Camberwell Haul #7

A nice stash of French comic albums...A Massive Moebius collection and an equally massive Druillet one. Lots of amazing Sci-Fi and fantasy artwork, Psychedelic colours, Mind bending futuristic city-scapes, and a steal at 5 Bananas a book. Also a couple Druillet Hardcovers from Dargaud, there were more there but i was trying to exercise restraint. 

A book of Fonts for Showcards and ticket writing from ye olde days for 2 pesos.

Ballantyne #1, 64 page collection of Australian newspaper strips for 5 rubles

A beaten up Dell comic, The Outer Limits #11, 4 shillings, Something to remind me that I have the complete original series of The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone lying around here waiting for me to watch them.

A hardcover collection of Richard Corben's work including a biography, flicking through it I noticed a section on his working processes which looks very interesting. love Corben's work, when I was fifteen a fellow was advertising comics for sale in the local paper (waaay pre-internet). I went, picked up a few goodies with my paper run wages including one of Corben's Den albums. He told me he was a drug dealer in Australia and was visiting his parents in Napier. He had laundered his money by spending $50,000 on comics. "The cops would never believe comics could be worth $50,000!!" he told me. Then he shipped them over to Napier. This was in the eighties and from the amount and quality of comics he had I believed him. I visited him one more time at his parents house were he had stashed all the comics in their attic. I can't remember for the life of me remember where that was though. I often wonder if the guy ended up a casualty of the gang wars in Australia and maybe those comics are still there.

Mackillop Lane

Yarra River

Little Brown Bear Sleeping

Mitch, Dom and Troy the handsome men at All star Comics

 Some Impressive Druillet Splashes

A bunch of books from 25 cent bins. Loved Peter MIlligan's work for 2000AD, his Human Target revamp for Vertigo, and also his collaboration with Michael Allred on X-Force and X-Statix. Duncan Fegredo's no slouch either so looking forward to reading their collaboration on Enigma. Also a bunch of Comikers I dig, Cam Kennedy, Eddie Campbell, Steve Rude, Hembeck, Mike Mignola, on various projects. Also some...ahem...supey-hero comics.

Cheap and Disposable

Melbourne currently has a ridiculous amount of comic shops. As the Direct Market goes down the gurgler and shops have to be more selective about what they import its a great time to pick up comics from various dollar and fifty- cent bins. These bins are populated by recent titles that were way over-ordered, drek from the nineties, and underground/indy goodies. While they're still available it's a pleasure to pick up some cheap bedside reading that I don't feel any necessity to hang onto. I would have little interest in some of these for cover price but from the cheapie bin I don't mind picking up a handful to read and I have no inclination to keep them, I can gift them to friends or use them to make paper machie dolphins. I wish comics were still like that. Cheap and Disposable.

Layout yoinked from Tom Spurgeon

Daily Drawing #44 Abandoned Cover #2

Supanova Melbourne April 9-10 2011 + The List Volume III Launch

Last weekend's Supanova in Melbourne was the best Con I've been to yet. Well attended with Saturday's crowd about equal to both day's last year. I had a plum spot opposite the Auditorium where regular streams of folk would spill towards me after each panel. Met a lot of lovely folk that had read my work previously and I sold out of the 25 posters I had brought by early Sunday. I wish I had finished a new book as there were certain folk that had everything I've done. From the sounds of things everyone in artist alley were happy with the weekend's proceedings. The new larger shed was great for the size of the crowd that turned up. Still three or four more conventions this year I hope the rest are as good as this one. Special thanks to Trev Wood and Greg Gates for minding my table when I had to duck out.

Bruce Mutard, Greg Gates and Philip Bentley

Henry Pop, artist of the List, and some crazy homeless guy

The List Volume III Launch at Loop Bar followed Supanova on Saturday. Me and Bren rocked in as the speeches started. Mc'ed by Trev Wood, it was a tight affair with brief speeches from creators Writer - Paul Bedford, Penciler - Henry Pop and Inker - Tom Bonin and then an excellent audio visual presentation of key moments form the new book from Trev Wood. Culminating five years of work the fellas have pulled out all the stops in creating the final volume weighing in at just over 100 pages. The List team had a remastered version of Volume one at Supanova over the weekend and further down the track they'll be offering a collected version of all three volumes. 

 The first time Henry Pop has smiled since starting The List five years ago

Mighty congrats to the guys for seeing this labour of love through to the finish line. Anyone stupid enough to be making comics in a serious fashion knows the amount of work that goes into making a complete book, If you worked out an hourly rate it would be a pittance with the amount of time involved. I think it is very rare that an entire story is completed like this, so many creators burn out and give up after an issue or two. There are a lot of unfinished to be continued's in the comic book world. Check out The List here.

Buy The List online at Paul's Secret Sack

Gentleman Greg Gates and Boisterous Brendan Halyday

Handsome Trev Wood the Illustrative half of Sawbones

A few Sydney comikers were in town including Jan Scherpenhuizen of The Twilight Age

  

Animator and Cartoonist double threat Frank Candiloro and Brendan 'Bi' Halyday

 Bobby N, Darren Close and Tom Bonin. I won't give them nicknames cause each one of them could smash me with deadly force.

 Chris Sequeira tells Paul Bedford the Secrets of the Universe

Paul Abtruse in repose

Supanova Cosplay Melbourne 2011

 Mario!

 She thought I was staring at her cleavage, No dummy! It was her boyfriends ridiculous Afro that held my gaze

 I spotted this cute couple on the floor and beckoned them over for a pic

Then they came back later with the rest of the Mystery Machine! Best Effort of the weekend.

First Droog I've ever seen

 Yay! Frog from Fables, a great effort on a fairly obscure character

 Young Tankgirl

 Wonder woman, Vampirella and some Hobo

 

Alan Scott, the first Green Lantern

Sweet Ass Poster

Here is a SWEET ASS POSTER I will be selling at The Supanova Convention in Melbourne tomorrow. It is printed on really nice paper (Officeworks El Cheapo Brand) and was printed on a really flash printing machine (not really). This poster is a panel from my recent story MAORI ON THE SECOND FLOOR. For Five Ju-Ju Bars you could have this hanging above your resting area and when you are getting intimate with your loved one they will look at it and be compelled to sexify you.

I will also be selling my other cool books like Amazing Slut Adventures and my fab new book The Guzumo Show + also original art from Crazy Mexican Horror Comics and Italian Porno comics + Chick Religous Tracts that will reveal to you the truth about those whacky Christian Fundamentalists.

Remember your money keeps me in Hobknobs.

Camberwell Haul #6

Just a baby haul from Camberwell last weekend. There were a few old Alfred Bester paperbacks I could have picked up but geez I already have half a dozen i haven't read so i had to use restraint. Picked up 3 of the 5 discs that come in the Alejandro Jodorowsky Box set for the bargain price of 12 bananas. I rarely ever buy DVDs but I had to check these out as they have a bunch of special features. I first encountered Jodorowsky's work when I was playing a gig in Wellington and they had The Holy Mountain playing on loop all night on the big screen. I think I still have a video of that night somewhere around here. Anyway I've read a bunch of his comics work over the years and they are amazing.

I've been wading through a pile of old comics journals and recently reading an interview with Barry Windsor Smith. Smith rails against the comic industry of the time and was a little way into publishing his Storyteller series through Darkhorse. He was moving about 50,000 copies per issue which are figures publishers would kill for now. I feel sorry for folk like Windsor Smith, he was around when comics work paid a pittance and were not really appreciated outside of fandom. If he came out now with his Storytellers series and didn't have his marvel/superhero baggage I think he would be greatly appreciated by graphic novel savvy audiences of today. For 10 coconuts I picked up 100 pages of early Windsor Smith on Conan. Love these huge old treasuries. I heard the same thing mentioned about Steve Ditko's recent work. Ditko's in his 80's and basically self publishing works  of his personal vision these days and has completed over 300 pages in the last few years. He is cranking right now. Read Jog's great essay on latter day Ditko work here! Buy Ditko's books here!

Why would you put your dumb tag over Bill's face?

Saturday I popped down to the Monthly Melbourne comic meet. Chatted about comics with the fella's for a bit before heading home to do some serious drawing.

My dear friend Jason Franks bids me farewell as he is off to Japan to live for a while. Meanwhile, Big Tough Paul Bedford was recording an album of his romantic love poems.

Paul had them enthralled with his tender emoting. Franks was on the verge of tears.

The outside of Hell Gallery in Richmond

Camberwell Haul #5

Another Sunday trek to Camberwell. Not a huge haul but some interesting things. An old couple had a huge pile of Pictorial Social Studies Comic albums for $2 each. Published in the Fifties and Sixties, these were used as teaching aides for history lessons I presume. Covering a whole lot of Australian history I picked out a couple that were New Zealand centric. Never made it all the way through a Salmon Rushdie book but for a dollar I'll have another try at The Satanic Verses. William Gibson and E. L. Doctorow books were a couple dollars each, I'll add them to the thousands of other novels on the to read list. Maybe I'll get Miss Mai to read them and give me the cliff notes version.

There were comics here and there throughout the markets but I only picked up three for a dollar a piece.

Hot Stuff - I pick up cheap Harvey comics when I can to see what I can glean from them for my own comics.

The Jetsons - A Hanna Barbera Aussie reprint - again for drawing reference and also I've been thinking about doing some more futuristic gags/stories. The Garish re-colouring reminds me of reading these as a kid. I always remember the Superman editions where everyone had very pink skin pallor.

The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera TV STARS #1 - Another Hanna Barbera reprint. This one is a great anthology of short strips based on Saturday Morning cartoons. Solid line up of cartoonists with Steve Shaw, Will Meugniot, Dave Stevens, Dan Spiegle, and an Alex Toth Space Ghost story.

Here's The Herculoids by Will Meugniot and Dave Stevens.

GRAAARRR!!

All manner of things turn up at Camberwell

The Corner Billboard

Under an Overpass by Punt Road Bridge