It’s been an interesting year.

I’ve dealt with depression and anxiety, my abdominal hernia is bigger than ever, had a few hospital trips, and sadly I’ve also been re-familiarising myself with the unemployment line - after a nice couple of years working entirely from home.

But I’ve also been to a few local conventions and events, built on my lego collection, and been ripped off several thousand dollars in an unpaid redundancy, and two years worth of superannuation. I also watched my football team squander a very handy ladder position from an early run of victories, to falling in a heap at the last hurdle and not even making the finals.

I published another Killeroo book with Stuart Black, while still dealing with demons involved with drawing an 8-page comic book story, which has really halted my developmental progress and caused immeasurable damage to my reputation as a publisher and an artist. But I also helped a few other local comic creators with showing them how the kickstarter process works.

So now we’re here in October (it was September when I started writing this), and I’m staring down the barrel at another stint of unemployment (at probably the worst time of year to be so), and a whole lot of rent and bills to pay.

And oh yeah, that 8-page comic I still haven’t drawn.

(It’s a bit of a meandering update, and not terribly well-written in terms of structure. Bear with me.)

I have attended several conventions and trade fairs.

Melbourne Supanova has become my staple event of the year, the home ground advantage means my operating costs are low, and being granted GUEST status is something I never take for granted with Daniel and Royd. They’ve always looked after me very well, and I’m thankful for that.

—

I made the trip up for Sydney Supanova too, with the great assistance of my old friend Pat Purcell. He used to publish comics himself, notably with WINTER CITY, but he made the smart move and decided that the welfare of his family was more important than flushing money down the toilet and print comic books…

(You’ll have to bear with me, “CYNICAL DAZ” is a persona who pops up from time to time in my head).

Anyway, it was nice to get back to Sydnova, which is generally the larger show on the ‘nova circuit. I hadn’t been up there since before COVID, and not a lot had changed in terms of the typical show layout. Stanley “Artgerm” Lau was the big attraction for most of the comics crowd, he was swamped for the whole show for signatures, and Neville and his Grail Hunters crew did very well from all indications - which is great to see.

Make no mistake - KILLEROO is a tough sell. While the visuals and the name tend to resonate with people - I wish I had a dollar for how many people will see my table and say the name - “hey check out the Killeroo!” - only a fraction of these will stop to have a look. And I’m simply not a good enough salesman to engage with them, and try to CONVERT them into paying customers.

When I look at some of those folks, I can almost see the gears turning in their head, as they take the Killeroo visuals in front of them, and try to CONNECT that to something they’re already familiar with, something they’ve seen before - and they usually come up with something like “Tank Girl!”

(I’ve always been somewhat fascinated by this automated cognitive process. When I first saw the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, when I was in High School (it would have been the cartoon I think), I didn’t try and connect it to some other intellectual property, I just accepted it for what it was, and wanted to find out more. It wasn’t until later that I found out it was based on a comic book, and I became even more interested in these characters).

But I digress.

—

Bendi-con in August was fun too. A smaller show, but I particularly enjoyed catching up with Andrew Law for the roadtrip up there, I hadn’t really seen him for a few years. It’s also great to catch up with a few very old friends from my Uni days in Bendigo (20+ years ago), thanks to both Michaels for dropping by.

—

This Sunday 13th October I’ll be attending the Geelong Comic & Toy Fair, which is just down the road from my home! I’m looking forward to talking to Peter Lane for the short roadtrip down there - we’ve been toying with the idea of a Killeroo crossover with his Skye’s Cavern Library comic book, so we’ll iron out a few of the details then.

In July, I attended a comic store farewell weekend in Canberra.

Dee’s Comics and its proprieter, Brendon Dann, has been far and away the biggest supporter of Killeroo over the last ten years. That’s not to diminish the great support I’ve received from other local stores in any way, but there’s degrees…

What do I mean by that? Take a look at the FRONT DOOR of the store:

Not only that, but Brendon would actively recommend local books to his customers, and he gave them pride of place on display. Killeroo issues that would usually sell maybe 5-10 copies in another store over about a year, would sell 30+ copies in Dee’s over the course of 1-2 months. Brendon is just that good a salesman.

It’s not often that the loss of one retailer would actually affect the print numbers of a comic I’ve published, but that’s definitely the case with the loss of Dee’s. It was a very sad day.

However, alongside the dream team of Sommariva, Yardin and Di Pietrantonio doing a marathon session of sketching, I spent the day selling a bunch of comics and hopefully helping Brendon sell more of the stock he would soon have to move into a storage locker.

I also enjoyed an amazing gourmet feast of Korean BBQ, visited a whiskey bar, and got to briefly hang out with Brendon’s amazing family - and added to their lego collection while I was there.

It was also nice to drive again - I hired a car for the weekend drive up to Canberra, loaded up some of my favourite tunes for the roadtrip, and sang along all the way up the Hume freeway. It was as good a short holiday as I’ve had in recent years.

So I was made redundant in August, from a part-time job that I worked entirely from home for the last 18 months.

It was an interesting position, doing design work for a Cyber Security company, and I never once went into the office (not even for the interview). The job was managed entirely via video calls and email, and everyone else in the company did the same - there was staff in multiple states across Australia, and also some based in the Phillipines. It was often high pressure, with short deadlines and a lot to be done in terms of preparing presentations, promotions, and brochures to help promote the company, and educate people and protect companies from cyber attacks.

It wasn’t always fun, but not having to commute every day into the city was a big perk, and it’s going to be hard to find another job that offered that kind of freedom. It paid pretty well too, which was also nice. But at 47 years old, it’s not proving easy to find another job so far (especially with the economy the way it is right now).

I’ve managed to pick up a couple of freelance projects in the interim, but they’re not going to last very long. So if you think you could use some help with design, or comic book production in particular (layouts, lettering) - now would be a good time to give me a yell.

It’s also forced me to dust off my web design skills, and actually put my ozcomics domain name to use. It’s a work in progress, I still need to build a decent portfolio section - but you can take a look here:

So yeah, OLD MAN RUFUS…

Just starting this sentence fills me with dread. I’ll try to explain what goes on in my head when I think about getting to work on this 8-page backup story:

Couple that with regret, my disappointment in myself, not just in being unable to complete it, but the feeling that I’m letting people down EVERY DAY that I haven’t delivered this book. The feeling that every sketch or drawing I do for this is no good, it’s shit. The fact it’s taken so long and I still have virtually nothing to show for it, and the fact that I’ve already had some layouts done by friends that I can work from and STILL haven’t done it. I worry that people might blame Ryan Vella, who did an amazing job and was in no way involved in the delay of the DELUXE EDITION of this book.

I’ve gotten to a place where I avoid drawing altogether - not just for comics but drawing only for enjoyment. I can’t read a comic without being reminded of my failing to produce this book. Seeing other local creators running kickstarters reminds me of my failure - and the fact that I had really started building up a half-decent audience, a market of people I could directly sell new Killeroo books to - new fans that would not just buy this book, but my next one, and maybe even seek out the back issues.

I’ve ruined that. I know I’ve pissed off so many backers that won’t return, and worse, will actively discourage others to support my work again.

“Don’t bother with Killeroo, you’ll probably never receive your books.”

And I really don’t blame them for that.
If the shoe was on the other foot, I’d be saying the same thing.

I wonder whether I’ll even have the chance to rebuild that reputation, or if my heart condition will finish me off well before I can achieve that.

But for now, I’m going to keep doing a little bit at a time where I can. It will get finished, hopefully by the end of the year, but I’m not going to commit to another deadline and add even more pressure than I’m already feeling. I can only thank you for your patience and understanding, and apologise again for how long it’s taken.

But all of the above hasn’t stopped me from working on another Killeroo project in the meantime - but it has pushed its release until later next year:

Working with Jason Franks and Ben Sullivan on this horror-themed Killeroo story has helped me to see that there will be light at the end of the OMR tunnel, and importantly, without the pressure of having to draw any of it myself.

These are two really great local creators that I’ve wanted to work with for years, and the process of developing this story into a finished script, and to see Ben visualising that script into pencilled and inked pages has been fantastic (he’s about 10 pages in so far).

It’s nice to have this bubbling away in the background, and every time I get an email with a new page of art from Ben, it’s like Christmas morning.

But more on this one later.

That’s probably enough for now.

I’m going to try and do more regular updates (particularly about OMR progress), maybe every couple of weeks or so. And they’ll probably be disjointed, like this one - I’ll just keep my substack open in draft form and add stuff as I go along.

Hopefully this has been of some interest to you - thanks for reading/listening to my rants.

-Daz

PS: Here’s a few plugs and links for my friends and fellow publishers latest projects:

KICKSTARTERS

TORN / SOUTHERN SQUADRON

This is the book Ben Sullivan worked on before working on Killeroo, and it looks as good as you’d think it would. My pal Gary has been working steadily at building up his Reverie empire, and this looks like a great addition to his growing library.

BOOM SQUAD #2

My 4HORSEMEN buddy Stuart Black has yet another comic completed, which I would describe as big stupid, sexy fun. If you liked our crossovers, you’ll want to grab this too.

DEATHSHIP JENNY

My friend Rob O’Connor has created a new issue of DEATHSHIP JENNY, which I have often described as “the best Australian Comic you’ve never heard of” - and this looks fabulous - one of the best and positive female characters (with none of the clichés you’d expect in today’s typical portrayal of women in comics).

GORILLA MY DREAMS TEAMUP

This book from my AUSTRALIAN BURNS collaborator Tim Stiles hasn’t launched yet, but from what I’ve seen it’s gonna be great - signup for when it launches.

Killeroo.com | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Kickstarter