various nothings

I have that occasional frisson of concern when I wonder how people in other countries are going to assume/ interpret aspects of Australia. This is an image from the Washington Post's article I think today or yesterday marvelling about how Daniel Andrews as a centre left politician with experience only of being a politician can maintain popularity despite his commitment to lockdownism. I was just annoyed at thinking that people reading the WP will be thinking 'oh my god, that's what bananas look like in Australia?' I have to remember that actually I don't give a flying fuck what people who read the WP think about Australia or anything. 

 

One of the things I love about history is it so often makes me/allows me to feel smugly woke. I actually saved this cartoon because I thought maybe I could use it in teaching next year. But like a lot of historical things it is meaningless if you don't consider the context, and that a lot of it is in the eye of the beholder. Your first take on this is sexist society but then again, it's also, kids are know-nothing shits, and sexist society acknowledged in a cartoon in a major newspaper. Is acknowledging the first step towards doing something about it? Not my place to say. This is a syndicated cartoon from 1962. 

Of course a lot of us in 2020 will be like, wow she got to leave the kids in the car without someone calling the police and putting her in jail and also wow, a parking space so close to the supermarket (also wow, why no shopping trolley? but I guess that's part of the cartoon exaggeration - I'm pretty sure shopping trolleys existed in 1962). (Also, often, teenagers to help you carry your bags to the car etc, I gather). 

The only other thing that happened today is that I tried out a little bit of ink drawing to see how I would go with my second graphic novel in ink (Helmi walked over it, and without thinking I committed the cardinal error of picking her up to put her on the floor, which is of course anathema to this little free spirit who struggled in outrage and flew across the room, but I don't think she got ink on the carpet, if she did, it's not noticeable - to me - yet). The difference is, an A4 page like this has the detail I could do in felt pen in 1/6 of a page. So either I would be doing my pages at A1 size (not easy) or perhaps doing what I understand Chester Brown does, or has done: composed his comic books out of individual panels which he has assembled on the page after the fact. 

I have a vague memory that, when I did the pages for Cut Snake I wanted them in some way to be holistic, although I have no idea (and there is no evidence, to my mind) how I thought this would manifest. But maybe this is the way to go, and I should just be more freeform about the ultimate result. I shouldn't put stuff like Chester Brown's work in close proximity to mine, only one of them comes off well. He is smartly economic though in putting totally black backgrounds etc, which not only focuses the reader's attention it also, let's be realistic, saves time and effort. But what's important is it looks great. There's no doubt he could/can draw a fabulous comprehensive background if he wanted to, it just doesn't suit the story. 

My next step might be to try and redo some actual pages from I Am Not... as ink drawings, big, with a view to reducing them and composing a page against a black (or other?) background. See how it goes.