On 5 July 2021, Melbourne was having a little break between lockdowns and conservative nightmareman Michael Leunig released yet another deeply weird antivax cartoon in The Age. It had his usual racist, homophobic undertones, but also… what did it mean?
I would apologise for sharing this but I think we’re honestly still all very confused by it.
Since it was winter, and the man is reprehensible, and lockdowns, etc, I was willing to indulge my worst impulses.
It frustrates me deeply that Fairfax is still publishing him as though nobody else could do what he does. Our country is chockablock full of much funnier, much more talented, much less hateful and more generous cartoonists.
Also, those other cartoonists’ sisters (content warning for childhood sex abuse in link) haven’t gone on the record about their childhood abuse. He is a reprehensible man. Let’s all get out there and draw better stuff than he does.
I looked at a lot of pulp sci fi art and wanted to draw something with unrealistic space suits and sexy aliens!! So I have zero concept of who these characters are, just that they are arch rivals in space… and maybe that’s enough 😌💁🚀
love, protect, and fight for your child self 🏳️⚧️ (2021)
I drew this when we were waiting for the federal Religious Discrimination Bill and the NSW Education Bill to be debated in 2021.
I was tired and wondering where my community’s energy to fight comes from. Many trans people are haunted by our pre-transition selves—these closeted younger versions of us who needed love and protection desperately, but who nobody fought for. We survived, and we are fighting for them now.
* I drew this for a one-off work event. If you have anything you want to use it for, drop me a line! I don’t think I should keep something like this just for myself.
the sharehouse cutaway that made it into my graphic novel pitch.
Like most millennials, I love staring at floor plans on real estate websites and imagining “”owning”” a “”home.”” I can finally excuse the psychic damage: it turns out this is a really useful trait for a cartoonist to have.
The sharehouse is a recurring setting that represents authenticity and safety for my characters, so I need to know where everything is and where everything goes. This also helped me get a feel for all the housemates, who at this point existed as dot points only.
thank you to real estate websites, as well as to everyone who hasn’t renovated their bathroom
My notes called for:
Henry, Electra, Anira, Corey and Nassim live in the same sharehouse. Their ageing weatherboard house has a grungy, welcoming, down to earth vibe. The sharehouse is full of light and activity…sandwiched between a super fancy gentrified apartment block, where a house just like it was sold and knocked down, and a house owned by an old Italian couple with a bountiful garden.
It’s more or less impossible to rent a place like this in Footscray now. Pour one out for the fallen 🥲
The floorplan of the house shows that Henry is in the smallest room in what is technically a four bedroom house; he’s tucked away in the lowest rent room, a small once-storeroom at the back. The house overall hasn’t been redecorated or renovated at all since the 70s, and it’s full of mismatched second-hand furniture, fairy lights, milk crates as chairs, and pride flags. Almost all the furniture in this home was rescued out of hard rubbish on the side of the road.
the sharehouse kitchen/lounge is based off a sharehouse I lived in once, which had a weird 70’s arch and a lounge room… window? situation?
I really did love sharehousing, but wow… I think my biggest challenge as an artist is going to be representing a realistic mountain of dirty dishes in the kitchen sink.
