*Pic: Empanelled Book One — Loose Life Stories ISBN 9780980548273
*Pic: Empanelled Book Two — Frivolous Fables ISBN 9780980548280
*Pic: … and inside …
Empanelled Books 1 and 2 by Lindsay Arnold
The graphic novel has been quietly coming of age, almost unnoticed by mainstream culture. The idea that comics are for children only is no longer true.
Most graphic works come from the US; its huge markets made possible a living of sorts from drawing crime and fantasy stories and the genre made fortunes for sometimes unscrupulous publishers exploiting droves of underpaid artists.
After a fatuous moral panic about ‘horror comics’ in the 1950s, comics began to appeal to a more adult audience in the turbulent 1960s as they began to reflect a growing counterculture stemming from the Beat generation and flourishing in the climate of rebellion and rejection of the stuffy, button-down atmosphere that marked the immediate post-war period.
During that time artists like Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton rose to the height of their fame in the 1980s with often outrageous works that challenged conventional wisdom and tore up many a taboo.
Lindsay Arnold is the only Australian artist to figure prominently in this movement, appearing in seminal anthologies such as Weirdo, Rip Off, Prime Cuts, Graphc Story Monthly and The Comics Journal.
Now these stories have been collected, along with much unpublished work, in Empanelled Book One — Loose Life Stories.
It’s a big, brash, colourful book with 288 pages about growing up in wartime Hobart, through the tribulations of school and into adulthood in a stuffy, repressive society. But jazz, the more outré and recondite the better, took him on a career as a drummer on the mainland and into Europe, affording a precarious and often hilarious living.
His work has been praised by Crumb and other luminaries of the comix world, and by musicians like John Pochée and the legendary Al Browne.
As well as the stories, the book features some of his prolific painting, mostly on jazz subjects, offbeat literary gags and rocks painted cartoon-style into mythical creatures.
It’s an impressive collection — the stories are sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but always lively and full of well-observed detail supporting the narrative . It’s occasionally strong stuff, too, so don’t give it to your old Granny or leave it within reach of very young persons.
Empanelled Book Two — Frivolous Fables, which will be released early 2016, features the jazz adventures of Dr Gumbo, a character invented by Arnold in the early days of ABC JJ, a legendary rant by drum genius Buddy Rich and a tale of a seedy descendant of the comic hero The Phantom, along with more paintings and stories of artistic life.
You can take a look inside the books at:
http://baznold.com/
A bio of Linzee Arnold:
WORK
Born into 97 days of Peace before Hitler invaded Poland
[and never forget it kiddies!]
despite a natural proclivity for Art:
visual musical performance & literature
I have survived Times as
ditch digger dishwasher floor and ceiling cleaner
public toilet cleaner park keeper
mail sorter milkman fruit and vegetable deliverer
tree feller fencepost cutter builders labourer
surveyors chainman house painter
building demolisher carwash attendant
door to door salesman [sold: nil]
puppeteer scene shifter set builder
set painter furniture removalist stage manager
factory hand stage hand studio hand
tv floor manager film props man
filing clerk typesetter tv cameraman
theatrical wardrobe assistant pogo stick painter
cat herder floor sander silkscreen flower print tracer
adult education teacher high school teacher
[the worst one]
