CAB Comic

I'm going to be continuing my comic strip for the next semester for my uni's magazine, The Bull.

Also, the Cabramatta comic I previously hyped as Naked Kingdom Tapestry is well on its way (some pages above). I've decided to rename it CAB for so, so many good reasons, such as 'it's so much easier to remember' and 'it'd be easier to fit on the cover'. CAB is my Frankenstein's monster of a collaborative work to end my recent marathon of collaborative work. It's incredibly rewarding, though, and I can't thank the contributors (all non-comickers, except mrtang) enough for how generous they've been with their cooperation.

It's been challenging in every possible way translating other people's stories into comics. I've been given some of my most frustrating subjects to draw...AGAIN!...but the pages show a lot of refinement as I progress. It's also made me face some really difficult editorial and artistic choices. It's an incredibly weighty task to try to respect and revere the truth of a person's autobiographical story, whilst balancing my own emotional filter and personal  historical connection to the subject matter to make the portrayal affecting. The elements of the process is a broth of -

• the writer's autobiography of themselves (in giving an honest recount of their life);
• my biography of the writers (in visualising translating the writer's story into a comic);
• my autobiography of myself (in filtering the writer's story through my own interpretation and experience/understanding); and 
• a historical/community portrait (in the context of the time/place the story occurred, which could be an unassuming street up to 10 years ago, and also in the context of the collection of stories).

I guess how much of that process is evident in the final work is in the reader's hands, but the process itself was tough and solved by the necessity of deadlines.

The CAB zine will be 16-24 pages (most likely 20 pages) of content. I realised when printing tests of the pages that my artwork looks MUCH better at a4 at a5, (Why didn't anyone ever tell me this?! OH I FEEL LIKE A FOOL!) so the zine will probably be a4 or slightly smaller. The final pages will be complete by July 31st so a small run of the zine should be ready soon thereafter for sale, contributors and to generally show people the kind of book I'm trying to make. However I'm keeping the project rolling until I have enough to print the larger book I wanted to see for this project, so don't stop sending me your autobiographical Canley Vale/Cabramatta stories!

I'm sooo ready to start on my own work once CAB is put to rest. I've already quickly knocked out some writing for a short warm-up book called Otherside (I literally made up that name as I was typing) before I embark on another immersive project. I'm thinking A6 size.

I had really hoped to clean up and update my website and webcomicsnation account too, but that might have to wait until after the books.