Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (00:18):
Welcome to another episode of Comex Recent Reads. I am Ciz or Sizzle or Shane SLE or whatever. Most people call me Ciz. In this particular environment, we are going to be talking about what we’ve recently read. Before I go around the room, I will say, remember to the video, share the video with other people and subscribe to the channel that helps us grow. Oh, look at that. We’ve got some cool little things there. Awesome. Thanks, ed. So we’re going to start with Ed. What the hell, ed? What are you going to be telling us about today?

Ed Kearsley (00:58):
Today I’ve got presents number four from Comic Studio of all people.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:05):
Excellent choice. And then we’ll go to David. Oh, I meant to do the, yeah, well, I’ve missed it on Ed, so I’ll miss it on everyone else. What are you going to tell us about today?

David Schembri (01:22):
I’m going to talk about the weird and wild art of Scar.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:26):
Oh, nice, nice. And Ryan, Christopher, what are you going to tell us about?

Ryan Christopher (01:35):
I’m going to be talking about the Brian K. Lindsay and Louis Joyce Kung fu revenge. Novella. A fistful of pain.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:45):
Yeah, that looks cool.

David Schembri (01:47):
I love the foil on

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:47):
That.

Ryan Christopher (01:48):
Yeah, it’s pretty crazy.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:52):
And then Max, what are you going to be talking to us about today?

Max Ferrada (01:55):
Okay, I have Gods among Men from Nation by New Kids on the block, on the comics block, the Mack Brothers.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (02:06):
Nice. And I forgot to say what I’m doing, which is Outlaw. So we’ve got a real Comex night going on tonight except well almost. And so

Ed Kearsley (02:26):
You got some comments?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (02:27):
Comments? Yes.

Ed Kearsley (02:29):
You got Carrie says, howdy all. Howdy. I spy Astro Boy.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (02:35):
Oh yes. Nice. Oh

David Schembri (02:36):
Yeah, there’s Astro Boy.

Ed Kearsley (02:40):
Hey, well read Humans from Nick May from Nadia. Hi guys. Awesome. Hi, Nathan. Cool.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (02:51):
Well, I’ll start it off. I like to start off to show everyone what not to do. The part that I missed in the intro I’ll do now. So I’m Ciz the Comex guy, so I’m all things Comex there. That’s what I’m known for. Okay. So like I said, outlaw is what I’ll be talking about today. I did a funny thing that Stu, the creator of this with Oscar, his son also the editor, I believe I read two thinking it was the first one I got as a pdf, so I didn’t notice the cover. So I’ve read two. I quickly skimmed through one before the show, but I read two, so the action starts in two. Now I’m sure it starts in one as well, but this is a great book. It starts with, I keep forgetting his name. It’s usually just people, William, that’s it. William has put on the armour in one because I read it slightly through it to see why he had the armour and they were being invaded or terrorist attack or something. So he put the armour on to protect himself. Now he’s stuck in the armour and he’s on a park bench when some operatives of the law attack.

(04:21)
So then it’s a cool big white scene and all that sort of jazz. Then it goes back to headquarters of these guys, and I won’t go into the detail of that. That’ll kind of rule and what the guy finds out in one and it ends with him going, what have they’ve done? And this one, you find out what they’ve done. So there’s a big fight between him and the guy in charge over what they’ve done. That is the worst explanation of a story ever. Believe me. Great art, great story. It was a lot of fun to read. It is very reminiscent of your old eighties comics. Just action fun. Yeah, so I would say go get it. Not just because it’s a comics comic and who knows why. I love two more. It’s got the smaller Comex studio, but two is awesome, two is awesome, and one I’m sure once I read it properly is awesome as well. When I skimmed it, it was awesome. But yeah, they’re in the Comex shop right now as well. I’ll advertise that. There you go. Anyone got some questions for me? Show us the artwork. Show us the artwork. Of course,

(05:40)
There’s one of the fights, there’s the guy sort of going, oh no, help me help. And then there’s the attacking him. Yeah. So

Max Ferrada (05:47):
The allusions to Ned Kelly are obvious right off the bat. So would

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (05:52):
You say

Max Ferrada (05:52):
That this is a sci-fi rendering of the outlaw legend of the Bush Ranger legend?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (05:59):
Yeah. I believe, don’t quote me on this, but I believe that was Stuss intent was to get an Australian feel to Ironman. So the Ned Kelly look to it gives you that Australian feel. I believe he’s never told me. That’s just what I interpreted from things that have been said.

Max Ferrada (06:20):
Well, yeah, it is iconic. So I can see why he would gravitate towards that iconography.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (06:26):
It works really well too with the suit. It looks really cool.

Max Ferrada (06:31):
Yes. Yeah. And it makes sense. We all know that Ned Kelly doned, that garb, that tin suit because it’s no fun being shot, especially in with those like those round pellets,

Ed Kearsley (06:53):
The sun

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (06:53):
Ones

David Schembri (06:54):
Balls.

Max Ferrada (06:55):
Yes. Back in the day.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (06:58):
Right. All bearings

David Schembri (07:05):
Be better. That technology lived now, and we had no automatic rifles. It was just all about put the powder in it down, they’ll get you just wait there,

Max Ferrada (07:18):
Don’t move.

David Schembri (07:19):
The world would be a place. It would be such a safe place. And mind you, that wasn’t my joke. That was someone else’s joke. It just resonated. I heard it from somewhere, but it’s just like it’s so true. The military just stuck with that didn’t advance anymore. Yeah.

Ryan Christopher (07:40):
If you were robbing people, you’d have to be prepared and accurate.

David Schembri (07:43):
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Ryan Christopher (07:47):
Someone’s going to rob you with a musket pistol and they get away with it. Kudos to them.

David Schembri (07:53):
Yeah, that’s right. They get one shot, basically one shot,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (08:00):
One shot,

David Schembri (08:02):
One shot.

Max Ferrada (08:04):
If you find a body of a guy with several musket wounds, it’s like, what were you doing, mate?

Ryan Christopher (08:15):
Standing still while somebody shot you

David Schembri (08:17):
Over and over, over and over. Yeah. It really makes you question, it’s just like if someone ever flew a spaceship into the asteroid belt, that’d be absolutely a moron to actually run into an asteroid because the closest distance is a million kilometres. True. Really weird.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (08:38):
So we move on to the next person. Do we

Ed Kearsley (08:41):
Get to comments?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (08:43):
I’ll get some comments. Yep. Sorry, I didn’t realise there’d being more.

Ed Kearsley (08:46):
So we’ve got Jeffrey. Hey, Jeffrey Day and Shaw. Oh, time to bankrupt myself again

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (08:56):
And

David Schembri (08:56):
Lee Chocolate with the hand

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (08:58):
Singles Lee. Cool. So who do I pick this time? Let’s go with David.

David Schembri (09:10):
Hey, no worries. Totally

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (09:12):
Predictable. That’s where it always goes. The top right top.

David Schembri (09:18):
No worries. I can get this talk.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (09:24):
Yes.

David Schembri (09:27):
Yeah, one and only. Okay, so the book I’ve been reading recently is There we go.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (09:36):
Hold

David Schembri (09:37):
On. Wild Art of Scar. Now I haven’t been in the comic scene for very long, so it’s only been a few years and I’ve attended a few small events. So I first came across these guys when I attended a Creator Day out in Alternate Worlds where a bunch of creators were there, some that have appeared on this podcast several times. And I was immediately drawn to the table of Steve Carter and Antoinette Ryder and I grabbed one of their comics, and this wasn’t the first one I grabbed. There was a few others. They’ve been published by rie, by a lot of people. But what for me, I mean I love a lot of the stuff that I read, but with their work in particular, there’s just a colour vibrancy that they have. There is a real limitless feel like you love animation because animation doesn’t have the realities of filming live action.

(10:43)
You can literally do anything you want with animation. These guys, I feel push the boundaries of that with their comic book work, especially with their monster designs. Interspecies, it really was an eye opener for me. I was really just a Batman Marvel, the guy with comics and Spawn. I was a big fan of Spawn, still am Astroboy of course, but when I looked at their stuff, it was the kind of work that I just couldn’t put it down because it was just so out there and it just, even their topography, I’m a graphic designer, so I love type and typography and all of their hand rendered titles, so it’s their own fonts and they just do everything. So it’s all of those details and their colour work as well. I was mentioning before the vibrancy, but just a little example of that.

(11:47)
In one of these shots here, you’ve got a magenta background with colours on top and characters and everything’s just black outlined. They just make everything work. And the vibrancy of the outfit here for this particular character, it’s got, where is she? Oh, there she’s, yeah, that one. Yeah, it’s got the yellow, yellow arm and sort of the Mag Magary outfit as well. It’s just really, they just push the primary colours. They push it out there and I just really love their work. It’s vibrant and just the themes that just, they’re beyond what I would ever think of to put together and just a very big fan of their work. And so anyone out there who wanting to read comics with a bit of a difference and want to sort of take a ticket, get on the train and not really know where the hell it’s going to take you, I really recommend Scars work.

(12:49)
It certainly does that for me. And they’re published by a wide range of people, and if you ever, ever at a convention and there are tables there, there’s boundary something there you’re going to want to pick up and just have a read of. It’s just a nice, a nice, I think it’s just a nice variant to other things that you’d normally read if you’re big into superheroes or detective or heavy horror stuff, reading some of their stuff. It’s just got a bit of everything. And some of their work is really funny too. There’s a good bit of humour in there, but that’s what I’ve been drawn to at the moment recently.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (13:30):
How many of the books did you pick up? I noticed you showed more than one.

David Schembri (13:34):
Yeah, I actually only have four. Four

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (13:39):
Only. Oh, is that

David Schembri (13:41):
Four? There might be a few others. They were involved in a series called World Within by rie. Yeah, I remember that one. And that’s got a lot of other great creators doing Worlds Within as well, but they’ve done some features in that series. They have other really good ones like the FMO saw. It’s pretty cool. So this is a black and white treatment too. Not that wasn’t, but the rest of the comic has more of a black and white feel to it, but nice solid lines. And it’s again, even the cover of This one’s amazing, just love all the working in and the composition’s just fantastic and the balance of the colour. I dunno, I’m just a really big fan of it. It’s just really cool to look at having monsters become textures in themselves and merging into other things and having a monster that has a hand that has monsters on the fingers and love the limitless vibe that they have. They really just push the boundary and just literally just let their imaginations just run amuck on the page. And I just think it just works so well. Yeah, agreed.

Max Ferrada (15:05):
If I can interject, I believe Danny Nolan and I in our Aussie Andie review show, we covered a Worlds within by Steve Kata and Antoinette Rider, hence Scar. And from what I remember of it, and let me know if this is the case with what you read, it wasn’t one particular story arc, it was a port manta or a visione of several short stories with otherworldly themes combined metamorphosis and yeah, hunter becoming the hunted. Yes,

David Schembri (15:45):
Exactly. Yeah. Again, it’s another interesting element to their work is that, yeah, it’s all intermingled. Like the design of the art itself, the themes of the story do the same thing and just everything’s just churning and twisting and smouldering in there and yeah, I love it.

Max Ferrada (16:07):
Absolutely. And the art itself, I believe Danny was apt to call it old school. I mean, I’m quite new to the comics game, but would you say that that’s an accurate rendering? It’s very nostalgic in its artistry.

David Schembri (16:26):
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And it’s even the novelty little things, the micro details, even down to the page numbers on some of the stories within these books too, the page numbers actually just hand drawn with a little circle around it. And they used to find that on really old comics. And it’s lovely to see that they still adopt that style into their work now, still maintaining that, which I think is really cool. And yeah, I would say that, yeah, they still use a very, very hand to the drawing table style of work, which I tend to relate to too. I like working at the drawing table and my digital stuff happens at the end. So yeah, I really like that hand drawn feel to their work. Yeah, it just adds a sense of nostalgia, like you said. I think that’s a valid observation for sure.

Ryan Christopher (17:31):
Yeah, it’s definitely giving those sort of early ec comics vibes, thrilling sci-fi stories and all that sort of stuff that they were publishing in the 1950s, that sort of

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (17:48):
Throwback element.

David Schembri (17:51):
Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah, there’s just so much, not

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (17:58):
All friendly for every viewing person.

David Schembri (18:02):
You got to have an open, good little observation there. That’s true. Not on every story, but just got to not every story, no limitless. Just buy a ticket, take the ride, and just, yeah, open. I think it’s fantastic.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (18:29):
Yeah, it is. I’ve read quite a few of their stories now and they’re a lot of fun. They’re

David Schembri (18:34):
A lot of fun. Absolutely. And that’s what, it’s

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (18:37):
Very different. Very different from anything else.

David Schembri (18:39):
Yeah, I don’t try, I love good in depth work as well, serious stuff, political stuff. But it’s lovely to have a refresher in that limitless world where it’s a lot of fun and the story of writing is great. The writing in it is really wonderful too. So when I was reading through this collection, especially just in one of the stories, they just have some large blocks of story detail, and I’m just following and I’m just going, this is really well thought out. And just go the next page and just get all these wild animals and monsters and travel and time walks. Excellent.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (19:26):
Yeah, it’s good fun. Cool. Thanks that David.

David Schembri (19:32):
No worries.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (19:34):
We shall go to Max. Oh yeah, sorry. Comments

Max Ferrada (19:39):
Missed out on the review of Ned Kelly and a myriad discussion about old timey muskets

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (19:50):
Rewatch later Stu, and how badly I talked about your book and the opposite of talking badly about books. We’ve got Max. So Max, tell us about God’s amongst men

Max Ferrada (20:04):
From the vast expanse of the scar galaxies. We now take a

David Schembri (20:09):
More

Max Ferrada (20:12):
Micro view of the Dan and dark back alleys of Rich, me and Melbourne in God’s among men. Now right off, you can see from the front cover that the details of this particular book, and anyone who knows the Australian indie comic scene will know the name of Benjamin Sullivan because he like, as you earlier mentioned, he doesn’t work digitally. Is there a word for that? When you traditional? Yeah, when you work traditionally, when you work analogue. And yeah, I heard in a previous podcast that I was on that he still uses razor blades to accentuate his artwork. So that’s what you get here. You did the emotion in every line and every stroke. I actually did read the book. I’m not going to concentrate on the cover. That’s what I used to do back in my old days when I didn’t read Weathering Heights. And I just talked about the cover for a while.

(21:27)
But I did read Weathering Heights and I did read Gods Among Men, and the first thing that really comes out to me, and this is what I relay to the Max Brothers, is that this comic book has a sense of place. Immediately after I read it, I looked up Rise Burgers on Google Street views, and I did that whole stalkery thing where you play with a street view camera to see if you could get the right angle. And yeah, all of this is there, this beautiful cover here. This is this splash page I should say. It’s not a spoiler. They’ve used it in the Mack Brothers have used it in a lot of their publicity. But yes, that building with the arches is there. It’s still there on Google Street view. And yeah, the sense of place is very palpable, and that’s something that is very difficult to do with any medium.

(22:38)
Now this starts with Goodfellas. It starts with a sort of nefarious prologue. And in a sense you could say that this whole book is a prologue. It’s not very thick, it’s very thin, but a lot of it is set up and you get a hint of where that’s all leading to. In the first page when the protagonist Jason is shown into a drug den. I won’t get into the specifics of what kind of drugs, I’m not entirely sure what the age appropriateness is for this channel, but you see it in all of its detail, like the melting faces. I mean, drug taking has been expressed in various degrees throughout a lot of interesting medium. The electric Kool-Aid test by Wolf comes to mind, the Tommy’s the who is another, and yeah, there’s quite a few, probably my favourite one is Big Lebowski. When he gets punched in the face instead of blacking out, he goes into this sort of dream sequence of what it’s like to be an alcoholic who’s just been knocked out.

(24:09)
And you get that in a particular page, which actually I’ll show that splash page as well because it’s not a spoiler, because again, it was used quite extensively in their publicity, but, but here it is. Here it is of the drug taking, the pupils rolling back, the sense of disembodiment and just leaving your body for however long. But you get that. And I’d like to also give credit, give a shout out to the moody colour scape by Filipino artist Anthony Wilson Go. His name comes up a lot in the indie scene, and it’s no wonder he is exceedingly talented and he’s just like Ben, both Ben’s, the Ben who works on my book, and the Ben who works in this book, there are attention to detail is alarming. It just leaps off the page. So that’s how we’re introduced into this world. Every page after that is a step taken in illustrating the stakes of what it took to bring an otherwise responsible character or responsible person within that environment.

(25:47)
So what are the motivations that find you teetering between lawlessness and a traditional life, and what does it take in order to push you one way or the other? And yeah, the stakes are fleshed out with a lot of flair and humanity. A lot of great characters are introduced. You see the restaurant and it’s gimmick. I guess it’s a key selling point of rice instead of burgers since rice burgers, you see Jason’s daughter, children are definitely a very strong, very visceral way to set up the stakes. And without giving too much away, the climax is a discussion of another splash page, which I won’t show because it is full of spoilers. But yeah, it’s a discussion that brings them to the bands of illegality. And there is supposed to be supernatural elements which are injected throughout and it perhaps sprinkled between the pages, but right now they’re not evident perhaps in future issues. If there is one criticism I have to relay about the book, it’s that it does feel like a prologue, like all prologue, is that the right word? Epilogue is at the end. Prologue is at the beginning. Is that correct? Yes.

(27:23)
I get mixed up between the two. But yes, it does feel like all prologue, but very expertly written. There is a lot of dense poetry to the voiceover. It’s wall to wall voiceover, which usually I don’t like. Not in films, not in, yeah, certainly not in comics, but an exception in films is Goodfellas. And if I could evoke that again, I could see parallels between that and this. They call it a Norco war. So that war has its roots in French cinema war, black as in a crime caper or a crime film. Multi Falcon is probably the first example of that. And yeah, narco train spotting, breaking bad narco meaning drugs, of course. But yeah, I guess the voiceover within that parallel absolutely works. And the writers are themselves songwriters, so it’s eminently quotable and yeah, very poetic as well. I definitely do recommend it.

(28:34)
And they have a whole website and everything. They have a TikTok that is just pumping with the sort of vibrant youth, which is no longer within my grasp as a 38 year old’s all there. And it’s a reminder of my inadequacies on an energetic level, but yes, yes, do check them out in TikTok. This is, I believe, on Apple Books and they have their own website. God’s Among Men. Yeah. I mean the supernatural elements which are promised really don’t come to the fore, but I’m sure they will in subsequent issues. They’re probably in the writing stages now. So yeah, check out. And that’s a hardcover. That’s a hardcover book. Yeah, they had that Kickstarter, right? Hardcover and it has a spine and everything. And the first time you open it, you hear that crack, that indelible crack. And I know I’ve been missing something. Before I met Shane, I was completely a digital reader. And then, yeah, Shane I guess forced me back into the physical realm and yeah, I’ve missed that. I’ve missed that crack of a hardcover.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (29:58):
Welcome to the Real World. You’ll like it here.

Max Ferrada (30:04):
I’ve already lost all my shelf space. It’s in my couch. I wish I could show you my studio apartment. It’s in my dinner table. I got to go out to eat now. I can’t invite dates over, and when I do bring a girl over, I still have to do that thing where I have to cover the embarrassing NSFW comics. It’s not embarrassing. I know. It’s not embarrassing. They see something like that. The dates finished, it’s done.

Ryan Christopher (30:34):
I’m kind of envisioning that scene from The Matrix now with you and Ciz, like the Red Pill, blue pill scene.

Max Ferrada (30:45):
It did feel like that we had that discussion. I had no intention of making Stellar Lands Physical. It was going to be PDF or Kindle all the way. But yeah, I’m glad he changed my mind and changed my apartment space. I guess

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (31:00):
I know exactly how you feel.

Max Ferrada (31:02):
I know, yeah. So yeah, I really enjoyed talking about this and yeah, check ’em out.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (31:11):
Thanks Max. And I will just add, it’s also in the comic shop.

Max Ferrada (31:18):
Excellent.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (31:19):
Yes,

Ed Kearsley (31:20):
Some comments.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (31:22):
Yep.

Ed Kearsley (31:24):
You’ve got a great art in that book.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (31:27):
Agreed.

Ed Kearsley (31:29):
And I’ll be sure to go back and watch the start. It’s a good review. Your check is in the mail.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (31:35):
Well, there’s no check in the mail then. Okay, so we’ve got Ryan of Corner Box Comic Art.

Ryan Christopher (31:46):
That’s it. Tell

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (31:47):
Us about your book, my friend.

Ryan Christopher (31:49):
Alright, so my book is a Fistful of Pain.

Ed Kearsley (31:56):
Wow, that looks sick.

Ryan Christopher (31:58):
Yeah, doesn’t it? So this is by Ryan K. Lindsay, and Louis Joyce. So Ryan K. Lindsay, probably best known for Beautiful Canvas and Eternal published by Black Mask Chum. And she at the Tower of all that is known, both published by Comics Tribe, Louis Joyce, known for Hap Haven, which has just had a deluxe edition reprint from Ani Press came out in June, and he is currently tearing the house down with Godzilla Skate or Die, which he is both riding and illustrating for IDW. So check out all those, but to focus on this one, it’s available in this fancy foil, embossed, hardcover and soft cover. So the story is basically a kung fu sibling rivalry revenge epic with dragons.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (33:09):
Cool.

Ryan Christopher (33:10):
So the story, sorry,

(33:14)
The story focuses on two siblings, shin and Sloan set in Melbourne, Australia, and they come from a family where a family of scale herders. So they’re an ancient bloodline that have been tasked with sort of keeping the peace and caring for these dragons that exist in our world. And they have one dragon in particular that is like the family dragon named Gilgamesh, and it is Shin’s best friend in the world, and her sister decides that she wants the dragon for herself and takes the dragon from her. And then it turns into the ultimate sibling revenge drama with Kungfu. So the artwork in it is pretty phenomenal. I’ll see if I can, I just want to pull up something quite kinetic. Louis has this really great ability to transition between softness and frenetic kinetic energy. And in this particular story, it does a great job of almost pacing and adding a musicality to the story. So it paces itself in a way that you can read this book almost without dialogue and have it all come through with the same meaning. So it starts out with these nice soft colours and soft shapes, and then when things kick into gear,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (35:17):
Oh yeah, oh cool,

Ryan Christopher (35:18):
Nice. You bring this crazy frenetic energy to the forefront.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (35:25):
It’s awesome. It,

Ryan Christopher (35:29):
It’s pretty unlike

(35:33)
Louis’ style is unlike anything else that’s sort of out there. And I’m glad that he’s sort of getting this new attention on him thanks to Godzilla. Godzilla is sort of all the rage at the moment with Godzilla minus zero winning the Oscar for best foreign film. Great time to have a Godzilla comic out there in the world. Graphics not foreign film, and this one is sort of, it tugs in the heartstrings for anyone who’s got a sibling and maybe has had an up and down relationship with their sibling throughout their life. And if you’re a fan of Kung fu films, if you’ve watched a lot of Hong Kong cinema films of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, SAMO Hong, then this is sort of going to be right up your alley. It’s only a graphic novella, so it is quite short, but it maintains a level of energy throughout that ramps up towards the conclusion. And it tells a nice story as well. It’s kind of sad, but it does what it needs to do to sort of get the point across.

(36:58)
So that’s Gilgamesh on the Oh, cool. Cover there. Nice die cut cover as well. Oh wow. Yeah, the back of the book is full of pinups that have been done by other artists. There’s interviews, there’s some fun little extras, I think possibly some script pages to sort of show you how some things have been broken down and laid out, which I absolutely love seeing. Oh, here we go. Absolutely love seeing process. Oh yeah, as part of development. Yeah, so knowing that it was just a novella, I mean, it sort of doesn’t give an accurate description. So that’s the hard cover, but then that’s a soft cover, very little.

(38:06)
But it was published through Kickstarter in 2022, and at the time it was comics, tribe’s, most funded Kickstarter of all time. I dunno if any of the books have surpassed it up to this point. But yeah, extremely successful. Huge campaign behind it. Some lovely extras that I didn’t grab at the time. There was some metal trading cards. There was a virgin art cover that was done specifically for Comics Tribe, which you can get through their website. Other than that, this book is available directly from Comics Tribe. You can get it from louis joyce.com, go to his store, he has copies available and just loved it. It sort of brought back all those feelings of being 10 years old and renting a lot of those eighties action films from the video store popping the VHS in and then just watching some badass kung fu. Nice. Yeah, so I mean, I feel like this universe that they’ve created has legs, so I dunno if they’ve got any plans to continue on and do any more of this sort of universe. I just know that I would definitely be down to see more from those two based in this world. They sort of hit you with this amazing concept and we get one family sort of view. We get the sense that the scope of this is much bigger. There’s more dragons than just the ones depicted in here. There are more families with these ancient lineages of caring for these dragons. We hear about the Council of Dragons, all these wonderful concepts that don’t get explored beyond this drama that’s existing between these two siblings.

(40:18)
So I encourage anyone who’s interested to pick it up. Like I said, it’s available widely and I don’t think you’ll regret it. There’s so many interesting things going on in this book that you won’t really find outside of a fistful of pain. You get elements of it now being thrown into God’s Illustrate or Die because obviously it’s Louis Joyce’s baby, that book. And anyone who knows Louis knows that he loves skating, he loves that kinetic style. He loves putting as much energy, colour movement into his work as possible. It’s definitely a book that you can imagine putting headphones in, cranking up your favourite epic rock soundtrack, and then just reading the book and the music’s just going to fit straight in there. That’s awesome.

Ed Kearsley (41:22):
Based in Melbourne, is there any creators from Melbourne?

Ryan Christopher (41:30):
I dunno where Ryan Lindsay is from. Yeah,

Max Ferrada (41:32):
Neither do I.

Ryan Christopher (41:35):
We will see if I can shed any light on that,

Max Ferrada (41:39):
Maybe for that. It’s down at the moment. I’m not actually sure. He might be watching Ryan, Ken Lindsay might be watching Ryan. Yeah, please reply your comments. The title of Fistful implies a Western in particular spaghetti western sensibility. Do you see any of those tropes there, like standoffs and lingering?

Ryan Christopher (42:10):
Oh, absolutely. I’ll show you my favourite spread from the book. It doesn’t really give anything away because we know from basically the front cover that these sisters are going to come face to face at some point. Yeah.

Max Ferrada (42:28):
Yes.

Ryan Christopher (42:29):
So where are we?

Max Ferrada (42:40):
Just while he’s looking.

David Schembri (42:47):
Oh, that looks cool. Yeah,

Ryan Christopher (42:50):
So the fight scene itself, so you get this epic standoff and then the fight scene itself actually takes place within those boxes that make up the background

Max Ferrada (43:03):
Very innovative. Yeah.

Ryan Christopher (43:04):
Yeah, it’s definitely, there’s a lot of things that I haven’t seen other people do in a comic before that they’ve done to give

(43:15)
Something, which is a short format, much more legs. It’s one of those books that you can read half a dozen times because there’s so much going on. There’s so much to focus on. I mean, every little mean, you saw how many boxes line that background, every single one of them has something interesting and dynamic going on within it that could have easily have been a panel in and of itself, but it’s broken down to create this pacing of this back and forth fight scene between these two sisters. And yeah, I just love it. I love the way it’s depicted.

David Schembri (43:56):
Isn’t that great When you can read something that will always deliver something to you every time you read it again, because you’re always finding more detail that you may have missed the first time, you still would’ve gotten the story and the plot and everything. But it’s wonderful how there works out there that can deliver that.

Ryan Christopher (44:17):
And like I said, you can read the story, so you can read all the narration, you can read all the dialogue, which will fill out everything that you need to know about this world. But then it’s kind of also interesting to go back and read it and not focus on that at all and just take in the visuals that are being presented to you sort of in two parts in that way.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (44:47):
Awesome. Oh, that’s great. Sounds like a great book. Thanks, Ryan. No worries. I’m adding that one to my list of growing books that I need to get. Why do we do the show again, ed? For me to spend money? Well, before we go Ed, we’ll check out the comments

Ed Kearsley (45:08):
We’ve got. Shawney Ooh, would be great if we could have a bookcase like the Matrix Armoury.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (45:13):
Yes.

Ryan Christopher (45:16):
Those sliding ones like they have in archive centres and stuff like that where they all collapse and concertina in. So we need,

Ed Kearsley (45:27):
They’ve got Hi everyone from Alison Google bonus features. I really got to get that off the shelf and read it. And I like the idea of stories from different people in a particular world instead of just following the same few people forever. Not that I don’t enjoy that too, but we need variety.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (45:47):
Yeah, that’s a good point.

Ed Kearsley (45:49):
I agree, Sean, that one just got one in. That’s why I love Star Wars visions.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (45:56):
I don’t know that. Okay. No, I’ve read that

Max Ferrada (45:59):
One. Yeah. Before we continue, I just want to say that I was reading this actually last night. That’s why I was so close. It’s a small book from Louis Joyce, which I thought, yeah, about 20 18, 20 19, 5 years ago. And it’s a short story about dealing with fatherhood, becoming a new father. Oh, cool. He can be, as you say, frenetic and kinetic, but there is also a beauty, an undeniable beauty in his stillness. Look at that. Just being supervised. Yeah, it’s beautiful. Anyway, I just wanted to share that the universe is very big, but sometimes it’s very small. And who knew that Louis Joyce would come into both our paths in quick succession.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (46:56):
Thanks, max. We’ll go over to Ed, master of Radical. Tell us about your book.

Ed Kearsley (47:06):
Okay, I’ve got presents number four and straight off the bat. That’s a really great cover by Peter Wilson. It’s such a great composition, clever idea. All the guys hanging off the line up in the sky, and they’re all the characters from the book. And there’s four stories. We’ve got the crew by Morgan Craig, Morgan Qua, Alexi Raznick, Franz be Canyon, and Alex Avarez. And it’s got some really interesting credits there. I’ve never seen an art director or creative direction on a comic. And this is the Crow one. It’s got really clean,

David Schembri (48:03):
Nice,

Ed Kearsley (48:04):
Cartoony. It’s almost, it reminded me of a Saturday morning cartoon kind of style. But then you’ve got the, because it’s Morgan Quaid, they’ve got the zombie throwing up into the crew’s mouth. He likes to do that sort of stuff. The young kids,

David Schembri (48:25):
Ed, you can just read it. You read it, because I won’t have to open mine.

Max Ferrada (48:31):
Mine’s here somewhere as well. Like I said, huge piles thanks to Shane. Yeah,

David Schembri (48:39):
Mine’s growing and growing.

Ed Kearsley (48:40):
So we’ve got the crew, that zombie guy I think is maybe Lucifer, and he’s using the Crows to search around for his daughter. And then we’ve got Crow by Peter Wilson. I did a review of FOS on episode three of this very short, but if you haven’t checked out the fo story with the Donut battle and Peter Wilson’s

David Schembri (49:14):
The same

Ed Kearsley (49:16):
Peter Wilson’s expert use of action of seen to scene action. It’s really great snappy dialogue. Yeah, F is just an excellent comic book. And then as

David Schembri (49:37):
Hey,

Ed Kearsley (49:38):
Adam was talking about, we got the victims of Space by Scar Antoinette writer and Steve Carter, his name escaped me just for a second. But yeah, this is crazy. I was getting vibes like 2000 ad where they’ve got the sci-fi language.

David Schembri (49:59):
Oh yeah.

Ed Kearsley (50:01):
The crazy action,

(50:04)
The imagination, all the weird aliens. It’s like kind of a crime story where these two schlubby criminal guys are trying to get off planet and then they accidentally bump into an invasion of Amazonian, like Crazy Warrior Ladies is that one. And they kill one of the Amazon warriors. And then it turns into a Chase story, and then that blue comes and helps them. The little bumper is on her head, turn into war clubs and beat up all the other girls. Yeah, I love it. It’s also the psychia of the, she shows them alternate dimensions of stuff that could happen to them and that it’s got this underground sixties comics feel and 2000 ad, it’s like the science fiction stuff. It’s very pulpy and it’s a lot of fun. It’s just some, you see the inventiveness of the imagination just on every page. And then the final story is Sunshine by Stuart Black. That’s another great cover.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (51:37):
That’s cool.

Ed Kearsley (51:38):
It’s a really great composition and it’s kind just describes what’s going on in the story. So there’s a ghost attacking people at Flint Street. We might recognise that feller there from the ghost. And then the run from

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (51:58):
Those ghost. That’s what I do.

Ed Kearsley (52:00):
The hero comes in that sunshine and there’s great, the action that looks like kind of a mango inspired scene there and really good superhero kind of action stuff. That looks great. Sorry, so who’s the illustrator? Is it Antoinette Rider or It’s Stuart Black. This is Stuart Black. It’s a D story. Alright.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (52:27):
Different story.

Ed Kearsley (52:29):
Yeah. So there’s a transformation scene like in the eighties, Japanese cartoons. It’s really cool. And then it ends really nicely with the little look to camera. And this is just the start of stuff that’s going to be happening. So that is comics presents four stories, four creative teams, and that’s really good.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (53:03):
Yeah, I might add with Stuart’s story, he actually ended up liking that story that he wrote and presents so much. He ended up making a full comic of it. He continues the story from that point, adds a bit more into that story. And he’s made a book called, I think it’s just called Sunshine as well.

Ed Kearsley (53:24):
Wow. Yeah, that story really feels like it’s setting up. It’s a really great setup for a bigger look at the world with the ghost. So she’s a ghost hunter, and when she kills a ghost or sends it to heaven or hill or whatever, she then gets their powers. So there’s a lot you can do with that from an action superhero kind of storytelling perspective with all the different powers that she could get from the different bad guys.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (53:57):
And you find out in the extended story in the book that he wrote, why she’s doing that, why she’s a ghost hunter and what it means and why she’s going through all that effort to hunt them. So I won’t ruin on that sunshine. Cool.

Ryan Christopher (54:17):
Give us a little bit of a pitch as far as people watching. Why should they go and pick up comics presents? Why should they be grabbing these anthology books?

Ed Kearsley (54:33):
Well, it’s like if you’re old enough to remember compilation albums where you’d get different bands that got a song each on the thing. And that’s how you discover new bands back in the day.

Max Ferrada (54:46):
Yep. Now that’s what I call music on a cassette tape with Ludicrous and Celine Dion. Yeah,

Ed Kearsley (54:57):
It’s the same thing. There’s four stories. There’s two creative teams and two solo cartoonists. And if you haven’t seen this stuff before, it’s a great way to get into this stuff and to find out out. That’s the power of the ontology is to, you get four different stories, they’re all good. And you don’t have to invest into a full comic from either of, or any of the teams.

David Schembri (55:31):
Just like what the comments were going on before about saying they want some variety. And that’s exactly what that, I guess that style application would offer. You’ve got different artists, different writers, different stories. They can get a really good sample and explore some different worlds within one book.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:52):
And before we go to the comments, ed, I’ll add that presents is actually also a nice place for people who haven’t been published before to get a story published. It’s a nice place for them to expose themselves and for readers to learn of these people who haven’t yet published anything. Before there was a, oh my Mind’s gone blank in the first one we did, there was a story that we did, and it was the first time this particular artist had ever published a book. And I was so excited for them, and I can’t remember who it was, but I was very excited for them, whoever they were. But it was the first three that ever published was in presents. So I was really, it’s great learning.

Max Ferrada (56:40):
Yeah, it’s, yeah, you learn about the prints, the proofs, and how your work can manifest onto a page from a creator standpoint, it’s all about learning. Yeah,

Ryan Christopher (56:55):
Cool. And I believe they can learn more on the comics comex net au.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (57:05):
So I was just going to see what you did. And it’s just com, COMX net au. That’ll take you to the main site. Top right corner is the menu. Just hit that to go through the different pages for the shop.

Ryan Christopher (57:21):
And I think people can find out a little bit more about what they need to do if they want to get published in comics, presents or comics. Presents Noir, is that right, sis?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (57:32):
They can, and that’s over on Comex Studio au. Yeah. And that’s where you go to find out about the people currently in the comic studio. And we also get to find out how to submit and all that sort of stuff. Be it in presents or be it a full comic.

Ed Kearsley (57:54):
Alright. Have a look at the comments we got done. We just got my copy. Haven’t read it yet. Reminds me of a pinball machine.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (58:10):
Oh yes.

Ed Kearsley (58:11):
82 out of the blue.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (58:16):
Cool. Well, this is the part of the show where we go, do you want to be on the show? Would you like to be on this show? Or maybe even one of the other shows that we have? There’s five of them throughout the week. I All you need to do is go to Comex Show slash Interest and that’ll take you to a little form. Fill that out, tell us a bit about yourself, tick the boxes of the shows that you’re interested in being in. And I’ll get back to you and we will discuss getting you onto these shows for this particular show, all you have to do is love comics. That’s it. And come on with a book that you liked or enjoyed, whatever word you want to use.

(59:03)
And that’s all the requirements of this particular show and that you do it at the time zone that we do it at. So you don’t even have to be Australian. You don’t even have to be a creator. You can just be someone who loves comics and you read something recently that you loved. So yeah, that’s it. And this would be the part where I also go like the video if you haven’t already, because we are doing great so far. And share the video with your friends, so they get to find out about these books as well, and then subscribe to the channel. It helps us grow. It helps the channel get seen by more people and yeah, helps us show you more. So this would be the part where we now go to the guest plug, which I have to bring this up because there’s a timer. Get a minute each. I’m trying to say to Max, that video still hasn’t appeared.

Max Ferrada (01:00:05):
Yeah, it should be. It should be there.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:00:10):
Maybe you put it somewhere else. Click difficult. Oh, we haven’t got that on this one, do we? That’s another show.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:00:20):
No.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:00:26):
Well, while you try to do that, I will do my promotion first. And that is, I’ll put this one up. Ed I, oh, you can’t see the timer? What a shame rigged. Well

David Schembri (01:00:44):
Start the timer now.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:00:48):
It’s also me who starts it, so who knows. Okay. Yeah. So myself and Kes are going to this Saturday. It is the UQ Sci-Fi and Fantasy and Fantasy Fair. It’s on the 17th of August, Saturday at 8:00 AM till 4:00 PM We will, did I say PM?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:01:11):
8:00 AM

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:01:12):
Oh, did I say 8:00 AM Oops. I’m even reading it. And I got it wrong. 10:00 AM until 4:00 PM at St. Lucia campus in the building called Mod West, which is also called 11 a in the rooms one 20 slash 1 21. They’ve opened up two rooms, two lecture halls, whatever you want to call it. So we’ll be in there. We are one of 20 something store holders. There’s some cosplayers and there’s some other things that I couldn’t tell what they were from their names. And there’s us. We’ll be there. And we’ve just gone to zero. And don’t worry about Ciz. I’ve just been told the whole reason you should be there is to see. And I totally stuff that up by not watching it and pausing it before it got to zero because it stuffs up the whole video. Cool. So that’s my minute. I will take that down.

Ed Kearsley (01:02:21):
You bringing Doug? Hello?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:02:29):
No, we’re not bringing Doug. Sorry, I’m just reading some private chat messages. Oh, it’s there now. It’s there now. Just telling Max the video has finally arrived. So while we’re doing that, let’s get someone else to do this. Well, ed was last, so we’ll do Ed first. Go ahead.

Ed Kearsley (01:02:54):
All right. So I’m Ed Kiley. I do comic books such as Radical and Final Dragon. I also do one called Sea Manels from Earth. There’s two different versions of two different covers of issue one. And this is a fantasy kind of monsters comic. It’s in the square format and it’s an ode to the old Savage sword of Nan comics that I grew up on. That’s black and white, lots of monsters and fighting and stuff. And they’re available in the comic shop. And also on my Patreon, there’s updates of the pages as I make them. And that’s at Ed Ley Patreon and at Ed Ley on Instagram.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:03:58):
And I will add awesome little, do you call it a Xeno or a comic? Is it still a comic?

Ed Kearsley (01:04:05):
I call it a comic. It’s a comic book.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:04:06):
I understood the distinction, but either way, the Mandrels from Earth are awesome. Yeah, they’re in the store and I read them before I put them in there. Very cool. Little story. So we’re going to go with Ryan. You get to promote Comex. I believe I do. I’d love to hear this from someone else’s perspective. This is going to be really cool. So away you go, buddy.

Ryan Christopher (01:04:41):
Okay, so I’m pretty new to the whole Comex thing, but it’s been kind of a great learning experience to be coming on these shows. I’ve done a few shows. I’ve done Drink and Draw. I’ve done this comics recent reads, and you’ll be catching me in September on Chinwag with Lee Chaka where you’ll learn a little bit more about me and what I’m trying to do with Corner Box comic art, et cetera. But I kind of love that Australia has its own sort of independent publisher in comics. And the more I’ve been exposed to some of the incredible people who are making comics locally in Australia right now, the more I’ve been impressed and more I’ve wanted to get involved. And I think if that’s anything that I can sort of say to people right now, it’s like you can’t help but be inspired by seeing the work that’s getting put out by so many great Australian creators. And it’s thanks to platforms like Comex and sis that these stories are getting into the hands of a wider array of readers then they would otherwise

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:05:57):
Love it. Ryan, my head is swelling as we speak and not from the Confluence because Max is actually cheating and doing a video for his promotion. We’ll go to instead David.

David Schembri (01:06:11):
Oh, okay. Okay. Hello everyone. Dave Shery and I came out in a comic scene a few years ago where I launched my first comic series called Splitting Sides. This was issue one, it has been rereleased this year with a new story called Val the Vampire. So he’s in here too. So just to give you a quick look. So if you haven’t read Val The Vampire, this is a quick little s squeeze. I’m too much so I don’t want to spoil things, but just a little look. It’s a full colour comic and so I trade that. And there’s also issue two Splitting Sides was released last year. I’ve been doing that and it’s all comedy horror is what I’m all about. So it’s all having a bit of fun with the theme. I loved Creep show. It was one of my favourite horror films. It’s what inspired me to create spinning sides.

(01:07:09)
I’ve got my own superhero as well. It’s Crow Man and that’s for the Kitties is the Kitty edition. So it’s a colouring book and if you contact me, you’ll get little coloured pencils as well. I’m also a horror fiction writer, so I have a couple of horror story collections that’s Unearthly Fables released in 2013 and the other one in 2016 was beneath the Furney Tree. These are fiction, short fiction collections and they’re also illustrated, so they’ve got some illustrations and stuff in there as well. Cool. Cool. So that’s a real quick spiel. I’ll be at Bendon as well. Oh yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:07:47):
Sorry, A picture for you for that.

David Schembri (01:07:51):
That’s alright. Kids under five go in free. So get down to Bendon and I’ll be there in Artist Alley. It’s my first big show, so really looking forward to it and I’ll able to get me a table there. So really looking forward to checking out that pop culture and all the crazy vibe that happens. So it should be a great show. And also be there with all my stuff and my artwork as well. I’ll trade some of my artwork as well. So yeah, looking forward to it. That’s me and nice to meet you. I’ve heard nothing but good things about Bendi. Same. Hopefully it’s a good show. Yeah. Looking forward to it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:08:32):
Now before we go to the video, because it’s sort of like a big event, do you want to catch up on any comments?

Ed Kearsley (01:08:40):
Yep. Yeah, good talk tonight guys. Thanks

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:08:46):
Nathan.

Ed Kearsley (01:08:47):
Thank you. Thank you. Another great show. Doug doesn’t play well with others. And Crumb nice. Ryan, thank you so much. And well of the Colours, which was in reference to the Vel of Vampire.

David Schembri (01:09:08):
Oh, thank you.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:09:11):
And I’ve uploaded the video, so here is Max’s minute.

Ed Kearsley (01:09:18):
Hit it.

Voice Over (01:09:22):
I thought it was great and was fantastic. Another awesome Indy comic time out of all. Definitely check out. I’m really looking forward to reading issue number two. This was a complete comic with a starter middle on an end. It was very satisfying. It’s very well made. It’s incredibly well written and drawn and it was my favourite comic from last year. I can tell you, Stella Lane two, in my opinion is better.

Voice Over (01:09:54):
I’m not going to lie. I’m a grown man. I can admit this. He had up a little bit on the last few pages. It was quite emotional.

Voice Over (01:10:00):
There were tears. Shed listen, my cold den heart

Voice Over (01:10:04):
Unfroze at the

Voice Over (01:10:05):
End issue.

Voice Over (01:10:06):
Well issue one and issue two more. So issue two, I was like, no,

Voice Over (01:10:12):
I felt that I was alive again. Okay,

Voice Over (01:10:14):
You’re getting quite bang for your buck, I would say, because most comic books are half this size at this price point, which I think is quite the deal to be quite honest, because the art is amazing and obviously the storylines are incredible. So I read it and it’s fantastic,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:10:48):
Awesome video. And I’m just going to throw that up there just because I’m Comex and I’m the boss and I can do whatever I want. Damnit, so I can put a bit more promotion there on right now last week. Don’t miss out. If you haven’t read Stella Lands one, you can get it as well with Stella Lands two, which is this. They’re all self-contained storage, probably say that as well.

Max Ferrada (01:11:12):
Yep. You’ll never see to be continued in a stellar land book. As he said in the review, there is a beginning, middle, and end of a satisfying Aristotelian arc. And the connection between all the issues is that they’re happening at the same time, so you don’t need to read them in chronological order. So yeah, they are their own narrative. And the Stellar Lands campaign is on its last week, and we have some variant covers, which will be only available on this Kickstarter campaign. This will be the only time you get it these next seven days. After that, they will be gone. You can probably get them as secondhand, but in terms of buying them fresh and getting them printed, this will be the only time. So get your variant covers. I didn’t know what a variant cover was until I started making comics. Now that I know what they are, I want all of them. And you probably do too. So please, this is it. This is the only time that you can get ’em seven days. Seven years. It’ll go like that. Seven days. It’ll go like that.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:12:25):
Seven years. Wow. That’s a long Kickstarter. Okay, so we’re at the part of the show where I’m going to let Ed press the button

Ed Kearsley (01:12:36):
Pressing now.

Voice Over (01:12:37):
Are 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 inspiration.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:13:07):
Yeah, Inspira. Awesome. Okay, now it’s quick, short, round where we all give a recommendation. I’m going to start. It’s not a comic. I have a bad feeling. Someone recommended this a couple of weeks ago, but I’m going to say understanding comics is awesome. I haven’t read the whole thing. I’ve read about half of it, and the insight is awesome. I’m looking at comics in a totally different way. I love this so much. I went out and got making comics, which I’ll be reading next. And then I found out he had another one, which is Reinventing Comics. So that’s also in my pile to read. I’ve actually decided to make that more important than my reading the comics actually. This helps me understand what’s going on so I can help people better as a publisher. So that’s my quick one. We shall go to Max. What’s your quick recommendation?

Max Ferrada (01:14:08):
My recommendation is from American and Australian writing slash illustrating team Robert Young and Daniel A. Becker, who is a pal of mine, one of the first people I met. And it’s Lobo, it’s origin story of Naturalist Explorer. And I believe he was the founder of the Boy Scouts Earnest Seton. And it looks at his travails at hunting, particularly troublesome wolf in the New Mexico Valley. And I’ve read the whole thing, but from what I know of the behind the scenes, the wolf in question, the titular Lobo, he’s not an alien band. He hunter, he is a particularly aept and innovative wolf. He represents a sort of consolidation, a conglomeration of all of the particularly alpha wolves that Seton had come across during his, well, I guess his time away from his illustrator’s desk because he did work as a early 19th century illustrator. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was helping settlers with their wolf problems and making setting traps and ensuring the safety of ranchers and so on.

(01:15:49)
And yeah, the first few pages shows how Lobo outsmarted early attempts to capture him. And then Seton was deployed and what follows his cat and mouse game between the two. And I think at its core there is a element of guilt. There’s a powerful psychology in the book, which might give reason or origination to seton’s efforts in conservation in the latter stages of his career. Both Daniel and Robert do an excellent job giving, well, not human, but personifying the wolf in question. Yeah, Wolf. Wolf is just wolfing man. He is trying to survive in harsh, unforgiving terrain, which is now populated by Westerners in their expansionist policies. And yeah, there’s really no bad guy here. Yeah, this certainly broke my heart because there is also an undeniable element of love within these pages. So yeah, check it out, Lobo. I really should have done my research in terms of how to get it. My relationship with these books always begins in ends at their reading, so I have to get better at that. But yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:17:19):
Copy as well. But it was through the Kickstarter, so I don’t know how to get it otherwise. Yeah,

Max Ferrada (01:17:24):
Yeah. But I guess just Google it again, you’ll be met with an alien bounty hunter who was by Brad Garrett, but if not, yeah, look up Earnest Thompson Seton and Lobo and Daniel Becker, and I’m sure, yeah, you’ll find out how to get this comic book. It’s quite thick, it’s got a spine and everything. Again, it’s voiceover or narration, which I usually don’t like, but it absolutely works. And with these two books, which I covered tonight, they do share the same theme of an origin story and anyone who says that the Australian comic scene is flailing or circling a drain, I just encourage you to pick up these two titles. These are very detailed, very alive, and I think it shows a promising glimpse of what the future of Australian indie comics or Australian comics can look like.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:18:33):
Thanks Max already, David. So I’ve forgotten who we’ve done Quick recommendations from Ryan.

Ryan Christopher (01:18:43):
Yeah. Tell

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:18:44):
Us who you recommend.

Ryan Christopher (01:18:47):
So I’m recommending the format Epic Collections from Marvel.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:18:54):
Oh nice.

Ryan Christopher (01:18:55):
So this is something that I’ve become addicted to when they come out now is collecting the X-Men epic collections. This particular one collects the Brood Saga by Claremont, Cochran and Smith that sort of took place between 1982 and 1983. So this collects all the issues of X-Men, the annuals, and any special issues that tie in to sort of give you that story. You can find the epic collections broken up into lots of different story arcs going from Children of the Atom, which is the first issue, which is like the Stanley Lee Jack Kirby years all the way through to Second Genesis. So your Chris Claremont and your Dave Cochrane and John Byrne all the way through to your, your more modern collections. So your Claremont and your Jim Lee comics. Your Adam. Yeah. So if you’re a fan of X-Men, I think that’s a really cost effective way to collect the story arcs that you really love without having to get all of that often sort of unnecessary filler that can come bundled with an omnibus. These ones tend to collect a year or two’s worth of stories into a decent chunky trade.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:20:44):
Could I just ask a question? Is the inside still colour or is it like the essentials Black and white

Ryan Christopher (01:20:49):
Colour. Full colour.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:20:50):
Oh sweet.

Ryan Christopher (01:20:52):
Yeah. Cheaper than colour pages. They reproduce all the covers and stuff as well. Oh, that’s cool. Yeah, you get all the issues broken down as part of the larger story arc and I really love it. It’s got a checklist in there. So it lets you know which issues are contained within the series. Oh, that’s when it came out, what the issue was actually called and then in the back gives you a rundown of all the different epic collections that are available up to date with whatever issue this one was published. So this one only came out earlier this year or late last year. Okay, cool. But as you can see there are, across the Marvel titles, there’s several hundred, just a few collections available for you. So I mean if you love Spider-Man and you want certain Spider-Man stories told within an arc that’s available.

(01:22:07)
If you love Iron Fist, I think there’s two Iron Fist epic collections that are available. Avengers, it breaks down if you want just the Dr. Doom Avengers stuff, you can get that if you want just the Galactus Fantastic four stuff. You can get that it’s sort of broken down so that you can be a completist and collect them all as they come out. This is volume nine of the X-Men of, they’ve been sort of chipping away, so they don’t necessarily come out in order. They don’t come out nine and then 10. They come out so far by whatever they think is going to sell well at any given moment or whatever’s going to tie into whatever they’re releasing it as well. The most recent one they got released for the X-Men was Fatal Attractions, which ties in well to X-Men 97 just having its first season, which borrowed heavily from the fatal attractions storyline of Magneto going a bit mad and ripping Wolverines Adamantium out of his body. That’s

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:23:12):
Attractions.

Ryan Christopher (01:23:13):
And the next issue for the X-Men that’s coming out is the iconic God Loves Man Kills storyline. So I recommend, yeah, you can pick and choose your favourite creators, your favourite storylines, or you can be a nerd like me and you can just get ’em all

Max Ferrada (01:23:34):
Quickly. Ryan, so what’s your favourite storyline?

Ryan Christopher (01:23:39):
I’m a massive magneto person. So there’s so many great magneto storylines that have taken place. There’s the reintroduction of the character by John Byrne and Chris Claremont. So that’s sort of I magneto years where we learn much more about his backstory. We find out that he’s a Holocaust survivor. We learn more about his complex history with Charles Xavier. He has some of his increased sort of post brotherhood battles with the X-Men all the way through to the Jim Lee, Adam Cuban eras. So like your mutant genesis where he sort of comes back and he has a bit of a megalomaniac Messiah complex in the early nineties. Yeah, I’m sort of happy to jump into, I mean, I love it all. So the Brood Saga is a great story. You get some vampires, you get some aliens, you get the star jammers, you get the Shia Empire floats in and out of different stages throughout these years. So I don’t know,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:25:02):
I’m just going to interject and not answer that question and just two of you have forgotten this good recommendation.

Ryan Christopher (01:25:15):
I was going to be quick, but then Max said,

Max Ferrada (01:25:19):
I’ll just say I’m Magneto. I’ll look for that next time. Yeah, that was the first thing you said. Yeah.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:25:26):
Sorry, I just had to put that in there because two of you have really stretched out this quick. I Ed, what would you quickly recommend?

Ed Kearsley (01:25:36):
I’m going to do a non-com book one as well, but it’s trading cards that come with Kickstarters or whatever they are. They just got the FS ones today, which there’s,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:25:50):
Yeah, it’s quite an extensive set. That one. There’s

Ed Kearsley (01:25:52):
Tonnes that one’s or that one’s mine. It’s hard to do the cameras backwards, but yeah, the trading cards that come with the Kickstarters or if anyone’s independent comic guys are making trading cards, get those because they’re great if you’re into trading cards.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:26:14):
Cool. Okay. This is the part where we go if you are interested in coming on the show. And

Ed Kearsley (01:26:19):
Did David,

David Schembri (01:26:21):
I didn’t do one. I didn’t do one.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:26:23):
Oh, sorry, David

David Schembri (01:26:25):
Am my

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:26:25):
Mirage. I thought I was doing the circle. I thought I was doing the circle. Okay. Sorry David. Yep. Really fast.

David Schembri (01:26:32):
10 seconds. I’m recommending the kickass Goblin Shine of the Moon by John Lowry. His name’s there. I’ve only read through a few volumes of this, but he’s got a lot of volumes of this. But it’s all full colour adventure, fancy mayhem. If you want to kick ass female goblin shine of the moon’s, the one to get. I just found it really enjoyable and I look forward to getting the rest of the collections. But it’s a great story, really in depth to go to the land of the dead, living everywhere, wars all over the thing and she’s just a really good kickass hero and yeah, lovely stories. So yeah, highly recommend Shown on the moon. Done.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:27:19):
Sorry about that. My apologies.

(01:27:25)
What are we doing? Oh, that’s right. We’re doing the, if you are interested in being on the show and me rudely interrupting you and I’m cutting you off, then this is the link to go to Comment comics show slash interest. There’s a form there, fill it out. You can say you want to be on this show, you can say you want to be on one of the other show. This show in particular, like I said before earlier, if you didn’t catch it, you just have to love comics and read something recently that you loved. That’s it. That’s the only requirements. Of course, you need a webcam and microphone. I guess that’s And a computer. Computer. Be out in the woods. I can use your phone. You can use your phone. You just,

David Schembri (01:28:07):
The challenge,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:28:09):
Just write down your thoughts and mail them to,

David Schembri (01:28:14):
As long as your phone has a screen on it, it’s not one of those analogue phones.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:28:21):
Too true. I’m sure there’s more comments now as well, so I’ll let Ed go through them.

Ed Kearsley (01:28:27):
Yes, we’ve got where to purchase David’s comics. All good. Found his website. Eddie is that guy

David Schembri (01:28:39):
If you want. No problem.

Ed Kearsley (01:28:41):
I dunno what that’s in reference to. Good chat folks. Got to run. Thanks Jeffrey.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:28:48):
All good, Jeffrey.

Ed Kearsley (01:28:49):
Hey, good points. Si. I should prioritise my how to books right now as well. I like that. How to copy books on the table and that’s it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:29:01):
Cool. And we’ve done it. Thank you so much to our guests. Thank you to Ed for pushing the buttons and also being part of the show. Want to say thank you to me? Thanks. Made a new banner. I’m looking forward to using it again on other people. And yeah, thank you to everyone who watched, everyone who commented, everyone who watches this in the future. And we apologise for making you spend more money on comics. And that’s us for the night. Thank.