited the kids from The Godlings, this time hand-drawn (for the most part) and I'm really enjoying the commitment to having something finished by a set time. Three strips in and I haven't missed a deadline yet (touch wood).

When it's been a while since I've actually sat down to write something, I always forget about that amazing zone that you can find yourself in, where the simple act of putting pen to paper, or finger to key, stimulates the creative juices in a way that just does not happen in any other circumstance. No matter how many notes I jot down, or ideas I incubate in my head, or conversations I have, the way ideas flow when I'm actually writing is an entirely different, more exciting and more creative beast altogether.

Going into Rehab
29th Feb 2008

I'm one of the four comic drawerers in round five of Amber Carvan's Comic Artist Rehab thingo. It's a comic-drawing blog where four people commit to writing, drawing and uploading a four-panel comic every four days for four weeks.

The mathematically astute among you will note that that's seven four-panel comics, for a total of 28 panels by the end of March.

Joining me for the month of March will be three other comickers: Neale, Adi and Sam. I'm pretty sure Neale is Neale Blanden, whose comics I've been reading for years. I don't think I know the other two, but we'll all get to see each other's comics soon enough.

I'm a bit nervous about it, to be honest. The plan was to trick myself into making some new comics by working to a set deadline. We'll see if this is an effective strategy or not soon enough.

My first entry is due March 3. That's just over three days to come up with something. Well, I've always said that fear and guilt are great motivators for me. Let's just test that theory out, shall we?

Some Stuff what I Wrote
28th February 2008

Some stuff what I wrote is in the latest issues of Meanjin and Going Down Swinging. Which is nice.

The latest issue of Meanjin is a double issue combining Vol. 66, no. 4 AND vol. 67, no. 1. Straddling the years, as it were. It's the Summer Reading Issue and it's running a short story of mine called "She Called Up Her Mind's Fire And Watched Him Burn", about grief, jungles, pyrokinesis and the perceived validity of the "real world" (check ME out with my high-falutin' thematic concerns, hey?).

The story is accompanied by the latest iteration of The NeoPulp ManiFesto, kind of as a job lot. A theory and practice coupling, if you will.

Going Down Swinging 26 is also out this Autumn, reverting back to its familiar book + CD format after its recent dalliance into book-only and CD-only territory. The CD portion of issue 26 leads off with "The Battle of Clarendon Street", a false history of the late-1800s civil war in South Melbourne, which is basically the audio from the short film of the same name.

It's the first time I've been published on a spoken word CD, and the fact that it's not actually my voice saying the words adds a strange irony to this debut.

I'm not sure about the particulars of any launches of Meanjin in the near future, but the folks at GDS are putting on a launch party at the Northcote Social Club on 25 March, which will feature a rare screening of "The Battle of Clarendon Street" (well, there have only been three to date since the film was made back in 2005) as well as much spoken word and literary revelry as can be fit into a small but desirable High Street pub.

More details as they arise.

Me and Mister Micallef
10th February 2008

I suppose it's the Australian way, the slow start to the year. You know - Christmas bleeds into New Year, bleeds into a week at the beach, then a kind of meandering resumption of work followed shortly by another week away - this time heading down south to Tasmania - and by then February is well underway and you're about ready to tackle the no longer particularly new year in something resembling earnest.

I'm not sure I can guarantee earnestness per se, but I'm hoping that there will be some candour and revelation on Saturday the 16th of February at 8pm at the Abbotsford Convent, when I will be pleased to take the stage beside comedian and raconteur Shaun Micallef as part of the Writers at the Convent writers festival.

(That's not me on the left. That's Lady Di.This is a different conversation.)

Shaun will be familiar to many of you as the man behind such comedic televisual gems as The Micallef P(r)ogram(me), Micallef Tonight, Welcher and Welcher, and Newstopia. I will be familar to you as the man behind this website. Together we will create 'In Conversation with Shaun Micallef' in the very Library of the Abbotsford Convent itself.

Tickets are $15 and $13 concession, available from the Malthouse Theatre - details are online at www.malthousetheatre.com.au.

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