H C N U L A UE I SS
L A I R O T I D E
MEET THE TEAM PUBLISHERS & EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Brendon & Suzette Bell-Roberts
[email protected] [email protected] EDITOR Andrew Lamprecht
[email protected] CREATIVE & EDITORIAL TEAM Brendon Bell-Roberts, Simone Schultz, Fay Jackson, Marcus Viljoen
[email protected] ADVERTISING & CAMPAIGNS Suzette Bell-Roberts
[email protected]
It is a cliché to say that there is a ‘renaissance’ underway in any given creative field, but when it comes to comics (or, as the academics call it, sequential art) in Africa this is undoubtedly the case. This is the first issue of a new quarterly publication, ComicArtAfrica, which will be dealing with the outpouring of creativity we have both been aware of for some time, initially as a supplement to ARTsouthAFRICA Magazine.
Going back to its earliest issues, ARTsouthAFRICA has always been a supporter of local comic talent in many ways over the years. This new initiative will extend our coverage to the whole African continent in the next and following issues, although for this inaugural issue we have chosen to focus predominantly on local production. We welcome Andrew Lamprecht as the new Comics Editor for ARTsouthAFRICA and this publication going forward. We have a number of initiatives planned to extend ComicArtAfrica and we hope you will be as excited by the talent featured as we are! Brendon & Suzette Bell-Roberts
Safe From Harm, Gerhard Human.
ZAP! I
SOUTH AFRICAn COMICS NOW
n some ways, the comics scene in South Africa reminds me of the local contemporary art world about a decade ago, roughly when ARTsouthAFRICA first launched. At that stage, there were some ‘big names’ doing things internationally and a very excited and driven group of young artists and emerging galleries all vying for attention and space. There was a small but loyal audience, a few respected critics and one or two pioneers who had been working tirelessly for years to promote South African art. But there was also much in-fighting, jealousy and fractiousness that threatened to poison the well we all drank from.
As editor of this new venture for ARTsouthAFRICA, I come to homegrown comics art as a relative outsider, though I have been following local production carefully since the early days, when Bittercomix had just launched. As such, I see the immense creativity around us and the possibility that we are on the cusp of something truly great; but I am also concerned that now is the time to consolidate, draw together (pardon the pun) and become more professional. A number of emerging local events, including collaborative productions such as GrafLit and comic doyen, Andy Mason’s AMAK Collective launch a few months ago, as well as the work of the Centre for Comic, Illustrative and Book Arts (CCIBA) at the University of Stellenbosch are evidence that we have already begun to consolidate and professionalise. Pioneers such as Moray Rhoda and Andy Mason have been instrumental in pushing creative limits, theorising what is produced and setting up structures that instil professionalism and garner respect. When it comes to ‘household names,’ there are Kannemeyer and Botes; Zapiro (all incidentally exhibiting as artists or in conventional art venues); Joe Daly; Madam & Eve; and Supa Strikas amongst others. A few of our creatives, such as Jason Masters, Lauren
Kwezi, Loyiso Mkize
Beukes and Sean Izaakse, are working with the big American publishers, and, as far as critics go, Mandy J Watson with her site brainwavez.org has consistently given attention to South African comics. We also have a very long history of indigenous and often remarkable comics in South Africa, ranging from Adoons-hulle to Mighty Man; as well as the cheesy Photocomics of the seventies. Political cartooning has, unsurprisingly, always been strong here and D.C. Boonzaier, Tony Grogan, J.M. Jackson and Abe Berry, to mention but a few, have all made important contributions to critiquing the political landscape. There are remarkable initiatives such as ‘The Heroes Project,’ which aims to change the lives of youth through the retelling of Khoisan stories, and K.I.F. Comics, where Clinton Osborne works with ex-offenders to
Manu Kongolo
A large number of creator-owned comics ARE emerging, where individuals are writing, illustrating, printing and distributing their own stories storieS Ben Winfield
Phyto, Ben Winfield
Mark McKeown
COMICS CAN CAN HELP HELP EDUCATE EDUCATE AND AND ENTERTAIN ENTERTAIN COMICS LOCAL FOLKS FOLKS ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY IN IN AREAS AREAS OF OF LOW LOW LOCAL LITERACY LEVELS LEVELS LITERACY Manu Kongolo
create comic books as part of their reintegration programme. He notes, “The guys that work on the comic have developed different styles of drawing as well as storytelling, and usually don’t follow the Western model of plot.” The necessity to draw from our own context and to make links with the rest of Africa is something that crops up frequently in discussion with local artists. As Daniël Hugo notes, “In terms of stories, I think, although we are influenced by [Europe, the US and Japan], there is a tendency to draw inspiration from our own surroundings, angstiness and legends. It would be wonderful if there were more cross-pollination with other creatives from the continent, which is something that the Velocity Graphic Anthology has promoted. The positive aspect of there being no formal publishing house in SA is that everyone is free to experiment and pursue a personal style and genre according to individual tastes and influences.” In preparation for the launch of ComicArtAfrica,
we asked a number of locals to respond to series of questions about the local scene and the full transcripts will be made available on the ARTsouthAFRICA website. To draw from just one such response, Danelle Malan answered the questions, “Do we draw our inspiration from the USA and Europe rather than the rest of the continent? Should we be engaged more closely with creatives from Africa?” thus: “It varies greatly. I know a lot of the local comics producers personally and everyone seems to be doing what they enjoy, and a great deal of that is experimental. On the one hand we have people like the Trantraal brothers and Anton Kannemeyer who draw heavily and directly from the tumultuous landscape that is South African socio-political issues. Then, on the other hand, we have people like Luis Tolosana whose short, wordless comic Phylo’s Wish deals
with issues of poverty, the separation of the classes and escapism – topics that are extremely relevant in South Africa, but are at the same time universally accessible because they are global issues too. Then you get the other end of the spectrum, where people write pure fantasy that features little to no humans at all, such as Deon de Lange’s Gofu, and Tomica, for which David Covas Lourenco does the writing. With our own project...” “...Cottonstar, the milieu is still South Africa… but a hypothetical (and by that we mean pretty much completely fabricated) future South Africa in which global warming has covered the world in water and left only a few bits of dry land sticking out. We reference South African culture heavily, but we’re not limiting ourselves to it. Because the global playing field has changed so drastically, it’s easier to apply artistic license to social and economic issues. Regarding your question about whether we should engage more with creatives from Africa, I would say yes! It would be great to see people from this continent making great comic art and inspiring others. Doubtlessly, there already is a ton of it out there, but I have not really been exposed to much of it. I have seen some French work from West Africa before and I’m sure there’s a lot more where
d n a s s e n e r e a r a Aw y t i l i b a l avai allenges h c g i b Sean Izaakse
“you live in africa???” they’ve never considered Africa to have a contemporary voice
Danelle Malan
Reka with a pearl earring, Danelle Malan
that came from, but the language barrier is a big factor. It would be awesome if the world began to acknowledge Africa and its many countries as having a voice creatively, in the popular culture scene, as opposed to just ‘that big scary place full of wildlife and exploitable natural resources.’ It could only do good. I come across this a lot when speaking with people from overseas, who say, ‘You live in AFRICA?’ And then they kind of don’t know what else to say, because they’ve never considered ‘Africa’ to have a contemporary voice and interests.” For this first issue of ComicArtAfrica we decided to focus on some (and only some) of the many independently published comics in South Africa. What is clear is that South African comics cannot exist in a vacuum away from the rest of the continent; if anything, that is a lesson that the development of South African contemporary fine art made clear in the first decade of this century. Future issues of ComicArtAfrica will give attention to the creativity that can be found across Africa and further afield. The range shown on these pages, wonderful as it is, is only the very tip of the iceberg.
Local comic comic artistS artistS would would like like more more Local of the the same same opportunity, opportunity, exposure exposure of and attention attention that that other other ‘high ‘high brow’ brow’ and artists get get Alistair Brauns artists
Alistair Brauns
The Great thing about local comics... is that the creators (get to) do what they want to do. Andrew Cramer
talking trantraal trantRaal
An interview with Nathan Trantraal, co-author of the popular comic The Coloureds What is the current position of comics and other related media in South Africa and the African continent? Have we arrived or are we still on the journey? How do I put this? Well, if this was the Lord of the Rings, it would be the scene near the beginning where Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee walk up the road and across that big field from their home, and, after about five minutes’ walking, Samwise stops and tells Frodo, in that cloyinghalfIrish accent, “If I take one step farther Mister Frodo, it will be the furthest I have ever been from the Shire.” So, I think the journey is going to be about another two volumes long, with lots of descriptions of barren landscapes and mountain peaks. But we’ll get there eventually; it’s an adventure. What can comics do that other art and literary forms cannot in our local context? Comics are a very accessible medium, as much as it is to read them as it is to make them. Comics are a bit like the ‘football’ of creative work; you need nothing to create stuff that you can’t find in five minutes tops. There is a lot of raw talent in this country and if someone invested in it we could have a whole new market, and we could have people creating jobs for themselves, for the love of it. Do we draw our inspiration from the USA and Europe rather than the rest of the continent? Should we be engaged more closely with creatives from Africa? I think instead of following popular trends in American comics, African cartoonists should be working with African writers, and create stories that grow from this soil, not because of some national identity or pride or anything like that, but because it’s practical. You can’t get away with writing about stuff you don’t understand anymore. For example, you can’t have your character going to Chicago if you’ve never been to Chicago, like Herge sending Tintin to Congo. That won’t work anymore; there’s the Internet now, people will know and talk about the ignorant sh*t you’re trying to get away with. The essential thing is that real writers should be writing comics. The dudes who can draw but can’t write should be engaging with the dudes who can write but can’t draw, and vice versa. But that can only happen once people begin to realise that these shortcomings exist in the SA comics scene as it is now. Is there a recognisable South African style in comic art? I would hope not. No, I don’t think so. I think at the moment there’s just a bunch of guys each doing their own thing, with everyone bringing his or her own set of influences to the scene.
If so, how would you characterise this? If not why do you think this may be the case? In America and Europe, if something sold well, it was because a business like that was run like a sweets factory. Say if John Byrne’s style sells consistently and he’s very popular, then for the next ten years everyone had to draw like John Byrne. That would become the ‘house style’ for the big publishers until someone else came along and did something new, andthen for the next ten years everyone would have to draw like the new guy until that became old and stale. I hope we never fall into that space. If you look at a company like Strika Inc – they do that football comic – they are very fond of calling what they do ‘the African style’, which is funny because their style is really just a bad imitation of the Scottish artist, Frank Quitely. I know most of the artists that used to work there were real fans of Quitely, but if you continue to say it’s ‘African’, people start swallowing it, and before long, you who’s doing the saying is swallowing it too; you convince yourself because it makes a good tag line for your business. When I meet anyone who works for one of these big comic book/advertising companies I always ask the artist to show me the stuff he draws for himself. It very rarely bears a resemblance to the stuff they are doing to get paid. For the longest time I couldn’t get a job as a cartoonist because I couldn’t do ‘African style.’ What challenges do we face in creating a viable comics culture? No one’s figured out how to sell the stuff. If you want to build a culture, you have to start at the smallest level; you need to be selling comics to kids. You need to build that market from the bottom up, but you need money to do that and no one is investing money in comics. That’s unfair to comic book creators, and, as a result, most comics coming out of South Africa are either badly written or badly drawn, or both, and that’s unfair on the general public. Any other comments relating to our local comic productions that you would like to make? I think the great thing about working in comics at the moment, in a country like South Africa, is that no one has yet defined what the industry should be like. We have an opportunity here to create what people expect from reading a local comic. People have a notion that comics should be about superheroes, but that’s more ingrained in American culture, it’s a relatively new thing in South Africa. We’ve been lucky in the sense that the only people who make real money out of comics are makingadvertising pamphlets, and they are so transparent that people can see it’s rubbish. We’ve dodged a bullet in that sense, because if someone made a bad superhero book without all that advertising to highlight the fact that it’s rubbish, it might become a hit and make lots of money and people wouldn’t be able to see through it, which would be problematic. People go where the money is, and if the money is in telling good stories about real characterswith actual souls, then everyone will start thinking, “Maybe we should do that.” That’s why we should start in the way we mean to go on, because things will evolve from here into what it eventually becomes, and if here is good and we can build something out of that. I believe it can only become better, more sophisticated. Finally describe what you are currently doing relating to comics, cartooning or sequential narrative. Please list your recent publications or current projects. We are publishing two weekly strips in two papers, The Richenbaums in The Cape Times and Ruthie in Die Rapport. The Richenbaums is about a dysfunctional family who are very unaware of the fact that they are dysfunctional. Ruthie is based on a book our mother wrote. It’s a comic about a little coloured girl growing up during apartheid and how that kind of sucked. We are also busy with a graphic novel about Crossroads, specifically the women’s struggle. We’re doing that with Koni Benson, a historian who specialises in the subject (The book is based on her PHD thesis), and Isotrope media is publishing it as we complete each new instalment. We have brought out two issues already, and we plan to bring out five issues.
Trantraal Brothers, Crossroads.
Zapiro, Athens se ma
DemoCrazy J onathan Shapiro, or Zapiro as he is universally known, has been one of the most present, consistent and persistent commentators, critics and celebrators in the post-apartheid democracy. He is a household name, a celebrity and has been highly praised here and abroad for his courage, insight and intelligence as South Africa’s most famous cartoonist. For his recent exhibition of signed, limited edition prints at the AVA, Zapiro has made a careful selection of 60 images from his archive of over 4,500 cartoons he has produced for various publications since 1994, narrating what he calls ‘SA’s Twenty-Year Trip’. Such tight editing is likely to produce a distillation that in itself makes a pointed statement. In contrast to the book of the same name published by Jacana earlier this year which had the luxury of 200 cartoons in it (nevertheless representing less than 4,5%
Zapiro, Zuma in the Pool
of his prolific output during this period) this act of extreme selecting has produced an exhibition that is less an overview than a surgically precise comment on what Zapiro sees as our ‘now’ though the lens of what happened ‘then’. And all this, of course, magnified to an even higher degree by his own pointed take on South Africa’s last (or should that be first?) two decades. There is a noticeable focus in this show on the political, and this personal selection gives insight into the artist’s own choices and favourites (the first room is essentially dedicated to Nelson Mandela, leaving no doubt in the mind of the visitor of the high regard in which the cartoonist holds him). Additionally some of Zapiro’s sketchbooks are displayed, giving a fascinating insight into his working process. Zapiro’s ‘DemoCrazy’ was on at the AVA Gallery, Cape Town, from 29 September - 30 October 2014.
GRAFLIT 2014 The second iteration of the GrafLit anthology is a testament to what creative collaboration can bring about. Titled Urban Interiors the compilation is a reflection on the city – real or imagined – and is a nod to Cape Town’s status as World Design Capital in 2014 as well as celebrating twenty years of democracy in South Africa this year.
W
ith so many creative projects barely making it out of the starting blocks it is wonderful to see a second volume of GrafLit come out and the promise of an annual publication showcasing established and emerging local comic art talent being achieved.
Published by Stellenbosch University’s Centre for Comic, Illustrative and Book Arts (CCIBA) in association with Mamba Media, Youngblood African Art and Culture Foundation, Artfarm, Jean de Wet and PreZanian Comix and edited by a team consisting of Andy Mason, Su Opperman (who was responsible for the theme of the issue as well as project managing it), Jean de Wet (who designed it and hand-printed each issue on his Risograph printer!), and Keda Gomes, GrafLit 2014 is truly a labour of love, as Mason notes in his editorial ‘Afterword.’ And what an achievement this beautiful, exquisitely crafted volume is. Twentythree separate but thematically aligned contributions are packed into its 125 pages and give a refreshing taste of the possibilities that Cape Town’s graphic storytellers can realise.
The editorial team prefaced the launch of the publication with the following statement: “As a city, Cape Town expresses itself in a variety of ‘scapes:’ neighbourhoods and work environments, cultural and recreational spaces, political and personal encounters. It also occupies interior spaces in the minds and experiences of its inhabitants. In Cape Town’s World Design Capital year, Graflit 2014 focuses both on the city itself and on the idea of Cape Town in the artist’s mind. The project provides a space for juxtapositions, tensions and epiphanies engendered in the encounter between artist and city.” In Urban Interiors, this manifests in stories that weave reality with fantasy; the harshness of the urban jungle with Cape Town’s natural beauty; the indigent living cheek-by-jowl with hipsters and gangsters; and grand historical narratives with plain tales told on street corners today. Artists included in the compilation include Jean de Wet, Ben Winfield, Daniël Hugo, Anwar Davids, Gerard Human, Luntu Vumazonke, N.D. Mazin, Rayaan Cassiem, Roberto and Su Opperman amongst many others.
I WOULD SAY THERE IS A HOPEFUL CYNACISM ABOUT SOUTH AFRICAN COMIC ARTISTS
Anton Pretorius
Dave Gomersall and Gavin Thomson, Trek Net: Wise Post Job.
Susan Opperman
01 5 2 March from G I N T C E L C OL T R A T S TH IS independent publication
