Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (00:18):
Welcome to another episode of Comex Recent Reads. This is where we talk about comics that we’ve read recently. Of course, as the name says. And we talk about some other comics as well at the end that we recommend. And I almost got my tongue ring caught under a tooth then and couldn’t talk, so that was a bit amusing that I just undid that while we were going through the little thing. Then. Okay, tonight we have me Siz and I’ll be talking about this book here. Let’s see if I can get it so that it actually can be seen to capture a Calex by Janna Hoffman. So that was a cool little book to read. We’ll go over to Ed because he’s first in the square. Ed who is famous for radical. What have you got to tell us about tonight?

Ed Kearsley (01:10):
Tonight be doing Deaf Ship Jenny by Rob O’Connor.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:14):
Oh, cool.

Ed Kearsley (01:16):
I think he’s doing everything.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:19):
Yeah, I’m pretty sure he does it all himself.

Ed Kearsley (01:21):
Yeah, that’s that one.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:24):
So next in line we’ve got Ryan Christopher, who’s famous for Corner Box. I’ll try to remember the correct name for it. And what are you doing this afternoon, Ryan, this evening? So

Ryan Christopher (01:38):
I’m talking about the John Higgins book, razor Jack, created by written by Pencils, inks, colours, all by John Higgins with a little bit of additional content by Mike Carroll and Sally Hurst. Yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (02:02):
Very nice. And shall I go clockwise or shall I? No, we’ll go Tom. Tom, we’ll go. Like we’re reading. Tom is famous for Mini Tom and probably other things that I have forgotten, but I know Mini Tom definitely is the big one. So what are you talking to us about today, Tom?

Tom Tung (02:24):
Today I’ll be looking at Karate Prom by Kyle Starks with Colours by Chris Schweitzer.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (02:31):
Oh, cool.

Ed Kearsley (02:32):
That’s cool.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (02:33):
Nice. And then last but not least, we’ve got Max Ferrier, founder of Stella Lands. What are you looking at today, my friend?

Max Ferrada (02:47):
Well, I’m just dismayed that I’m the only one here without a physical property to hold

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (02:52):
Up. Oh, yeah, sorry, I’ve got pictures for you.

Max Ferrada (02:54):
No, well, yeah.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (02:55):
Afraid when you come up. Yeah,

Max Ferrada (02:57):
Very, very embarrassed. I should be more hardcore when it comes to my relationship with books. But yeah, I’ve read the Digital Editions of NEMO by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill with a specific focus on the first issue. Given that talking about the second and third instalments are essentially spoilers for the first issue, which is probably the strongest of the bunch.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (03:27):
Cool. Thank you, max. Okay, now, oh God, I am getting lost. I thought I was going to, I get used to the show. Okay, this is the main bit. This is where we actually talk about the books. Okay, so I’ll go first. So I have the power, what’s going on with my lights here anyway, to capture colour effects. We’ve got these two characters. One has been injured by Calif Effects. I hope that’s how it’s pronounced. Janna, tell me if I’m wrong. And the female protagonist gets very upset that he’s been injured and wants to, I should show him internal art and wants to if I can. Oh yeah, that’s working.

(04:19)
Yeah, nice. Janna’s a very good artist, so it was pretty cool to read. But yeah, so she gets upset that he’s been injured by Halifax, so she wants to abandon the rules and go against the tribal elders and go and capture this Calif facts. And along the way the Calif effect captures them and they learn a few lessons and that the end of it they realise that maybe there was a good reason they were told not to do what they were trying to do. So yeah, I won’t go into it more than that because ruin the book, but it was a very cool little book, very kid friendly as well, so you can take that home to the kitties and yeah, so great read. That was me and I was just going to pass it over to someone else and then realised I’m the host. Okay, so next we’ll start down at the bottom. We’re going to get Max because he’s drinking a bit of tea.

Max Ferrada (05:24):
Yes. Okay, well, did we pop up images of the book? Yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (05:31):
Just grab it now buddy.

Max Ferrada (05:32):
I think that we did. Alright. Well, we all know Alan Moore as a renowned figure in an authorship in comic book writing. He is perhaps most famous for, Watchman Says, has a tattoo of Watchman on his neck, which I guess is pretty indicative of how much you feel about Alan Moore. Would Watchman be your favourite of his works?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (06:03):
Yes, definitely

Max Ferrada (06:04):
General. Oh, excellent. And yeah, what do you feel about his other books in particular? League of Extraordinary gentlemen?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (06:13):
League of Extraordinary gentlemen. I’ve only seen the movie, to be honest. I really want to see the comic because I’m told the comic is way better. And he did V for Vendetta, didn’t he?

Max Ferrada (06:25):
Yes, he did. He did.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (06:26):
Yes. I love that one. I love that one. I just forget who did it and I’m,

Max Ferrada (06:32):
Yes. Well, this Nemo is a digression from the main story of the Leave of Extraordinary gentlemen, but it carries on a lot of the famous a Moore tropes and hallmarks where he gets various characters of different degrees of popularity from different source material and he throws them into this narrative salad, so to speak, and forces upon them a very well-paced story where the stakes are usually world ending. And the same can be said for the mini stories, and I call them they’re 56 pages, but compared to the 196 pages of volume one, it’s tiny. It’s almost a parcelled story. Now this, the first issue of part of Nemo, which is Heart of Ice, is a sort of direct second part of a story that was introduced in Century where you have Nemo’s daughter reject her birthright of being captain of the Nautilus, which basically rejecting the attribution of the mantle of pirate and the events of century shows that she eventually does imbue herself with piracy pirate leadership.

(08:12)
And the main theme is you can run from your birthright, but in the end it’ll always catch up with you. And that’s what we’re seeing in heart Advice right at the beginning of the book. She’s already engaged in looting and what she does is she is her character and her crew, which itself is composed of famous characters from different source material. Ishmael, broad Aro Jack, they loot from Asia who is also derived from, I believe, a hatred or haggard source novel, an immortal deposed princess ruler. And through Aisha’s connection with Charles Foster Cain of Citizen Kane, they mount expedition of hunters to track down Nemo, Jenny Pirate, Jenny, her name is and exact revenge and recollect the loot which she stole from Asia. And what follows is a very, the hunters themselves are also derived from source material. Tom Swift is one of them, the others are from Victorian era Lia.

(09:44)
But what follows is, I don’t want to say it’s a very understated cat and mouse, but it’s not the main thrust of the book because Pirate Jenny assigns herself the mission of following her long deceased father’s footsteps of going to Meadow Patagonia and seeking out the mountain of madness and seeing what exactly is within the hollows and dolls of that mountain that drove her father and many others. Insane. I won’t give too much away because the source of the madness is surprising is from a very well beloved b-movie monster who’s, when you see this monster drawn, you’ll get a jolt of nostalgia, especially if you are born in the eighties and you are fond of films. I’ll give a wink and say, John Carpenter, that was the McGuffin so to speak. But yeah, the book has everything that I love. I mean, first of all, when you delve into a Alan Moore novel, a graphic novel, there’s a whole heap of density that you have to absorb.

(11:13)
It’s like I wanted to watch, well, I want to start watching Born Again Daredevil for Marvel, but I know that nor to Watch Born Again because it has Wilson Fisk, I have to watch what Wilson Fisk was lost in, which is echo. And in order to understand echo, you have to watch Hawkeye. And in order to understand Hawkeye because of the character of Yelena, you got to watch Black Widow and before you know it, you you’ve lost a month. And the same could be said for Alan Moore. This is a Digressionary story where you have to have some appreciation or foreknowledge of the stories of the main timeline. And I believe it’s worth it. It’ll be all the more rewarding when you read it. And one of the things I love most about comic books isn’t so much the art. I mean, you could see the art from Kevin, not how you would say classical or directly in proportion.

(12:19)
Alan Moore describes it best. He loves that ghetto aspect of it. So I love, its crude nature and I love it like its sharpness and its disproportionate. It gives it almost an unpredictable mercurial air essentially. You have to know the source material because it takes from other source material. It also imports the dialogue, which is what I love most about comics and plays. I love dialogue. I love how people interact, and I love how a Moore just is able to tap into the nuance with such clarity and detail. Like Charles Foster Cain talks like Charles Foster Cain. He’ll say stuff like, I tell you, Jedi, she’s a hell of a thing. And the way they talk, it’s as if he’s resurrected the authors or the filmmakers in a sense. And I read a lot of books. I mean, that’s all I do. If I’m not in front of you right now, I’m probably off reading and to see all of the characters who I love from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea to Moby Dick, which took me a while to read, but after you read it, you get such a sense of accomplishment. Seeing all of them thrown together is going into a very well-written, very well configured and choreographed costume party. And that’s with all of League of Extraordinary gentlemen. I feel that yeah, you have that same sense of wonder and I guess you could say that. Yeah, sorry.

(14:23)
Do you

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (14:23):
Think someone who goes to read it would be able to understand what’s going on without knowing all those previous novels and books and plays and other stuff that he gets his source material from, would you say just quickly, just quickly, we’ve got other people with turns. Would you say that you can read it without knowing all that?

Max Ferrada (14:42):
Yes, but speaking as someone who read it back when I was 19, when I first read it, I’m 38 now. Who I was at 19 isn’t the same as who I am today. And definitely I wasn’t as literate, but I find myself going to the internet and just looking up all of these backstories, all of these characters. It’s fun archiving Easter egg sort of behaviour. I know a lot of us do that. I mean, there’s no way you can have the whole encyclopaedia of Marvel in your mind and you’re reading a comic book. This character just pops out of nowhere. Where is he from? Well, what can they do? And a lot of people will be doing that during Deadpool and Weine there looking at the trailers. There’s a variable Congo line of Marvel characters who True, true, won’t have heard of. So yeah, that’s what I read this past week. I couldn’t recommend it enough. And check out the whole Dear league of Extraordinary Gentleman Opus. I believe that’s what Ellen Moore ended with. So it must mean something if that’s what he ended with. Tempest and I did read Tempest. It does verge on the self-indulgent, but when you love something wholesale, I mean, I don’t love things by half. When I dove into comics, stellar Lands wasn’t going to be one issue, it was going to be eight. When I love a series, I watch it more than once. And when I love a comic book, I’m going to read every scrap of information that adds something, adds a layer of amazement and understanding, and that’s what League offers.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (16:30):
Cool. Thanks Max. Okay, do we want to go to comments or we want to go to the next person?

Ed Kearsley (16:38):
Sean,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (16:40):
Nice to see you

Ed Kearsley (16:41):
In reference to the art that was displayed before you run boys. Hello. Good afternoon. I need to read League, love the movie. You’ve Got Red saying, then we’ve got DVN 61,

Max Ferrada (17:01):
That’s

Ed Kearsley (17:02):
Word says here, read Archie Comics.

Max Ferrada (17:04):
I have never read an Archie comic. I should, yeah. Yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (17:10):
A lot of fun.

Max Ferrada (17:11):
Give me recommendations of where to start.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (17:13):
Awesome. Well, we’re going to go backwards, so we’re going to go, well, we’ll go clockwise. Yeah. Tom, tell us about your book, buddy.

Tom Tung (17:23):
I’ve got Karate Prom by Kyle Starks and Kyle Starks has done a lot of offbeat action things and when I heard he is doing a high school drama, I thought that sounds really weird for him and I’m glad I still picked it up. Really fun. The tagline is, it’s the best night of your life if you can survive it.

(17:49)
It’s about two people in high school who both compete in karate tournaments. It’s the three sections, their prom night, the after party, and their graduation. And each has a lot more karate than you’d expect to have in your prom after party or graduation. I’ll give you a look at the art. It’s the kind of comic art that has a really nice energy to it. And if you’ve ever watched an action movie that’s full of action but also really boring, this is not it. This is the kind of art where you’ve got a lot of character in some of the poses. They’re one of those things where if you look at a pose, you’re like, that doesn’t actually make any sense, but the energy carries it through really well.

(18:51)
And Kyle Stocks knows how to do comics. He knows how to tell a story that’s good for the page. It’s one of those things where, yeah, it’s full of karate, it’s full of action, but it’s not overstaying. Its welcome. All the action is purposeful. There’s a lot of character building throughout fight scenes. And because you’re getting three different stories in the one book, you get a lot of decent character progression across three stories and it’s done in one. So this is from First Second Press, and you know what, I’m probably going to keep buying more Kyle Stark’s books.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (19:37):
Cool. Have you read any other Cole staff books?

Tom Tung (19:40):
So there was a book called Assassination, which is a bunch of assassins all killing each other. And there was another book called The Six Sidekicks of Trigger Keon, where a beloved action star from the seventies is killed. And the six child actors who had played his sidekicks over his career gets all swept up into his murder investigation. So he always does these sort of offbeat type action things and this one is just as good

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (20:17):
And you sound like a fan. I like it.

Ed Kearsley (20:20):
Sweet. So it sounds like he’s doing a lot of martial arts kind of movie inspired.

Tom Tung (20:27):
He is. There is a genre thing to a lot of his stuff, but at the same time, clearly apart from watching a bunch of action flicks, he’s watched a lot of high school dramas as well and it’s quite a charming book.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (20:46):
Nice. Thanks Tom. So if I’m going clockwise, I’ll go comments. Sorry.

Ed Kearsley (20:59):
They got a nice compliment.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (21:00):
Yes, he is very passionate. That’s what I love about the man. Cool. Well, if we’re going clockwise, ed, do you get to tell us about your book?

Ed Kearsley (21:11):
So I’ve got Deaf Ship Jenny by Rob O’Connor. It’s Australian creator. So Jenny is that girl there, from what I gather, she was on a cartoon when she was a kid called Deaf Ship Jenny and Pepper throughout the, there you go. There’s ads throughout the whole thing. And so she’s a transition from a child star into a Big Brother reality TV show kind of deal. And it’s in the future. So there’s all sorts of spaceships and stuff flying around in the future cities and she’s trying to get out of the life, but parents are pushing her into trying to get her more jobs as just anything to keep her famous and she’s trying to get away from it all. And there’s some sourcey pictures of her leaked over the future version of the internet that she’s getting chased down the street by crowds of people. And she’s invented a hard light roller skate thing. She’s like Inspector gadgets. She can make roller skates come out of her shoes and she kind of gets hooked up with these people who are going to Mars and there’s these clones and they all like Dwayne Johnson

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (22:49):
Wasn’t just me. Good.

Ed Kearsley (22:53):
And that’s where we leave off on the first episode or the first issue is they’re heading off to Mars and Jenny, she’s been recruited by these people who may or may not be a bit sus, but there’s lots of cultural satire about the nature of fame and the people who are chasing it and stuff like that. And it’s really well written and the artwork’s excellent. So we know Rob O’Connor from, he’s been on the Let’s Make a comic book, but the really high level professional cartooning, really strong artwork and the story’s great and then see the Women’s magazine cover. So there’s all that satirical stuff going through the story of this young woman who’s been kind of forced into her life she doesn’t want anymore. And so she’s going to get the heck out of there and go to Mars. So that is how you do. Yes, we’ve got Lee. So that is my pick for out of the

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (24:19):
Four issue series.

Ed Kearsley (24:22):
Yes, there’s definitely this story is finished and then he’s starting a new one as well, so

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (24:31):
Oh cool. I did not know that.

Ed Kearsley (24:33):
Good to look forward to. Hope that wasn’t a spoiler problem.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (24:36):
Now. Well going. Well we’ve only got one person left. So Ryan, tell us about your book buddy.

Ryan Christopher (24:46):
Alright, so things are about to get quite a bit darker. So the book that I’ve chosen is Razor Jack by John Higgins. John Higgins is best known as the Colorist for Watchman and the Killing Jock. So he’s worked with Alan Moore, another Alan Moore connection, and since about 1978, he’s been fairly heavily involved with 2000 ad. So Judge Dread and whatnot, including a couple of other series that he sort of co-created like Dreadnoughts, which is a prequel series that sets up the events that leads to sort of the Society of Judge Dread and another great 2000 ad sort of spinoff series called Grey Suit, but Razor Jack. So it was first published in sort of an anthology format in 1999 by Jack Publishing, but this is the remastered edition published in 2013 by Titan Comics. So some of the artworks being tidied up, some of the dialogues being tweaked on this sort of revised collected edition.

(26:05)
It includes two additional short stories that weren’t in the original publication, one that serves as a sequel and one that serves as a prequel and it includes a gallery of preliminary sketches and covers and things like that. But the book itself is sort of a law and order SVU meets hell raiser sort of situation. So it centres around three narratives going at the same time that all can joinin. So first we’ve got the narrative set in this sort of hellscape universe called the Twist, where the demon queen razor jack has captured her sort of main rival and she’s trying to learn the secret to jump between dimensions. Basically she wants to come into our world and she wants to bring her armies and her vision of hell to Earth Lovely. At the same time, our two main focal point characters are two detectives named Ross and Frame who are investigating a series of brutal homicides that we may learn, have some connection to these demons from another rail, as well as some sort of unwitting college kids who are rehearsing for Performance of Macbeth and may accidentally make a fisure between the two universes and allow the influence of Razor Jack to start spilling into our realm.

(28:01)
So it is quite a gruesome book. There’s some amazingly brutal artwork. Can you chuck that up on the screen for me, sis? Oh yeah, sorry. Just an example of the inner artwork. What I love about the way that John Higgins colours his work is that even for people who have read Watchmen, and probably more so the killing joke too is that he’s not afraid to completely stray from realism and head into abstract mood related colour schemes and I kind of love it. It makes his work look like nobody else’s. Yeah. So I am glad that there’s the two additional short stories that are thrown into the back of the book because in and of itself, my only criticism is probably that the book is quite short.

(29:11)
It ramps up this tension and it wraps it up quite quickly. So you do get left with a sense of that this is almost a prelude to a much larger story that I hope that John one day gets to tell if there is something there. He does want to tell it because I feel like there’s a whole universe to be told, we get a sense of the backstory and the power of some of these characters from this other realm, but we don’t really get to dig in enough. So we jump through the narratives a little bit quicker than I probably would’ve liked. So the book is, I mean, it’s quite thin.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (30:03):
Oh yeah. When you held it front ways, it looked quite thick.

Ryan Christopher (30:08):
Just trying to see how many pages the main story is.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (30:13):
Oh, there better be page numbers or Dave Dial would be very upset.

Ryan Christopher (30:16):
There are page numbers.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (30:18):
Oh, Dave will be happy if you’re watching Dave, this is a book for you.

Ryan Christopher (30:24):
So it’s an 80 page story plus the prequel and the SQL segments. But I could have easily had this be double the length. I think that if it was double the length, some of the pacing issues would’ve been easily overcome and it maybe would’ve made, it’s not that the story doesn’t end in a satisfying way, it’s just you. I don’t think if you get into the story as much as I did and you’re sort of hanging on the events, then it probably just comes about a bit too quick. But yeah, I highly recommend it. You can pick it up. I got this one from Book Grosser if they still have any stock of it there, I think I paid about $12 or something like that. But yeah, if you’re a fan of cop dramas, if you’re a fan of horror, then it sort of blends the two of them pretty seamlessly into a pretty good story.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (31:50):
Awesome. So would you say Shakespeare is Leave it alone. That’s the moral of the story. Just leave Shakespeare alone. No, just joking.

Ryan Christopher (32:09):
It’s probably a sense of where does Darkness come from? Okay, you’ve got these horrendous crimes.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (32:17):
Yeah, it’s Shakespeare. Interesting.

Ryan Christopher (32:18):
And this idea. Yeah. To what extent are we responsible for the atrocities that befit mankind? Oh

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (32:28):
Yeah.

Ryan Christopher (32:31):
Cool. Yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (32:35):
Back to me I guess. And sorry about the camera angle people. My normal camera is not working. Oh, comments, sorry.

Ed Kearsley (32:46):
Things are about to get quite a bit darker as how I’m going to introduce myself. I got four monkeys. Woohoo. Sorry I’m late. What did I miss? You missed?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (32:58):
Okay, we’ll just do it all over again just for you. The show,

Ryan Christopher (33:01):
Just the whole show,

Ed Kearsley (33:04):
Max’s Review of Hearts on Fire is spot on and the whole series is one of the best comic series ever, 20 years of the making and very hard to surpass.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (33:14):
Oh, okay.

Ed Kearsley (33:16):
And really liking into notes reads.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (33:22):
Sweet.

Ryan Christopher (33:25):
I have to just double down on what Ed has said about Death Ship Jenny. I think that when you think of, I’m going to be kind, but kind of be truthful about some things. The Aussie comic scene, what I love about it is it’s all about just getting the work out there in front of people so people aren’t necessarily fixating on every last little crisp detail of every project that ever comes out. Because there’s a space for everything from the most indie of Indie through to the most polished professional style books that book from Top to Tails Death Chip, Jenny is one of the most professionally finished and put together indie Aussie books that I’ve ever come across. It really is kudos to Rob for really, I know he agonised over doing the colours to get the book to a spot where he was happy to put it to print and he did a fantastic job. He really should be commended and thrilled with the work that he’s put out.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (34:44):
Yep. Well done Rob. Big fan. Rob. You love that guy? Yes. Well this is the part where I say, do you want me to hit it? I’ll hit it. Have we got more comments coming while I was saying that I’m not keeping track?

Ed Kearsley (35:04):
No good.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (35:07):
So what I want to say is people, you want to go here, you want to go to Comex Show slash Interest. What this is about is coming onto the show, you don’t have to be a creator, you don’t have to be an indie creator and hell, if you’re willing to do crazy hours, you don’t even have to be in Australia. All we have to be is someone who reads a comic, liked the comic, and wants to talk about that comic. That’s what we are looking for in this particular show. That link will also take you to the ability to show interest in our other shows and I’ll get in contact with you, we’ll discuss what we can do and all that sort of stuff. But mainly tonight I’m talking about this show. We want comic fans, not just creators. This is about people who love comics. That’s what this show’s all about. Any comic, I think Ed would agree that even Manga fits in there. That’s just a type of comic as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know if everyone agrees with that, but that’s what I think. So yeah, so go to that link Comex show slash interest or just go to show and up in the top menu is show your interest and fill out the form, give me your details and I’ll get in contact with you to get you on the show.

Ed Kearsley (36:32):
I will be doing some manger at some point too.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (36:35):
Ooh, we’ve had a few people do Manger on here. So yeah, so what I will do, I’m doing a bit of an experiment tonight, so you’ll have to excuse me, Kerry just said, oh no. Oh God, I’m pressing extra camera here. We don’t want that. We don’t want my crappy camera coming through. So what we’re doing is we’re doing a bit of a race to promote ourselves. So I’m going to see if this works. I’ve made some notes so hopefully I can get through it in a minute. I’ll just get rid of that so we can see everyone. And I guess I’ll go first and I will press the play button and see what I can say in a minute and go like we’re saying show interest, do that. Okay. Battle for Bustle, volume two, issue one is in the Comex shop.

(37:41)
So yeah, go to the shop, buy that, buy a whole bunch of other comics with it. But while I’m saying that Outlaw will be out by the end of the week, that’s issues one and two, they’ll also be in the shop. So maybe you want to wait until that comes out so you can order that with Battle for Bustle and a few other comics. Speaking of other comics, I’ll be adding a whole bunch of comics from Nick Quick into the shop, adding some stock for Dave Dye. And I think I’ve got a few other comics down there that I’ve forgotten who they are. So I’m really great at this. And that’s enough about the shop. Then we’ve got Art People, art Send in your art comic show slash art, sending your art to Batwoman. That is the character for this Friday night for Drink and Draw. And I think I made a minute.

Ed Kearsley (38:29):
Nice.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (38:33):
Who wants to go next? No one. I’ll pick someone then. I mean you don’t have to go a full minute. If you’ve only got a little bit to say then just say a little bit. Just show us your books, show us your whatever. I meant to get links off people to put up on the screen. Sorry about that. That was a bit disorganised, but we’ll go with problem. Looks very comfortable down there. Yep,

Tom Tung (39:03):
Let’s do it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (39:05):
Let’s do it. Back him on the big screen. Okay. 1, 2, 3, go.

Tom Tung (39:13):
Well, if I’ve got a minute, I’m going to use the minute if I can. Oh no, I’ve wasted more time already. Crumbs. Okay, hang on a second. Mini Tom is my daily cartoon Mini. Tom is in the day 2006 hundreds at the moment. If you Google Tom Tong and you look for the cartoonist, not the doctor, you’ll find me

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (39:38):
Much

Tom Tung (39:38):
To my father’s shame. If you want print versions of my books right now, the only place you can pick them up is all Star comics in Melbourne. But if you are not lucky enough to be a Melbourne local and you do want to get ahold of my books, I’ve got a bunch of paperbacks, I’ve got a bunch of single issues, and if only there was a comic website which could stock local books that I could submit to that. Oh, five seconds left already. I’ll have to get back to that.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (40:14):
Oh, I wasn’t expecting that.

Ryan Christopher (40:17):
Oh, the Cone of Death.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (40:19):
What have you done? Oh my goodness. Ah, it’s not letting me do anything.

Tom Tung (40:28):
That’s an imposing counter.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (40:31):
Yeah, that is is here I shrink it. Sorry. Okay, I’ve now learned don’t let it go all the way to the end. Lesson learned. Okay, I am going to pick on Ryan now. He’s smiling too much. Okay, so tell us about yourself, Ryan.

Ryan Christopher (40:57):
Alright, so I’m the owner of Corner Box Comic Art where I represent a couple of Aussie artists, Lauren Marshall, Jason Paul, and Colin Wilson for original art, sales and signings and things like that. So the main thing that is coming up is Lauren Marshall has a store variant cover coming out for Teenage N Turtles number one one. So I will be posting about that on the Facebook page sometime soon about how you can get a copy, a signed copy, and it looks like we’ll be trying to do a CGC signing as well. So you’ll be able to get a signature series book by Lauren Marshall hopefully sometime in the next week or so. That’s it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (41:55):
Nice. Awesome. Okay, who do I pick on now? I reckon Ed should go last because he’s pressing the buttons. So Max, you’re up buddy. Tell us a bit about yourself starting now.

Max Ferrada (42:14):
Okay, I am Max Ada. I am the author of Stellar Lands. Do you have a copy of the book nearby? I don’t.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (42:22):
I don’t actually.

Max Ferrada (42:26):
Yes, I don’t have any in proximity right now, but because there it’s

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (42:30):
Ed.

Max Ferrada (42:32):
Ed, yes. We sold out of Stellar Lands in New South Wales from both recent Cons, comic Gong and Supernova. It’s been well reviewed over 50 vlogs and websites. You can get a copy at Comex, but also issue two will launch on Kickstarter on the 18th, which is Thursday. So you can get a copy of both Stellar Lens one and two. And we have Kickstarter exclusive variant covers. I’m over, but that’s who I’m as a person. I’m always

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (43:18):
Max. Max.

Max Ferrada (43:20):
Always runeth over. But yes, join us on the launch on the 18th. There are stretch goals to be met. There are custom covers to be commissioned as well and it’s just dense, incredible, layered character driven story and I hope you’ll be with us.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (43:44):
Do I need to start it again, dude? Oh, sorry. Ed, tell us about your wonderful self starting now.

Ed Kearsley (43:56):
So I make comic books. I’ve got Radical is a superhero based in Melbourne that’s radical there. He’s learning how to use his powers and be a superhero. I do another one called Coba, which is a eighties crime drama that’s only available for the Patreons, which is at Ed Kiley Art on Patreon and on my Instagram and Means says do another show called Let’s Make a comic book where it’s on Thursdays and every panel has a different artist says 53 artists all Australian in this book. And we’ll be, we’re doing season two, which is Bitsy the Trading Cat is the new character. There you go.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (45:04):
Just so you know, being really good friends with S means you get to go over time apparently. Now I’ve got to go back here and I’ll close this down.

Ed Kearsley (45:17):
Should we run that?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (45:18):
We don’t need that pesky timer anymore. Ruining all our fun. This is part of the show where we do the Comex ad, like share

Ed Kearsley (45:37):
The wrong one.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (45:39):
Are

Voice Over (45:39):
You feeling a little down tired of reading the same old books again and again looking for something different? Why not head over to the comic shop now and pick yourself up some freshly inked inspiration?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (46:09):
Hell yeah. The Shop Comex Shop now redirects you to comex net au slash store. You can just go to comex net au, there’s a menu item, pick the shop. The site will slowly start getting all the profiles back. We have to work on that. And then we’ll get the other functionality that comex.net you used to have, but we’ll have the shop as part of it. Reasoning for that is just so things are all in one place rather than all these multiple sites that I thought was a good idea at the time. It wasn’t really a good idea. So yes, so we’re putting the sites together. So now we’ve done the shop ad. This is the part where we do the little quick fire and I’m going to do something very unconventional for our quick shot round of recommendations. I’m going to recommend something I haven’t read yet.

(47:12)
Battle for Basle volume two issue one. I will be reading it straight after the show, so next show verify that it was worth recommending, but no, no, no. I’ve heard from people who have read it that it was brilliant and it is one of Lee’s Best works. So it is in the shop now. Buy it with all the other things that have been in the shop this week. So maybe wait till Friday, I don’t want to put you off. But then just buy all of them. All of them at one shipping rate for Australians, $9. So you buy one comic, you buy 10 comics, it’s $9. So in Australia, I just want to put that out there because Lead never says that and people have asked. So just saying it. What’s your recommendation, Ryan?

Ryan Christopher (48:04):
All right. I’m actually kind of recommending a series of books. Yeah, that’s cool. These lovely hardcover insight editions of HG Wells stories. So they came out with the island of Dr. Moreau, the Invisible Man, war of the Worlds and a Time Machine. Alright, cool. And so they’ve sort of been adapted to comic scripts by a literature historian and then illustrated by some phenomenal European artists. So this one island of Dr. Moreau Fabrizio Fiorentino, who worked on Amazing Spider-Man is the interior artist for this one. And it’s just really stunning.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (49:23):
Very nice.

Ryan Christopher (49:25):
This sort of indicative, if you’ve read a lot of European comics, the style is indicative of that across all. They’re not all illustrated by the same person, but they’ve all got that same sensibility to them. Everything’s in super fine detail. The colour are beautiful. Yeah, they can make some talking head stories into incredibly interesting. So yeah, they sort of take the HG Well stories and elevate them into something pretty special. So I can’t recommend them enough. You should be able to order them through your local comic book store.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (50:11):
Cool. Nice. Shall I pick on? Well I’ve been picking on Tom all night, so why not pick on Tom again? Cool. Alright,

Tom Tung (50:22):
I of the Adventures of Superhero Girl in secondhand bins and bargain bins and this book is gold. It is by Faith. Erin Hicks, who’s a fantastic artist, and this is the story of superhero girl who’s moved to a new town to get out from underneath the shadow of her older brother who’s a more popular superhero. If you like Ns, this book’s good for you. If you like superheroes, this book’s good for you. And if you like stories of really inconsiderate roommates, this is a good book for you. If you are not lucky enough to find this in a secondhand bin off a half price, don’t worry. You can buy it new and you should be

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (51:15):
Nice. Nice, nice. Thanks Tom. Okay, I’m going to let Ed go last again. So Max yes. Tell us your recommendation, buddy.

Max Ferrada (51:26):
Well, my apartment is basically just books everywhere, so I’m just going to reach out randomly, just

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (51:32):
Reach one randomly, that’s a spirit.

Max Ferrada (51:34):
See what I get. But most of it is books Right now I’ve got Grapes of wr. I’m not going to recommend that in a comic book. I wish I

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (51:46):
Forgot to tell you about this part of the show.

Max Ferrada (51:48):
What

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (51:50):
Recommendation, you don’t seem very ready.

Max Ferrada (51:53):
Okay, here we go. Lane Call. This is from Roski. Well, it’s drawn by very popular European illustrator called Mobius. It’s very fast. He did the storyboards for the unfortunately Heartbreakingly Unproduced S’S Dune. And in order to I guess give them some sort of consolation prize, it might’ve even exceeded their vision. They created Al, which is a story about a private and guest investigator who gets into all sorts of shenanigans. And then there’s a McGuffin as well, which has world ending capabilities. It’s irreverent, it’s funny, and I believe it’s on the slate for television for a movie. I’m not sure if it’s a movie or a TV series, but being directed by Tika White tt. And I think that’s a pairing that’s going to be a winner. I know Tika has fallen out favour at the moment for infusing his Marvel properties with too much humour, but I think that tendency is just going to work to the benefit of Mobius. Just look, look at the illustration. I mean it’s there. It doesn’t necessarily take itself too seriously because there is a lot of frivolity in the pages, but there’s also a lot of intricacy and the world building and early on there’s a sort of encounter with a skin stretcher. I’m not going to give too much away, but yeah, it’s thick, but you’ll race through it. It’s that kind of well-paced narrative.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (53:51):
Awesome. Thanks Max.

Max Ferrada (53:54):
No worries.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (53:54):
I’ll have to look that one up. Ed, is there comments before we go to You

Ed Kearsley (54:01):
Can do comments.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:03):
I haven’t been looking, that’s all. I don’t know.

Ed Kearsley (54:05):
It’s an excuse to get to my to be red pile.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:09):
Yeah, I’ve got the same thing going on.

Ed Kearsley (54:13):
Just the reason why we made this show to make us read comments. Yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:17):
Only reason.

Ed Kearsley (54:19):
And then really it’s speed. Run Tom.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:24):
Okay, cool. Ed, what’s your recommendation this week? This is going to get hard after a while.

Ed Kearsley (54:30):
Detective Budgie by Nick Quick. Nick Cleary.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:34):
Yeah, it’s a good one.

Ed Kearsley (54:35):
Drink and draw. It’s a hard boiled like crime noir the detective, but everyone’s birds and it’s really funny. It’s really well written and quite thick. So I think there’s a couple of books collected in there and you can see Nick’s just art and storytelling getting stronger and stronger as he goes through. The more pages he gets under his belt, the better his stuff gets and get that. The comic shop.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:18):
Comic shop. Yep. So lots of things in the comic shop. That’s what we’ve decided tonight. And yeah, like I was saying before, Nick Quick, a few of his newer books will be in the shop as well. Well as that particular one. Detective Budgie. Yes, agreed. It was a lot of fun.

Ed Kearsley (55:40):
Yes, I liked it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:43):
And I guess this is the part where we all say thank you all for coming onto the show. Thank you all for your telling us about the books that you’ve read recently and for your recommendations. I’ll be looking them up after the show. And yeah, thanks for coming on. Thanks for everyone who watched. Thank you. For anyone who’s gone to that link that’s in the thing down here com X show slash interest. Let us know that you want to be on the show. We’d love to have you. Yeah, tell us about how you want to be on the show. We’ll get you on. Come meet me and Ed. Maybe Brian, maybe Shannon, who knows. What do you reckon, ed? Yeah, hit the button, my friend. Good night. All like share and subscribe.