The Thousands

In the same way that SESAME STREET trains kids to watch TV, MAD MAGAZINE trained me to read comics: get a few quick jokes then move on. Other than Mandy Ord’s excellent ROOFTOPS I’ve never read a graphic novel in my life. Really. If I lived in Japan and had to read manga novels I’d kill myself (possibly in a Japanesy way like dressing up as a cutsy tear drop character then knifing kids coming out of a baseball game before running flat chat into an oncoming fugu).**So it is with great delight that I welcome Bernard Caleo’s latest/greatest feat of bite-sized comics – TANGO8: LOVE AND FOOD. It’s Australia’s low-fi version of America’s famous high-fi comic anthologies, and no better or worse, I reckon, just different paper stock. The aforementioned Ord is in, alongside big name novelists Bruce Mutard and Nicki Greenberg and Australia’s best stand-up comedian who sits down and draws his jokes into cartoons, Andrew Weldon.

All up, a yummy Coles variety salad-in-a-bag collection of 70 Australian cartoonists cram 242 pages with short-attention-span-sating comics. Buy for yourself this Christmas, instead of any new American anthology you see.