// you’re reading...

Interview

Supanova Brisbane p3

The Supanova Pop culture festival comes to the Gold Coast, Australia, April 20-22. These comic-con style events are the best way for writers to get to their readers, and vice versa. Writers simply have to hire a table to get their books to the market. Readers never know what viewpoint they'll get, and the standard is high. Here are a few reading tips I collected at the last Supanova, in Brisbane.

Robert Clotworthy is the voice actor who plays Jim Raynor in the computer game StarCraft. He and another StarCraft voice actor went into a computer game store in the Brisbane CBD, while in town for the Supanova, to see if they stocked StarCraft. They saw a couple of guys playing Starcraft, crept up behind them and did a couple of the voices. Robert Clotworthy said he liked The Man in the Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal; All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren; and the Daniel Silva novels featuring Israeli Secret Service agent Gabriel Allon, like Portrait of a Spy.
Space Pyrates.com is a webcomic by Caitlin Major and Matt Hoddy. They’ve also made a short stop motion and animated film Amour Robotic, using a Nikon DSLR, which was accepted into the 2012 Savannah International Animation Festival. Matt liked Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick; and Altered Carbon, a sci-fi novel by Richard K. Morgan. Caitlin liked Harry Potter, The Hobbit, Robin Hobb and the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik.
Comics Artist Colin Wilson had some excellent ink drawings of western scenes. He liked biographies, but he recommended anything by Michael Connolly and Robert Crais. In comics he said he liked everything from Jean Giraud or Moebius; Turf, a five-issue comic series written by Jonathon Ross and illustrated by Tommy Lee Edwards, and 100 Bullets written by Brian Azzarello Azzarell and illustrated by Eduardo Risso.
Paul Abstruse liked The Dark Tower series by Stephen King, and Mr Norris Changes Trains and Prater Violet by Christopher Isherwood. He also liked The Goon, a comic by Tennessee writer and artist Eric Powell; the Jay and Silent Bob characters created by Kevin Smith, which feature in Clerks movies and Clerks: the Comic Book; Battle Chasers, a fantasy comic by Joe Madueira; and Danger Girl, a comic by J. Scott Campbell and Andy Hartnell.
Keri Arthur, paranormal romance and urban fantasy author of books like Penumbra and Beneath a Darkening Moon, liked anything by Dick Francis; anything by James Herbert; and Andre Norton, most known for her Witch World series.
Tracey O’Hara, author of Night’s Cold Kiss and Death’s Sweet Embrace liked George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire; Raymond E. Feist; and Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern.
Creator and editor of Decay magazine Darren Koziol’s favorite comic books were Marshal Law, which has been described as a ground-breaking anti-superhero comic; Toxic! (1991, 31 issues); 2000 A.D.; Judge Dredd and Heavy Metal. He also liked the collection Skeleton Crew by Stephen King, and comics anthologies like Dark Horse Presents and Creepy.
Rob O’Brien, author of Maelstrom Heart, To the Stars, about a punk rock band on their first inter-galactic tour, liked the Dark Heavens trilogy; and the Journey to Wudang trilogy by Kylie Chan; and Billy by Pamela Stephenson.
Zac Smith-Cameron is the creator of Ashcan comics anthologies of Brisbane comics. He liked Planetary, a comic book by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday; WE3, a western manga by Grant Morrison and Grant Whitely; The Authority, a Dc superhero comic; and Game of Thrones.
Brad Daniels created the comic Groovy Gravy, which I’ve seen on the magazine racks of Brisbane music stores for years. He liked the Dark Knight Returns graphic novel; the Fourth World Saga created by Jack Kirby; The Lord of the Rings, and Starstruck by M. W. Kaluta.

-copyright Simon Sandall.