No Space Like Space - An Exhibition by Ashley Ronning. FB Event page.
Be-Longing For It- An Art Exhibition Exploring Meth use Among Gay, Bi and Queer Men. FB event page.
Squishface Studios 5th Birthday Celebration. FB Event page.
Paper Trail
Hamilton Zinefest 2015 are now taking stall registrations. (Poster by Gary Venn.)
Cartoons about #nzsnowden and GCSB. (Above cartoon by Sharon Murdoch.)
Go have a look at what Louie Joyce is doing.
Caravan of Comics are offering free minicomic downloads every week for a limited time, get in quick and download Meg O'Shea's The Wolves of King Street and Dean Rankine's EEW!
Catching Up File: Dylan Horrocks reports from France in wake of Charlie Hebdo attacks.
Catching Up File: I'm rapidly accumulating backed up days of podcasts to listen to, one on the to get to list, Richard Fairgray and Tara Black's Living the Dream featuring Robyn Kenealy.
Radio As Paper new anthology 8 x 3 featuring Australian and New Zealand contributors.
Adrian Raschella writes about the Pulp Confidential Exhibition featuring material form the estate of publisher Frank Johnson at the NSW State Library.
2014 in Review: Richard Fairgray
What have been your personal cartooning/comics highlights of 2014?
Releasing the 3rd volume of Blastosaurus in print. It's the first standalone story and it's about a haunted house so that combination hit a lot of buttons for me. Also releasing a spinoff series about Blasto doing really boring stuff like playing with trains and ordering shoes, it's the kind of storytelling I don't get to do much of in the main title so having a forum for that was really satisfying.
We also made a huge change to the rules of I Fight Crime this year by having the characters vanish from their universe and end up living in our world. It sounds silly but it's really cool being able to play with the format of something that seems so limited like a 4 panel strip.
What are some of the comics you've enjoyed in 2014?
The Deep by Tom Taylor, Exo Comics vol. 3 and (most excitingly) getting to read the Roddy's Film Companion graphic novel that almost no-one has even seen.
What is something non-comics that you have enjoyed in 2014?
I've been listening to a lot of podcasts this year. I'm way behind on this sort of thing so until the beginning of this year I really didn't know what a podcast was (like I sort of knew, but in the way that your grandma knows, like that it's sort of like the radio). The one I'm enjoying the most is Go Bayside, it's where April Richardson watches and breaks down every episode of Saved By The Bell. I love it because I watched that show obsessively as a kid, it was on ALL the time when I was growing up so I know every episode, it's just weird watching them again and hearing other people talk about them 20 years later.
What are you looking forward to in 2015?
I've got my first picture book coming out worldwide in April, in October I'll be finished on the Funny Books project with Theo so I won't have to be stressed about the whole weekly comic thing every spare second, I'm working on a bunch of new projects with a lot of really cool people and I'm hoping to start finding ways to bring those to the world at large.
2014 in Review: Tara Black
What have been your personal cartooning/comics highlights of 2014?
I've loved moving I Fight Crime to the real world and the strip above is one I'm really proud of. Richard is so funny, as usual, but I think that my illustrations are bringing a lot of the humour. I'm also really proud of the colouring I did for Issue 11 of Blastosaurus.
What are some of the comics you've enjoyed in 2014?
I've loved Saga and Dan Slott's Silver Sufer. I've been reading them on comixology because I can't wait for them to come out. Dan Slott's unashamed homage to Doctor Who involves stunning art and engaging relationships.
What is something non-comics that you have enjoyed in 2014?
I enjoyed The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt - I love her use of language even if the plot doesn't quite hold together at the end. Korra is stunning. Honestly, that show gets better and better. I'm particularly impressed by the complex politics and the world building. Podcasts. I've gotten into Harmontown, The JV Club and This Feels Terrible as well as getting my weekly fix of Saturday Morning with Kim Hill.
What are you looking forward to in 2015?
I'm really looking forward to Gorillas in Our Midst coming out, which will be our first picture book to get World-wide release. I'm looking forward to being involved with publishing more of Ralphi's work because it is fantastic and, of course, the Three Words project. I'm also excited about The Sculptor by Scott McCloud.
