Aha, some more comics.

I recently made a new comic book made up of a string of disjointed comics. The comics were all... strange. I'm very happy with the actual content, I think. The booklet is either the best comic I've made, or the worst. Or, possibly neither.

You can check it out by clicking on the cover above.

'The Man is Disappearing.'

I mentioned a book that I was working on. Well, I finished it. I took a whole stack with me to Rome, where I would say that they held their own amongst very tough competition. Here are some photographs of the book.

Very cool. (Two-parter)

Part 1)
I recently attended the Crack! comics festival in Rome. It was very cool. Fantastic. It has, both years that I have attended, been largely on the life-changing side of things. I will post up some photos of the festival soon. From both years. I'll also soon take some photos of my new 'zine and post those up. The 'zine is on sale in three bookstores in Berlin. Motto, Neurotitan and Bongout. These three stores are notable for being ludicrously hip. Rumours have it that Motto is so hip that copies of my booklet there are already sold out.

On a side note - 'Zine is the term I encountered most often in Europe when hustling my little book. I'm not sure why the term 'zine is used as a catch-all for lo-fi publications. The term is short for 'fanzine', which is what fans make when they make magazines about the comics/tv-shows/movies they go bonkers about. I might well be completely mistaken. I refuse to look this up. I'm not sure why.

I find the use of this term for my booklets quite fun, because as my fanzines don't have a specific object of fanaticism, they are forced into being fanatical about far more general targets, such as genres, or entire mediums. It's quite a silly idea when taken too seriously, but if you're playful enough when applying it, it has quite nice results.

* 'The Man is Disappearing' is also for sale at the Book Lounge in Cape Town. If you would like to buy or sell my stuff, my email address is the @gmail.com version of my blogspot address.

Part 2)
I'm quite fanatical about music, specifically listening to the stuff. I've recently made two compilations of some of the songs I've enjoyed over the last few years. You can listen to them here:


The Dream -  http://www.mediafire.com/?b0jf6hk7d60mdtb
Part II - http://www.mediafire.com/?i6yl3c6ivocfp6c


The reason I mention it is that I'm quite excited about a third that I'm making at the moment.

What's up.

50 Watts has posted the results of the Polish Book Cover Contest. My entry is on the 'Extra Entries' page, which is the second tier of runners-up. It appears I did not excel quite enough. My entry, in retrospect, does not look very much like a book cover. Ah.

This is my one:

Check out the results. There are some super-duper covers there.
If you'd like to see my entry for last year's contest, click here.



I will be at the Crack! comics festival this year. Am very excited about that. I wanted to post photos from when I went in 2009, but I was too caught up in getting my book finished for the convention before leaving Cape Town. I'm in Johannesburg at the moment. Just doing my thing.

Book came out very well, by the way.

Special Music.

Songs from Nature's Valley

I've been meaning to put these up for a while (since 2009). I think they're fun.

I had just been given a tape-recorder and used it to record my first attempts at singing. These are they. All the songs are improvised and I had only been playing guitar for two months at the time, so it might be a bit different to the music you're used to hearing.

(The text above the picture is a link that if you click will allow you to download the songs!)

A page of comics.

It makes perfect sense to have my comics out where people can see them.
More will come soon probably.

Comics
Comics
Comics

Poems:

Mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes can never quite get their fill
They are like humans in that regard
I heard a bunch of them gang up
and plot to bleed another one dry.


The lighthouse is on.
One ship passing.

The lighthouse is off.

Now it's on.

I'm surprised to have stood up.

Lion and I.
My friend the lion says to me one day,
"Why aren't you visiting anymore?"
I say, "Why're you always hassling me, Lion?
Lion says, "Because you aren't visiting anymore."

Some more drawings.

Here are some more drawings that I've done since the last batch:

Some recent drawing.

This is some of the drawing that I did this week. I've run out of paper now.

(Click the picture to view a higher res version.)

Keleketla!

These are some photos of the comics workshop taken by Malose and Nkuli of Keleketla!

Showing the kids how to make booklets:

Joubert Park.

I've been meaning to put this up for a while, but have been either emotionally or physically distant for most of that while. I apologise.

In December/November I spent two weeks in Joubert Park, a suburb in Johannesburg's inner city. The suburb is similar to its infamous neighbour Hillbrow. Both areas used to be wealthy whites-only suburbs during Apartheid but saw a rapid exodus of whites as (far) poorer blacks began living there. With the severe exodus of wealth, the area experienced sharp urban decay. Many of the buildings there are now squatted and controlled by 'property warlords'.

I was there to facilitate a comics workshop at the Keleketla! Library located at the historic Drill Hall, where in 1956 Nelson Mandela and 155 other ANC leaders were tried in the Treason Trial for their organized resistance to the newly introduced Apartheid laws. The library is a supercool project that provides kids living in the area with access to reading material and creative workshops. Facilitating the workshop was a wonderful experience and I'd like to do it again. Being in the inner-city was also a wonderful experience, a bit mindblowing.

While I was in Joubert Park I bought a disposable camera and took photos of the area:
(clicking these images will lead you to the higher res versions on Flickr)

My bedroom window looked onto an informal taxi rank. The building diagonally opposite mine was squatted.