SUBURBOPHOBIA

A comic blog based in Melbourne.

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Instagram Account

I’ve been having a lot of problems with my tumblr account (posts disappearing, etc) so I’m now using Instagram, also under the name Suburbophobia. I’m currently doing a comic a day about a trip across Europe.

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A sample page from my new issue, Suburbophobia #14. It features a three panel comic from every year of my life. It will be launched at the Festival of the Photocopier at Melbourne Town Hall on Sunday Feb 11th (12-5). 

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Just finishing off my new issue and choosing between two time-machine covers. The comic features one incident from each year of my life and will launch at Festival of the Photocopier at Melbourne Town Hall next Sunday (Feb 11th).

[sticky-institute]

Arty arcade to become ghost town due to Metro Tunnel

Melbourne's much-loved Campbell Arcade will soon become a ghost town to make way for the Melbourne Metro Tunnel.

Hi zine fans. As you might’ve read in The Age today, the current proposal for the new Melbourne Metro Tunnel involves the demolition of a number of shops in Campbell Arcade, including Sticky.

We’ve been informed this week that, as mentioned in the article, the new draft development would necessitate our eviction sometime before July 2019.

If you are concerned about the prospect of shops in Degraves Subway being removed, Metro Tunnel are currently holding information sessions where the public are invited to give feedback on the proposed new development. We will be attending Tuesday’s meeting, 5.30pm at Melbourne Town Hall. Please feel free to join us. http://metrotunnel.vic.gov.au/planning/have-your-say

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Melbourne Metro is a great idea but this new proposed alignment of the tunnels is heritage and cultural vandalism. Melbourne CBD has already become bland enough without losing Sticky and the other shops in Campbell Arcade. Please fill in the embedded survey as we only have a week to object.

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I hate Australia’s for profit national lottery, which seems like a direct monetary transfer from the desperate poor to the shareholding rich. I really wish there was a British style lottery that did some social good, in which case I’d be quite happy for my wife to spend $20 on tickets...

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My AFL team Richmond Tigers have reached the Grand Final and in celebration I’ve put out a mini comic. These two pages give the historical context of their achievement.

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I'll have a stall at the Tonerpalooza Zine Fair at the State Library of Victoria tomorrow (Sunday) It's on from 10-4 and I will have a variety of comics including a new one about Richmond Tigers. It's the kind of comic about football that doesn't feature any actual footballs but does include a lot of silly facial hair, a member of Black Sabbath and a Delorean.

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I’ve been re-watching the first season of Twin Peaks. The music still sounds amazing, but it’s hard work aesthetically...

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Pushwagner - Soft City My own current projects (principally a comic about Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds' broadcast are trundling along quite slowly so I thought I'd fill the gap in my blog with a comic review. The Norwegian artist Pushwagner's magnum opus, an epic of line art, took him six years to complete and was lost for over a quarter of a century before being published in English for the first time by New York Review of Books in 2016. Appropriately, there is an introduction by Chris Ware as the awkward size of this book means it's likely to sit alongside his larger works on your bookshelf. The book consists of 269 line drawings with the occasional splash of colour. It doesn't have a plot in the conventional sense, which has the bonus that anything I write here won't be a spoiler. The book is about a day in the life of the retro-futurist 'Soft City', where the technology is largely that which existed in the 1970's, but the social organisation is very different. It's been compared to 'Brave New World' (the populace's pill-popping passivity) and 1984 (surveillance and distant war) but the book it reminds me of most is Yevgeny Zamyatin's 'We' with the emphasis on time and time-tables. The epic vistas are all the more impressive for the knowledge that they were done without digital manipulation (and indeed Pushwagner's slightly wonky linework give an individuality to the masses). You do gain the occasional tantalising glimpse into the inner world of characters, but generally the book is more about the system than any individual - in some ways it's like an elongated version of John Bracks' 'Collins St, 5pm'. There are only a few hundred words in the whole book so a lot of what we take from it is our own interpretation and for this it is all the more unsettling. I recommend this book to fans of Gary Panter, Ander Nilson or anyone with a general interest in dystopias.

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A sketch of my favourite Aussie Rules player Toby ‘The Big Nanny’ Nankervis in action during a ball up in the Richmond-Melbourne game.

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I’ve recently taken some more copies of my zine ‘The Future That Was Cancelled’ to Sticky Institute in Melbourne. Here’s a page that didn’t make it into the final edition.

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I've got a stall at the NGV art book fair on Saturday from 2.30-8, where the above publications will be available for browse or purchase. It's on at The National Gallery of Victoria, St Kilda Road, Melbourne. https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/programs-events/art-book-fair/

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My new zine “The Future That Was Cancelled” was launched at FOTP on Sunday. It’s now available from Sticky Institute in Melbourne. This page is about a scientific experiment that finished a mere 97 years ahead of schedule.

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A sample page from my new zine “The Future That Was Cancelled”, which is about past visions of how we would be living now which, for a variety of reasons, never came to fruition. 

It will be launching on Sunday at Festival of the Photocopier at Melbourne Town Hall. 

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I've just done my photocopying at #stickyinstitute and I've now got a busy afternoon of making comics for #fotp2017 next week. It's just as well Barbarella has volunteered to help me.