Thinking of the creative hubs of the comics industry, most people will think first of New York City or Portland, Ore. Very few would go with the city of Perth in western Australia, but Gestalt Comics directors, Wolfgang Bylsma and Skye Ogden, want to change that. They’ve found a book that might put them on the map. Funnily enough, it’s the sequel to an American film with a British director.
Artist Chris Bones had been a fan of the cult film Repo Man for years. Director Alex Cox's first film, it merged the aesthetic of LA.'.s ’80s punk scene with an absurdist science fiction story line and tied it together with a great soundtrack by Iggy Pop, Black Flag and Suicidal Tendencies. “I was very young when I first saw the film, and for some reason it just stuck with me,” Bones said. “The older I got, the more I seemed to gravitate back to it, which was a catalyst for me to develop an interest in Alex's other films, along with many other ‘strange’ directors. But I guess what made it a hit for me was the overall black humor and postapocalyptic feel. Having one of the best soundtracks ever didn't hurt too much, either.”
Bones noticed that Cox had put the screenplay he wrote for the Repo Man sequel in 1995 on his Web site. The film was called Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday. In the film, the main character of Otto—played by Emilio Eztevez in the original—comes back from a 10-year residency on Mars and finds that Los Angeles has become a very different place. On his own, Bones started drawing a book based on the screenplay and sent it to Cox. “I guess it's because I’m not a writer, so it’s very important that I choose carefully who I collaborate with,” he said. “I prefer to use a voice that suits me, and Alex felt like a right fit to me.”
It was a gamble on Bones’s part to even send the work to Cox. What was more surprising was that Cox approved the idea and started working with Bones on turning the proposed film into a graphic novel. “I thought he was an immensely talented artist and that I was lucky to have met him,” said Cox. Talking about why Waldo’s wasn’t made as a film in the 1990s, Cox said, “[Repo Man producer] Peter McCarthy tried valiantly to raise private financing for the film, as an indy pic starring Emilio Estevez, Harry Dean Stanton and Willem Dafoe. But it was hard to raise money on that cast, exciting though it was, and he never succeeded.”
Finding a home for the graphic novel version of the story proved to be more fruitful, although not without its own share of difficulties. “We'd worked with [Bones] previously on a couple of smaller projects and been seriously impressed with the work he was producing, hence we were keen early on to secure the rights to Waldo also,” Bylsma said. “However, being an emerging publisher at the international level, we were unable to meet certain criteria that his agent, who was handling the negotiations, was looking for. I understand there were some complications between Cox, the agent and other publishers, and so we eventually got to take another stab at handling the book, all of which was over a few months, and based on the relationship we'd built with Bones during that time, the previous ‘necessary criteria’ went out the window.”
Repo Man was either a comedy film with touches of science fiction or a science-fiction film with touches of comedy. Cox has said on his Web site that it was inspired by the nuclear paranoia of the Reagan 1980s. One of the plot threads of the film involves a car with some type of weapon in its trunk, more powerful than any atom bomb. In Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday, Cox used a similar storytelling element to present the issue of a lack of job prospects in an economy where more and more people are being “downsized.” “Ten years have passed,” said Cox. “Things are much the same as before except that the characters are carrying a bigger debt burden, and animals are being trained to do their jobs.”
“The book itself is quite the curio,” said Bylsama. “Aberrantly eccentric storytelling, beautiful artwork with intricately layered mise-en-scène, expressive tones and coloring thanks to Justin Randall and, well, much of the same oddness that was inherent in Repo Man. The fact that it's released by a hitherto mostly unknown Australian publishing house also adds to the weirdness.”
While Bylsama is committed to raising the profile of Australian creators, including working with already popular Australian artists like Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night, Fell) who was a speaker at the launch of Skye Ogden’s book, Vowels, he doesn’t want to create a pigeonhole of what Australian comic books are like. “I'd be reticent to suggest that there is any overriding flavor to works coming out of Australia,” Bylsma said. “It really comes down to how each individual handles their relationship to both the environment and the artform. We have creators working in hugely diverse styles, both in terms of illustration and their approach to narrative.”
“If more people read books by Gestalt, that's great, but I think Gestalt deserves to be recognized as a global contributor to comics, not just a wholesome flag waver for a remote spot on the planet that few people seem to have ever heard of,” said Justin Randall, colorist on Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday and an art teacher in Perth.
“We're constantly reassessing our strategies to expand beyond the U.S. and Australian markets, and apart from recently establishing a presence in Tokyo, we're also negotiating with distributors in select European regions and South East Asia,” said Bylsma. “Incorporated into this is the approach of creating collaborations between Australian creators and those already successful in these regions to assist in providing greater exposure to Australian talent whilst hoping to establish a foothold for the Gestalt name and reputation.”
