First Images last

Here's a possible first page for my future hopeful release of "the Long Weekend".

It's an image of Craig, the author/narrator of the article of the same name that I am adapting into a comic ... so the adapted comic will be Craig writing the article ... so here he is thinking ... and grappling with the concepts that he is writing about. I don't have a scanner for A3 currently so I have just stitched together two half pages ... hence the wonderful line in the middle ... I think that it kind of adds something to the whole ambience of the piece ... and perhaps I'll just continue the trend rather than try to fix it up for the rest of the book ... just kidding.

When I was a kid I used to visit a friend of my father's on the way home from school - Peter Foster ... he was a cartoonist, he was particularly into Will Eisner ... a man who's work Peter must have come across in travels rather than finding in a casual bookshop in Australia in the 80's, not sure about that one, must ask Pete one day. Pete was a humble and happy kind of bloke, also conducted the local church choir which both my parents were in. He drew a an adventure comic strip series (which was all the rage in Australia for a few decades). The main thing that he did and was most proud of was doing a black and white adaptation of "for the term of his natural life" which is an Australian classic story about a gent from England who gets accused of the wrong thing and sent to the penal settlement of Port Arthur in Tasmania and winds up miserable and dead and whatnot.

He was very kind to me and let me see all of his set-up when I was a kid. He had this desk that leaned up so that you could draw on it properly and stuff ... I got one of those recently ... so much better for your neck. And he lent me comics that he thought I might be interested in. Some old-style Batman's ... he gave me a couple of Martian Manhunter comics ... which looking back, I'm surprised that he gave them to me since they were a) rare ... and b) highly risque for a child under 10 years ... but no complaints ... it was interesting stuff. He also had a contract to work with a series of kids "readers" called Eureka. These were the readers that my primary school down the road got so I used to read Pete's comics at school and then walk past his home-studio and stick my head in to see if he was busy.

Anyways - I found out that Peter ... at almost 80 years old ... is trying to get his adaptation of "for the term of his natural life" out in colour ... go Pete!! See the article here.

I have to say though ... I pulled out my old copy that he gave our family in 1993 and had a gander ... his arduous cross-hatching has gone with the digital colouring ... and it's a touch sad because it looks beyortifulll!! But, if it gets out to more folks due to the colours then it'll be a good thing.

(because of course the world is split into things that are good and things that are bad ... yes - it's that simple!!)