Today in the mailbox, thanks to the efforts of Australia Post and Japan Post (日本郵政社), I received a package from my collaborative partner Matt Kyme back in Melbourne.
Matt’s the artist with whom I’m currently doing a little comic book titled Tales To Admonish, issue two of which was launched yesterday in our collective hometown (on Australia Day no less), and that issue rolled up today in a jiffy bag. It looks an absolute treat — full gloss, with splashes of colour.
Also in the pack was #2 of fellow Melburnian Craig Bruyn‘s From Above, which I just read… and it is an absolute romp you need to check out.
But the best thing was something included along with these comics.
It was a page addressed to my eight-year-old daughter Cocoa, hand-drawn by Matt (who has two boys of his own), featuring our characters Roy and Suzie from Tales Of Admonish waving hello. This is it right here, a poor digital pic of the original, and when I showed it to Cocoa she smiled and glowed.
It was this extra special touch which personifies Matt — a wonderful guy I’ve known only a few months, who’s exceptionally talented but also a brilliant human being. Probably the reason we’ve become best mates even while never actually having “met” since we live 5,000 miles apart.
If you haven’t yet heard of Matt, I’m betting you soon will since he has a shit-load of material on the way as both artist and writer. You can check out his online comic That Bulletproof Kid, and find out more at the IF? Commix website we’ve set up together.
Otherwise, yesterday I got an amazing critique of Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? courtesy of reader Shawn Michael Voigt, who helms a blog called Weird and Wonderful Reads. He placed it up on Amazon USA here.
Anyway, back to comic book reading for me — have been catching up on a lot of 2000s stuff I missed, highlights still being Hawkeye by Matt Fraction, David Aja and Annie Wu, along with a re-read of Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting‘s run on Captain America. I think I’ve faded, sadly, on All-New X-Men but will continue reading and see how we go.
As for Jedediah Berry’s novel The Manual of Detection? I loved it.
Andrez Bergen / Little Nobody 