It's pretty rare for me to post two days in a row these days, but I am all fired up today! (Maybe after yesterday's post, this is the kick-start I needed??) Today I received an urgent SMS from The World's Number One Ginger Meggs Fan, James Wakeling, to let me know that Sydney's Sun-Herald has dropped the long-running newspaper comic strip, Ginger Meggs. The current cartoonist who works on the strip, Jason Chatfield, confirmed this news to me today. I am outraged! This historical Australian feature is only a year shy of celebrating its one hundredth birthday. While I do not decry Bushy Tales, written and drawn by Queenslander Ian Jones taking its place, I do feel that the newspaper editor/s could have selected and dropped an overseas comic strip instead. I'm nothing, if I'm not parochial! If you are as incensed as I am, please drop an angry email demanding the newspaper reinstate Ginger Meggs ...as soon as possible. Especially as it's so close to its century. Here's the email address: [email protected] Do it now and do it for Ginger. Someone on Facebook made a comment to me about Oi Oi Oi! recently. It got me thinking. I have many comic projects that I would like to work on. And during COVID-19 I have been doing absolutely none. Sure, I have been 'tidying' up my room (and have catalogued almost 6000 comics), but my enthusiasm for publishing of late has been sorely lacking. Personally, I'm a little jaded with the Committee of the Australian Cartoonists' Association: I've made (what I believe to be) perfectly sensible suggestions for advancing the collective, but I feel I am working with group members who don't share my enthusiasm, which in turn dampens my joy. Sure, I have given up the Editorship of the Inkspot magazine; something I don't really regret. I'd been churning out a magazine quarterly for quite some years in a row (whether that magazine or Oi Oi Oi!) and needed the break. I've come to feel that perhaps I work best alone, without having to answer to a Committee. Or perhaps it's just me at this moment. I was given a lovely package of Peter Foster's work just before Christmas last year (from Peter), and I have not had the decency to ring him to thank him. I've been meaning to call Fysh Rutherford, one of the co-creators of the Iron Outlaw comic (pictured) for months. I've wanted to tell him of the find of most of the original artwork of his comic, published in the Nation Review and Sunday Observer about fifty years ago. And yet I haven't. There are projects I ordinarily would be working on (I won't list them here) or at the very least would be starting. But I am feeling flat and down in the dumps with it all. So I thought in the meantime, while I wait for my mojo to return, I'd share some of the original pages to Iron Outlaw for you to enjoy. Anyway, without boring you, I just wanted to say that someone's comments on Facebook have got me thinking. In a good way. What about, I may tell you in the next posting....
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Comicoz is Nat Karmichael's publishing imprint. Nat is committed to preserving a permanent collection of Australian comic and comic strips. He feels that there is a need to recognise comics' contribution to and depiction of Australian culture.
Nat Karmichael.
Since 2011, Nat has self-published over twelve comic-related books and was Publisher-Editor of Oi Oi Oi! -- the last series of nationally-distributed comic books of original stories to appear on Australian newsstands. He is a member of the Australian Cartoonists Association and edited the Association's journal Inkspot for 14 issues from late 2015. He remains the Lead Judge in the Ledger of Honour Awards for the Comic Arts Awards of Australia (formerly the Ledgers). Nat has now retired from his former occupation as a Clinical Nurse in the Psychiatric Emergency Centre in Queensland's largest public hospital, so that he can spend more time with his long-suffering wife and their six children and fourteen grandchildren. He still plans to publish more comics and comic-related books, the details of which you should see here in the coming months... Comicoz acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay respects to elders, past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations peoples.
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