I PUBLISHED A COMIC ONCE.

I PUBLISHED A COMIC ONCE.

WOMBAT COMICZ 1984

Way back in the early 1980s my brother Joe and I wrote, drew and published our very own comic. It was a bucket list event before bucket list events were popular.

We both grew up on KG Murray reprints of DC characters and MAD magazine but were truly inspired and hugely influenced by the American and European underground comics like ZAP, Dopin’ Dan, the Fury Freak Brothers and Slow Death. Artists like Robert Crumb, Robert Williams, Gilbert Shelton, Paul Mavrides, Ted Richards and Rand Holmes were drawing stuff that blew our collective minds and we wanted to do what they did.

I don’t know if many of you remember the 1980s, but I don’t have great memories of it. The fashion was terrible back then, I winced at the New Romantic fluffy shirts, big coats and stretch jeans, shoulder pads on T-shirts and the ridiculous all black and stud wearing Goth’s back when it was in vogue, now I just cringe. Mainstream music was horrendous and would only get worse until the decade was over. All the hopes we had of growing old enough and getting some of that hippy free love and sex was crushed by the AIDS spectre. The best thing about the 80s was the underground culture bubbling underneath the surface offering alternatives to the commercial onslaught in the press, TV and radio.

Phantom parody

As kids, both Joe and I loved to draw, whether it be copying pictures of Superman or drawing big fantasy football games on butcher’s paper. I do remember Joe’s style growing out of his love of drawing Fred Flintstone and then watching that character evolve into a cigarette smoking, beer chugging ocker. I had a hard time keeping a character constant and my ability to draw hands was non-existent whereas Joe seemed to have no trouble at all, all up his skill set at drawing was far superior to mine, I accepted it and encouraged it.

Living in a house with three teenage brothers, Joe was youngest, then me and our two older brothers, there was always fighting and arguing as the pecking order was kept in check. With this was also a lot of ribald humour, practical jokes and immature shenanigans. You must remember this is a time when baby jokes were the height of popularity, a new joke was like a new meme these days, everyone wanted to know a new one and be first to tell it. For example, when the first Space Shuttle exploded in 1986, there were jokes going around before the rocket had hit the earth.

This kind of humour influenced many of the stories that we worked on, which I’ll get to later.

As we left school and got jobs, we found we had quite a bit of disposable income, whilst I spent mine on music, books and guitars, Joe spent his on writing pads and pencils and ink. As I tried to master the guitar, Joe concentrated on his art and storytelling. Every now and again he’d show me a thing he was working on and I’d be impressed but rather than say how good it was I’d say “That’s not funny, that’s sick” which seemed to impress him more. It got to the point where I decided that if he could do this I could too, and I started doing my own stories, occasionally swapping ideas.

We would often pick up our growing collection of underground comics and use them for reference for layout and ideas and marvel at the simplicity of it all, we started to research the artists themselves, finding a book about the U.S underground scene in the local library or a magazine article.  There always seemed to be a constant theme, if you wanted to do something badly enough and no one would do it for you. Do it yourself. As we were building up this collection of comics Joe and I decided we should give it a crack and do our own.

We had no idea what we were doing, how to present the artwork, how to format, who would print it and how much.

For some unknown reason, Joe was obsessed with copyright and wanted to know what it was and how it affected his artwork. He thought it was some legal requirement akin to setting up a mortgage. That it needed to be registered with some legal firm or faceless Government department. I simply went to the library (I keep mentioning this “library” place kiddies. It was a really useful resource before they put Google in your phones) I read a few chapters and was satisfied I had a grasp on it. Joe, however, wasn’t, even though I showed him all my findings, he wanted to ask anybody and everybody who ever worked in a bookshop, a newsagent or street vendor who sold comics, because they were “professionals”. Most who looked at him as if he was “special”.

With the whole copyright mystery solved and behind us, we next needed to know who would print our comic. Places like Kwik Kopy were popping up in suburbs around Melbourne and were offering quick and simply printing services, though at the time limited. They liked our idea but suggested a more traditional printer for our job. We had a mate who worked for one of the larger printers. Packer’s I think it was and he suggested a smaller local guy in nearby Oakleigh.

By this stage, we were getting all our facts and figures in place, but we still didn’t have enough pages of content to actually print. The guy who owned the printers was understanding kind of chap, he had to be with two complete amateurs asking all the wrong questions. Straight away he saw a problem with the samples we had brought along with us. I liked to draw on A4 paper, but Joe liked to do everything on A3. The printer said if we wanted a standard comic, he would do it in A4. Joe would have to redraw everything. Well, that was never going to happen, and the project nearly died right there and then, when the printer seeing our devasted faces and sensing a lost job said that he could shrink the originals, but we may lose detail. We were hacks, we didn’t give a shit and we were happy again. The printer asked when we wanted to start, and we said when we get enough pages to fill the book. When we left, I turned and saw the guy shaking his head in disbelief.

It would take us nearly a year before we finally finished. I know it was a passion but we were both in our early twenties and life had to be lived. No sitting alone in a garret, anguishing over work for us two.

The main story.
Legends of the Dreamtime.

We had managed to cobble together 52 pages with a cover that we wanted to be in colour. It consisted of a six-page story on angry pens and pencils by me, a whole heap of one and two-page jokes influenced by MAD magazine by Joe and myself and the bulk taken up by a seventeen-page epic called Legends of the Dreamtime by Joe. A story that told the adventures of two drunken marsupial’s, a koala and a kangaroo that incorporated many a 1980s news story including Aboriginal rights, the Lindy Chamberlain debacle and that time a semi-trailer drove through a pub in Alice Springs, a reluctant superhero and a regurgitating giant frog. All through the comic in either one-page gags or running underneath the main LotD story as three-panel gags (similar to Gilbert Shelton’s Fat Freddy’s Cat.) were one of Joe’s favourite characters, the Rats. These little Rat’s Tales (as they were titled) were usually bad jokes we all told each other when we were drunk and were never in good taste. To look back at the comic as a whole these days, it would never pass the vetting stage of the printer if they had a modicum of self-respect.

The Nolan's Research Time. Joe on RHS

Just prior to taking the finished product to the printers I transferred to Queensland with my job and the bulk of the final stages of the comic were left to Joe to manage.

There were some minor problems. It was cheaper to just leave the inside cover and back page blank as a cost-saving measure. Then the printer had a problem with the cover as it was a parody of the popular Life Be In It Ad campaign. The printer said he could get a grant because of the nature of the publication but if it had advertising anywhere in the comic it would be void. This grant, unbeknownst to us up till this point was factored into our price. Eventually, it was agreed that the cover was of satirical intent so passed the litmus test for the grant. The printer wanted 50% up front for artwork and preparation and the other 50% on completion collection six weeks later in March 1984. As luck would have it I came home for a holiday the day after Joe collected the comic from the printer. In the shed was 10 boxes each containing 100 copies of Wombat Comiz- the Z on the end to appease our punk aesthetic. I liked what I saw and promptly pointed out the obvious. Joe, who was obsessed with copyright failed to put one single copyright symbol or notice anywhere on the comic. The printer who was so concerned about the advertising implied on the cover put his own little printing blurb on the otherwise blank back cover. Aside from that, I was impressed. Dad. Who read it said, “I don’t see the humour in it” Mum who didn’t read it said “It’s lovely dear”

While I was home we barnstormed some ideas on how to get rid of the rest of the comics after we had sold or given away copies to all our friends and family. We devised a strategy to try and push it through the local Milk Bar, newsagents and even the pub, possibly going into town to see if someone would take a few copies. We thought of making a whole heap of stickers and sticking them everywhere. Places like urinals, bank and post office windows and Stop signs. I went back to Queensland and after six months I came back and found nothing had been done, Joe was going to go to the Small Café at Monash Uni. But the week before the Federal Police went through it and he decided not to do it. So we still had nine boxes of comics and no real desire to get rid of them. The whole process seemed to take the steam out of it for Joe and me coming back, I felt like all the momentum had run out. At the same time our Dad got seriously ill, so we just moved on to other things.

RAT TALES

About fifteen years ago, the family home was sold and Mum was moving to smaller premises, we had to clean out the place. Part of the many things that were thrown in the large skip bin was one and a half cartons of Wombat Comicz. Some water damaged the rest in fairly good condition. Joe and I looked at them for a minute or so, discussed if we should keep the good box and decided to ditch the lot, remarking that in the fifteen plus years earlier how the hell we managed to unload so many? I quick look in the bin later the next day (it was out in the street) and I noticed both boxes had been taken, everything else remained. Joe continued to draw and even took some classes but when his new job took him all over Australia, he just didn’t have time anymore, I got married and started a family and we never got round to issue two.

It’s crazy these days looking back when this all happened. Faxes were new technology and used that horrible thermal paper, photocopies were a great tool if you could get hold of one but they were still limited in what they could do and the kind of quality they offered.  Only the other day I scanned, printed and bound an original copy of Wombat Comicz in a few minutes from my office.

You’ll never find Wombat Comicz in any Australian comic or small press, even ‘zine histories because of its provincial distribution. But after all these years I’m still proud of it, and I can say I published a comic once.  

Also published in BBCN Issue 270 August 2018