Supanova Perth 2012

One week after Supanova Sydney (which you can find photos of here) was of course Supanova Perth. Another huge show, breaking Perth's attendance record once again with 21,100 happy attendees. Combined with the previous weekend's Sydney expo Supanova was nudging nearly 50,000 people over the two weekends!

I hadn't been to a Perth Supanova for a few years, so I was really glad to finally be back. Once again, since I'm working most of the time, it's hard to get a lot of photos, but I'll share a few that I do have. 

Full disclosure: I'm one of the founders of Supanova, art direct it, and have a financial stake in the business. 

After the opening ceremony on Friday night, a bunch of us retired for dinner somewhere very nice. Here you can see Tom Taylor, Q-Dog, one of our wonderful MCs from Cool [Shite] on the Tube, Justin Randall, and our fabbo comics guest helper Royd Burgoyne. 

Three shots stitched together to show the crowd of eager fans waiting to get the go ahead to invade the exhibitor floor. Of course, this was just the lot that were able to get into the holding area inside – lines were out the door and down the road!

The exhibitor floor on Saturday arvo. 

Artists' Alley crowds on Saturday morning.

Some more crowds in one of the other areas of the exhibitor floor. 

As always, we had some stellar comic book guests, and a bunch of nice fellers they were too! Here we see, from closest to camera to furthest, Ashley Wood, David Mack, Jim Cheung, and Tony Moore. 

Three of our guests had a draw-off during one of the panels. From closest to camera to furthest, Australia's own David Yardin, Peter Nguyen and Jim Cheung, all drawing the mighty Thor. 

Something Jim drew must of made them laugh! What are you up to Jim?!?

Gestalt Comics were exhibiting their wonderful comics…

… and also gave an informative panel. Here you see publisher Wolfgang Bylsma, writer Tom Taylor and artist Emily Smith. 

Ashley Wood, one of Perth's favourite sons, also gave a Q&A panel. 

Saturday night means Cocktail Party! Here I am with my date, daughter Annabelle. 

Me, Belle and one of our wonderful Guest Services people Mark. (As usual, that's coke in my glass.)

Sunday crowds in Artists' Alley continued to be strong. I had a ball selling Tides of Hope comics and doing caricatures for punters. 

And all too soon it was all over. Thanks Claremont Showgrounds!

Sunday night is traditionally the recording of a special Cool [Shite] on the Tube Supanova podcast, and traditionally a night where no holds are barred and I blush a heck of a lot. Q-Dog holds court, and the microphone, and in the first of these two photos are the Gestalt crew, while in the second Tony Moore gets something off his chest. CSotT's Bruce Moyle turning the dials, bathed in the cool glow of his Macbook. 

Monday was an amazing day. Royd organised for a boat trip down the Swan River to Fremantle. Jim Cheung and Tom Tayor can be seen in the cabin here. 

David Mack could not contain his excitement being out in the fresh air and was climbing all over the boat. 

This is not a staged reaction shot. This was everybody's faces watching David do nautical gymnastics. 

Dolphins swam and played around the boat quite a bit. They must has smelled the sheer creative talent on board and wanted to show off! Or maybe they were just trying to match David Mack's antics!

We ate at Little Creatures Brewery, as you do…

I had dessert for lunch, as you do… 

And then we all went climbing a giant spider-web, as you do. 

That's Tom Taylor with Annabelle. 

The talented and gracious Jim Cheung drew in my sketch book on the way back to Perth. What a beautiful drawing of Thor he did!

While in the living quarters Christopher Paolini (right) was spilling some secrets about his work to Matthew Reilly (left) and Tom Taylor. 

Later that evening, back on dry land, David Mack got down to the serious business of completing some commissions, as Belle watched, enthralled. 

Tuesday morning was our last brekky in Perth, and it was the breakfast of champions, including Tea & Toast. 

Thanks Perth! So glad I was able to come back again at last!

What I Read Last Month…

What I read in… 
March 2012

Guh #s 1-5, by Jase Harper.

http://www.jaseharper.com/

I bought the full collection of Guh from Jase Harper's Etsy store and I urge you to do the same. 

Full review coming soon. 

The Deep: Here Be Dragons, by Tom Taylor and James Brouwer.

http://www.gestaltcomics.com/store/the-deep/ 

A fabulous fun adventure comic for all ages. 

Full review is on it's way. 

Prophet #22, by Brandon Graham and Simon Roy, Fil Barlow.

http://www.imagecomics.com/comics/4605/Prophet-22

I bought this primarily to read the Fil Barlow back-up story, but I've heard so many good things about the series that I was equally as curious about the main story, especially considering this is a single issue in an on-going storyline. 
It's quite the interesting sci-fi tale, or a chapter thereof. Even with no knowledge of what it was all about going in I really enjoyed my time here. There's a strong European sensibility to this, both art and story, and enough quirky and interesting things happening, told in such a way as to not spoon feed but also to not be impenetrable, that it's made me likely to pick up a trade paperback sooner or later. 
The Barlow short story lived up to my high expectations. Witty and weird, delving once again into his ongoing Zooniverse oeuvre, presenting us with another Zoon cultural oddity, its hang-ups and foibles, while simultaneously having a satirical dig at our own western culture. Brilliant cartooning in this a welcome return of the Zooniverse and I'm super keen to see the upcoming stories Barlow has promised. 

New Avengers Vol. 8: Secret Invasion Book 1, by various.

http://marvel.com/comic_books/issue/22592/new_avengers_vol_8_secret_invasion_book_1_premiere_hardcover 

I really don't know how anybody reads these sort of comics on a month-to-month basis. Some of the chapters in this book — each chapter being an issue of the monthly comic — give so little story it's almost criminal. Then there are other chapters that cover years and years worth of plot and backstory, but in such a matter of fact and flat fashion as to totally rob the telling of any sense of awe or scope regardless of it's star-spanning repercussions. 
I would much rather see all these brutally separated sections of such a large story woven into the over arching plot as simultaneous threads and subplots. 
The brightest part of this volume for me is the clear, clean, enjoyably traditional art of Jim Cheung. Even though I can see so many of his influences hardly disguised by being barely integrated into his own style, he tells the story solidly and with flair. The other art present is not bad by any standard, and every chapter has an artist whose style is more or less appropriate for it, but they're not my cup of tea for the most part. 
I had supposed reading this single volume would give me a nice chunky read, and instead I feel like I got a bunch of disconnected episodes or vignettes, all too fleetingly burned through. 

What I Read Last Month…

This is what I read in… 
January 2012

Star Wars: Invasion, volume 2: Rescues, by Tom Taylor and Colin Wilson. Dark Horse Comics. 
This is the second trade paperback from the team of Taylor & Wilson telling the tale of the Yuzhan Vong invasion of that galaxy long ago and far away. I'm no Star Wars fanatic, but even for me it's fun to see fondly remembered characters like Luke, Leia and Han have cameos. More importantly though, the cast of characters that I've never met before are engaging and likeable. 
It's a fun ride with enough twists and turns, revelations (both in plot and character), and action, that I'll happily be coming back for volume 3. 

The Adventures of Tintin — The Crab with the Golden Claws, by Hergé. 
I was particularly taken with the cartooning in this volume of Tintin's adventures, especially the faces, and Tintin's the most. For something so simply constructed, there's a wealth of expression there and a lot to find attractive. Numerous characters are delineated with lovely, clearly formed caricatures, and this is wonderful cartooning in that respect. It doesn't quite hold true across all racial depictions unfortunately, with what looks to me as a more clumsy approach to Middle Eastern and Asian characters. 
There are some wonderfully funny bits in the opening scenes, which can be very difficult to do in comics. The fun continues throughout with the drunken shenanigans of the obviously alcoholic Captain Haddock, who is introduced nicely for the first time in this story. If I were Tintin though I would quite happily have never seen him again after the way he acquits himself during their time together! I'm not sure how they ever became such great friends. 
For some reason this adventure of Tintin didn't grab me. Despite the exotic locations, fun action, tight scrapes and adventure, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps there wasn't enough rise and fall in the tension. Maybe the stakes didn't seem high enough. It might've been that Tintin himself was taking it all too much as 'business as usual'. At any rate I wasn't as interested in coming along for the ride or seeing where it took me this time, despite everything else this book had going for it. 

Celadore, by Caanan Grall.
This is a really fun book and a really great ride. From my experience fun is what Caanan does best. That and the voice of children, and children make up a large percentage of the cast of this 192 page book. 
Celadore is named after the pivotal protagonist of the three stories collected here. All three of which are fabulous, with plenty of real danger and sacrifice for the characters mixed in with jaunty dialogue, believable, emotional relationships, and fun action. There's never a status quo, not within each of the stories, and not from one story to the next, which I really appreciated. It gives a more palpable tension and believability to the dangers faced by the cast knowing that things will indeed be different by the end.  
And what a great cast. Quite large, very interesting, always introduced and used purposefully. It grows naturally and well, until it's quite an ensemble. The central members are so great that it's hard to say that Celadore is even the "main" character, even though the book bares her name. Again, great evidence of good character writing making me care about them all so much. 
There's a great concept that ignites this book, but even better than that is the fact that Caanan doesn't rest on it, but evolves from it and builds on it in what really is quite an exciting and believable manner. It kept me as a reader on my toes and keenly interested. 
I love Caanan's cartooning style too. It's deceptively simple, full of life and bounce, and he has a great handle on character poses and expression. The character acting is really good. 
Unfortunately there are a couple of issues with this volume, the biggest of which being the printing. It's dark and muddy, and for a story that often takes place at night or in other gloomy settings, this is unforgivable and very disappointing. It's way too often out of register as well. 
They are the technical issues. Regrettably there's one creative issue as well. Far too many times I was confused and lost by the storytelling. This is a fabulous rollicking set of stories and I just wanted to go with them, but I was too often hampered by having to reread pages, trying to figure out what I had missed and why I'm confused. I even reread the first half of the first story in an effort to "get in the groove" of the storytelling style, assuming I just wasn't hearing the book's voice correctly, but in the end I think Caanan simply didn't always allow the rungs in the monkey-bars to be close enough together for me. 
This is a sad stain on an otherwise brilliant trio of stories. I would love to hear more from Celadore and her friends in the future if Caanan could swing it. 

Supanova Melbourne 2012

I've never really done these travelogue/con review posts before, but I had such a great time a couple of weekends ago in Melbourne for Supanova that I thought I'd give it a go. 

Full disclosure: I'm one of the founders of Supanova, I art directed it for about six years (taking the mantle of that title again as of next week), and have a financial stake in the business. 

Because this Supanova fell in the middle of the NSW school holidays I was able to enjoy a few days visiting the city of Melbourne with my family both before and after the expo which I've never really had the opportunity to do before. It's such a brilliant city and I fully understand the great Australian comics migration towards it that seems to have happened over the past 10 years or so. I'll let the photos and captions tell most of the story…  

A fabulous start to the trip was had with a brunch with some of my favourite fellas on the planet: The boys from Cool [Shite] on the Tube. Here's some of them: Chris, Bruce and David. My family are in the background also saying 'hi'. 

We stayed at a lovely hotel called Batman's Hill on Collins. Could there be any more appropriate place to stay for six days of comicy goodness? 

I visited the wonderful Squish Comics Studio in Brunswick. A fabulous initiative conceived by Ben Hutchings and foundered by him and five other brilliant comicers. As you can see, they sat me at the visitor's table while I drew. In the background are Annabelle and comicer Ive Sorocuk.

There were two other visitors there that day. Alisha Howard from Queensland and Robert Perrie from the ACT. That's Ive again in the foreground and Ben in the background. 

This is the sketch I did while there. Trevor's feeling the squish-vibe alright!

Friday night was opening night, but I took a moment beforehand to grab a snap of me as an Avengers action figure. As you do. 

On Friday night we ran two comicbook MasterClasses. Kicking it off were webcomic creators Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub. On the right, Scott is sharing a moment of epiphany with Kris. 

Brian Michael Bendis was another of our comic book guests and he also ran a comicbook MasterClass, following Scott and Kris. 

Because I work most of the weekend, or am trying to catch up with people I rarely or only briefly see, I don't get a long to very many panels and seminars. Here's a few I did get to and snapped a photo of. 

Overseas comics guests Spain's Carlos Pacheco, America's Brian Michael Bendis and Malaysia's Billy Tan. 

Actress Jaimie Alexander, who played Sif in the film Thor. 

Melbourne's Tristan Jones, who's making quite a splash at IDW with Ghost Busters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Infestation. 

A shot of one of our fabulous Artists' Alleys. Seen here on the right, from closest to camera to furthest: Wolfgang Bylsma and Gary Edwards from Perth's awesome Gestalt Comics, and Tom (Evs) Taylor. 

A random shot of the crowd enjoying the retail floor. 

Ahem… well, I worked very hard until I discovered on Sunday afternoon at 5:45pm (15 minutes before closing) that the pinball machines were free to play! Good thing I didn't know before that. 

Sunday night is traditionally time to record a Supanova Special Edition of the Cool [Shite] on the Tube Podcast. The groovy ManaBar were very kind to host the occasion. In the first of these two pictures is my lovely wife Bongo failing dismally at holding herself together while being 'interviewed' by David 'Q-Dog' Quinn. The second photo has, on the right, Q-Dog speaking with Tristan Jones with Gary Edwards, Wolfgang Bylsma and Tom Taylor behind. 

I love the architecture and buildings in Melbourne. Here's a few quick snaps I took. 

The all-important comics haul! Bought in various places before, during, and after the expo, and weighing in at 23 books and 10cm. (Yes, there's only 21 in the photo – I forgot I still had two in my backpack.) When am I ever going to find time to read it all?!?

Bye Melbourne! You were awesome and I had a brilliant time!