Rehab Exit Interview: Bernard Caleo

1. Briefly describe your experience at comic artist rehab:

Being part of CBR really focussed the month of February, comic-making-wise. Loved the feeling of always tinkering with possibilities for the next one, then diving in and making one.

2. What, if anything, did you learn from the program?

That my energy for comics is not unlike that which I have for performing: it thrives on the short burst of work. I’ve always thought that they were completely distinct from one another: now, not so sure.

3. Which one of your own comics are you most pleased with and why?

“Nose Biter“, because it has the best acting.

4. Which one of your own comics are you least pleased with and why?

“Meanwhile, Elsewhere“: although I do like it quite a lot, it’s a bit overstuffed with horsehair. It’s been very instructive reading the amount of air, of openness, in Alice’s strips and the degree of perspective-on-self humour in Cassandra’s.

5. Do you hope to keep up drawing comics after rehab? If so, how often.

Aw, yeah: as stated at the beginning, really want to get things re-started on “I Knew Him”. Certainly it has provoked much more ‘casual’ drawing, drawing becoming more of an everyday thing.

6. Any suggestions for future rounds?

This may be a wordpress thing, but is it possible to call up all of one artist’s strips on one page? I found myself wanting to do this with earlier rehabbers’ work.

And of course, it might not often work but getting us together that day was a master stroke – really gave the round a kick on, I thought, an added dose of community.

Not a suggestion but: I also liked it that you were quite intensely part of an online world, but for a circumscribed time: one month seems a good length.

I’d certainly do it again! Great to see the next buncha profiles up! Big tips of hats to my fellow rehabbers: class of Feb 2008, I salute you! All of you, please contribute to Tango8. And a bow to you, Amber, it’s a fine fine idea. And it works!

Round Four: Day Twenty Seven

The Hurstbridge line

Second panel should probably read, ‘Brian at work’:’people’ is too general, no?

Au revoir, all, it has been much fun.

Round Four: Day 23

Dying River funnies presents:

Phew! Just posted in time: from a distracted sketch from one of our interminable meetings at work. Hey Kids! Don’t say paid work’ll never get you anywhere…

Round Four: Day 19

Lego is not a dirty word

As mentioned, the father/son comic cooked up down in Sticky on Satdy.

Who’s the old lady? Why’s she on a crutch? All such questions to be directed to:

Joseph Ross Bamford Caleo Esquire

Thank you.

Round Four: Day 15

Culture/Nature/Nurture presents:

Spot the continuity error!

Round Four: Day 11

Colonial Funnies presents:

Round Four: Day 7

Slim volumes speak volumes

Mister Hoover (1895 – 1972) was the director of the FBI from 1924 until his death, quite an innings. His battles against city gangster rackets and Communists are perhaps better known about than those inner battles which he fought, and so often lost, against an insistent muse.

Round Four: Day Three

Hermann Flaneur in:

Hullo there, readers and fellow rehabbers. Backstory to this strip: it’s an account of a few things that happened to me yesterday, Friday the first of February, when I went into the city to pick up Rufus Wainwright tickets for my wife of extreme loveliness, Susan, and a friend of ours, Philip (also lovely). I drew the strip tonight, Saturday night, while they were at the concert and I was at work, and was very tempted to make the last panel into what happened at the end of Friday night, which was a celebratory dinner for the Bee Circus which has just finished at Melbourne Museum, where Susan and I both work. But no amount of shoe-horning seemed to make it fit. So instead we have the omnibus panel, with lettering on its side that I have actually seen on a bus in Melbourne. Good to be started – see you in 4 days!

Artist Introduction: Bernard Caleo

I have been part of the talking team on a radio show called ‘The Comic Spot’ on 3CR, a Melbourne Community Radio station, which has had 6 weekly installments over the 2007/2008 summer. On this show, with co-hosts John Retallick (seasoned comics journo) and Jo Waite (ridiculously talented comic book maker/cartooniste), we have been considering the quite remarkable year that 2007 was for Australian comics and graphic novels, or, as we’ve started to call them, ‘book comics’. All of which has reminded me that work on my own online book comic, ‘I Knew Him’, 32 pages of which I put up last year (viewable at www.cardigancomics.com), has sorta stalled. Part of the stall is attributable to the time spent working on ‘Tango7: Love and Sedition’, the latest issue of the semi-annual romance comics anthology that I edit and put together, as well as working on ‘Aggressively Strange Fables’, an exhibition of Melbourne underground comics and animation (curated by the aforesaid Ms Waite), that was part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival 2007. However, it’s now time to return to ‘I Knew Him’ and as everybody knows, making comics breeds the making of even more comics, so rehab is for me. Also, the prospect of working on what amounts to comic strips: little 4-panellers, really appeals. So let’s go!