Here's a sneak peak at a panel from a one page comic I drew for the next Going Down Swinging

I recently got turned onto the comics of David Libens. I have been meaning to blog about him for a few weeks now, although recently I ordered some of his mini comics which arived promptly in the mail and were excellent. I also got some rad original art which I was not expecting at all and is too kind of him. His comics have a wonderful sketchy charm and lovely comic pacing to them. It is comics like these that make me fall in love with the medium again. You can check out his blog here , and also order the comics from there too .

My new 48 page comic to be put out by Sure Shot Comics . This book will be launched at the Zine fair in Melbourne on the 13th of February. The comic precedes the subscription comic, 'Good to Go', and documents our move to Canada late 2007, which means this comics has been in the making for around two years!

 Rick Amor, Landscape with a Car, 2000 Panel from Star bores, by Rick and Tina Amor,  1978 After a little digging I confirmed that the Rick Amor from Falcon comics, is indeed the Famous Australian painter Rick Amor, and Tina Amor was wife. 1970 Amor rejoins his old jugband as a guitarist and meets Tina Schifferle,1 the washboard player. In September he moves in with Tina in a shared house in Hawthorn and begins full-time employment at the Public Works Department’s survey section as a field assistant. Amor and Schifferle marry on 27 November. 1975–76 Amor’s professional relationship with Brown ends abruptly. Amor finds work illustrating five English educational comics for Macmillan Publishing Company, which he compiles with his wife Tina, and receives a Visual Arts Board Grant from the Australia Council. The dismissal of the Whitlam government in November marks the commencement of his involvement with the Australian Labour Party and the Trade Union movement. From here,

I have been waiting with baited breath all week for the announcement of Apples new product as I blogged earlier. It was almost unfortunate that the hype grew so big because I think everyone, me included, thought that this new device would have everything, you know like steak knifes and a lawn mower. Whilst I can see some immediate drawbacks I am still holding to my conviction that this will be a fantastic platform for digital comics. The name aside (iPad? come on!!) imagine reading digital comics on this! Before it was announced I thought iSlate sounded bad and iTablet sounded like medicine. I think the name iTab would have worked well. It appears that apple will have it's own store called iBook so it will be interesting to see what sort of graphical content will  be offered there, comics books, picture books, art books kids books. There will be other companies like comixology that will continue on with the model they have with the iPhone and no doubt a host of other companies

After posting about the comic that had inspired me as a child (Star bores) I started thinking about the other titles in the Falcon comics series and wanted to find out more about the artists. I read on another website that there was a book on Australian comics called 'Panel by panel' by John Ryan and that the book had information on the Falcon comics series. Luckily a copy of the book was at the university library, although unfortunately there was very little information on the actual series other than Macmillan chose from the underground comic artists of the day.  Imagine how great it would be if a publisher were to do this same thing today, it would be so awesome to see Australian cartoonists do a series of books that went out to younger readers. I have begun to try and list in the Hayase Australian comics wiki all of the titles in the series that I can find on the web,  I would love to be able to add any information to the page and related pages as possible especially arti

I had the pleasure of being invited into the 3CR community radio studio to talk with John Retallick on the comicspot . The talk went well although I realised afterwards that I forgot to mention one of my first big introductions to comics that had a big impression on me, 'Star Bores' by Rick and Tina Amor. My own personal copy pictured above! I would love to know more about these series of Falcon comics from the late 70's, and is Rick Amor the comic guy the same as Rick Amor the painter? I doubt it but who knows. The podcast should be available to download soon.