Appearances. Keeping up with them.

In my last post I introduced my part in the program of the Melbourne Writers Festival. Now here's the Brisbane program. They're shining a spotlight on the 'graphic novel' and are flying in Brian Talbot from England, Guy Delisle from Canada, Sean Tan from Perth and Nikki Greenberg from Melbourne. I will have already crossed paths with these last two in Melbourne. There's also Leigh Rigozzi, I think from Sydney, who is the only one I haven't met before. My pal Daren White, well known in this parish, also plays a role, chairing one of the panels. I have a feeling there may be a fourth appearance which I haven't listed here, which is part of the separate schools program. More on that when I figure it out. (update: if you read this earlier, I made a mistake in that second session, now fixed. I'm with Brian Talbot first, then I'm chairing a session with Greenberg, Delisle and Rigozzi. Third session has the biggest line-up.)

BRISBANE WRITERS FESTIVAL
The official site

Thursday, 13 September 2007, 8:15 PM - 9:15 PM
EDDIE CAMPBELL IN CONVERSATION WITH BRYAN TALBOT
Visy Theatre - Brisbane Powerhouse. Of Graphic Novel Fame
Eddie Campbell in conversation with Bryan Talbot. Brisbane’s award-winning graphic novelists Campbell and Talbot discuss their work as it relates to the larger history of illustrated literature.
Bookings essential. Tickets $12/$10 at PowerTix.War:

Thursday, 13 September 2007, 9:30 PM - 10:30 PM
AS IT HAPPENS: AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN GRAPHIC NOVELS
Visy Theatre - Brisbane Powerhouse
Join Nicki Greenberg, Guy Delisle and Leigh Rigozzi, three of the sharpest self-styled graphic novelists, to discuss how they use their everyday lives to produce acclaimed graphic novels. Chair: Eddie Campbell.
Bookings essential. Tickets $12/$10 at PowerTix.

Friday, 14 September 2007, 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
DOES THE LITERATURE OF OUR TIMES HAVE PICTURES?
Visy Theatre - Brisbane Powerhouse
Eddie Campbell, Guy Delisle, Bryan Talbot and Shaun Tan.
Hear four of the world’s most renowned graphic novelists talk about the rise and rise of the medium and the ideas and issues that propel their work. Chair: Daren White
Bookings essential. Tickets $12/$10 at PowerTix.

And everyone said 'how tall they've grown!'

A fter showing the photo of not-so-wee Cal yesterday I remembered that i had meant to compare it to these images from my 1993 story in The Dance of Lifey Death, which was my adaptation of The Jumblies by Edward Lear. I pictured my children as the jumblies , going to sea in a sieve, and then coming back twenty years later. hayley campbell is none too impressed with my clairvoyance, but Cal turned out just about right.


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MELBOURNE WRITERS FESTIVAL

The program is now up and I think you need to sort out tickets for these things. If you're going to be in town that week, go to the site and see what's doing.

Eddie Campbell & Nicki Greenberg
Date: 29 August 2007 Time: 12:45 - 1:30 Venue: Beckett Theatre Session for middle school, lower and upper secondary students: Grades 7 - 11 ---THINK VISUALLY. Eddie Campbell is the acclaimed artist behind From Hell, which was made into a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp. Comic artist Nicki Greenberg has turned The Great Gatsby into a graphic novel.

GET THE PICTURE?
Date: 30 August 2007 Time: 11:45am – 12:45pm Venue: Merlyn Theatre: Words and images work well together, but never completely without tension. Manipulators of word and image, picture book writer Shaun Tan, scriptwriter Keith Thompson and graphic novelist Eddie Campbell, discuss what can be said and what can only be shown.

SCHOOLS OF PAINTING
Date: 31 August 2007 Time: 1:30pm - 2:30pm Venue: Merlyn Theatre: A close likeness, of course, is what you’re looking for. But just as portraits can be impressionistic, expressionist or caricature, biographies can be executed in many ways while still being clearly of the subject. Victoria Glendinning, Brenda Niall and Eddie Campbell talk about elements of style in their art.
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update: Australian graphic novelist Shaun Tan, mentioned above, is interviewed in The Australian today:
THERE is something disconcertingly familiar about Shaun Tan's calm, open face as he looks up to greet the next autograph hunter in a queue snaking out the bookshop's door and around the corner. It's a mixed crowd here at a writers festival in homage to a book without words. Tan smiles and opens the book handed to him, stamps and signs it twice, and looks up again. Finally it dawns that, of course, it's Tan's face that appears on the protagonist of his graphic novel The Arrival. There it is in frame after frame of the more than 800 images in this sumptuous 120-page story tracing the journey of migration in a fantastic world.
(link thanks to Mick Evans)
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Steve Martin interviews Roz Chast, video (link via Journalista)

say 'cheese' (but don't mention the oyster).

D id I get a photo of me and Wee Cal in San Diego? No, Anne, I completely forgot. How could I possibly forget to take a photo of me and the apple of her eye on holiday in sunny California! Look, I'll email around and see if I can find one. Charles Brownstein took this one on Thursday. He regrets it's not a good photo, but we don't look any more out of focus than Charles himself did on the night.


Film producer Bill Horberg might have a better one from Friday, and it may be in focus since he is a teetotaller. In an email titled 'The world is my oyster ' he told me he woke up with a bad case of food poisoning and a doctor had to be called. Since I had half the oysters , it must have been a prawn that got him. I told him his trouble is that he isn't drinking enough beer.
My pal Wayne Beamer has one from Sunday, and I'm looking very tired. I went and upset the dear fellow and I deserve all and more that he says about me.
Unless somebody else out there has one, that's the lot.
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Speaking of Bill Horberg and me, Anne Thompson in VARIETY- Sun., Jul. 29-: Horberg's 'Agency' on drawing board
Dormant scripts get graphic novel treatment- As movies based on graphic novels such as "300," "Sin City," "Road to Perdition," "A History of Violence" and "Stardust" become more common, frustrated Hollywood filmmakers are taking dormant screenplays and commissioning graphic novels in hopes of boosting their onscreen potential.
And on her blog two days later: : Campbell's Black Diamond Detective Agency, with photo of me and Bill, presumably before he knew about the prawn.
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Authors in couples make for unhappy endings Guardian blog- August 1, 2007.
Writers are often drawn to each other romantically, but very often a sorry tale ensues...
(link via Mick Evans)
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BECKHAM TURNS DOWN SIMPSONS CAMEO OVER AFFAIR JIBE
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in other news:
Odor leads to illegal dung depot
MIAMI (Reuters) - A Florida man stockpiled 20,000 cubic yards of horse manure on his property and was charged with running an illegal composting operation, ...investigators suspect Duque had been accepting dump truck loads of horse manure from nearby equestrian communities in Palm Beach County."

his nibs (2)

N ow where was I up to before I had to dash across the Pacific? Oh yes, the nibs. When you use these in your regular work you need to be buying them by the gross, so that your stash looks something like this:


Whenever you get together with a colleague in the trade you say 'hey I found that this one suits my puposes, you should give it a try', and you shove a handful in the other guy's mitt. In this way I came by the crowquill style of nib via Dave Sim. This style has the cylinder in emulation of the bird feather from which it derives, as opposed to the flat reed in which the more flexible type of nib originates. This style offered me a tighter control of the linework, but with less thick-and-thin dynamics, which you can see from the selected examples below. In fact The use of this type (in conjunction with my other favourites) starts coming in around From Hell chapter 7. I had spent a week with Sim early in 1994 after which I added to my armoury the Hunt 102 crowquill, pictured in the red box.
On occasion I come across a box of a rare nib. The large Brandauer nibs above came as a Christmas present many years ago and I occasionally find a use for them. I think these are very old. (Some other gorgeous Brandauer antiques.)
The quaint abel on the underside of the box reads:
Brandauer: CAUTION: Whereas, with a view of securing the public from imposition, and of protecting our own manufacture, we have caused our Trade mark, to wit, 'an Archer in a kneeling position, with bow and arrow, to be registered according to law...etc.
A history of the Birmingham pen trade including Branfdauer and Gillott: The Brandauers remained involved with the business until the First World War, when the factory was confiscated by the authorities on the grounds that the Brandauers were Austrian, and was eventually released to the Petit family.
Examples using mainly the crowquill:

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Changing the subject, I'm leading up to a video clip which made me laugh, but we must get there via unsavoury matters, so bear with me a minute. While I was away they nabbed somebody for groping, but surely this isn't the groper I mentioned here before (which should not be taken to imply that I know anything about the matter):
Sex assaults linked to bikeway attacks?- July 31, 2007.
Man charged over sex assaults- August 1, 2007 .
hayley campbell sent a link to the unrelated incident in England:
Man sought over TV bottom pinch- BBC- Tuesday, 31 July 2007
A man who pinched a Channel 4 News presenter's bottom during a live broadcast is being sought by police. (Youtube)
Sue Turton was speaking to the camera from Oxford's flood-hit Osney Island when the man was seen on film walking past her. She said she found the incident "quite humiliating" but continued reporting. She does not wish to pursue the matter. Police said they still intended to impose an £80 fixed-penalty fine on the man under the Public Order Act.
Ms Turton said in a statement: "Many people found the incident in Oxford last week when a man pinched my bum live on Channel 4 News humorous.
I am not one who finds amusement in the puerile behaviour of annoying of ladies in public, but while at Youtube I came across this U.S. news reporter getting mad, which has nothing to do with bottoms, and had me in stitches because of the placing of the word 'violent'.

That's that.

Home.
The bastards at the airport went through my case behind the scenes and put all the books back in a very lousy way. Wouldn't that rip the fork out of your nightie, as the wife of my bosom would say. I found the saying listed here with an assortment of other Great Australian sayings including:

* May your chooks turn into emus and kick your dunny down.
* He's a six pack but he lacks the wrapping.
* Laughing like a fat spider up a Christmas tree.
* So hungry I could eat the crutch out of a low flying duck.
* It's about as useful as a waterproof teabag.
* It fits like a stocking on a chook's lip
* Full as a goog (always a favourite of mine, a goog being an egg)

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I suggested wee Cal go to school, but he's gone to bed instead.

that'll be me off home then.

Funny how you get tired of eating out. I just want to sit at home with a cup of my own coffee, with Monty drooling on my shoe as he eyes off my slice of toast.
Normal service will be resumed upon my return.
Must rush. toodle pip.
Good bye, San Diego, Good bye America, good bye Mickey mouse, goodbye Buffalo bill, goodbye dollar bill.

The man...

The man who went to bed before midnight awakes fresh as a daisy, dresses and sets out for his San Diego appointment with his agent.
The man who wore lampshades when they were in fashion is safe in the knowledge that he was not seen riding on the hood of an automobile at three in the morning, and that no photos will appear to embarrass him.