BUGOUT! (A5 Colour-in Comic, 2000): Although I contributed cartoon art to a few zines as a teenager in Newcastle during the 80s, I’ve only published solo collections on 2 occasions, both as b&w A5 colour-in mini-comics. The first, which via some elusive logic I titled BUGOUT! (exactly the same title I used for an entirely different A4 zine, published at the same time…?), was a collection of images and characters taken from personal sketchbooks of the time (1998 – 2000), in a fairly funky, somewhat psychedelic style. It was intended as a colouring-in book, though I never saw evidence of it used as such. The “Funky Luv Tribe” characters featured in it are all based on actual humans I met via the very colourful techno scene in Melbourne at the time.
SLUGBUNNY #1 (2013): My second solo mini-comic came many years later in 2013, and focused on an enigmatic character who had emerged in the course of my Tasmanian cartoon workshops. Originally, in the midst of a class session, I had drawn him on the whiteboard as a simple device to help demonstrate some drawing elements such as perspective, foreground / background, scale and sequence. Somehow his blank stare and indeterminate physical form (ie not-quite-a-rabbit) struck a chord with students, he was also (somehow) christened Slugbunny, and thereafter was a much-loved feature of many a future workshop. He became so popular, even requested by fans, that I felt he deserved his own comic, at least once. SLUGBUNNY #1 was only available at my workshops, and I had designed the comic to demonstrate the techniques I taught, so I often referred students to the comic for context.
