Newton Comics -the Amazing Rise and Spectacular Fall -Review

Newton Comics -the Amazing Rise and Spectacular Fall  by Daniel Best.

Way, way back in 1975 when I was thirteen I found a new comic in the Milk bar, it was The Planet of the Apes a spin-off of the popular movies and TV series.

I was so excited about this comic that I didn’t even care that the story continued onto the next issue, so I kept an eye out for other titles by this new publisher Newton Comics. Well, you could imagine my disappointment when hot on the heels of Planet of the Apes came countless Marvel titles. I quickly became aware that Newton was doing the same as GK Murray (whose self-contained black and white DC stories I’d grown to love) and were releasing reprints, but in my opinion not as good. Soon these comics were everywhere and my passion for the Planet of the Apes series waned as this was also the time that I discovered American underground comics. Newton eventually disappeared off the newsstands and seriously I could have cared less. It seemed like mass produced rubbish. I did however, many years later as my interest in local comics grew, wondered what happened to them.

Well I don’t have to wonder anymore, thanks to Adelaide author Daniel Best’s Newton Comics -the Amazing Rise and Spectacular Fall. A book entertaining on so many levels and a captivating reference of a short but tumultuous time in the history of Australian comics, and one that up until now was largely ignored. Besides being a comprehensive listing of all the Newton Comics catalogue with cover images of all available issues, it also tells the amazing story of how, in a short span of three years Newton Comics deserved the title chosen for the book.

Maxwell Newton

Best does a great job filling in a gap about Maxwell Newton and his comic publishing history, that seems to get passed over in his own biography and by many Australian comic book historians.

Newton was a child prodigy who grew up in Western Australia and counted among his school alumni John Stone (the man whose signature was on our bank notes for a long time) and ex PM Bob Hawke. He was talented journalist and economists who wrote for major National papers including the Australian and the Financial Review. He was accused of spying by the Gordon Liberal government and started the Sunday Observer in Melbourne where the idea for Newton Comics was formed and how Maxwell Newton went on to screw Marvel comics out of a small fortune on his way to a self-destructive lifestyle.

The author goes into what transpired over that period in some detail, including original documents and interviews with people who were in the thick of it, he also continues as Newton’s publishing career and life collapse due to his many excess’ which include alcoholism, suicide attempts and a stint as a pimp, only to clean up his act sustainably.  Eventually leading him to abandon Australia (with the help of Rupert Murdoch) building for himself a respectable career never to return and dying at the age of 61 in 1990.

Best also gives us insight to the collectability of the product as well as comprehensive list of available comics and ephemera, even supply a script of a possible Australian story that may have been published had things turned out differently.

Why we have TV mini movies on media personalities like Dulcie Boling, Ita Buttrose and Kerry Packer when we had a Larry Flint/Ian Fleming hybrid running amuck upsetting politicians and the establishment in equal measure. A man with amazing resilience and ability to bounce back from whatever crisis he found himself in (usually self-infected) This man is a major motion picture waiting to be made.

Newton Comics -the Amazing Rise and Spectacular Fall  was made possible by a 2013 Pozible crowd funding campaign and a lot of people had faith in him to make it a reality, and I’m glad, it’s  a fantastic read and an important research document for the series Australian comic collector. Daniel Best has written a well researched and entraining book that sheds light on a period many tend to skip as blip on the radar in Australian comic history.

Newton Comics -the Amazing Rise and Spectacular Fall   is available as an Ebook via Blaq Books www.blaqbooks.com.au

Improving the classics

I have a friend on Facebook who often posts art that inspires her.
Beautiful classic landscapes from prominent artists with the occasional beautiful photo.
I have taken it upon myself to just tweak these artworks to make them a bit more palatable to my tastes.
This is what I've been doing.

Photo Hydrangeas in the Azores

Henri Jules Geoffroy Nursury School 1853

Email Claus Summer Morning 1896

Henri Biva From Waters Edge 1905

F. Pons Arnau" Eating Fruit" Circa 1920

Rene Milot "Anguished"

Photo Minot in His Garden

Ivan Shishkin "Forest" 1897

BLACK CANARY

THE BLACK CANARY

In 2015, DC released an incarnation of the Black Canary, written and drawn by Brenden Fletcher and Annie Wu. Recasting Dinah Lance (Black Canary) as the lead singer of an electropunk band, imaginatively named Black Canary.

The pop culture website Humanstein refers to it as: “(the comic) is 50% rock and roll, 50% super-heroics and 100% fun. The comic is an action packed blend of ninjas, spies, and punk rock, the story moves pretty quick and features gorgeous artwork and a frantic energy that perfectly conveys the feel of the band. Dinah (Black Canary) leads the group with two other over-the-top characters Lord Byron, Paloma, and Ditto.

DC also made the interesting choice of setting up a Bandcamp for the band where you can check out producer Joseph Donovan and singer Michelle Bensimon (of Caveboy) putting out very real music as the fictional Black Canary band. Even selling the downloadable only EP at the same price as the comic book.

https://blackcanary.bandcamp.com/

https://youtu.be/KztEiEsO4e8

Dinah Lance hits the road! After years as a soldier and vigilante, the LAST place Dinah saw herself is on stage...but she's quickly learning she'd die to protect the gang of misfits she's fallen into. And she just might have to - for some reason, the newly rechristened band Black Canary seems to be a magnet for trouble...and Dinah's not gonna believe it when she finds out the reason why! Martial arts, super-spies, and rock 'n' roll combine, from Brenden Fletcher (BATGIRL) and Annie Wu (Hawkeye)!  COMICCASTLE blurb for Black Canary Volume 4

THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

MERRY CHRISTMAS

This is 5-page story written by me and drawn, coloured and lettered by the amazing Argentian artist Carlos Angeli. It was originally published in the now-defunct decay Anthology.

Click on each image for a larger view.

ENJOY

The Basin Fire Starter Fire Fighter.

Fire Fighter / Fire Starter

Summer is fast approaching , the heat is upon us and of course preparation by the CFA for another fire season is well underway.

In our modern era, we are better prepared with more sophisticated technology and resources to fight fires, but there is always the threat that Mother Nature will outsmart us all.

Since the founding of Melbourne the Dandenongs have always been a place of respite in the hot Summers and as long back as the 1860s, it rivalled Sorrento and Portsea as a getaway destination for the affluent, escaping the crowds, heat and smells of an ever expanding Melbourne booming from the gold rush.

These days there is little trace on the mountain of the grand mansions that stood proudly in their opulence and finery. Names like Doongalla and Ferndale are legendary not just for their beauty but their famous owners. Names like the McKinnons and Griffiths. Pioneers in Industry and sport. Both these fine properties were lost to bush fires.

Victorians learnt very early to respect the fire dangers of the Southern Summer.

Respect of the land and bush fires were quickly inbred into the local populace and the Basin as a township had a Community ready to support each other in times of crises. Though up and running in one form or another the Basin officially formed its own Fire Brigade in 1926.

So imagine how bad it must have been to find one of your own had been responsible for deliberately lighting fires.

Newspaper reports fromMarch 1938 report that a Henry Frank Grumont (more commonly known as Frank Junior, son of respected community member Frank Grumont Senior) a young man of 21 was convicted at Ferntree Gully Courthouse of lighting three fires in different locations between the 20^th  and the 23^rd of February the same year, using a rudimentary incendiary device. For one of these fires he even raised the alarm to put it out. Grumont was also present at two of the fires to help fight them.

The devices were perforated tin cans that were placed over a short candle to prevent them extinguishing and that when they burned down would ignite the surrounding dry grass. A time bomb in its most basic form. Two days later Captain of the Basin Fire brigade Bert Chandler found several of the perforated tins whilst inspecting the burnt-out areas.

Grumont’s crime was discovered by some early CIS and smart detective work –acting on Chandler’s information- by First Constable Sage out of Bayswater when he visited Grumont’s house and finding two short candles. Though Grumont denied any implication he was arrested where he eventually admitted to Senior Detective Lyons the deed after being shown the cans and a piece of candle with his thumbnail on it and was charged.

His reasons for lighting the fires was to clear scrub – mind you, it was a 35-degree day with hot northerly winds - he then admitted it was to get even with some people who “had a set upon him” A phrase that means they held a grudge towards him. 

Though the potential for Grumont’s crime was catastrophic, his punishment was lean.

The Brigade Captain Chandler though discovering important evidence implicating him, spoke of Grumont as one of the finest firefighters in the district, He then said he would hire Grumont and watch over him as the believed this lapse was due to the drink. This obviously held sway with the Magistrate and  Grumont was sentenced to six months jail which was suspended on a 50 pound bond for good behaviour for two years. Mr Chandelor even acted as bondsman.

In Rick Coxhill’s History of the Basin, he makes a very brief mention of the event and I quote “ The 1930s were bad years for fires, mainly because an arsonist was very active in the area and this continued until an arrest was made in 1938.”

This statement is not expanded on but it does imply that the person arrested may have been responsible for more than one fire.

Grumont's actions were dangerous at best and given his history was well aware of the consequences. Just three months earlier in November 1937, 150 houses were threatened in an outbreak, foreshadowing a bad summer fire season. His was even quoted in anARGUS news article about his concerns for the oncoming season. Grumont’s court appearance appeared in newspapers all over the country such was the interest in the outcome.

I believe there must be more to this story, information at hand would have suggested a harsher punishment, there may be more in the back story. As for Frank Grumont junior, he married that same year and moved out to Croydon and eventually Altona. In 1962 bush fires took the place he grew up in and where his mother still lived. Ferndale.

I’d be interested if anyone else has information on this subject.

Sources: LINK TO ORIGINALS

The Argus 4-3-38 page 3 & 28-11-1938

BurnieAdvocate 5-3-1938 Page 7

The Age 5-3-1938 Page 22

The WestAustralian 15-3-1938

The Adelaide Advertiser 5-3-1938 page 23

The Townsville Daily 7-3-1938 page 3

The Herald (Melb) 4-3-1938 Page 3

The Weekly Times 12-3-1938

History of the Basin Rick Coxhill

BBCN July-September 2004 issues 139-141

What’s with LEGO?

What’s with LEGO?

The "project"

My experience with Lego is probably the same as most adults. It was a thing we bought our kids thinking they were old enough to build something that they were having a passing obsession with, then we ended up building the whole kit because the kids really weren’t that old enough to follow the instructions or have the attention span/patience to see the build through to the end.

Then a few weeks later it would be in a million pieces again and we as parents would find every piece by stepping on it in bare feet at any given time of the day in any given room. Basically, you repeat this with several kits until it all ends up under the bed in a big plastic container all mixed together with all the instructions missing with a stray piece escaping to remind us that Lego is instinctively made by evil Scandinavian monsters (probably the same ones behind IKEA kit furniture) to punish us.

I haven’t had to worry about Lego and its attraction to the soles of my feet for quite a while now that the kids are all grown and moved away, but recently, due to an art project I had to collect a certain amount of different coloured bricks to construct a model, then complete it with printed instructions and box. It was then going to be a gift for a long time associate.

There was no way I was going to ask any of my children if they still had their containers of Lego, let alone dredge through said boxes looking for the 184 pieces needed to commence my project. Lucky for me there is a shop in Bayswater Toy Bricks that sells deconstructed kits that have been sorted by colour into trays that you can sort through yourself. While this sounds easy, allow yourself some time and powerful glasses because all lego bricks come in a million different styles and the black ones all seem to melt together after five minutes of searching. Anyhow, after a long search I was 14 specific bricks short. This wasn’t the shop’s fault or my bad eyes, apparently people come in all the time and plunder these trays and I may have come in on a wrong day. I asked the lady behind the counter if by chance they sold individual bricks, which they did but only the more popular styles and the ones I needed didn’t fit that category. However, she said, it was my lucky day. On the following Sunday, next to the Council offices in Bayswater, the Senor Citizens Centre was the venue for A Toy Brick Market where there would at least 200,000 loose Lego pieces available. If what I wanted wasn’t there, it didn’t exist. This was great news because I was on a timeline to finish my project, the only downside was it was only between 9.00 am and Noon. Those hours are ok any other day of the week, but Sunday?

sunday 9.10Am Bayseter

That Sunday, being committed to the project, I rejected any notion of a sleep-in and a late breakfast and set off to find the elusive missing pieces of Lego. I gathered that I’d get there about 10 past 9 to allow the poor people setting up to drag their feet a bit and get the sleep out of their eyes. Pulling into the car park I couldn’t have been more mistaken. I was lucky that someone had already found their Holy Grail pieces and left the already full carpark as I drove in, I could feel the curses of the cars that had followed me in.  There were people everywhere. Mostly parents with children but still a great representation of the population in general. There was even a coffee van set up near the hall entrance to cater for those like me not familiar with this Sunday time zone. Or then again it could just be a Melbourne thing being the coffee consumption capital of the world.

In here there were treasures

On entering the hall I was amazed at the crowd this early in the morning and there had to be at least 150 bodies in there all digging through trays of coloured bricks and looking at second-hand kits in original boxes and other completely made models all vying for new owners. I gave the people at the door my gold coin donation as an entry fee and proceeded to sift through the trays with other people as desperate as me to find that one brick. There was none of this crazy, Boxing Day Sale pushing and shoving it was all politeness and order and within five minutes I had exactly what I was looking for and some extras just for good measure, then on the way out I bought a little Dr Who Dalek because it looked cool. At the checkout, there were a lot of happy people holding all manner of kits, models and plastic bags of Lego (at $5 for 100 grams, it’s a lot more and cheaper than

Everyone was looking for something important

you’d expect compared to a new set). There was a lot of money being spent and I got an indication of how really popular Lego is and it isn’t just for the kids. And mind you, this all before half-past nine on a Sunday morning. I had to remind myself at this as I passed more people coming in and cars followed me back to my parking spot.

As of writing this, my project is complete and I’m mailing it off next week hopefully making someone happy in the process. So, I discovered Lego is popular and more than I ever realised especially as a collectible for adults and I finally found a use for it rather than using it as an indicator of pain tolerance.

originally published in the BBCN Issue 282 October 2019

Mystik Spiral

MYSTIC SPIRAL .
A band from the cult favourite MTV show DARIA an animated TV series that was aired on MTV from March 3, 1997 to January 21, 2002


All of this info was shamelessly stolen from the Daria Wiki

Mystik Spiral is the band fronted and led by Trent Lane, Daria's friend Jane's brother. It is an alternative-rock grunge band, with elements of heavy metal: sources call it "post-alterna-grunge" or "trance punk". Most of their songs aim for screeds on the tortured human condition, to a ludicrous degree. They often introduce themselves as, "We're Mystik Spiral, but we're thinking of changing the name." Some of the alternate names have included "Helpful Corn" and "Something-Something Explosion". They also wondered aloud if it would help if they "spelled Mystik with 2 Ys". The roots of Mystik Spiral were planted when 12-year-old Trent Lane met musical soulmate Jesse Moreno at summer school (well, around the corner from summer school). These two young iconoclasts discovered that they shared a mutual love of rock and roll, water pistols, and gum. With acoustic guitars donated to the band by Mr.Vincent Lane (a big draw on the singer songwriter circuit of early-1970s Ann Arbor, Michigan -- see Daybreak Dreamin') the two boys began experimenting with unorthodox riffs and jarring, atonal juxtapositions. Eventually Mr. Lane clued them into the concept of tuning, and things took off from there. Performing for family and friends as 'Wax Lypps,' 'Indyan Burn,' and occasionally 'Boa Constryctyr,', the boys developed a repertoire of angst-driven power pop and Weird Al Yankovic covers. They decide to turn electric when they realized that it would be louder. In high school, they teamed up with drummer Max Tyler after he answered a notice placed in a local paper. Attracted by the pared-down, zen-like simplicity of the ad ('They charge by the word,' Trent notes), Max blew everyone away with his energy, drive, and ownership of a drum kit. The threesome played numerous basements throughout their teen years, developing their signature style of pioneering 'trance punk.' They changed their name to Mystik Spiral and immediately began reconsidering it. But the name stuck, since Jesse had already written it in metallic marker on his guitar case. The lineup became complete when the threesome spotted Nicholas Campbell hitchhiking along the side of the road in 1996, and the rest is history (including a five-hour wait for a tow truck when The Tank broke down a few yards later.) In the late 90's, Jesse briefly also appeared with the group Bats With Guns, which later splintered into Cats With Gats and Bats with Bats. Trent has worked on many solo projects over the years, including an unfinished tone poem inspired by the weather, a yet-to-be-completed opera about the life of actor Nick Nolte, and an idea for a sort of hybrid comic book/CD sampler that he'll get around to eventually. Nicholas and Max wish people would pay more attention to them. The band's "career" They are generally portrayed in a negative light - in their very first mention in "Road Worrier", Daria said the name sounded like a Doors tribute band and Jane laughed that they wish they were that good - and the few of their songs we get to hear are rubbish. Even Trent once said the songs in the second set were so lame, he'd leave the gig if he wasn't in the band ("Jane's Addition"). Despite all this, they keep getting gigs, both in Lawndale and elsewhere. They've performed at Brittany Taylor's birthday party, a kids party in Fremont, the Club Glamour Lounge near Ashfield, various dives across Carter County, and regularly in Lawndale at both McGrundy's Brew Pub and The Zon. Their website states "We are available for weddings, sweet sixteens, bar mitzvahs, acquittal parties, keggers. Not too early in the day, please... Cash, check, or barter accepted." A genre magazine named Smudge Magazine gave them a (ludicrously purple prosed) favourable review, calling them a "convincingly tormented quartet", while Muck & Rage gave them a bad review because the reviewer was a surly douche and thought Trent looked like the type of boy his ex-girlfriend liked. They had a website from 1999, fronted by Trent, where you could book them, join their fan club ("Make a stand against corporate rock (until we sign a record deal)"), and see their lyrics. Max set it up. It's very clear on the site that they need money badly. They have never released a CD. The IIFY Post-Movie Chat had Trent state they have a 15-track CD in the works "and we only have 14 left to go"; in 2001, their website said they needed to agree on the cover art and get the drum kit "out of hock". They have released a vinyl single of "Behind My Eyelids" (with B-side "Icebox Woman") under Plush Records (Daria Diaries) but on their website they admit many shops refuse to order it.