Glenn Lumsden

Voice Over (00:03):
This show is sponsored by the Comics Shop. We hope you enjoy the show.

Leigh Chalker (00:26):
All right, good day and welcome to Tuesday Chinwag, episode 28. My name’s Lee Chalker, creator of Battle for Bustle. And well, man, I got to tell you, I’m pretty excited tonight because when I was a little fella and dad was buying comics and Cyclone comics, et cetera, was getting around, and this gentleman, I haven’t had the opportunity to talk to one-on-one. So I’m very much looking forward to this. Mr. Glenn Lumsden, how are you, sir?

Glenn Lumsden (00:58):
Very well, thank you. Good, good. Am I loud enough? Do I need to turn? Mic

Leigh Chalker (01:03):
Mate? I can hear you, but if you want to turn it up, I’ll leave that up to you. But we’ll work on pickles is the safety word. All right. Any technical issues get too rough. That’s it. I think it’s

Glenn Lumsden (01:21):
Covering my ears.

Leigh Chalker (01:24):
Alright, so if anyone watching at home hasn’t seen the show before, it’s based on a couple of prompting questions, which are who, what, where, when, why, and how. And basically look, sometimes we get through ’em and most of the time we don’t. So I’m just going to delve straight into it. Glenn Mate who?

Glenn Lumsden (01:49):
Glenn Lumsden. And I’ve started drawing comics semi-professionally I guess from the eighties. And that ended up, I started off working mostly with Tad who does Dark Nebula and we met through being comic collectors, which is actually I think how we all met. But yeah, I remember, I think Tat had just finished school and I must’ve been 13, 12 or 13 years old or whatever. And I think for his end of year big art project, he’d done this dark Nebula portfolio, which I found very, very impressive. And then I think it was a year or two later that he said, right, well I’m going to actually put out a comic and get it all printed properly and distributed in the whole bit, which he did. And I can’t remember if I helped him at all with that. I might’ve helped him with some layouts or something, I can’t remember. But after that, when he did following issues, I helped him there. I drew it for a while and then we met up with the other cyclone guys like Gary and Dave and that carried on until we got some gigs in America in the nineties and that started off reprinting a lot of Australian material. And then that led to doing stuff for the Americans, new stuff for the Americans. And then that led to working from smaller companies to working to larger companies like DC and Marvel.

(03:37)
And that led to me giving up and just running away and doing well, I guess you could say that, but especially when we were doing the Phantom for Marvel, we got a lot of offers from advertising agencies and places like that who just wanted advertising work done in a superhero style. And so they came to us and that’s when we learned that advertising illustration plays about a hundred times more than drawing comics. And also it’s like instead of drawing eight panels a page, you draw one picture once. Yeah. So that was also, once you get onto the treadmill of regular comic books in America, it doesn’t stop. You’re just on that treadmill. If you’re on monthly, it’s like you realise quite suddenly, oh my God, suddenly the next few years look a bit grim. And I just marvel when I think of, I just marvel, I just marvel when I think of those old school guys like Rama and Kirby and Gene Colin and their ability to just

Leigh Chalker (05:06):
Pump out pages monthly

Glenn Lumsden (05:08):
Mag but do three and they do ’em for a decade or two decades and yeah, they were just made of stronger stuff I reckon. But anyway, yeah, so I left comics for a while for magazine work and commercial illustration and then I came back again in 20 14, 20 15 or whatever. And now I’m currently doing covers for through and also some sequential stories for Through as well, which are taking me forever. So years per story.

Leigh Chalker (05:47):
Yeah, well everyone works to their own pace, mate. You would know yours I would assume, with your experience in the industry just from that small snippet. So that’s a great rundown, man. I really like that There was little points in there where I was going to go ask the question now ask the question now, but I’m going to, so back. Alright now Little Glen and you and TA are collecting comics and stuff like that. So were you drawing at that stage or to draw and come to you later? Yeah,

Glenn Lumsden (06:21):
Well I reckon I started drawing at the age of three and I used to draw over everything. I remember mom’s cookbooks just in all margins. It was just like drawings, drawings, drawings. And I think the first comics that I got into were Walt Disney stuff. I remember there was a Walt Disney Weekly magazine. It might’ve been British and I would get that every week. And I went on for a few years until I tried out, I think Harvey Comics was next. And then I used to always have my eye on Marvel comics, but I was too scared to buy one. And

Leigh Chalker (07:13):
What prompted the fear? Was it what mom and dad would say if you say a bit more expensive, like mom might’ve gone, no, you’re not getting that one today. No,

Glenn Lumsden (07:27):
No was just the characters were always fighting. You got to remember Mickey Mouse and Goofy making a birthday cake versus Iron Man with half his metal ripped off and the blaster going, and now you die. I was just like, and I would occasionally, maybe once a year I would buy one and I wouldn’t understand a word of it and I would just be too scared and I’d just go, no, back to Harvey, back to Richard Rich, Jackie Jokers and all that sort of stuff. And then I discovered a British weekly magazine called Mighty World of Marvel and they were reprinting all this stuff from the mid sixties. It was like your Jack Kirby, chick Stone, fantastic four and that I could handle. And so that sort of introduced me to Marvel in a way that I could work my way up to the contemporary stuff of the early seventies, keeping in mind that there was a huge cultural revolution between say 65 and 73 just across the board.

(08:47)
And so what was being done in comics in 65 was really kid stuff. And then you go to Fast four to 73 and you’ve got guys like Steve Engelhart and Jerry Conway, and I remember getting a Roy Thomas, Neil Adams, Conan, which was just like, it was just slaughter. I was just like, even today I look back on that comic and think that was pretty hardcore. But a lot of the stories too were quite, I guess sophisticated stuff. Remember Craig Russell and Don McGregor did a series called Kill Raven, and I couldn’t make Heads of Tail said that I probably still can’t, but it was so I think a lot of the creators back then, it was a Gonzo time. Stanley Lee had kind of headed off to Hollywood and I don’t think anyone was minding the ship. And so there was some real terrible stuff coming out, but there was some gems and you just think, how the hell did they get this published?

(09:59)
I remember Jim Stalin doing these amazing trippy Captain Marvel and Warlock comics and there was one Warlock comic where he was obviously just taking the piss out of Marble and he had all these characters who were, obviously, this one’s obviously Stanley Lee and this one’s obviously John, and I remember there’s some scene in it where they’re all producing a giant steaming pile of poo or something like that and it all collapses on them. And I think somehow Warlock finds the one gem in the base of the food. And I was thinking, it’s kind of ironic that he’s making this comment on a company that is also allowing him to publish this comment on the company. So obviously no one was watching them. People were just going, oh yep, yep, just roll the presses. But yeah, it was

Leigh Chalker (10:53):
Send it out.

Glenn Lumsden (10:55):
What’s that?

Leigh Chalker (10:56):
Send it out. It’s good. It’s finished. Off we go.

Glenn Lumsden (11:01):
So there was a big shift I guess as a kid. So you’d be reading Jack Kirby, chick Stone, fantastic four, your classic sort of stuff. And then the very next day picking up a recent, well, even a recent Fantastic four, I was sort of going, who the hell are these characters? They had Medusa and Crystal and Wyatt Wingfoot or just going, I just want the stretchy guy, I want the hot guy, the invisible girl and the Rock guy. Is that too much? Should I ask Marvel?

Leigh Chalker (11:35):
Look, I don’t think so because I myself, as a young person, I always had a bit of a chuckle of Wyatt Wingfoot wondering what exactly was going on with that guy. So Matt, the fires, it’s burning

Glenn Lumsden (11:58):
And I haven’t sworn yet, have I said poop?

Leigh Chalker (12:01):
Oh no, look, hey look, I’ll probably swear before you do, man. It’s just over excitement here for me tonight. I’m trying hard too. I’m checking. Don’t worry about that. Otherwise I just Cutting six.

Glenn Lumsden (12:17):
Just say what Wingfoot,

Leigh Chalker (12:21):
There we go. And suddenly his books will go up in value tomorrow, mate, once a white wing Foot book. Try and say that quickly. I don’t know how I did that. There we go. Hey, so Ryan, you meet Tad, you meet Tad.

Glenn Lumsden (12:40):
Yes.

Leigh Chalker (12:41):
And you’ve been drawing, you’ve been drawing, you’ve seen He said he’s going to do it so he does it. And did that make you think at that point? Wow, okay. The dude did it. You know what I mean?

Glenn Lumsden (12:57):
Absolutely, yeah, because no one had, I don’t think anyone had done that in, well, decades, so I’m only 13 or 14. So for me it’s like it’s never been done in my life. Having said that, I bet you someone will say, oh actually in 1971. But yeah, to my knowledge, that was my firsthand experience of crossing that or at least seeing behind the Curt, I’m an entrenched audience member enjoying comics and suddenly there’s this weird kind of like, oh my God, you can actually do them as well. And yeah, then I guess Tad, I think he met Gary somehow and Gary was a commercial artist in town and he took me in to meet Gary and that’s how I met Gary and Dave. I think we met Dave in another meeting. It was kind of like over a period of a couple of months it was like there was this gradual awakening of a whole lot of comic fans in Sydney and no doubt in other states as well. And I dunno, it was like everyone suddenly decided, and maybe the Dark Nebula book was the catalyst maybe people decided, yeah, let’s do it. Because I think inside a lot of comic fans is probably they want to be comic creators themselves.

Leigh Chalker (14:38):
I would a hundred percent agree with that, mate. Yes. That’s cool. I like the origins of that man, just for like-minded creators getting together and then going off on this journey, the seed start sprouting and stuff. Did you have dedicated comic book shops at that particular point in time in Sydney where you could go and hang out in pick up

Glenn Lumsden (15:12):
Whatever doing? I know the first one I became aware of was I think King’s Comics or No, no, no, no, no, no. I think it must been the late seventies. Steve Smith opened a shop in Bondi Junction. I remember I used to, I live miles away and I used to just take trains and buses and walk to get to his comic shop. And yeah, that was great because prior to that you would have to go to news agencies, which in itself was kind of fun and secondhand bookshops, which was good because after a while it was a route that you would take at Sydney and you would just do it, work your way around and do the eight shops or whatever. And every now and then, the greatest moment of my teenage years was this one weekend day when I went into this secondhand shop was on was either Pit or Pit Street or Castle Ray Street.

(16:20)
But normally they didn’t have very much, they just two or three crappy comics with the covers coming off just a box. Someone had just sold this mint collection. I don’t know why, maybe their mom took it in or whatever. It was just full of entire runs of Avengers and Dead Devil and and it was just like I almost died and the owner was just picking one up with a big squeaky black text. That’s what they did to write 5 cents, 5 cents. I was, no, and I only had, I don’t know how much money I had me, it might’ve been five bucks back then, of course $5 was the equivalent of $50,000. I had five and

(17:10)
I have just got to see if I can get me more money somehow. And I couldn’t because it was Saturday and I don’t think they had auto hotel machines or whatever. I think I just had to live with the fact that I could only buy $5 worth, which was still big. And the stuff was just, but what was so sad was waving goodbye to just so much. There just runs of Neil Adams, green Lant and Green Arrow and the condition was perfect. And it was like one of those moments I thought, I bet you this never ever happens to me again. This is it. It’s all downhill from here.

Leigh Chalker (17:46):
That was the treasure chest, you reckon?

Glenn Lumsden (17:49):
Yeah, that was my El Dorado moment.

Leigh Chalker (17:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Hey, how long did it take you to go through that box? I’m assuming it would’ve taken you quite a while to

Glenn Lumsden (18:00):
Well, considering that

Leigh Chalker (18:01):
Terms with the selections that you were going to make,

Glenn Lumsden (18:04):
My heightened state of excitement was like the flash. I was like, and I got mean if I had the money, I would’ve just said to the guy how much for the whole frigging box. But I didn’t. And of course the next time I came back, I came back I think Monday or as soon as I could. Probably couldn’t come back Monday because of school. I dunno how. But anyway, next time I came back, of course gone. I should have asked him to put it behind the desk. It’s too late now.

Leigh Chalker (18:42):
Oh man. How long have you been carrying that around for? Let it go, Glenn. Let it go, man. Long. I had a man book exchanges. I dunno if younger people today, there’s not many book exchanges around, but they were unbelievable places to loved treasures, man.

Glenn Lumsden (19:08):
Treasure troves weren’t, they just walk in and even if they were badly curated and stuff, it was just getting hit with a wall of pulpy, paperback, cheapo goodness. It’s like, and James Bond knockoffs and cowboys and detectives and all those beautiful painted covers,

Leigh Chalker (19:34):
Overwhelming to the senses, man

Glenn Lumsden (19:38):
Command, somewhere like that high.

Leigh Chalker (19:43):
My grandma, right on Thursdays when I was a kid, when I was on school holidays, it used to be pension day and stuff, so they’d have the routine at grandma’s house and Thursdays pension day they’d go shop and in the Woollies do the round trip. So in school holidays she used to take me to this little book exchange and it was in Shores Arcade and it was called Jim’s book Exchange. And grandma had a hanker and man for Catherine Cooks and books. She loved romance novels. She’d sit there all night reading these period piece things. The

Glenn Lumsden (20:18):
Ones the chick on the cover is running away from the castle in a negligence. Yeah,

Leigh Chalker (20:23):
Yeah, yeah. Oh man. And some of those images still stick with me throwing the bouquet of flowers over a shoulder and the dude under the tree with his head hanging and stuff. The hero

Glenn Lumsden (20:38):
Was always sort of this very brooding kind of dark hair, whatever. You’re very serious contemplating manly, serious things.

Leigh Chalker (20:51):
I know just the sheer contemplation man that must’ve gone into those torrid moments they took

Glenn Lumsden (20:59):
Of those books because I used to take the piss out of ’em. I was at school and someone said to me, have you even read any of them? I went, Nope. So I thought Bug group. So I went out and bought a few and I would be sitting on the train with my Boas Ripper romance novel, never thinking people looking at going, I never gothic romance,

Leigh Chalker (21:31):
Man,

Glenn Lumsden (21:33):
But it’s good for you.

Leigh Chalker (21:35):
Over time, I’ll be honest, I did open up a few of the covers and have a read to see what my grandma was raving about. There was stacks of these things. But on school holiday Thursday, she used to take me in. I used to go in little fella sort of thing and used to go, this book exchange dead set you talking about, you see in that box just flipped back into 10-year-old Lee. And it’s like walked into this little shock, man. It was tiny to the point where if you bent over to look at something and someone was standing next to you, it was like, excuse me, excuse me. There it was full. You got to be athletic man. My grandma, I swear, used to hang off rafters and shit, get cooks and books, man.

(22:31)
Man, she just shimmying man. She’d see Catherine Cooks and books shining in that corner, man, bang, she gone, man, grandma. But anyway, and I’ve gone in there, dude and ho hum kicking stones and shit and walked in there and oh mate, there’s these boxes like Omo boxes you get in the supermarket with these comic books all stacked up. And it was like, whoa, what is this? Because dad used to collect ’em and I was just sort of starting to find my way into what titles I like. And grandma used to give me five bucks, buy yourself an ice cream or a strawberry yager or something. Say Lee was like bought eating all the strawberry yoghourt and shit. And then I found comic books, man stripped that strawberry yoghourt straight off me. I was going through this stuff, man. They were like old X-Men comics, like the same Avengers. I remember standing there for hours, man in deep contemplation what I was going to get. Oh, that was an amazing moment man. And then every Thursday I’d just ride my push bike in and raid them.

Glenn Lumsden (23:44):
I mean obviously this doesn’t happen to everyone who is exposed to comics, but people who like you and me, you just know you’re gone for life. It’s like I love this medium. And it’s insane because it’s, it’s a medium that is treated by the general public with disdain or a lot of people. And yet it is such a complex art form because it combines so many disciplines. It’s like it’s writing, it’s storyboarding, it’s pencilling, it’s inking, it’s lighting, it’s doing the, it’s like if you did a movie and the credits were all you that is, I mean you can obviously work with other people as well, but I mean with comments, if you doing it by yourself, it is the equivalent of those credits at the end of movies that go on for five minutes and it’s just saying your name.

(24:50)
And the thing is, you can ruin your comic by just being weak on any of those disciplines. I mean, if you’re a great pencils lawyer and you inking is terrible, you’ll end up with a bad looking comic. If your lettering is bad or you just dunno where to place word balloons, no one’s going to read your comic because it’s too off putting. If your coloring’s bad, it’s like there are so many areas where you can fail, but it’s still tremendously satisfying to I guess learn, try and master all those disciplines. You think, you know how I was saying about the advertising industry, the allure of just doing the one picture? Well, literally you just doing the one picture, that is it. You’re not telling the story or Well, I guess in a way you are, but they’ll tell you what story. It’s like want the person to be drinking coke and smiling because Coke’s good. That’s the story. But comics just the potential for complexity in the storytelling and stuff and the infinite different ways you can tell it and trying to find the most effective way, trying to find a fresh way of doing it.

(26:12)
It’s just such a challenge and it’s such hard work and you get overall money and credit. So it’s like why? It’s because it’s that feeling you had when you walked into the secondhand shop and you saw the box and it’s just like, I love you forever.

Leigh Chalker (26:33):
It’s totally it, man. It’s totally it. I think you’ve said that pretty much succinctly is the definitive answer for me because people have asked me friends and stuff and I can’t explain much like yourself. It’s just that memory of seeing there and being blown away. And

Glenn Lumsden (26:56):
Maybe it’s because everyone, well, just about everyone loves movies and stuff yet not everyone loves comics, but for me, comics are a different experience to movies, although they have similarities. But comics, it’s like if the comic is really effective, I reckon it has a characters that are sort of generic enough. This is why people like John Ramida and Jack Kirby, I found so effective. The characters are generic enough for you to sort become the character. But then once you’re in Peter Parker’s skin, you are in this world with buildings and skyscrapers and cars. And tintin’s really good for that in terms of you couldn’t have a more bland looking hero for you to become. It’s a bit like that. What’s that avatar movie I was going to say’s a movie about the avatar. Avatar. The avatar avatar where you become, you just slide into tintin’s skin, excuse me, Tintin, this won’t hurt, I promise.

(28:15)
The world that Herge created is really realistic. There’s cars and the buildings and then everything it looks. So you’ve got this weird contrast of very simplistic characters, which you can pretend to be, because I actually find, because I used to try and do characters that were more photorealistic thinking, I was being really clever because they’re not doing this and now I know why they weren’t doing this because for a few fringe characters like Paul Glacey in Master of Kung Fu in the seventies, he had characters that occasionally would look like Sean Connery or Marlon Brando or whatever. But I think if you do that, if you make Captain America look like Chris Evans or whatever his name is, it’s harder to get into the character because you just look at him going, well, that’s not me, that’s Chris Evans. Whereas if he’s just generic man with the Captain America uniform, then you can immerse yourself in the adventure. And so yeah, it’s a very, comics are a very immersive experience. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Mickey Mouse or whatever, I guess it’s the mechanics or how they work and they give you a unique sort of experience. And that’s what I personally get out of it, I think.

Leigh Chalker (29:41):
Yeah, well when I was younger, you’re a hundred percent right with the comics that dad was reading because dad collected all the amazing Spider-Man, early uncanny. So I got from a very young age brought up having these comic books to read while I was eating my cereal, you know what I mean? I’d go to boxes and just grab wads, plunk ’em down and sit there and go, can

Glenn Lumsden (30:03):
I just ask what cereal?

Leigh Chalker (30:06):
Oh, look, at the time, man, I’m not really sure. Probably Cocoa Puffs, something that was probably unhealthy and things probably some toast. I seem to remember a lot of eggs being thrown around and stuff at that stage, man before school. But I always got the comics in, so next time I speak to you, I’ll talk to my mother and have a proper list of what I was raised on for breakfast and comics. So

Glenn Lumsden (30:36):
When I was growing up, when I was little in the sixties, Kellogg’s were just kind of doing what comics were doing and they had these, hang on a sec, this is little Peppy comics. They all had their little icons like Cocoa Pops and Honey Smacks. And I remember I lived in a cul-de-sac and all the kids, we’d all get together and we’d play, we’d be the cocoa pops monkey and you’d be Tony the Tiger from Sugar Frosting and we would play games like that. And I was just thinking that was, that’s the comic serial marketing dudes

Leigh Chalker (31:19):
Taking

Glenn Lumsden (31:19):
The lesson from comic books and applying it to their serials and stuff. And it brilliantly,

Leigh Chalker (31:26):
I remember little four and six panel comic book strips on the back of ’em too. Yes, Daniel Best has just sent in Gene Cole and once told me that every single blonde haired Marvel character, captain America, dead devil, et cetera, et cetera, he drew as Robert Redford. Well, there you go. Yep.

Glenn Lumsden (31:48):
Could well be, I mean I wouldn’t have picked that, but I mean often I think what happens is that maybe you start off with someone in mind and that’s your rough template and it because I mean basically if you really wanted it to be Robert Redford like perfectly, that’s just going to add so much time to Gene Collins because you’ve got to find all the reference photos, whereas the generic gene face, he just could spin that around his head, whatever angle he wanted to. And I mean Colin was, he must’ve been doing three monthlys a month plus extras. I don’t know how they did. Well, I remember reading that he took speed at the end of the sixties. It was the only way he could keep himself awake. And what’s interesting too is at the end of the sixties, everyone’s got their breaking point, Colin’s quality after, and he becomes more kind of flourish, flourish without the detail, without the substance.

(32:55)
Whereas when Colin was at his peak, which would’ve been between say 65 and 68 ish had the structure in place, but he also had the kinetic movement. He had both things working beautifully and he would exaggerate and he’d go for crazy worm eye bird’s, eye views and stuff, and he’d distort things, but they all were recognisably consistent. If you do a worm’s eye view, we’ve all seen worm’s, eye view camera photos. And so if the head’s really that big, how little the feet should be and you’ve got to have that Fidelity and Colin started to get sloppy with that. And so it would be like one bit would look like it was a fish eye lens and then halfway through the picture it would just look like a normal lens. And then it’d be just like Missy Massy pick one lens, but don’t try and do three or four in a row. And also his movement would just be like, it’d be too swishy. It would just be like I’ve seen panels of his, I don’t know how the ink could inked them. It would be like a swoosh mark, a bit of a starburst, something that looks like a couple of rocks maybe. And you’re going, oh, was Joe, I’d be just going, Nope, gene, do you want to give me a clue?

Leigh Chalker (34:33):
Yeah, you’d have to have an air of confidence about you if you were inking his work because I’ve admired his stuff as well. And I’ve often wondered how it’s a particular image that always strikes me by Gene Colin, and it’s an image of the flash, it’s wide shot and he’s running as I’m the panel and he’s running that way and it’s a cityscape like street scene and the movement, he is got the outlines of him in going through that flash force thing that zips around like a rainbow. And you could tell just from his pencils, he’d had it real sharp and on it and just been washing in this stuff. And I thought, man, how would you do that as an inky? You’d have to brush it, but then you’d have to get the right, just so many questions, man that you’d go nuts, man, I reckon if you ink that by the end of the day what

Glenn Lumsden (35:41):
Ink is to my mind, the more I’ve got into comics and tried to learn the craft ink are the absolute unsung heroes of the whole process because pencil gets rubbed out and ink is what you’re left with. And an inker has to do more than just trace. A good inker has to describe form and create texture and create the illusion of depth. And it has to be able to interpret things like for instance, with pencils, you can get away with murder, you get pencils and pencils that look quite tight, but there’s actually lots of graphite, there’s lots of greys, which is all information. And you’re reading that information going, oh, there’s a lot of detail in that. But I’ve done this myself when I’ve, back in the days when I just thought inking was basically tracing is that you would go over what you think is the right pencil lines and over all the graphite interesting bits, and you rub it out and suddenly it just looks so lifeless and disappointing.

(37:00)
So all that graphite kind of texture that’s gone, and then you find that the eyes on the face, you’ve inked on the outside of the pencil line on one eye and on the inside of the pencil and it’s really subtle, but when it’s just the ink, when you’ve committed to that line and that is the only line on that face, it looks terrible. You just think, oh my god, you just want adjust those. And that’s where again, seasoned iners know what line to pick and what line to ignore. And that is keeping in mind again, that what they end up doing is what gets printed, what gets seen. And so those great inks like Joe Sinner, Tom Palmer, chick Stone, they were fantastic. And then you go further back, people like Leonard Starr and Alex Raymond, their inking is phenomenal. I mean, Alex Raymond can just ink a shirt and you can tell what the shirt’s made of. You can go, that’s one of those blossy kind of shirts or that’s made out of, it’s more like an army shirt or that’s almost made out of that theatrical curtain drapery. You can just tell by the way the folds just go like a waterfall or the lion’s all fluffy because the materials all light. And he’s a magician.

(38:37)
White wingard, what’s his name? Yeah, white

Leigh Chalker (38:40):
Wing. That’s it,

Glenn Lumsden (38:43):
Not his name.

Leigh Chalker (38:44):
Alright man. I think I’ve blown the nose swearing thing out, getting too excited about grandma before shimmy, so let’s not worry about that.

Glenn Lumsden (38:55):
Oh, what was I saying? Oh yeah, I was just saying, yeah, Alex Raymond, he’s a magician, he ins, and the thing is, I don’t think I’ve even seen his pencil work. He rubbed it all out. So in some ways it’s like, I mean obviously pencilling is important and part of the, you shouldn’t denigrate any parts of the process, but pencilling is like if you’re constructing a house and you have a blueprint or you have the metal frame that gets put up and that’s got to be rock solid and everything’s got to be right. But then when they come along and they finish the house, that’s what people see and they come along and they go, that’s a beautiful house. And they go, it’s a bit ugly. And that is what got put on top of that framework and that’s what In’s job is.

Leigh Chalker (39:42):
Did you find that your attraction to your appreciation of the art of inking was from getting into black and white books and comic books? Because I know the early Marvel stuff, for me anyway, you never really saw the inking as a young person. I sort of saw it together, I couldn’t differentiate that and Inca would bring his own style to John Reida and stuff, so I saw that as John Ter. And then there were the colours, the real pop, bright colours and stuff. So a little bit of inking gets lost, I think, anyway, when I was younger. But then for me personally, I came across like 2000 ad and Cyclone comics and stuff and I started processing like, hey, this inking thing you do. And I’ve since had the conversation with people, man, that the reason I like black and white, again, not saying anything wrong with colour or anything that anyone does, this is just me talking, whatever. It makes you happy man in your art form and you create, that’s all I’m cool with. So all for you. But when it comes to man inking, when you get to that page and it’s you and what you put on there, you can’t take it off. I love that thrill, man, knowing really, you can kill a page, man, one stray thought, anything, hey, and it’s like just wood. Oh no. And there’s a power in that too.

(41:32)
Those in men were pretty amazing. And then I guess what I’m sort of getting to with that is did you ever let anyone else ink your pencils in the day and now in your later career, I noticed that you handle everything like pencils and inks and all that. I guess was this concept that you’re at formulated from what you saw in other pencils that you found were attractive and not so much?

Glenn Lumsden (42:07):
Yeah, oh yeah. I’ve had other people stuff and I guess there’s just nothing doing it yourself. And the thing is, I guess it’s good to experience both sides of the coin and not everyone’s going to come to the same conclusion that I did, but after quite a long time of not inking my own stuff, I just thought it’s time for me to do this. And then I realised that how crucial inking was and how much I had to learn, well you’re not going to learn it if you don’t do it if you keep on handballing it over to someone else. So yeah, that’s how I ended up doing that.

Leigh Chalker (42:59):
Yeah, yeah, going back to, and I think it’s something you incorporate with your phantom stuff at the moment, but when we were talking earlier about how those characters could create in every man or every woman that the reader would be invested in as a character and feel a part of that character, I strongly agree with you there because when I was younger, there was nothing better than you’d go to school, you do your sport, have your dinner and stuff, and I liked my tv, but there were also times where it was like, man, I was happy to spend an afternoon or something just chilling, reading comic books, man. Because you wanted to know what happened to Peter Parki, you wanted to know about that, the tortured villains, because as the serialisation went on longer and longer you did ended up thinking about these things regularly in your mind and talking about it with other kids in school and stuff.

(44:15)
And I think, I guess to a certain extent as well, that begins the storytelling primer I guess when you’re younger, like you are creating pathways off these characters and then suddenly you’re off sketching your own and drawing your own and then drawing with people and doing art classes even though you may not be into art, but because you want that little bit, you gravitate towards it and stuff. No comics back in the day were beautiful, man. I don’t tend to read a lot of international comics these days. Probably my primary, I guess reading is Australian comic books, so I get a lot out of that. But yeah, I I do miss that I guess much my grandmother loved in her Catherine Cooks and novels I loved in the comic books of the time, man, you’ve got to remember back too, there were times when no one knew who Wolverine was me. So you had that whole mystery and stuff of the storytelling thing and Daniel Best telling me to keep me pants on. Hang on mate,

(45:40)
I can’t help you get excited Daniel. Good lord. Well no, you’re alright. But I’m going to do something quickly. Don’t forget to and subscribe the channels. Alright, because know that’s got the algorithms and stuff. Friday night drinking draw is on again at eight o’clock this week and it’s the wild west. So if you want to do some artwork, get your artwork into the website, that’ll pop up at some point or later in the show and check out the comic shop. Okay? Alright. So one of my mates, Ben Sullivan, who is a hell of an artist, Glenn, what kind of tools do you use, mate? Pens, brush, what’s your weaponry?

Glenn Lumsden (46:26):
So I just draw on my monitor so I do everything digitally.

Leigh Chalker (46:34):
How long have you been doing that for?

Glenn Lumsden (46:41):
At least 10 years. And before that I was when you had those little tablets down here and you’d be looking up there and drawing down there. And it’s funny, you get used to doing that to the point where when you finally get the monitor that you can draw on, which is a lot more drawing on a piece of paper, it’s really difficult. You keep on wanting to look, it’s like it’s learning all over again how to just draw a frigging piece of paper.

Leigh Chalker (47:17):
Yeah. Do you have a studio or a space that you like mate that gives you your creative ebbs and flows and things where you like to go to be

Glenn Lumsden (47:30):
Positive? We have a house which is fairly simple. It doesn’t have, there are many rooms and the main room is sort of the kitchen living room and I’m just in the corner of it now. And so the good thing about this is that I tend to always want to draw or be at the computer. And if I had a studio down the hallway, I’d never see my wife, but at least here. And often what will happen is that if I’m just kind of mucking about not drawing seriously and she’s watching something on telly and it looks interesting, I can sort of go and join her or I can sort of half watch it or I’ve half watched a hell of a lot of Netflix series.

(48:19)
So it’s just a nice setup I do enjoy because we used to share a studio with lots of different artists back in South Australia and that was great fun, but change is good. And now I really like drawing on my own. I wouldn’t like to share a studio again, but you change, I guess sometimes you just get sick of being by yourself. But I remember when I was drawing with all the other guys in the studio and all the other guys, everyone was really funny. And so you’d go through these, you’d start off drawing and everyone would be in their own little part, their corners of the room and everyone would be chattering away and it’d be telling funny jokes and we’d pissing ourselves laughing. And then at some stage I think your brainwaves must change. You would just go into this deep silence for, I don’t know, an hour, two hours or whatever where you could hear a pin drill and then you’d come out of it again and people start talking again and you’re just going like, Ooh, I think we got some stuff done then.

(49:28)
But the thing is that stuff done, whether you’re chatting or not, I think it’s just a different sort of stuff. And maybe it’s the intense detail or something that you do when you’re just in that zone where you’re not talking and you’ve blocked everything up and then maybe you’re just like, if you’ve got to do a whole brick wall or whatever and you can chat away and laugh and make jokes and stuff. One thing that was good about working with other people was that if you were working on a really complicated bloody drawing that was taking you forever, you can spend 10 hours drawing it and at the end of the day you’re going, have I progressed at all? Because you can’t tell. And so it’s really good to just go Rod or bear, can you go? And they go, oh yeah, you’ve done stacks so good. Thank God. Because sometimes you just think this thing is never going to freaking end. And comics are the same as well, especially sequential comics. It’s just like you go, I’m always saying this to Kylie, my wife, I’m going like, this is it. Three weeks. Three weeks. And I’ll still be done anyway, three months,

Leigh Chalker (50:37):
Three years. I’m just laughing. I know exactly that in my mind. I’ll have this done by the end of June and we’re never at the end of June.

Glenn Lumsden (50:49):
You lose all credibility,

Leigh Chalker (50:54):
What do you do, man? It’s like you would’ve, I’m going to assume from what you spoke about earlier though, going through the grind of monthlies and all that, you would’ve found your happy medium and balance with your output of your art though obviously at this time. I would assume

Glenn Lumsden (51:11):
Now, yes. I mean I wish I was faster, but on the other hand, I really think am better now. And it’s not so much that I get things right straight away. In fact, I’m the opposite. I actually work kind of in reverse and I draw a terrible piece and then I try to remove the wrong bits. And so in the end, by the time I’ve finished the drawing, I’ve probably drawn it four times, maybe more just like drawing a hand six times until you go, yeah, that’s the hand, that’s the one, that’s the one. And heaven help you. If you’re drawing something that you haven’t drawn before or you haven’t drawn that often, elephants or giraffes or something, that’s like why? But the thing is you do it because you haven’t done it before and you want to know how to draw a giraffe, it’s good.

(52:21)
But yeah, so I guess getting back to your question, yeah, I’m sort of philosophical about my speed or lack of, and I really just focus more on, I just want to be happy with the drawing. To me that’s always been my biggest bugbear is that all through the nineties I never produced anything that wasn’t rushed at the end. It started off great and then just turned into crap by the end. And so you make the deadline, or even if you usually late for the deadline, all you’ve got to show for it is a comic that you don’t want to look at yourself because you’re not proud of it. You don’t want to show it to anyone. You don’t want to say, oh, this is what I’m like, because what you actually want to say is, no, I’m not like this. I’m, I’m better than this.

(53:10)
So yeah, now I would rather take the extra time and do something that I go, but I can look at it and go, I’m happy with that, I’m glad I did that, I’m proud of it. And even if in a few years time I look back at it and go, actually the hand’s a bit wonky or whatever. But on the plus side, I do think that now I’m doing stuff at a basic standard that even if it’s not in three years time, I can see something wrong with it. I still can tell myself, no, it’s still of a acceptable standard. It hasn’t dropped below that. Whereas in the nineties I could not say that at all whatsoever.

Leigh Chalker (53:53):
When you started getting into the American market in the nineties, what was it like for you then being a young fella out of Australia, like in cyclone and getting your opportunity?

Glenn Lumsden (54:09):
I was totally out of my depth and just so scared and unconfident. And when you are like that, I find you’re not yourself. You’re kind of a bit of a jerk or you just say dumb things and you go, you go, why did I say that? That’s not me. But it’s just because you are so uncomfortable and yeah, that’s how I was. And I just say I met some great people who I still know today. I’m Facebook friends with all the dudes at Malibu comics. They just fantastic. So if you want a sweet entree, you could not have a sweeter entree into American comic scene than via these guys because all the nightmares you have of tough New York guys going, what the hell do you want? Get out of my face. These guys were in Malibu and California, they were the total opposite. They were just sweethearts.

(55:21)
And that was so nice. And then when we did go to New York, that’s when I met the get out of my face. But even over there, there were some nice dudes, but it was like, another thing I didn’t like about it is a lot of it wasn’t about comics. A lot of it was about climbing the greasy pole and I don’t know, jumping from company to company or if there’s a dinner you’re invited to, it’s like, who’s at the table? Is it, oh, it’s Sergio or Ese? Oh yeah, he doesn’t want to talk to me.

(56:02)
So I just find it, it’s not authentic, it’s really contrived and I find it makes me cringe. I like talking to people one-on-one, like what we’re doing now, that’s you. But you find, you go to a convention or something and you’ve got 50 people all trying to talk to you at once. You have to split your attention into 50 and you can’t, and then you can’t be yourself. You can’t have a decent conversation and some people want to talk to you, other people don’t or they just want to schmooze and yeah. So no, it’s not my cup of tea at all.

Leigh Chalker (56:48):
Not your cup of tea. So from that, Dave Di just had a question. He would like to know if you have written any comic books.

Glenn Lumsden (56:56):
Yes. Yeah. Well, not entire comic books I don’t think, but I’ve written comic stories and I love writing and I’ve always loved writing. When I was at school, my big strengths were both English, creative writing and art and stuff. I was sort of like humanities type of person. Also, I love history as well and that sort of stuff. So yeah, I’ve always been a big writer. I used to write plays and in the early cyclone days my comics were sort of like they were dropping in my list of priorities and really theatre and film and TV were more important for me. And so during those early cyclone days and stuff, one of the time I wasn’t really taking it back seriously or giving its due attention. And I still remember being at conventions and stuff and meeting people like Will Eisner and stuff and not really paying attention. I remember this time I’d done a poster in the cyclone, which had the spirit in it and Will Eisner signed it for me to gland, don’t worry, I won’t sue you for using my character Will Eisner. And I think I gave it away about 20 seconds later to someone I said, yeah, have a comment. And later on Gary’s going, oh Tad, what do we Dave, where that will Eisner sign one? I went, one gave to some guy, they’re going, what? But yeah, it was, I dunno, it wasn’t, but I didn’t, I treasure still

Leigh Chalker (58:49):
Would’ve been an amazing time for a young fellow though. Did you find that you just weren’t, I guess at that point, even with the Will Eisner thing where you just weren’t in the moment, I guess at that stage it was just so much happening like, oh, thank you, here you go. Well,

Glenn Lumsden (59:08):
I reckon I was an arrogant dick. I just reckon I was a really top student at school and won some scholarships and left school and thought, shall I be a great playwright or shall I direct films? And yeah, I mean, I wish I had a bit more of that confidence now, but I’m glad I lost the arrogance. But yeah, I just thought my shit didn’t stink and that really held me back artistically because, so I rapidly fell away from being best drawer at school to absolutely crap drawer in the real world. And I didn’t even realise it. It took quite a while before I could look at my stuff through proper eyes. And I still find today, when I look at my work, you need to have two sets of glasses or two hats or whatever you want to call it. You’ve got the eyes of the creator and the eyes of the consumer, and you need to be able to, obviously when you’re creating, you’ve got your creative glasses on or whatever, then you’ve got to be able to walk away, not look at it for half an hour, come back and just look at it like this is the first time you’ve ever seen this drawing.

(01:00:36)
You don’t know who did it, you. It’s just like, and you look at it and you just go, I can’t tell what’s happening. And then you put your creator glasses back on and you have to absolutely acknowledge what consumer Glenn just said because that’s what every freaking consumer is going to say if you don’t change the jewellery. But that’s when you are 18 and you think shit doesn’t stink, you don’t have that sort of objectivity. You just think, well, what is really a weird double think is that you can draw stuff that is poor quality and you can ink it badly and still think it’s better than a professional comic book that you see in the comic shop who just happens to be done by an artist you’re not keen on. So for instance, just say it was like Jack Kirby in the mid seventies was like losing it, and Vince Colletto is a terrible linker.

(01:01:32)
So you get them two combined and I would just look at it and just go, shit, yet it was still so much better. Vince Splitter zincs were better than what all my disasters were. But no, could not see it no way. Because you’ve got these creator, there was blinkers on which just refuse to let you see the truth. You can’t handle the truth. So it is good to be able to finally get over that and realise that consumer Glenn is helping Creative Glen. He’s not embarrassing him or criticising him or whatever. He’s helping him. He’s helping Glen do a good drawing by telling him all those heads are 10% too big. So shrink down and we all win.

Leigh Chalker (01:02:21):
Yep. When did, oh, here we go. I’ll come back to my question. But for Steven McLeod, gday, has Glenn ever drawn Judge dread either for 2000 ad or a commission?

Glenn Lumsden (01:02:34):
No, I haven’t. No.

Leigh Chalker (01:02:38):
Well, there you go. There you go. Indeed. That’d be an interesting one, man. And Glen, did you meet the EE name Drop Mate? Eisner? Nice. Wally Wood.

Glenn Lumsden (01:02:51):
So when we’re talking about meeting, people wanted define meeting because I’ve heard lots of people going, well, of course there was Stan Lee and then I turned and I believe it was. And what they mean is that in a room of 50,000 people where Stan Lee is there expressly to shake everyone’s hand and go Excelsior Excelsior shaking his hand and getting Excelsior does not mean that you’ve met Stan Lee or that he’s your best mate or that he would remember. I think the rule has to be if you meet them again later on, they have to remember meeting you, otherwise it doesn’t count. And if they know your name or at least they go, oh, you’re that Australian guy, that’s okay as well. That will go towards you having officially met someone. So John Ram, I have met him in person once at a convention, but I don’t think I said anything more than, and I have spoken to him on the phone when we were doing the Phantom, he was the art director at Marvel and there was a big change they wanted done to a double page spread and they were going to get someone in the art department to do it.

(01:04:09)
And I rang the art department and went, John Ramida, you don’t know me, my name’s Glen, I’m doing the Phantom, can you please do that art correction? And he went, oh, all the guys working with me, they’re really good. And I went, can you please do it? And I don’t know what he did, he said he said he was going to, but I don’t know.

(01:04:33)
But even then, after that conversation, I don’t know if he would’ve remembered me. I mean, these guys, first of all, I mean obviously John and Me’s dead now, but the thing is, back then they were in their seventies or whatever, they’ve been drawing for 50 years, they have met a Squillion people. The people they’re going to remember are going to be, they’re contemporaries like Will Eisner and the old dudes. And they do, even if you managed to call one of them and you having a polite chat and they’re go, oh, that’s nice to meet you. And they’ll be going, hi Wally, or Hi Neil, or whatever. And it’s almost like you want to go be with Neil or Wally or whatever, be free. I set you free.

Leigh Chalker (01:05:21):
Oh, it’s still nice to have these stories though. You can tell men of these dudes, these legends and stuff. But when did Consumer Glenn start, how far along the line were you when consumer Glenn started working with you and you started listening to it?

Glenn Lumsden (01:05:40):
Right. Well, I reckon I started to seriously listen to it when I just at the tail end of my comics career in the nineties and I was starting to work for advertising firms and they were bastards. They were tough and they actually made the New York comic dudes look kind of okay. And yeah, they would just would not hesitate to tell you that this was shit. It’d just be like, do it again. And there’s absolutely no point after a while in getting upset or getting offended. And because at the end it’s just really immature and unprofessional.

(01:06:32)
I mean, the dudes getting the illustration done in the advertising thing. They’re not comic fans or anything. They produce baby food or dog food or whatever. It’s like they just want a drawing of a dog or whatever that looks like a dog. And if you do one that doesn’t look like a dog, the first thing they’re going to say is, it doesn’t look like a dog. That’s terrible. Who the hell drew this? And then you get the agent going saying, it doesn’t look like a dog and I can’t go. I’m so hurt. It does look like wrong. It’s like, you can’t do that. You’ve got to just swallow it. And the thing is, the end result is you end up being able to draw a dog properly. They have done you a massive favour. And that’s where my mind started to go work. Oh, this is actually good to confront your imperfections, not feel personally confronted by it because it’s like it’s a drawing.

(01:07:36)
It’s not you. It doesn’t mean that you’re a kid, it’s just the drawing. The head’s too big. Change the head don’t have a huge argument about it or have a hissy fit. And that’s when I would have other artists coming to me, newer artists coming, asking for advice. That’s one of the first things I’d try and say to them is that you are not the drawing and you are going to be better by your a hundredth drawing than you are now. So let’s get the drawing a hundred as quickly as possible and try to learn as much in those hundred drawings. And when people who you respect tell you the head’s too big, just change the goddamn head. Don’t try and frigging argument about how, oh, that’s the way I draw heads. I’ve heard it all. It’s like no one draws heads like the dude or whatever.

Leigh Chalker (01:08:37):
So I guess what you’re sort of suggesting there is take lessons, take your licks and slowly lose that ego by, I guess

Glenn Lumsden (01:08:50):
You can find a good teacher or mentor or whatever you want to call it. It’ll be someone who is not a nasty, one of those old school kind of footy coaches, someone who’s nurturing and supportive. Because I know personally, that’s the way I learned the best. I know that for school, I went to this really strict private all boys school, which they actually ended up having a royal commission on them over. They had a paedophile ring of teachers in there and they were sadists. I’ll tell you, this was back in the seventies. There were dudes who were dead set saddest and they would terrify kids. They’d have kids pissing their pants and stuff and they’d laugh, you’re pissing.

(01:09:42)
But then I had one or two teachers who were just the best teachers in the world and they were these nurturing geniuses who just knew how to bring everything out of you. It’s almost like you didn’t even feel they were teaching you anything because it all your idea, somehow they would just know the right, they just prod you in the right direction and they’d know that. But it taught me a lot about difference between being a good teacher and a bad teacher. And definitely nurturing and respect and all that sort of stuff, but being honest too, not blowing smoke up people’s ass because that doesn’t get you anywhere. And again, you are doing a disservice to the person who will then draw the bad dog and be told by the dog food owner, you’re sacked, whatever. So you’re not doing It’s a lose lose.

Leigh Chalker (01:10:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like your way of learning too, mate. I find that works with me as well. Again, you all boys school, you remember the teachers who were good and did nurture all that stuff in you, but then there were some, they didn’t have us peeing our pants, but if you sock was down, you had to go and run 10 laps, go and do a 4K run and ties and collared shirts and stuff like in leather shoes. So you learn your lesson to put your sock up or don’t forget your guarders the next day

Glenn Lumsden (01:11:15):
We had, because you would have to attend the rugby games, we would have rehearsals the whole school in the hall where we had to clap a certain way. We couldn’t clap in unison and stuff. We had to make sure it didn’t fall through a chant or anything, weren’t allowed to. There were only a certain number of things we could say and they all had to be these sort of piss week. It’s like something out of Billy Bunter from the 1920s like Hurrah, tickles and war prize, which were just these songs of rah.

(01:12:04)
And it was just so, it was like 1984. The level of mind control that they wanted to exert over these kids was just, and it was all about just crushing your spirit and crushing your individuality. And so that in turn you would leave school and you would become doctor and a lawyer and a judge and a gynaecologist or whatever, and then have kids in the North Shore who would then go back to the school to do the, you’d all be liberal voters, you’d all be massively conservative. And it was just this, it was a conservative sausage making machine, which was a loop like the sausages going at one end and come back in the other and it was shocking. I dunno how I survived that.

Leigh Chalker (01:12:54):
Yeah, man, I dunno how you did either. I do remember the chanting though, and if you didn’t, you were that one kid that had no interest in sport whatsoever and just wanted to read a book and he didn’t stand up during some person winning some event. You know what I mean? You’re on tension tomorrow. I totally understand that. And that chanting, man, that was weird. Hey, hey. Everyone would go up in unison if they won and the other three or four colours would sit down like, oh no, we suck. It was

Glenn Lumsden (01:13:36):
The complete opposite of being authentic. It was just this contrived, it was all about appearances basically. It was just like you are representing the school. We do not do this. We do not do that. We are better than that.

Leigh Chalker (01:14:01):
Wow. I am here you, there you go. That’s all right.

Glenn Lumsden (01:14:05):
This is probably why I came out of school in arrogant prick and the best thing I ever did was I just, one day I was working at Channel nine and one day something shifted in my soul or whatever and I just went, I can’t do this. I can’t live this life. I can’t. You can see where it’s leading. And I just basically hopped in the car and drove to Kalgoorlie and I worked in the gold mines for a couple of years and it was the best bloody you thing I ever did. And I just kind of got over myself, or at least it was the beginning of getting over myself. I mean, I’m still working in progress I think, but it was definitely the beginning of becoming a better person. And the advantages of that, I mean if we can get back to drawing I guess, is that yeah, you do get to that stage where you can overcome your own ego hopefully and start to really improve and also start to be more authentic in your art and explore.

(01:15:20)
I’m always interested in what makes things tick, including myself. And so when it comes to art and what things instinctively appeal to me, my sense of aesthetics and stuff, I always think, why do I like that? Why is that? Because I’ll see the same thing crop up again and again and again in my likes. And I find that intriguing. And so I sort of think, well, I should start incorporating that into my art because for instance, I love Polkadots. I’ve got a feeling it might be because of a little dot, the Harvey character, maybe I sort of pulled a torch for her maybe.

Leigh Chalker (01:15:57):
And

Glenn Lumsden (01:15:58):
Yeah, now Polkadots just problem. So you just think, right. Got to make sure that the next fan of cover has got someone in Polkadots.

Leigh Chalker (01:16:05):
Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like you had a shift mate, like a spiritual shift at one point in your life there.

Glenn Lumsden (01:16:13):
Big life saving one.

Leigh Chalker (01:16:15):
Yeah. Yeah. No recognise. Yeah, I totally get where I get now in my life where I’m at, exactly where you are coming from, mate, which brings me to Al Goli stint where that was just, you’d never obviously gold prospected before or anything, or had no interest,

Glenn Lumsden (01:16:42):
Wasn’t a big subject at school. So I just turned up with, I don’t think I took any possessions with me. I didn’t even know that much money, but I lobbed into Kalgoorlie and I just, you walk down the main street and there’s lots of little gold mining offices and stuff and I just kept on walking in, just going, I just got two arms and two legs and I will do anything. And I got a job, I think first day it was funny, he actually got a job. There was this guy, little short looking agro guy who I almost bumped into him as he was coming out and I was going in and he was like, I go, is there a job up? And I went, yep, that guy. Yep. I said, well, whatever he is doing, I’ll do it.

Leigh Chalker (01:17:38):
What was your first job?

Glenn Lumsden (01:17:40):
It was, it involved going out to land that hadn’t been drilled yet, so it was just out in the middle of nowhere and they just got the rights to assay for gold and you’d be out there a lot of times I was out there by myself, but you would have a bag of wooden steaks and hessian bags and a shovel and you’d go every, I think 50 metres, you’d brush a peg in the ground and you’d write the coordinates of the peg, like north something or other and south or whatever, east, whatever. And then I’d take a little soil sample from 10 metres either side of the peg and then just walk in a straight line and you’re going through borsch and up cliffs and all this other stuff. And I dunno how straight my lines were because we started off, we had a compass and then I broke the compass. We were in the middle of nowhere. And so I’m just going, ah, that way I think so for all I know the grid, but luck to have it. They struck huge amounts of gold and I don’t know whether that was because of my terrible grid. Maybe I grided areas they never would’ve because I remember the guy I was thinking, oh, I’m going to get the sack for this. And I sort of came in one day. I’ve

Leigh Chalker (01:19:01):
Lost you a bit there, mate. I’ll give you a sec.

Glenn Lumsden (01:19:03):
Oh, sorry.

Leigh Chalker (01:19:04):
Good old Tasmanian internet gets a thumbs up from us over the last couple of weeks.

Glenn Lumsden (01:19:09):
Yeah, I know the Gary one

Leigh Chalker (01:19:12):
Was

Glenn Lumsden (01:19:13):
Bit of a time lag. Oh yeah. I was like, so I did this terrible grid and I went back to work thinking I’m going to get the sack, and they got all the assay results in and they were just over the moon. They went cold everywhere. So that was good. And then I went from there to working on a drill drilling rig up top, and then I ended up working underground, which was, but there’s a lot of dead time underground. You’re waiting, waiting. It’s like you’re waiting for the lift and then you go down and then you’ve got to walk miles to find the stove or the shaft or whatever you’re after and then the alarm will go, we’re blasting in 20 minutes, so you’ve got to walk all the way bang. And so in an eight hour day you’d get half an hour’s work done maybe.

(01:20:09)
But it was interesting, pretty amazing in some of the really big modern ones. They’ve got these giant trucks driving underground like hundreds of metres underground and these huge drives they’re called and they’re like, they’re as big as a freeway or not quite as big as a fairway. They’re big and they’re really tall and you’ve got to make sure you don’t get run over. These trucks will just go and you’re thinking, just can’t believe we’re hundreds of metres under the ground. It’s really amazing. What they do is they dismantle the trucks, bring ’em all down, and tle, if there’s such a word and they remantled,

Leigh Chalker (01:20:49):
I remantled, I’m going to steal that off you mate, if it doesn’t exist. I think that’s got some space to work with that. That’s a good one. With that South Australian change, at what point did the hankering for the comic books start?

Glenn Lumsden (01:21:07):
Well, Cal’s in wa, west Australia.

Leigh Chalker (01:21:11):
Sorry, Western Australia.

Glenn Lumsden (01:21:13):
Well, what happened was that I came back to, after about a couple of years, I went via South Australia and really loved it. And then I continued on to Sydney and realised I still hated Sydney, but while I’d been gone and I’d again just been frigging around doing the odd page of cyclone, but not really seriously doing anything, Gary and Dave had just gone on to become the most amazing, which is putting out comics that looked like fully professional, like the Southern Squadron comic. I was like, my God, what’s got, have I been away two years or 20 years? And I thought, oh yeah, I’ll get back into this. And again, this is, I hadn’t consumer Glen had not arrived on the scene just yet. So I go, oh, I’ll just jump in because I’m really good still because I haven’t bothered drawing for the last two years, but that doesn’t matter because I’m great.

Leigh Chalker (01:22:07):
I’ll be right.

Glenn Lumsden (01:22:09):
I was just producing shit and I could not figure out why my stuff looked so poor. And then Gary’s stuff looked so wonderful and I was just like, and the difference is skill and doing lots of it and knowing what you’re doing and all these things, but that didn’t occur to me at first. And yeah, it took a while. So that’s when I started to get back into the comics and it was a big learning curve and it really, to my mind, I don’t really like too much of what I did up until about 20 15, 20 14. So it’s really just this second career I’m having now where I feel like when I car it, I really want that to be my stuff. Maybe a little bit of the other stuff, but yeah, this is like 2015

Leigh Chalker (01:23:15):
Was when you started taking over and doing the Phantom.

Glenn Lumsden (01:23:19):
Yeah, I think before that though, I did do a piece, a sequential piece for a book that Na Carmichael was doing. You won the

Leigh Chalker (01:23:25):
Award for that. Yeah,

Glenn Lumsden (01:23:27):
Yeah, yeah. That was that zombie Ned Kelly story, which was, in hindsight, it was like, I think the story had to be five pages long or whatever, and the story really needed to be about eight to make sense. So doesn’t make sense, it’s not good writing, but I know with a few more pages it would be a perfectly acceptable and comprehensible story. But I guess my big triumph there I felt was that I was doing artwork of a much higher standard than anything I’d done. So it’d be like I’d walked away from comics 15 years later, I came back as a much better comic artist because I’d been doing all this non-com stuff with advertising and stuff that normally you just wouldn’t do in comics. And there was a lot of time people saying this isn’t good enough, get better. And so yeah, by the time I got around to going back to comics, I felt quite confident that I could do better. And now I look back on that stuff from 2015 and I know I’ve improved because I’m looking at it going not as good as I thought it was, but still I can live with it. But a lot of the earlier stuff I just wish would get bulldozed into a hole and left become landfill.

Leigh Chalker (01:24:55):
Well, it sounds like all the experiences that you’ve had primed you up to that 2015 to come in ready to rock and roll man with your second stint because you would just, I guess even going to places like Western Australia, seeing the mines doing all that sort of stuff and South Australia’s and different things, you get lots more visual context, you need more people, you see more things. It all adds into the artwork,

Glenn Lumsden (01:25:24):
It’s character building and it knocks the crap out of you. And all those things really help you. They help you across the board, but they really help you as an artist, as a creator and stuff as well. Also, another thing about getting the crap knocked out of you metaphorically is that you become more empathetic to other people. So in terms of your story writing, it’s a lot easier to put yourself in the shoes of other people I guess, because you can get yourself out of the way. And I think that leads to better richer stories. And also another thing that that life experience does is it helps you build a big picture of the world, which hopefully is coherent and mature and doesn’t contradict itself too much. And so if you have that mindset, then you can write a story about anything, you can write a genre story or whatever and still have that. The characters can still be believable and there’s a worldliness to the story stuff. It all helps.

Leigh Chalker (01:26:55):
Yeah, for sure. And the confidence does too, because I would assume with your confidence primed in 2015, it flowed into a aesthetically, as you’ve said, pleasing for you from a creator’s perspective style of work that you’ve done, hence your pride in this particular period.

Glenn Lumsden (01:27:13):
Yes. Although I still lack confidence a lot of the time, and the more I learn, I just realise there’s so much to learn and I’m never going to learn it, Paul, and there’s just some stuff I just look at and I go, I would need another 50 years of life to try and get anywhere near that. And so you’ve got to just go, well, you just focus on being the best you and maybe next time around you might be able to do that sort of stuff. But yeah, it’s just I think being keenly aware that you might know a lot and you’re definitely learning better, but there’s always more. And so that makes it really interesting and then exciting and a challenge because it is easy to rest on your laurels. Some people rest on their laurels at a really early age and they just don’t get better because it doesn’t occur to ’em. They need to get better, but I just think you can never stop learning.

Leigh Chalker (01:28:41):
Yeah, yeah. No, that’s good, man. I think choice words for anyone out there listening that wants to get better at drawing is try and draw every day and keep looking, keep learning, keep looking around, take it from you if that’s advice that you’re giving. Brilliant advice, mate. We just had a comment up from Daniel. Best if scissors out there. I’ll get him to put that back up. So Daniel Best asks, is it because you’re finally drawing what you want to draw as opposed to working for hire and taking on jobs because you had to?

Glenn Lumsden (01:29:20):
Yes, that hits the nail on the head. That makes a big difference. Now, to put that in sort of context in terms of an entire career, that is not to say that when you start off, you should be a primadonna who refuses to do anything but your own stuff. I think everyone has to go through that apprenticeship and some people will spend their entire career drawing other people’s stuff and that’s fine. So it’s up to you. But I feel in terms of all the years I’ve been drawing, I’ve spent a huge chunk of time working with other people and doing other people’s characters and stories and stuff like that. And that’s been fine, but that’s over. Now it’s time for me to do what I want to do and I’m absolutely loving it, having a ball and yeah, so that’s not to poo the past in any way because that was fine as well.

(01:30:22)
But yeah, now I’m just loving just exploring what’s inside me and yeah, it’s like I’m very, very lucky with the Glen Ford at through. He just lets me more or less do what I want, which is fantastic. So he’s got a lot of faith that I’m not going to just do something outrageous, which I wouldn’t do, but it is really nice for him to just, occasionally he might just say, oh look, we were thinking the next issue is going to be all Army or something, so just go, cool, okay, so they’re all going to be in battle fatigues or whatever, but that hardly ever happens. Most of the time it’s just he’ll go and this giant size, there’s Shadow Catman Phantom obviously, and Crimson Comet or whatever. So you try to put all those dudes in the cover. I don’t think I even have to put ’em all on the cover if I don’t want, I just, there’s no room. I’ll just run a strip in the bottom saying also Crimson Comet or whatever. So having that freedom is viewed and also getting published is great as well, without having to, not only am I not tipping into my own pocket, but I’m actually getting some payment back. So I’m very, very appreciative of that.

Leigh Chalker (01:31:53):
I think from my perspective anyway, and this is no disrespect to any of the artists that have done it for the last few years, but from my age bracket, I would think that you’re probably the definitive phantom artist at the moment, mate, you can recognise your work a mile away. You don’t even have to double check the name with just something from me, just being a penciler and an Inca. That’s something I guess similar to what Ben Sullivan was asking before, just purely a self-indulgent question that I want to ask you, man, from my own knowledge and maybe other people’s out there as well, we will have a look at some of your artwork. Actually I might, Shane, can you chuck up a couple of them man, doing the first one. Can I just have a quick we Yeah man, of course you can head off. I’ll read through these. Yeah, yeah, I’ll be quick. You take your time.

(01:32:59)
Don’t do what those nuns or brothers made your classmates do mate. Pee on your pants. Alright, so while we’re waiting with the Glen like and subscribe the channels helps all the algorithms and stuff like that so more people can watch the shows and more people can get to check out everything. The Comex is all about. Friday night drinking draw is up to episode 94 on its way to 100. So join SP Z and Sizzle and quick Nick in the regulars this Friday at eight o’clock for the Wild West. Don’t forget that this show and Friday Night Drink and Draw is sponsored by the Comex Studio. Now in the Comex studio is the Comex Shop. Now you can see that website there, you can go into that. It’s got a flat rate of $9 for one or 20 comics and there are over 100 independent Australian titles in there from varying artists. So if you’re interested, just jump on there and check out the catalogues and things like that. So go and support an Australian comic book creator and help ’em buy some ink and get those pages slapping and out quick as quick. And no, Daniel, I will not do a dance while we’re waiting, mate, because I never answered your question about pants. So it’s probably safe to stay seated.

(01:34:30)
So if anyone else has got any comments, please feel free to put ’em up and we’ll get Glen to answer ’em and stuff. And oh, there you go. Dave Di Glen won us. You won the Stanley Award, you won the Stanley Award for the a CA for the zombie. Ned Kelly, comic Dave. I was just letting me know mate, the Stanley. Yes. Now Ben Sullivan also had a comment while you’re away that if Shane can put that up for us. Ben Sullivan. This has been honest, deeply interesting and really encouraging. Thank you Lee and Glen, no need to thank me buddy. Thank Glen for his knowledge and experience mate, and passing on some tricks for us all, man. One thing we like to get out of Chinwag is if you can get at least one little piece of information that helps someone out there mate, then that makes for an awesome show as far as I’m concerned.

(01:35:29)
So back to my question for you now, the artsy fartsy one, as I like to jokingly call it mate, there’s a particular image, it may be in your images that pop up here, but whenever Shane wants to do it, but you did a double page spread for the Phantom a few months ago and it was a beautiful piece, man. Fandom was on the right. There was a lady standing in the corner next to a window, that’s not it. But while we’re just keep flicking ’em through, sis, that’s cool man, because it all relates to everything. How long right there. How long does that take you from the point you conceptualise it in your mind to the point where consumer Glenn says to artistic Glenn, good to go, mate?

Glenn Lumsden (01:36:27):
Well, I cannot weeks. I know that, but I kind of really lose track of the time because yeah, I should actually one day just what I’ve been doing is I haven’t written a date that I start on things, but I haven’t been keeping a diary, just a little notepad diary of the stages I go through from the very beginning when I’ve got a blank canvas to getting the idea what I then do and then the bits where I stall the bits where I find myself procrastinating and I sort make a why am I procrastinating? And I found I do this stupid thing where I love to pre-plan and I try to work, try to reverse engineer a cover. So I will start off with a little tiny canvas like a thumbnail and just draw. I’ll even have the little phantom logo on it and I’m looking at it, it’s tiny.

(01:37:28)
I’m thinking that’s a comic that I’m looking at from across the room in the news agency, what’s going to stand out, what can I put there? And I’ll just put little blobs on there going like, well, I want to see Phantom there, I want to see another character there and I want to see an elephant there. And then I end up with this blobby little thumbnail, which is I then blow up to the proper size and I’m going, no matter what I do, I’ve got to stick to that because consumer Glenn has decreed a little blobs. You don’t move them. So I start drawing and I’ll start laying all the figures out and stuff. I do this dumb thing where I leave the figure off and I know I’ve left the figure off and it’s usually always Planet Man I think because I don’t like Planet Man, his helmet is too hard to draw, but I’ll just go.

(01:38:18)
So I’ve got all these figures there in the Jeeps there and it always fits perfectly and every square is used beautifully. The logo and plant man, he’ll just go figure him out at the end and I get to the end and I just come with a screeching halt and I go, how am I going to, I’ve got this dumb space and I’ve got to fit this guy. I don’t want to draw into dumb space. So the notepad says, next time Glen planet man, do planet man. Why are you doing all the others? Even if you’ve got to have a little break, go away half an hour, have a cup of tea, and then come back and go right planet man time and don’t think of going onto the next step until you’ve got that bastard in the right spot. And it fits because there’s nothing worse than it’s like this beautiful complex clockwork mechanism, all the cogs and they’re all just fitting in perfectly. And then there’s this one bit that you just, ooh, that’s got to fit. But that’s something that I regularly do, but now that I’ve written a notepad, I’m not going to do it anymore.

Leigh Chalker (01:39:26):
Checking yourself, just little check here past Glen to present Glen, like giving him a bit of chastisement. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s a cool way of doing it. That’s an interesting way of doing it, man. Everyone’s different works. Is that something you’ve started now?

Glenn Lumsden (01:39:47):
One of the last few months, I reckon. Another thing I found was that because I’m slow and you’re working on the one drawing for maybe weeks, there is a stage where you get bored looking at the same composition even though there’s nothing wrong with the composition, the composition is still fine. You’re going, I might just flip that character. They’ll go, oh yeah, that looks good. And then you waste two days with this flipped character and then you open up something you saved from a week ago and you go, oh, that’s so much better. Why did I flip it? You idiot. The blobs. The blobs. So that’s another thing that I wrote in my notepad is when you get bored, walk away for a bit and then come back fresh and continue acknowledge that the blobs are not lying to you.

Leigh Chalker (01:40:43):
I think that’s great too. The blobs are not lying to you. Like what you’re sort of saying there is if you get just a bit too caught up in the frustration, because sometimes you can get frustrated, I guess I can, when something feels like it’s taking longer than it should, I suppose what you’re saying is breathe, walk away and follow your original instinct, which was the blobs, and you are trying to keep yourself on target by writing yourself these notes and stuff.

Glenn Lumsden (01:41:15):
Yep, yep. It’s really interesting, even the good bits where you’re sort of going really cruising and I’m just loving and doing. Yeah, just sometimes you can go get in a tormented artist mode and it’s nice to read the notes and you go, actually there’s a lot, I’m having a lot of fun and I’ve got it written down here, so just get cracking.

Leigh Chalker (01:41:42):
Yeah, yeah. Do you work work from start to finish on a page? I’m assuming you don’t. Some people will work on one and then if they do get to that walkaway process, they let it sit through a bit and they’ll pick up another piece they’ve been working on and have a jingle with that.

Glenn Lumsden (01:42:02):
Yeah, sometimes I do. I try not to, but sometimes you just get, you’ve got no choice. For instance, the last two things I did for there was the elephant wraparound spread thing we saw, and there was also this villains portfolio piece, which had this character called Mugu in it, and he’s terrorising Diane, she’s all bondaged up and the phantoms coming down the dungeon stairs and stuff. I had to kind of swap between the two of those because, and originally there was a third one they wanted and I got to a stage where I just thought, no, I’m going to stuff up these two if I try and do the third one by the deadline. So I just rang Glenn and said, no, third one ain’t happening. That was cool. But yeah, sometimes you do go back and forth and that’s fine, but sometimes it’s good to just walk away from the drawing board altogether and just think about something else. And when you come back as consumer, Glenn, you can kind of fool yourself that you’ve never seen this drawing before in your life. On Mac, you press the space bar and it brings up the instant image of the little J. You don’t have to open the Photoshop file. And that’s great because I just go und dumb look. And then consumer brand goes, ah, too dark. There you go. And I go,

Leigh Chalker (01:43:35):
Yeah, yeah, I like it, man. You’ve got an interesting way of doing things. There’s no doubt about that. While we were talking about you doing a very iconic Phantom, one thing that Daniel reminded me of today, and I’ve seen some of the pieces of this artwork, but I want to go back to your period now, I believe it was an abandoned project, was your Batman stuff that you got. Can you walk us through that and what happened with that? Because that’s some beautiful artwork, man, what happened?

Glenn Lumsden (01:44:16):
Well, so Batman, we were doing Batman after, I think we did Phantom. When I say we Ross the studios guys, which is Bear Heinrich, rod Toley, Dave Williams, obviously. I think that’s all. And so we finished, I think we actually did a couple of comics after Phantom, which didn’t get published for some reason. And then we got onto Batman, and by then we were really cooking, but it was like we were raising the bar all the time and we could never get ahead and we could never make enough dough. And it was so hard and was, I just had a gut full, I think it had been, by that stage, it must’ve been six, seven years of not doing the monthly comic every month, but basically moving from company to company and then having a deadline and stuff. So it was a long time in the treadmill and I was just over it.

(01:45:23)
I was really ready on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. And my editor, Archie Goodwin, who, fabulous guy, just one of the best dudes, and if you ever read about other people talking about Archie Goodwin, they all say the same thing. So it’s absolutely true. Just a lovely, lovely guy. He had cancer, he was dying. And I was talking to him going, oh, I’m so upset, I’m falling. And he was like, Glen mate, just take a break. It’s just a comic man comic. And then he died. And I was like, and this is one of those weird things where obviously Archie’s death was tragic, but it actually opened a door for me to just walk away because who else knew about the Batman project? I mean, back in those days, they probably still do it, but we had editors and they would, I think Mike Carlin or whatever, I think he did Superman or the Superman titles, and Archie did a few Batman ones and someone else did Wonder Woman and stuff. And they were really kings or princes unto themselves and they didn’t necessarily tell each other, oh, I’ve just got some Australian guys doing a Batman thing. So I don’t think anyone aside from Archie or the accountant knew that I was doing it or we were doing it. So when Archie died, I just stopped doing it

(01:47:02)
And I never heard a word. I didn’t get any focus for a while. I was just like, and then about five years it was like, I think it’s safe. And so that’s the story behind that.

Leigh Chalker (01:47:15):
Yeah, yeah. Oh, it’s very fine artwork, mate. I’ve had a good look at that. It’s beautiful stuff. I totally understand with a burnout having to walk away. But it is lovely stuff, man. You should be proud of that. And Nick May, I did a course once with Rod Toley. Is he still drawing?

Glenn Lumsden (01:47:35):
I don’t know. To be honest, rod and I haven’t spoken for ages. We used to be the best mates, like soulmate friends, and then we had this big falling out and I don’t think we’ve spoken since. It was really dumb too. But I mean I think we both had personal problems. I know with me I was a big drinker and I was a huge chainsmoker as well. But yeah, I was a bad drinker. And I think my side of things, that was definitely part of the reason for the big blow up we had. And yeah, I don’t drink at all anymore. I stopped drinking about 10 years ago. Bloody you think just you, it doesn’t even feel like you’re giving anything up. You’re actually, you getting, it’s like I remember thinking, I’m never going to have a hangover again in my entire life. This is just brilliant.

(01:48:45)
And then it actually took a little while to readjust to not being in any way hungover. And you’re sort of going, this is weird. This is strange, what’s going on? And it’s like, oh no, this is real life. This is me. And then you start to worry, oh my God, Emma, I’m not going to be funny anymore. People will think I’m boring at parties. What you dunno is that when you were drunk, you were a jerk and now you’re not. Well, not as much carefully not a jerk. And so again, it’s like, it’s just win-win plus your kidney, your livers and kidney. Really appreciate it. Yeah, so all thumbs up for that. But yeah, that’s a roundabout way of saying no, I have no idea. I’m totally still drawing.

Leigh Chalker (01:49:29):
Did you find that your artwork, and I asked this because it’s strange because we’ve run a couple of parallels here today. Personally, I am a recovering drinker. I’ve been sober for over 18 months now. I realised that wasn’t good for me either, and I wanted to get better at my artwork. And I have noticed since becoming sober, I’m getting better at a lot of things, particularly I guess my artwork. That’s my outlet. I don’t play sports and stuff, so my predominant let myself out is through my art. Did you find that your artwork increased in its productivity and style? And when you had that dream or when you were drinking and trying to draw, you’d think, oh, it looks so good. And then you look back on things now and you go like, oh man, what was that

Glenn Lumsden (01:50:27):
Thing? Also the time wasting and all the lying to clients and stuff. Yes, I’m working on it right now. No, actually I’m lying in bed, just barely able to talk and it’s just dumb. And I remember thinking whenever I get drunk the next day, the best scenario I could wish for is that I haven’t done anything too bad. That’s the best. You never that sort of wake up drunk and people go, you were so generous and kind and nice last night, and do you remember helping that? No, it’s always just like, do you remember what you said to such and such? Or do you remember you put your foot through the frigging glass coffee table and you didn’t apologise? Then you spend the next two hours ringing, hi, it’s glam room.

(01:51:23)
And also after a while, I think people just get jack of it as well. They’ll give you fair chances, but in the end they just want you to stop being a jerk. And then when you stop drinking and everyone just goes, oh great, okay, we can carry on. Now. Obviously there will be people that you had burnt off and you’ve got to just accept that. But no, it’s definitely been great for the drawing, great for the writing and great for everything. I used to just want to sleep all the time and now I five hours, six hours and I go to bed and I’m going, I’m really looking forward to getting up in the morning. Oh, that’s one thing I haven’t mentioned. Do you know I clean in the morning? So my wife’s the general manager down at Van dies land creamery. They do ice cream and then they have a factory and a cafe and that sort of stuff.

(01:52:28)
And after I stopped doing hat’s, hot dogs, which was my main source of income, I tried to get back into commercial art and it was just like, I just can’t do this again because I really wanted to just do comics. And Carly said, we need a cleaner. It’s like three hours every morning. You go in by yourself, you can go in the evening. In fact, I’m going in after this and then you come home. I get home this morning, I got up at two, I got home at seven 30, had breakfast and I was bloody drawing by nine and I’ll do a day’s drawing and I’ll forget that I cleaned. But the beautiful thing that I’ll forget that I clean until the money comes in the bank and I’m going beauty, and it just takes the pressure off having to pay the bills with the drawing, which I just can’t do. It’s too hard. Drew could be paying me a million dollars a cover and I would still not be making enough. I would somehow find a way of taking 2 million years to do it. So yeah, all roads lead to poverty. So except cleaning, which I also really enjoy doing, really fit. And I’ve lost, I used to be 85, 86 kilos, now I’m 70. And I remember the first month of cleaning, I was like, oh my shoulders. Now I’m zooming around and yeah, I get home and while I’m cleaning, of course it’s got nothing to do with drawing, which is brilliant because when you’re doing commercial art, you are using up your creative petrol.

Leigh Chalker (01:54:12):
When

Glenn Lumsden (01:54:12):
You stop, you go, I don’t feel like drawing anymore. So you don’t do your own stuff. But when I’m cleaning, I’m going, well, I’m going to do this. I can think of the changes I’m going to make on that cover. I’ve got another idea for another cover, where’s my notepad? And then I get home breakfast, boom. And I just have a great day drawing and feel like a million bucks and it’s great.

Leigh Chalker (01:54:33):
So you’ve found yourself a nice balance at this point in time. You are happy, calm, everything’s good. And it shows in your artwork, man. Well,

Glenn Lumsden (01:54:46):
I reckon so too because I think I’m a very harsh judge of my own work.

Leigh Chalker (01:54:55):
Well, if bloody your old mate consumer, Glenn is from the

Glenn Lumsden (01:55:04):
Shush, here he comes,

(01:55:08)
Where is that? And so sort of a harsh judge, and I’m loving it. I’m looking at going, dammit, I’m really happy with that. And also I don’t feel like I’m in competition or anything with anyone. That’s another great thing as well because in the nineties it was all about, again, climbing the greasy pole old, oh, he’s good, he’s too good. But now it’s like you look at someone who does a great bit of art and you just go, that’s great. That’s all you need to, you just say that’s great because it is. And everyone’s happy. It seems to me to be such a tragedy that if your ego stops you from enjoying great bits of art because you didn’t do them, it’s just the most stupid thing, isn’t it? And it reminds me of a story I heard about Michelangelo and Leonardo DaVinci. Michelangelo was a very huge ego apparently, and he hated Leonardo, hated anyone mentioning Leonardo. And so basically was unable to enjoy a Leonardo DaVinci painting. And I just think, what a wanker. What a, I mean, okay, Michael, you’re great Leonardo, he’s pretty good too. And he’s right next door. You could just, nah, can’t do it. Can’t overcome my huge ego.

(01:56:41)
It’s idiotic, isn’t it?

Leigh Chalker (01:56:43):
Yeah. Look, I’m with you, man. I don’t really understand the competition outside of yourself. For me, I just try and do the best thing I can. And if I’m happy with it, I didn’t know. I don’t think I’ve got a commercial leak in me anywhere, but I just judge it on if I’m, yes, that’s the best representation I can do there and move on. I’m not one for competitions either, because really when it comes to artwork, man, I’ve got one of my family’s sort of sayings is better than, but you’re just as good as, so I guess I just don’t see the competition and it’s not running a race. And I’ve said it before, I don’t really see it as we’re not eradicating diseases where we’re making art, we’re voicing our language. And for a lot of us, I guess our artwork is our language because outside of doing things like this, a lot of us don’t do a lot of talking. We don’t do a lot of venting. We don’t speak what’s on our mind or what’s bothering us, and sometimes we find it easier to go to our little or a three pad and pencils and get it out, man. So I’m with you a hundred percent on the lack of competition. I think

Glenn Lumsden (01:58:06):
It’s a journey within, isn’t it? It’s like, yeah. Whereas I think if you’re in competition, it’s more like what’s happening out there and it’s all it is. It just comes down to steam

(01:58:22)
Worrying too much about where you are on the totem pole, wanting to be doing the latest trend or whatever. And I’ve used the word authenticity a few times, but it all to me comes back to that. And that’s to do with what’s in your heart and exploring that and constantly asking yourself, I like polka dots, why this is intriguing, this is great. Let’s explore that. And because you never, what I love too is imagining your psyche or your soul or whatever is in Venn diagram terms and everything you love is one of the circles. And it’s try and stay in the intersecting bit where the polka dots meet the hot dogs, meet the comics, meet the dah dah, and that’s the area that you can just swim in a warm pool of love or whatever and just spend the rest of your life just going this.

(01:59:32)
And of course there will always be new interests that you’re discovering and stuff, stuff. Also, I love history and I find a lot of new stuff is actually old stuff that I either overlooked or never knew existed. And I mean Facebook is great for that, for just finding old artists from the forties and stuff who maybe did paperback covers or magazine lows and you’re just going, God, that guy does the best horses, or Jesus, his cars are so good, or how does he do the shiny bits on the glass? And you just go, I want to learn that and incorporated into my little box of goodies so I can start doing great glass.

Leigh Chalker (02:00:19):
Yeah, yeah, no, well man, I love it. I love what you’re all about, man. Especially I guess just the whole makeup of what you’ve been talking about tonight from a creative perspective as well too. Because from me, from being someone who’s relatively new, hearing yourself talk about your ups and downs and your strengths and what your perceived weaknesses and being very open and things like that is a huge help. And as Ben Sullivan said, in terms of encouragement, and the one thing that I sort of talk about on the show a little bit is some of us that do this spend so much time by ourselves that you don’t often communicate to people and you don’t often talk to other like-minded people. So you do, I guess self-doubt can creep in to a certain extent when you the only you judge, jury and executioner so to speak. But hearing what you’ve been talking about tonight, man, highly encouraging for me. Wow. Yeah, no, I’m tripping out. I’m just trying to enjoy the moment, man, and live in the present because everything that you’ve been talking about to me resonates in terms of my short journey and just where we’ve had some similarities with ego drinking, that sort of stuff, self crew,

Glenn Lumsden (02:02:12):
Rugby union, walk rise.

Leigh Chalker (02:02:14):
Yeah. Yeah, that meant I wake up in the middle of the night some nights, you know what I mean, to like green man, that’s probably why I like the colour green is they was just, yeah, I’ve been subliming. I don’t even like the bloody colour, but because those dudes were like, well, sharp green, now it’s like, I probably don’t want to fucking look anywhere else, man. It’s like red, have a red shirt. No,

Glenn Lumsden (02:02:43):
Apparently green is one of those colours that they try to avoid using on colours, sorry, colours. They try avoid using on covers, at least in comics. And I know I’m pulp novels and stuff because apparently they don’t sell as well. It’s just for some reason people just go, no, I just don’t like green. It’s weird. I’ve got nothing against green. But apparently

Leigh Chalker (02:03:07):
I don’t either. I don’t either really. But until it just, I’ve had an awakening that maybe I was beaten into my like of green, you know what I mean? Ridiculed into it and then it brings me, hang on a minute, because they did, and then in grade 10 they changed green to white. So what’s go anyway, existential questions, man. I can answer ’em another time with them myself, mate. With your balance in life here and your hard work to get to it, where do you see yourself in the next couple of years, man? Where do you see yourself, because you’re a huge part of the Australian comic book community industry, where do you see comics with your experience in the future? How do you see the medium staying alive with the pulse?

Glenn Lumsden (02:04:07):
Well, I really think it’s going to be a boutique. It’s a bit like, you know how LPs have come back a bit, it’s going to be like that. They’ll be there. And I guess while there’s life, there’s hope and maybe every few years someone will do one and it’ll turn into a big movie and people will go, ah, comics, they’re great. But what strikes me is that in America you’ve got all those Marvel movies and stuff, but that hasn’t really improved the budgets and stuff of the comics, the actors and the directors, they’re getting millions and warn brothers and stuff, but it doesn’t seem to filter through to the people doing the frigging comics. And I really think that is because of, well, the internet, once something’s digital and it’s on the internet, forget it, it’s gone. It’s like musicians had exactly the same problem.

(02:05:13)
I remember there was a band, I liked the church with Steve Kby, and I remember some time ago reading an interview where he said that he quit his own band on principle once because he got a royalty check and for the year’s sales, I can’t remember if it was from Spotify or whatever, but it was less than the 200 bucks. And they sent ’em the spreadsheet with how many units sold and it was like lots. And then as you work your way down the spreadsheet and everyone’s taken their little chunk out and the band of which there are four of them, you guys less than 200 have a good year. And he just went, this is because again, it’s like once it’s digital, people just download your entire discography. I mean, I have done it where, and then you take it for granted, you don’t even listen to the album in the order that it was done.

(02:06:19)
Again, going back to the seventies, but I used to buy an album and you would listen to it side A and then I’d B and you would listen to all the tracks in order and then you’d read all the little notes and the album cover and stuff and guy would say, explain why they did it in a certain order and stuff. And now it’s like all that’s just gone. It’s just like I’ve got this entire discography and I’m going to listen to three songs out of the 3000 and the others are just going to sing.

Leigh Chalker (02:06:52):
You’ll come back in a second, not Daniel Best. My favourite royalty check, which I kept was for 1 cent. Oh dear Glen, should be back in a sec. Here he is. Hello, mate, back.

Glenn Lumsden (02:07:07):
I’m back. Did I disappear today?

Leigh Chalker (02:07:09):
Yep. You’re a little bit, yeah. Yeah. I

Glenn Lumsden (02:07:12):
Didn’t even take the opportunity to have another wee.

Leigh Chalker (02:07:16):
Oh no, man. No. Do you remember where you were at probably 30 seconds ago about where you’re up to?

Glenn Lumsden (02:07:26):
We were talking about

Leigh Chalker (02:07:28):
Band LPs listening to track

Glenn Lumsden (02:07:33):
Steve killed because getting this pissy little, oh yeah, digital and discographies and no longer appreciating the body of work. It’s on your hard drive. If you feel like listening to it, you might, if you don’t, it could just sit there. And it’s the same with comics and stuff, so people can do pirate freaking a hundred issues or something, or the latest thing that took the artist, God knows how long to draw and it’s been going on now for long enough that you’ve got a generation of people who have learned learnt that that is the way it’s supposed to be.

Leigh Chalker (02:08:17):
And

Glenn Lumsden (02:08:18):
If you say, excuse me, you’re breaking copyright, they go, I’m okay with that. I don’t, that’s fine. No, I’m happy the way things are. You go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it’s not. You meant to say, you’re meant to say, okay, I’ll stop doing it. No, and then if you get the law onto them, you actually become the bad guy. It’s like this fascist guy wants to stop us from downloading all this stuff on the net, you’re thinking, so I’m the bad guy because I don’t want people stealing my work and I don’t get any money for it. That’s just bloody Ben. I don’t know. Only thing you can do is never put it on the net, do a hard copy. Someone can always scan it in. I know, but I’m not going to bloody make it easy for ’em. I do it. They can just,

Leigh Chalker (02:09:11):
Yeah, yeah. Well Daniel Best put a comment up when you dropped out before saying that his smallest royalty check was for 1 cent, so would’ve cost him more to bloody mail the letter out like, mate, I think it’s the way of the world, isn’t it? It’s something for nothing. Something right there. I want it now it’s here. Give it to me and then throw it aside. What’s

Glenn Lumsden (02:09:42):
Ironic is that the consumer demand for creative work is huge. It’s like more Netflix, more this. When’s the next series of Bosch coming out? When’s the next, why can’t we have more Hulk comics and more Hulk movies and stuff? And then it’s like, and can you pay the artists for them? It’s like pay for music, pay for art. Yeah. I mean appreciating the work that creative people do is a L thing. And over generations it becomes a habit, which I think is a good habit, but it can just be easily as easily. And that’s what the computer and the internet has done is it’s allowed people in the nineties got, and then there’s this sort of chasm, and now we’ve got the people on the other side who have never paid properly or even thought about it because the new status quo is it’s just on tap for free and I’m not paying hundreds of dollars or something. It’s like, I’ll pay $2, I’ll pay 20 cents.

(02:10:58)
I was talking with this guy the other day at work, he’s a Colombian bloke and he designed websites or whatever and he was going, you can make more money doing websites design and things like that. And I was going, yeah, I’m not really interested in that. And also I’ve done commercial art and I just find it a bit boring doing the logos and stuff. He goes, oh no, no, no, no, no, you go on these sites, they’re called five and there’s all these desperate artists and we’re all prepared to do it for $5. And you can even talk ’em down to two and they all fight amongst each other and you say you do the logo and you pay ’em $2 or you don’t, whatever. I was just because I had been on those sites before 10 years ago, just to check ’em out. When they first started having, I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

(02:11:49)
It was like you think it’s like unions never existed and child labour is still fine and people work 12 hour days. Logos are done for $2 and we’re meant to just fight each other. Dogs for the privilege and the way that the people who wanted the logos done would go about addressing the artist was just disgusting. It was like, you do this for me, don’t even think of, you weren’t going to sit on, it was just like garbage and all these people from I’m from Uzbekistan and I’ll do it. No, no, no, don’t do it after price. Give it to you. And you just think, I don’t want to be there, man, it’s so depressing. And also they’re not going to get a good logo. They’re just going to get some crappy logo which was ripped off from somewhere else. Because frankly for $2, that’s all you deserve.

Leigh Chalker (02:12:57):
It’s KPIs. You know what I reckon it is too. It’s a distinct, a succinct change in I guess society and stuff like that. Where I always chuckle at this is just me again is like job done scent and then you’ve got some poor bugger, like a mile up the road, you know what I mean? Gets this piece of paper churned out and he’s the poor bugger that’s got to hump the 200 kilo oven and stuff like that. And the salesperson’s in there getting the gold and the taking stuff and there’s this poor dude lumping this thing on his back. You’ve got to get it up this internal stick. Yeah, it’s a shame. But I mean, I’ll be honest with you, man, I read a lot of fifties and sixties science fiction novels and people thought those dudes were mad back in the day. But it’s funny how much of their ideologies from back then and what they were seeing forward are actually coming true.

Glenn Lumsden (02:14:15):
This is only going back to the eighties, but the whole Terminator scenario and the matrix scenario, it’s like, yeah, it’s freaking happening. I mean, I dunno if you’ve been following the Ukraine, Russia war, but they’re always mentioning the drones and stuff, but it’s just sort of like, I don’t think they’re making as big a deal as, because I’m going, you see, this is where it’s all heading. It’ll be like no soldiers, it’ll just be drones, like super smart drones that can detect the cent of a human being, maybe even detect your DNA. They just say, we’re going to, we know he is in the city, and off you go, 50 drones, it’ll just go, oh, here he is hiding on a table. And it sounds something fanciful, but it’s just not.

Leigh Chalker (02:15:16):
I made a mine send an article through not too long ago, and neither here nor there AI don’t agree with it. Okay, I’ll put that out there. I believe in creativity from the human, what they say, but AI is a part of what is happening out there. So I guess you can’t hide behind it. You need to speak about it then I suppose to a certain extent adapt, whether you agree with it or not, there’s nothing we can do about it at this stage, it’s in play, so it’s only going to be further in play. And he sent me through this article about how there was, or there is a forum that people can go on and do their artwork and stuff and muck around with. And through Europe, people had been noticing that a particular character had been popping up in their art form of they might do a landscape and then suddenly this landscape, they wanted something beautiful like five o’clock in sunrise over a lake. And what’s produced is this hellish landscape with this individual there. And one person thought it was an error with I guess their software, their computers, however it is the language. But then reports of this thing popped up all over Europe and stuff like that for a prolonged period. This thing has gone on. Its named itself, I believe is Loeb,

Glenn Lumsden (02:16:47):
And

Leigh Chalker (02:16:47):
It’s trying to identify itself as a valid creation and it keeps popping up in these art forms trying to understand itself, man. And yeah, scientist was having a conversation with it. It was typing back to him, I dunno why I’m here, I dunno who I am, that sort of stuff. And I read that article and I was just like, whoa, whoa man.

Glenn Lumsden (02:17:22):
Shivers down here. It’s like one of those Japanese horror movies, like the Grudge or whatever. It’s like make it stop. Make it stop.

Leigh Chalker (02:17:29):
Yeah, it made, it’s definitely happening. So it’s

Glenn Lumsden (02:17:36):
Like yourself. Yeah. There’s no denying it’s here. I think it’s going to be devastating for people like us illustrators and objectively though, I mean subjectively positively I guess I’ve had a play with it. And it’s fun for about 20 minutes because sort of saying things like Penguin, who’s Dolly Parton flying on a pizza which is made of bricks, and you see what comes up and sometimes you just go, oh, that’s funny. Other times you think that’s hopeless and then you get bored with it. So it’s a bit like those sort of funny name generators they used to have on the, you get Jack ’em after all, but obviously this is just early days and it’s going to get, it’s like those chess computers, it takes ’em a while to get better than the top chess master, but it’s just going to happen because what it can do better than the human beings obviously is that it doesn’t get bored and it can do billions of computations really, really fast. So that’s like game over really, isn’t it? Because human beings, we can’t, I’ll just adjust my brand to go a billion times faster. You just can’t do it. So

Leigh Chalker (02:19:00):
That is, and I guess at the end of the day when you hear too of, I can’t remember the UK publisher, but late last year, they moved to AI generated covers, mate. So obviously when do outwardly about it too, corporate identities are going for, look at it for the bottom line because bottom line things are taken into consideration as you would know from your time doing things. It is an interesting world for artwork, there’s no doubt about that.

Glenn Lumsden (02:19:35):
Yeah, I mean it just makes me want to just kind of focus just on my stuff and just go, I’m just going to go back and draw the next phantom cover, try and make it very good, even though a can probably do a better one. But P fan will have extra arms coming out of his frigging neck.

Leigh Chalker (02:20:00):
Oh man, I agree with you. There’s some things like I still draw on paper with pencils and pens and inks, man. It’s like there’s something satisfying about simplicity, you know what I mean? Sometimes I think things are unnecessarily complex in our world, you know what I mean? You could just scale it all back and I guess realise we’ve all got to try and find a synchronicity man and a rhythm and stuff like that. It’s all about unified people and things. So creativity I hope from the human never dies. Or if it does, you’re probably right mate. We’ll be hanging things on that cafe in some backstreet and people will be like, oh, it was done by a real human.

(02:20:57)
Who would’ve thought science fiction novels had happened like that. But we going to start slowly winding our show down because you’ve got some work and stuff this evening. Now mate, we’ve pretty much covered everything. I always like to ask one question, but we discovered why you do it earlier in the evening. So one last little thing, which is humorous, I saw it and my mate, Ryan Valla sent it through to me and we thought it was awesome. Thank you Facebook user. Did you know that you and Dave Dave’s comic book got on cartoon as Kfab about two months ago? One of your drawings from Malibu? Yeah, name of the comic book escapes me at the moment. If someone out there can bang up what the name of that comic book was, but you made the Fade mate. So I would say, yeah, yeah, I would say well done. Yeah, that seems to be the show at the moment, so congratulations on that and well done. And man, man, seriously, yeah, you’ve made the 14-year-old boy and me very, very happy getting to meet you tonight. Paradoxically, the 14-year-old boy is still me. I’m a very, very happy man. Yeah, man, you’re an absolute champion and a legend. Thank you very much for you guys, not just yourself but bodyguard. Thank you Gary, that

Glenn Lumsden (02:22:41):
Tell,

Leigh Chalker (02:22:43):
Yeah, so yeah mate, for all you, not yourself but Gary, the cyclone guys, for my little generation of comic book guys that are still going and stuff like that. And I know there’s a lot of us out there that thank you you guys very much for trailblazing and letting us as young fellas think to ourselves like, Hey, we could do some comics here. This is for real. So the dream continues. So there you go. Facebook users letting me know nineties Marvel fandom as well as he’s a fan of mate, loved it. So yeah man, thank you so much. Yeah, awesome. Alright, so Glenn, where can we get your stuff mate? If there’s anyone out there that wants to immediately go and buy your stuff, man,

Glenn Lumsden (02:23:38):
The latest Phantom giant size I think is probably out at the time at the moment. And a portfolio piece I think you’ve got, you have to get that directly from fruit or go to one of the conventions that are on at the moment. I think they’re selling them there. And I think I also did, so there’s only covers out at the moment. I think I did a cover of one of the regular Phantom comics, which might be out as well. So that’s all that’s out there at the moment. I think

Leigh Chalker (02:24:12):
All available news agents, hey, so if anyone’s out, they’re all available at Newsagency or stuff like the Giants

Glenn Lumsden (02:24:19):
Shops or whatever, wherever they get comic these

Leigh Chalker (02:24:22):
Days. So if anyone’s mum’s out there buying scratches at the newsagent or checking a lotto, just veer off down to the back corner and pick up one of the Phantom comics that Glen does and bring it back over and slide it up on that counter and give your mom a real sweet smile man and say, you really wanted to have a look at this stuff because you even know where it’ll take you.

Glenn Lumsden (02:24:46):
A rude magazine underneath. Yeah,

Leigh Chalker (02:24:49):
I haven’t thought about that. Okay, don’t do the Rude Magazine kids, but hey, I’ll leave that entirely up to you. If everyone in the world was the same, it’d be a very boring place. And who knows, parents can be liberal Mine, were quite strict, but times change. Alright, so don’t forget to like and subscribe to channels Friday Night, drink and Draw. Episode 94 is on this week, it’s on the Wild West. So get your drawings in early and you’ll get them shown on the show. A little bit of getting yourself out there. If you’re someone that’s nervous, someone just likes to draw, someone that wants to talk with the same minded people and stuff, comics is the place to go support Australian comic books. There’s a lot of people really working hard on things that they love out there. And there’s so many places. There’s Coex, there’s ol, there’s fruit, there’s Cyclone, there’s rie, there’s just Go and Search, go and have a look, reach out to people, they’re all available.

(02:25:54)
They all say good day. They love having a yarn about comic books. Now don’t forget the Comex shot because that is who sponsors this show in Friday night, drinking drawers over a hundred titles of Australian independent comic books from everywhere in Australia or for the flat fee of $9. So buy one, it’s $9, buy 10, it’s $9. I’d go for 10, I’d tell you to go for 10, but maybe realistically seven or eight. It’s not a bad number to start at because there’s that much good stuff out there too. Now, just to let everyone know as well, next week will be a prerecorded show, so I won’t be here, but I sort of will be. So it’s no mate. See that’s where I was building with it. You won’t be able to tell either. Alright, only how many fingers you got. Well, currently on this hand I have five. I’m not going to show you the left hand because you can see if I’m real or not next week. That’s right. I might just quickly change it in the algorithm just to buggy is all up, but it is Mr. Dean Rankin coming on the Tuesday. So I’ll be pre-recording that with Dean on Saturday because he’s a very busy man and he’s nice enough to come on and have a chat and I’m very much looking forward to that as well.

(02:27:17)
Look, there’s really nothing more to say. I’m happy as Larry, I hope everyone enjoyed it. Thank you for watching the show. Thank you for your comments. I do apologise if I couldn’t get to all of them. I do try my best, but yeah, I had Glen Lumsden in the house and wow, pretty awesome man. I’m happy and I hope you guys are too. So just remember, always be kind to people. Look out for your mates, give them a ring, touch base with ’em, make sure they’re okay because the world can be troublesome and some people don’t navigate it as well as others and it doesn’t hurt to look out for your people. Alright, thank you very much. Sort of see you here next Tuesday night at seven 30. But the show and a version of Saturday’s, version of myself will be here on Tuesday at seven 30. So everyone thank you. And remember, community is Unity. Thank you, Glen. My pleasure. Thank you, champion.

Voice Over (02:28:21):
This show is sponsored by the Comex Shop. Check out comex.cx for all things Comex and find out what Comex is all about. We hope you enjoyed the show.