Local Act Comics- Past, Present & Future - Part 2: The Man With The Plan
Fri, Oct 17 2008

I’m 25. Married. One son. I work full time as the business manager of a technical writing / publishing company. I have a degree in Psychology. I’ve always had an interest in comics. From the time I was a little kid I wanted to be an artist and actually used to sell my artwork to other kids in the playground. I’m really just an average guy who doesn’t sleep enough and loves to write, draw and publish comics.

It can be hard managing LAC as well as finding the time to write and draw my own comics. I have certain nights of the week dedicated to different projects or responsibilities. I love to draw and at the same time I love running LAC. For me it’s both or nothing.
So what keeps the director of LAC so busy? Keeping in touch with all of our creators. Keeping the accounts up to date and paying everybody each month. Keeping the website up to date. Keeping in touch with the stores and making sure they always have enough stock. Preparing files to go to the printer. Keeping a track of stock levels. Attending conventions and comic or small press events. Keeping an eye out for new talent and opportunities. Trying not to get sucked into the cynical attitudes of so many other Aussie comic creators. Its not easy but I persevere ;)

My first exposure to comics came in the form of a hard cover comic adaptation of Star Wars that was handed down to me from my older brother. From there I graduated into a more regular habit of collecting when I used to pick up 2nd hand comics for 50c each at a local market.

Batman was the extent of my interest early on and I still remember reading those same few issues over and over and trying to copy the artwork in them. Along the way I picked up a few random issues of Captain America or Iron Man and with my already present love of drawing it wasn’t a hard decision to want to be a comic artist when I grew up. I told this to my dad who said that I was probably better off working on book covers or something but if I put my mind to it I could do anything I wanted. As time went on comics were pushed to one side until I developed an interest again later in primary school after collecting a series of x-men cards with a friend. Spiderman became my main focus in these years and I would swap comics with friends to complete the stories. From there I spent a brief stint collecting Mr.Hero and other comics coming out of the publisher Tekno.

Once again I lost interest in collecting comics for a while. My friends were getting into spawn comics but I was more interested in video games and all of my money seemed to go towards that. Skip ahead a few more years to high school. I managed to swap a collection of batman comics off a friend for starwars cards or pogs or something…anyway I ended up with about 25 consecutive issues of Batman around the time they moved to glossy pages. My friend at the time was collecting Lobo so didn’t mind parting with the Batman comics. I collected Batman for years. One of my main influences of the time was Kelly Jones and he still remains one of my favourite artists tho his style doesn’t come up in my artwork his compositions and use of shadows have stuck with me.

Once again comics took a back seat to everything else. Other things became more important. Fast forward to University a few years back and I found myself once again in a comic shop picking up copies of Hellspawn, Bastard Samurai and Robotech. I collected comics for a few months but once I was finished studying I stopped collecting again. Jump to 2005. I had started a course in freelance illustration and cartooning to help out with the drawing work that I was doing at the time. I found myself drawn once again to the idea of comics – both reading and creating them. Hellboy, Sin City, Hellblazer and Lucifer all took front row in this latest voyage into the world of comics.

Through a series of contacts that started with my tutor and lead to Greg Gates I found myself at the pulpfaction.net forums contacting others who were all about the creation of comics locally here in Australia.

My biggest influences over the years have been Kelley Jones – Batman never looked as good as when Kelly drew himin the 90’s, Frank Miller (Sin City, 300) for his use of shadow and black and white starkness, Marcelo Frusin (Hellblazer, Loveless) for his figures and faces, Todd McFarlane (Spawn) for his ability to bend or break the rules. There’s probably more but those are the top four for me.
My journey into Australian comics started back when I first hit the pulpfaction.net forums. I went in looking for a writer to work with.

Apparently its not how things are done and its usually the writer who goes looking for the illustrator (I didn’t know that at the time and I still challenge people to break this norm). Regardless I was greeted with the ‘who are you and what have you done?’ comments from most that I contacted. Once I posted up a bit of my recent artwork I managed to win over a couple of people including the writer of Ma.B (and Vigil, After Life and Millie Piddley Pup) Graeme McDonald. Graeme and I met up and talked about putting together the first issue. Then I started working on it and after enlisting the help of a work colleague Chris Catlin we found we had a creative team that would be willing to put in the hours to make it happen.

I struggled in the beginning relying too much on photographs and using a style that is probably closer to design that I originally intended. As the first issue progressed I found myself starting to develop my own style away from using lightboxed photos. You can see the transition and development of the style throughout the released 3 issues of the series. In all honesty my earliest work shows weaknesses in my style that I have made an effort to improve as time has gone on.

I was very lucky in the beginning to get to know Graeme well and we’ve managed to stay on the same page about most things in the series. I think being able to understand where he was coming from and what he is trying to say with the story has been one of the factors that made it possible to draw.

So where to from here? We are looking at lots of new material and are involved in bringing together some exciting projects, so keep an eye on the website.