Jo Waite
Minicomic of the Month Club 2015
Jo Waite has been a Melbourne comic artist/cartoonist for more than 30 years.
Work published in small press mags, compilations like Going Down Swinging, Heat, Dailies, Tango, but mostly self-published: One Sock the Lovesick Devil, Sex & Violence, Kickstart, Caritas, See Jo Run, The Anarchist Feminist Diary, Fiend’s Diary of Evil and the New Jovian Calendar. Exhibited in cafés, galleries, alleys… Sometimes been paid to draw comics, just had a 45 year retrospective exhibition at Brunswick Arts Space.
What is your favourite thing to draw? Do you keep a sketchbook? What do you fill it up with?
Girls. I people-watch all the time and draw on trams or in cafes, but looking at all my stuff for the recent exhibition I would have to say I draw a hell of a lot of girls. There are a few trees and trains and buildings creeping in now, for the practice, but still girls; girls with long hair and surly expressions.
What’s a great comic you’ve read recently?
Weapons of Mass Diplomacy, written by a naïve aide to the French foreign minister during Gulf War 2; it was an insight into the incredible madness inside Government, and very pretty.
What’s the most enjoyable part of the comics making process for you?
Perhaps coming up with the idea; which usually starts with a character drawing… of a girl.
Is print dead?
Heck no! There is still too much frou-frou and jiggery-pokery between me and you if I make something for you using an electronic platform, when I could put it on a photocopier and bung it in the post and nobody the wiser.
Energy, you have to be conscious of the energy your art takes to make and consume; a printed thing has already used its energy quotient; now all it needs is eyeballs and sun.
Do you remember the last cool thing you got in the mail?
The Government want my poop; they sent me a kit for an Occult Faecal Blood test for my 50th birthday. Happy Birthday! Do you have arse cancer?
The Minicomic of the Month Club is an annual subscription series of Australian and New Zealand Cartoonists. Subscriptions are open for the 2015/16 season, you should go ahead and subscribe at minicomic.club.
