The Thousands

Okay. So there’s a lot to cover here.

Drawn From Life is a major project of the Melbourne Writers Festival. It’s a newspaper comics lift-out without the newspaper (maybe they should do a news lift-out inside…). It’s edited/produced/compiled/organised/laboured over by incomparable weirdo Oslo Davis.

The paper will be handed out, MX-style, at train stations on 26 August – the first full day of the festival. Of the print run (a whopping 35,000 – “Biggest run of cartoons in white Australian history,” according to Oslo) half will go that morning and the remainder will be available from MWF venues all over Federation Square and ACMI throughout the festival.

The broad idea is cartoonists and comics makers telling stories about the everyday. Largely autobiographical, often with a banal pretext, the stories in Drawn From Life pretty much all manage to avoid the trap that the amazing Jim Woodring notes in his piece: “Autobio comics are tricky. If you make yourself look good you’re a jerk and the ‘Oh, I’m such a discombobulated but lovable klutz’ shtick is threadbare.”

Of the 26 stories, the highlights for me – aside from Woodring’s and Oslo’s own contribution – are Pat Grant (a whole story, start to finish, in a single frame), Peter Arkle (Mezzanine-like detours through his head), Rebecca Hayes (rejection by animals), Mirranda Burton (unexpected conversation on a London street), Shaun Tan (a day in the life) and Sarah Howell & David Blumenstein (getting hitched).

On top of this, it’s going to be a huge year for cartoons and comics at the MWF with a book launch by Burton; a seminar by Oslo and Arkle; a panel discussion between Oslo, Arkle and Woodring; a keynote address by Tan; and a screening and ‘in conversation’, also with Tan.