A s I mentioned yesterday, there's a television Arts program doing a piece on 'the graphic novel.' I've got to fly down to Melbourne on Monday for advance shooting, having been all the way down there only last week. While I abhor the idea of having to explain what I regard as a hijacked and demeaned concept, I figured the alternative is too much to contemplate, that some other boob would be asked to do it and I would be reduced to being embarrassed in front of the tv. My mission, and I've chosen to accept it, will be to create in the minds of the viewers the notion of an ideal art so attractive and appealing and shiny and brilliant that they will not notice, when they seek it in the bookstores, that it is buried under a pile of manure (see yesterday's post). Furthermore, I will attempt to do it without saying 'comics' or 'graphic novel', or inventing any new term for that matter. Let's see how far I get.
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Nicki Greenberg will also be on the program, as will Shaun Tan. Nicki's Great Gatsby has just been launched into the world at Readings bookshop in Melbourne (see photos), with a spoken intro from Shaun, whose book The Arrival is released this week Stateside from Scholastic (correct me if I'm wrong on that)
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meanwhile...

4 : The white zipatone was the most sumptious of all. Screens of white dots to lay over a black drawing. I used to drop them in everywhere for painterly subtleties.


In at least one place in the following there are three layers of white (10%?) over a 50% grey: