Leigh chats with Gary Dellar from the Reverie “Empire” 😉 this week about, well, Gary and Reverie.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION (text may contain errors)

Voice Over (00:00:00):
Variety of Australian comics from multiple creators and publishers, all for one flat hostage rate. We hope you enjoy the show.

Gary Dellar (00:00:10):
Hello.

Leigh Chalker (00:00:11):
Good day. All right, well mate welcome to episode three of the Tuesday chinwag. My name’s Lee Chalker, created Battle for Bustle and tonight’s guest is Mr. Gary D the head honcho of Reary Publications. So welcome to the show, mate. It’s nice to see you again.

Gary Dellar (00:00:33):
Look, it’s great. It’s it’s an honor to be here.

Leigh Chalker (00:00:37):
Talk about, yeah, yeah, we do indeed. So just for anyone that’s watching for the first time, basically we just ask six prompting, oh, I ask six prompting words, which is who, what, where, when, why, and how. And we allow Gary to answer those anyway wishes and the conversation just veers off to where it may go. So hello Peter. How are you mate? Alright Gary, we’ll get this rock and let’s start with the first one, which is who?

Gary Dellar (00:01:10):
Yeah, fantastic. This is a really good one to start with because if we go over my life in general very quickly, yeah. I’d like to say that I came originally into this world in Rainbow. Now a lot of people dunno where Rainbow is, but it’s up the corner of Victoria facing South Australia, new South Wales, in a bit of North northern Territory. Now what I normally say is, yes, I was born up there, but the truth is that when the rainbow happened, they put me in a pot of gold up there and my parents found me. Now this is really interesting. He went the same way too. He was up there too as well. So it was great and that’s what started the journey. What a great journey that is. That’s why we are here right now, me and you.

Leigh Chalker (00:01:59):
Oh mate, you had your pocket full of gold the minute you popped into the world mate. So <laugh>, no been adding to those pockets the whole time you’ve been here.

Gary Dellar (00:02:12):
Just the experience has been adding. After that we shifted from there and we were on the farm life. That was our life from there. And we had this big farm we shifted to Mount Gambia, which is South Australia and most of our family was there. And then from Mount Gambia we went straight to the farm. Now farm’s always a fantastic beautiful look. You just can’t, for someone growing up, it’s the best way to grow up in. And I can say that honestly. And anybody that’s been on the farm, they know that. And then of course I was lucky because I had the best of both worlds cuz what happens is from the farm, just as I was gonna get my license in South Australia at 16 we shifted to Melbourne. So I had to wait another two years for the license <laugh>. So that went down

Leigh Chalker (00:03:02):
Real young fell that would’ve been horrendous, man.

Gary Dellar (00:03:06):
Not that it mattered anyhow, because on the farm we still drive, we did everything anyhow so it didn’t matter. We were riding motorbikes and everything around. So it was pretty good. But that’s when everything, I still, I started reading comics when I was quite young, but it was mainly Donald Ducks.

Leigh Chalker (00:03:22):
Yeah,

Gary Dellar (00:03:23):
Now Donald Ducks were great cuz they had a lot of adventures. But I also recognized that some of the Donald Ducks and the uncle, they were much more adventurous and very good for what the stories were. So I knew there was something different about it, but I didn’t know exactly what it was because I wasn’t at the time into, as we all are now into artists now, when you get an artist say Fantastic four or even that, you get certain artists that you recognize and you say, oh this is fantastic, I’ll go and get him or read him and see. So that’s what happened. But anyway, I realized back then that okay, there’s something different about these sort of comics and of course we all know it was Carl Barks. He was absolutely amazing some of the stuff that was coming out of his head. So that’s what picked and went onto it. And then of course what happened when I was 16, as I said, we shifted to Melbourne. Now Melbourne was totally different to what the farm life was, but it was a venture and I never worried about it cuz we were carefree. We did what we did. I shifted over here, the parents actually started the journey. They bought a new,

(00:04:35):
Made a candy shop there. So anyway, so that’s where the collection started and expanded with some of the American stuff. But a lot of the Australian stuff cuz Australian stuff back then was starting to slowly come through reprints mainly. But then it started coming through with a lot of the Australian Gerald Carr he come through it. Yeah, yeah, good with all his vampires and his Ubu comics at the time and it was highly noticeable.

Leigh Chalker (00:05:05):
So mother and dad’s stock takes go right in the news agents. Did they find that the comic book section was

Gary Dellar (00:05:17):
A bit of a problem but a problem coming into the room because most of the rooms at the time were three by three meters, but it was getting a little bit hard to get into ’em cuz the comics were stacked pile high and they’re getting closer to and all that sort of stuff. But that was good.

Leigh Chalker (00:05:34):
That sort of sounds like what you were telling me about the room you’re in at the moment mate. How you got squeeze through your comic both

Gary Dellar (00:05:41):
Collection. It’s now and I’ve got rid of a lot I reckon. Look, it’s probably two thirds of them over the years I’ve got rid of it. Cause when I get, let’s move ahead here. When we shifted to Melbourne, of course we did a bit of ships all around the place and we had different news agencies, we had different shops and I helped out mum out a lot of the times. What happened is we shifted to Riles Creek and that’s of course when Reary first started up.

Leigh Chalker (00:06:12):
Okay, so when’s this about mate? What year?

Gary Dellar (00:06:16):
This is probably in the eighties. About the eighties say and what happens, we were up there for a while but what happened was, because we were shifting a lot, there was a lot of comics there and it’s a hell of a job as to shift a lot of comics everywhere. Yeah, absolutely incredible. And time consuming. And you wonder why you do it sometimes <laugh>.

Leigh Chalker (00:06:38):
Yes.

Gary Dellar (00:06:40):
Anyway, so what happened is we went up there and we gotta get married because we had had a girlfriend, we gotta get married. And then that started the journey with the six kids. But anyway, what happened there is we we’re gonna get this we’re gonna buy a house, how are we gonna finance this house? So what I decided to do, believe it or not, was I got all the American comics together and I put it out to all the collectors around Australia and cuz I was pretty familiar with a lot of situations in and I got really involved in it and I said, these comics are for sale and come and put a price on. And lo and behold I sold ’em for 20 grand and that was interesting. Yeah, the 20 grand. And they sold. It was interesting because the collector collector that decided to do it, bill was funny because most of ’em would come up to you and say, okay, well I’ll give you 20 grand but I only wanna take these ones because they were the main ones that can sell.

Leigh Chalker (00:07:35):
Yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:07:36):
And I said, no, I don’t want that. I want you take the lot cause I’m not gonna be stuck with them. I don’t need ’em anymore. So they took the lot and that was great. So that 20 grand went into the first house as a deposit. So that was fantastic for us. So that Saturday is on that journey. So sometimes you look back at it and you regret that you sold them, but in the end it was suitable for the time. It did its purpose. And that’s why I’m here today. So we just,

Leigh Chalker (00:08:03):
Oh, 100%. So I mean essentially comics are in your blood. They’ve helped you with your first house and pushed you off into this now then. That’s amazing.

Gary Dellar (00:08:17):
Yeah, it was great. It was great. And then later on down the track there, there’s a few other issues and of course that was me with the American Collection. I did keep the science fiction side of it and I kept the cones cuz I loved the Conans at the time.

Leigh Chalker (00:08:29):
Yeah, yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:08:31):
The first Marvel run, that was fantastic for what it was.

Leigh Chalker (00:08:34):
I’m with you man. I love that stuff. You

Gary Dellar (00:08:36):
Can’t knock it. But I did sell it later on for fair price cuz they, well, and I’m talking about these comics, they were straight off the they were the shelf the time I had the wisdom to put ’em in a bag.

Leigh Chalker (00:08:48):
Yeah, yeah, right. Good man.

Gary Dellar (00:08:50):
But every single comic that come out of that time, from the time that I got to the point where I was sold them, they were Mickey Mouse.

Leigh Chalker (00:08:58):
So as a young fella, did you lovingly read ’em? You didn’t like hold the thumb in the middle of the binder staple part?

Gary Dellar (00:09:05):
They were well looked after. And what I found is, even though I like the American stuff, I like to sign switch and stuff more than a lot of the superhero stuff. But I was quite wrapped in <inaudible>. So I actually went and did a lot of writing. So the idea of when I was writing was to put out a comic eventually and have it serialized, like torn. Torn for instance, which we put out in 2018 was actually a written comic at the time that was gonna be serialized in River.

Leigh Chalker (00:09:39):
Right.

Gary Dellar (00:09:40):
But that was how far back it was written.

Leigh Chalker (00:09:43):
Yeah, yeah. Okay. What

Gary Dellar (00:09:44):
Happened was the concept art and all that sort of stuff was done back then as well.

Leigh Chalker (00:09:48):
Yeah, yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:09:49):
So that was good. That was part of the parcel. So was a couple other characters, but a lot of, I had about 34 good characters, but from eighties, the eighties to 2018 when I started, when you look back at it, probably out of all those characters, I reckon I lost about 12 of them.

Leigh Chalker (00:10:08):
And those characters are sneaking their way into the Reary universe and to,

Gary Dellar (00:10:15):
Yeah, they’re all coming in. Everything’s coming in, they’re all dropping in plus extras. But the original 12 I lost were simply because you know how you come up with an idea and then someone else in the world’s come up with an idea.

Leigh Chalker (00:10:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:10:27):
Well they were lost cause of that. So I just wasn’t quick enough to put ’em out and they just gone. So

Leigh Chalker (00:10:35):
Darrell, Darrell torn, the main man has been around with you for that long, mate, you’ve been Story and his life and everything like Jo.

Gary Dellar (00:10:47):
Oh yeah. Yeah. It’s been around for that long time and it’s a lot of characters that I’ve just started putting into it. Plus a lot of extras, which is really, really, the universe is really, really good at the moment. It’s really expanding. And our, believe it or not, our top selling at the moment was just a comic we just put out recently, which was Mr. I, detective Agency.

Leigh Chalker (00:11:08):
Yeah, right. Yeah, I know the one. Yep.

Gary Dellar (00:11:10):
Yeah. I dunno if I ever got that to you, but

Leigh Chalker (00:11:13):
I haven’t read it. But I definitely know the character.

Gary Dellar (00:11:16):
One

Leigh Chalker (00:11:17):
Of Variant covers Mate’s got a very, very lovely painted Ben Sullivan piece.

Gary Dellar (00:11:23):
Everyone’s got one too. This one here, that’s another one. That’s the one you’re talking about.

Leigh Chalker (00:11:29):
That’s the one that, that’s I’m talking about. But I definitely know there’s one with the yellow.

Gary Dellar (00:11:36):
The yellow one is, the yellow one has been dropped and there’s another one with a big eye in the middle and broken mirrors behind it.

Leigh Chalker (00:11:45):
That’s all you mean. You got the luxury of being there just seeing this artwork flicking. You know what I mean?

Gary Dellar (00:11:54):
And that’s the beauty about it because what happened with Gal to, of course we had had a look of it with the 1980s sort of look about him. And what happened with that one is it was really good, but it needed to be revamped, this idea that it had to be a certain way. So luckily Peter Lawson, he jumped into bandwagon, which was fantastic because he nailed it. Yep, absolutely. Nailed it. Spot on. Yep. And he also did that with Red Gum.

Leigh Chalker (00:12:25):
Yep.

Gary Dellar (00:12:26):
Red Gum nailed that spot on cuz it’s basically what I had to planned and he just went bang. And that was it. It’s done. And the other fantastic thing is Billabong was an extra character that I’ve just come up with just for this sort of universe now. And I gave him an rough idea what to do and how to do it and bang, he nailed that as well, which was fantastic. So it’s

Leigh Chalker (00:12:48):
Man, he, he’s a talented man. Peter Lawson, I like, he’s a very nice man too. Question, when you gave him your ideas for these characters, do you do little sketches or anything like

Gary Dellar (00:13:02):
An

Leigh Chalker (00:13:02):
Idea or it’s a phrase or

Gary Dellar (00:13:05):
With He had the ability to, I just gave him a rough synopsis of how I wanted it

Leigh Chalker (00:13:12):
And

Gary Dellar (00:13:13):
Basically I gave him a little bit of a freedom in it and he was great. Absolutely brilliant.

Leigh Chalker (00:13:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Visual Father of Torn is Peter Lawson.

Gary Dellar (00:13:25):
Yep. Yeah, he’s not, I’ve kept the it is similar to the first ones, but it’s better if you know what I mean.

Leigh Chalker (00:13:32):
Yeah, well you can’t wrong with Pete’s artwork mate, like

Gary Dellar (00:13:36):
That’s right. So it was a choice. So I said I know I’ll stick to this one cuz this is a better look about it. And it was look a hundred percent better. Hundred percent. I kept doing the old stuff. I’ve kept all the old stuff because someday I’ll write a book on it and this is what really started it off and that’s the ending of it if I ever get to that stage.

Leigh Chalker (00:13:54):
Yeah. Now we had, we’ve started, we’ll go back in time a little bit. So what was it that prompted you to do your very first reverie comic back in the eighties and stuff? Cause you, you’re trailblazer mate, you were back early on in the piece with couple of comic books that we know well, like Dark Nebula and Cyclone and Southern Squadron. And that was sort of starting to brew at that period. And Gerald Carr was banging out his wares and his magic. So what got you into it mate? Did you meet someone or you just thought I can do it? What?

Gary Dellar (00:14:41):
No, just look, I was into the comic side of it when I come over, I was very low key. It was like a mushroom. I kept under a mushroom, kept it quiet, just went around and asked and talked. And there was basically, at one stage there was about four or five of us set, we got all together and says we had a few drinks and stuff and we basically said, you know what, let’s put out a comic. And it was just a simple a five comic. And naturally of course what happened was we weren’t gonna just put it out as a 51. We said, no, we’re gonna print this and we’re gonna put it for Gordon and Gots. Cuz we had the contacts cuz we’re in the news s And the best thing about it is there was a gentleman called Paul Harris. Now Paul Harris was in the advertising agencies and he had a big influence on a lot of people. So that was a real good thing at the time. And that’s what really got us into it because after the first issue we’ve actually, we’ll show you the first issue now.

Leigh Chalker (00:15:44):
Yeah, righto.

Gary Dellar (00:15:45):
That’s the first one that come out. Now this, what happened was it’s only an a five size thought. What’s gonna happen? It’ll just fail and we’ll just distribute it through Australia. And low and behold, I was lucky because a year later when we got returns on it, it actually sold, we nearly fell backwards. A five went and at the time what happened is 83 is basically Southern Squadron started off, which was so that means that next year’s gonna be their 50th anniversary And the year, yeah, before that, sorry, yeah, year before that was dark neb come out. Yeah. Yeah. I saw Doug ne in the shops, of course I grabbed that. But I was also looking at Gerald cars and I sort of followed him as much as I could. And he’s probably the only one that inspired me a lot and saying, well you can do it.

(00:16:44):
I’m not an artist. As you can see, that’s the first drawing I’ve ever done got printed. So what? Good to me man. So what happened was at the time I said Okay, we’re gonna do this so we’ll just put something we’ll slap, stick it together and see what happens. And it damn well sold. And Paul helped out with a lot of stuff. But in those days most people realized you had to do bromides, you have to do type setting, you have to post it all together, then you have to go to the printers and sort it all out and that’s where the bromo comes in. And then you go for the printing process. Yeah, we did this and I quickly come to the conclusion that this is too dear this printing is, it’s just gonna cost you too much. We’re not gonna make any money out it.

(00:17:29):
The printers are. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what basically happens nowadays. But that’s part of the parcel. So what happened was we did the second issue. I dunno if I’ve got that here, but I’ll have a quick look. Here’s another issue that we put out. What we did is we did, actually, I’ll get a bigger one for you that’s Paul Harris with that particular thing. We’re actually getting that done in a statue. So it’s cool. Yeah. We’re gonna get that done in a statue and we’re gonna start putting out a yearly reward for people that will is actually helping the Australian comic market.

Leigh Chalker (00:18:10):
Yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:18:12):
In reference to comics.

Leigh Chalker (00:18:14):
Yeah, that’s cool. Cause that to me is an iconic image. I’ve seen that a lot over my years of internet scoping and things popping up and in the back of old comics that I’ve seen and stuff mate. So

Gary Dellar (00:18:29):
Yeah, this one’s a fantastic one and it’s doing it. Paul Harris has passed away. He was a great friend of ours.

Leigh Chalker (00:18:36):
Yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:18:37):
Passed away. He’s one of the top icon in Australia as far as humor goes and drawing. And his dad was a absolute famous artist as well.

Leigh Chalker (00:18:48):
Yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:18:49):
So what happened was Paul was naturally drawing for it and picked up a lot of other artists. And then we had a lot of other people jumping on board as well. Now we were still keeping low key, you were cyclone out there was a lot of other things. There was Platinum Grip grit. I dunno if you ever saw that. That started coming out later on. That was, that’s this one

Leigh Chalker (00:19:12):
Here. I know of that, yes.

Gary Dellar (00:19:14):
Drop back to stop the screen, let’s get back that come out. And then you had a lot of other comics that were dropping from the eighties upwards to 2000. And they were great. Absolutely brilliant. I got to seven seven and by the time I got to seven in between time I realized that this is ridiculous. This is just paying too much for printing. So what I did is I bought an offset printer.

Leigh Chalker (00:19:42):
Yep.

Gary Dellar (00:19:42):
So we got this printer and we’ve gotta deliver to Riles Creek. Of course we gave the dress and one Saturday we were there, we having a few drinks around the barbecue. The next minute this big truck rolls up with this printer board says, look here we are delivering your printer now. And I go, you gotta be kidding anything. And this is fair. What we did is, so we got the chainsaw, it’s a weatherboard house where it’s going. We cut the wall out, drop it down, carry it away, and put this printing press in. It just dropped it in.

Leigh Chalker (00:20:16):
Oh, lucky you had a barbecue and a few beers made to get that. Oh God.

Gary Dellar (00:20:20):
Yeah. It was so it was, didn’t

Leigh Chalker (00:20:22):
The house ever look the same? <laugh>

Gary Dellar (00:20:25):
We put it, we back together. Temporary. Everything

Leigh Chalker (00:20:28):
Temporary.

Gary Dellar (00:20:31):
You look, we got quite a few out. This is probably the easiest comic to get. I can’t get these comics number five. You can’t, they’re just so hard to get. This one’s just virtually impossible. And of course this one, Michael Deitz, he did the cover for that one, which I’ll show you. I’ll get these up in a minute. And this is probably the most what did you say? Oh

Leigh Chalker (00:21:02):
Do you still see these comic books out in the wild though? Cause I know you you’re a mad keen, what’s that Facebook site that I see you putting things on Australian? There’s like Australian pre decimal comics I think.

Gary Dellar (00:21:16):
Yeah, Australian. Australian comics. New and old.

Leigh Chalker (00:21:19):
Yeah. Yeah, that’s the other one. You’re on a look. You collect a lot of older stuff. I definitely see that it’s a private place for you. Do you see occasionally your old stuff?

Gary Dellar (00:21:30):
I get ’em all the time. Get they get sent in all the time. Because the reason why, I’ll give you an idea. In the last week, I’ll just show you this. This is a number of comments that come in. These are Australians comments from eighties to 2015.

Leigh Chalker (00:21:52):
Yeah. Right,

Gary Dellar (00:21:54):
Right. These are the ones that come here. Now obviously I can’t tell ’em all, but I’ll give you things like that.

Leigh Chalker (00:22:02):
Wow.

Gary Dellar (00:22:03):
The reason why, and these get sent to me because I’m doing a cover guide,

Leigh Chalker (00:22:11):
Right. Like a cover guide as in you’re printing the covers one per page sort of thing. Or

Gary Dellar (00:22:18):
There’s probably 30 covers on one page.

Leigh Chalker (00:22:21):
Gotcha. So you are like, I guess collecting as many covers as you possibly can.

Gary Dellar (00:22:29):
What comes in? I only do it, it’s only gonna be a very small print one because Gotcha. It’s only gonna be, I’ve got a small list that people want it, but it gives you a bit of an idea what’s out there.

Leigh Chalker (00:22:41):
Yeah, yeah. Oh mate, it’s amazing from my own perspective of just being or think you’re the only one doing this stuff and then meeting you and everyone around and you realize how many people are producing great quality work and how many people have done it before.

Gary Dellar (00:23:00):
There’s a lot of people that say that look, it’s Australian market’s pretty dead. Which it is as far as distribution goes, goes

(00:23:09):
<affirmative>. It is because there’s no distributor in Australia. And the big problem in Australia with what I found, and this is what we’re looking at for next year onwards, is that the comic shops, a lot of the comic shops don’t wanna take it. Two reasons why that is because they’ve been burnt before. Because you put a comic in the shop, it doesn’t sell and they get stuck with it. Yeah. You can’t anything about, so they gotta sell it for 50 cents to get rid of it. So costs of money, et cetera. Or there’s no follow through later on. So they can’t do anything about it. So what happened is we sort of come up with this system now where if, oh the other thing is of course is there’s so many individuals out there. If you’ve got a shop, you’ve got 50 people coming in say, look, I wanna sell you a comic. It’s very overwhelming and it’s not worth it sometimes,

Leigh Chalker (00:23:58):
If

Gary Dellar (00:23:59):
You know what I mean. And that’s where Yeah,

Leigh Chalker (00:24:00):
No, totally.

Gary Dellar (00:24:01):
Yeah. That’s where lot of the issues are. So what we’ve done is we’ve sort of got together and just got a few small group. And pre Covid was when I first got this idea and started it off, I sent a letter out to about 80 comics. Now mind you, some of those aren’t here anymore now of course. But most of ’em I said, look, this is a situation. We’re gonna offer you a MGAs board of comics, they’re gonna be all through us. And what we are gonna do is we are gonna give you the ability so that you buy ’em now you pay for ’em. If they don’t sell in six months, we’ll give the money back or we’ll swap ’em for a newer model, a new issue. And that went well. Cause that’s where they say, oh this is fantastic, this is great. And we got virtually most of them. But of course what happened is as we all got hit with Covid especially down in Victoria, cuz it locked down everything, it made it very hard. So that was a big issue in itself. And as I said to a lot of people is that we are riding all right now because everything’s opening up. I’ve, I’ve started the process of going back to our tables. Cause tables are our biggest seller. We make our idea and our first goal, everybody is as you know, you’ve gotta try to cover your cost,

(00:25:21):
Cover your cost. Well on the right road. Once you get past that and you get a little bit better, you get to know it easier. And I, I’m in the same boat. I was in the same boat and still am. Cause I still learn. I’m learning about everything and that’s what we are doing. But also learnt that, okay, if you stick to a bigger group and you’ve got a lot of people out there, you’ve got more power.

Leigh Chalker (00:25:44):
Yeah. Yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:25:46):
So

Leigh Chalker (00:25:48):
This is how the concept of Revere now where it came from, obviously to gather as much now your quote in the back of your comic books is exceptional creatives in some of your comic books. You’ve got it in there. So I presume that’s what you’re trying to do and alert the public is to let them know that at reverie you can come have a look at your stories as a heap of melting pots here, pick one you want because mate, you just, those ones that I read recently, I mean you got a lot of talent, lot of great writers, great artists. You got a lot of solid concepts and ideas that are going on there. And I mean there’s torn, there’s Toby in the Magic Pencil, which is one of your babies I guess, if not your baby, isn’t it? I know you’re very proud about conversation.

Gary Dellar (00:26:50):
I’m proud. Yes. It’s very honored to have that one. I was lucky that we did it. That was a funny story. Like I said, I come out in the early years and it was a cross between, believe it or not, it was, I don’t know if, dunno, have you ever seen Mr. Squiggle?

Leigh Chalker (00:27:04):
Yes, absolutely. Have

Gary Dellar (00:27:06):
I used to love watching it as a kid. Yeah. Yeah. And I fantastic. We looked at I that and says, oh look, that’s fantastic. Magic pencil. That’s really good. And I thought, well hang on here. If a kid gets this magic pencil and he can draw stuff, but this time it comes. And that’s where that started. You see <affirmative> and unfortunately what the original scripts of that, I’ve still got the original script of Thorns. I’ve still got my original script of some of the westerns that I’ve put out. And I’ve got a lot of the original scripts of some of the horror movies, horror comics that I would like to get into movies. But they’re still out there and theyre different.

Leigh Chalker (00:27:45):
Yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:27:46):
Actually I’m lucky at the moment because as you mentioned before, there’s some really good writers. I’ve got Rob Lyle and Harold Haydens. Very good writers.

Leigh Chalker (00:27:57):
Indeed.

Gary Dellar (00:27:58):
Very lucky with those because they add every time they write a story adding to it. And that’s the beauty about, that’s what I like about everybody. Cause I give everybody the chance to do what they can and get involved and the world just expands and it gets better and better.

Leigh Chalker (00:28:14):
Yeah. The health, well you’ve never been, well you know, gave a beard and bald bloke a shot couple of years back that your name got onto you outta nowhere one day and said, Hey I’ve got a comic book <laugh>.

Gary Dellar (00:28:30):
Well, as I said to that, I said, you cannot have your stuff sitting on a desk

Leigh Chalker (00:28:40):
Or

Gary Dellar (00:28:41):
You’ve gotta get, the only way you’re gonna get anything done in the world is get out there and do it.

Leigh Chalker (00:28:46):
You certain certainly did tell.

Gary Dellar (00:28:48):
And everybody that I’ve told it to has done something. They have got out. I’ve helped them on the journey. And some of them, a lot of them have gone their own separate ways. Which is good because you need to get out there and learn.

Leigh Chalker (00:29:00):
Well you’re hundred percent right with that mate. And the learning, as you said, from a man who’s been doing this for 40 years, it doesn’t seem to stop. Does it mean it plenty different things?

Gary Dellar (00:29:12):
Yeah. Look, I, I’m learning myself. I still am. Every day I get look we publications is, it’s a one man bang. I get a lot of people coming in and say, oh your publications, you’ve got 40 people working for you, you’ve got 50, you can publish this for us. You know, go and do it and et cetera, et cetera. But it doesn’t work like that. Not in Australia. Places are just one person that has a dream and everybody jumps on the bandwagon and enjoys the ride and has fun.

Leigh Chalker (00:29:43):
Absolutely mate.

Gary Dellar (00:29:45):
Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (00:29:47):
Is the underlying word there. And positivity as well, mate. That’s

Gary Dellar (00:29:51):
Right. That’s right. It’s like the old saying, if you’ve got a job and you like your job or you like what you’re doing, but it’s not really a job.

Leigh Chalker (00:30:01):
Mm-hmm

Gary Dellar (00:30:03):
Simple as that. That’s what it is. That’s what it is. And that’s what we like about it. And I’ve met so many people over the years when I first started off, of course, like I said, back in Cyclone the funny thing about it is I talked to ’em a few times like David Fry and Phil Barlow and all those, that group that was going around at the time. I said hello and all that sort of stuff. But I sort kept to myself, I wanted to keep out of it and sort go individually separate because what I did is with the American stuff, I enjoyed it, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as what I did when I read the English comics

Leigh Chalker (00:30:43):
<affirmative>. So you were like, what are we talking about, how far back we go to the English comics? Like ranges and stuff like that?

Gary Dellar (00:30:50):
Yeah, we’re talking about Trigan Empire, we’re talking about All Storm, which is what they put out as well. We’re talking about comics like Valiant Lion talking about even Buster Buster was pretty good because the reason why Buster was a comedy sort of one, but it did have the adventures in it. The venture pages

Leigh Chalker (00:31:13):
Gotcha.

Gary Dellar (00:31:14):
Venture strips, they were fantastic. And these people were the people that put these out. They had to have the talent to give you a three part story, keep you absolutely interested in it with a cliff hanger and then go to the next issue each week.

Leigh Chalker (00:31:31):
Yeah, no, I myself, my dad has, oh you name the collection that I’ve got, I’ve got a few hand me downs of some of those old English comics that were available at him. Myself. I got into 2000 ad pretty heavily back in the day. And I was always amazed at how that was a well-oiled machine man. When you watch the documentaries, it probably wasn’t so much <laugh>. A lot of different ideas and people out me. But

Gary Dellar (00:32:05):
What can I say, Lee? They were fantastic. They were good stories. 2000 ad was my favorite. I did I Star Lord was bit pretty.

Leigh Chalker (00:32:15):
That was precursor 2000 ad. Yeah,

Gary Dellar (00:32:18):
It was part of it joined a little bit later on. But that was a fantastic comic comic, a brilliant concept. And it had the adventures in it. Stories that were absolutely brilliant for anybody that knows what I’m talking about, they’ll understand. But they also had a lot of other comics that come out. But what happened was I really enjoyed those comics and that’s what set me writing all these stories you see. And then what happened is I started getting around a bit and people started talking to me and we talk a lot of stuff. So now I get given a lot of comics mainly for the reference side of it. But again, someone will send me the old stuff. But back then they used to, it was funny because I’d get a lot of the European comics coming through <affirmative>. Cause I used to know and they’d give them to me so I couldn’t read ’em because it was in, might be Spanish, it might be Swedish, might be German, it might be all these sort of, but the artwork was fantastic.

Leigh Chalker (00:33:17):
Yeah, you’d still be able to see it.

Gary Dellar (00:33:20):
It is absolutely brilliant. And this is what the westerns over there were absolutely brilliant when you saw the West. And when you look at Jonathan Heck, what’s his name? What’s his name? Couple of westerns that they did out here in America. When you look at those ones and you look at the European ones, totally different.

Leigh Chalker (00:33:43):
Probably the first Western European comic book I guess I became aware of Man, was probably Blueberry by Mobius. I picked up a trade paper back of that many years ago and enjoyed that. That was an interesting,

Gary Dellar (00:34:00):
Oh look, they were Fanta, they’re the ones that, I got a lot of those ones. There was a lot of other ones at the time, but they seemed to have just stood out from everywhere else and been very popular. They still are.

Leigh Chalker (00:34:12):
Yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:34:13):
I don’t think a lot of them are translated yet, but they will eventually, I suppose. I hope Sohow.

Leigh Chalker (00:34:18):
So You love you. You’ve mentioned the love of westerns there. Now I’m gonna throw up another character of yours that’s quite a popular, every comic book one where I got received an issue of late and really enjoyed that. Now Mr. Rick McCune.

Gary Dellar (00:34:35):
Yeah, that’s this one.

Leigh Chalker (00:34:37):
Yes. There you go. That’s Rick. Yep.

Gary Dellar (00:34:40):
That was, that’s another, that’s a lovely,

Leigh Chalker (00:34:45):
Yeah. Yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:34:48):
That’s a story. And look, my dad loves westerns.

Leigh Chalker (00:34:51):
Yep.

Gary Dellar (00:34:53):
And what happened was, he’s passed away now of course, but at the time I thought, you know what, I’m gonna put out a Western comic. I’m trying to get it. But it didn’t work out. But he passed away beforehand. But what happens is in 2018 we put this Rick McClune second fastest gun in the West out and we put it on Kickstarter and that lo and behold, that just went bang. It just went fantastic. And that’s another thing, we were quite shocked with that too because, okay, well Westerns don’t seem to be going too good. There’s not many at the Picture Feeders. A lot of the TV series, well they’re not inx existent at the time. <affirmative>. And I love those series like Maverick, Rick, it was a little bit Western e and a, Smith and Jones Bonanza, all those. I used to watch ’em all with Dad.

Leigh Chalker (00:35:41):
Yeah, well one of the first ones I remember watching Mate was the Outlaw Joie Wales. And yeah, I loved that when I was a kid. And Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was another one that I thought was

Gary Dellar (00:35:53):
Awesome. I watched them all, even the ones that were different, which was the old spaghetti westerns with to

Leigh Chalker (00:36:01):
Yeah, yeah, I

Gary Dellar (00:36:03):
Was great too. Yeah,

Leigh Chalker (00:36:04):
Yeah. No, I got a soft spot for Wes too, man. That’s what I believe me. Why? So Rick clu, was he where we’re getting to, he was an older character or he was one of your more modern tapes?

Gary Dellar (00:36:21):
The initial start was to originally do one, but I never got to it. Yeah. It was just like a fort and that’s it. And then what happened is in 2016 I wrote a little bit of a script but never finished it as you do sometimes. Yeah. And that actually script is still there. And I’ve actually expanded it now to a three issue story. I’ve got actually, the good thing about it is Ben Sullivan will be drawing that at some stage eventually. So what happened is we got the first issue out and it went well. We were surprised and we got extra printed and they all sold out the whole lot of them. Every table that we did at the time, which was very, very rare that we got to, they just went off the table, said, what’s going on? We can’t believe that this is happening. So what happened was they said, all right, so what we did is, and of course what happened is it was like a domino effect. All the, everybody that loved westerns come out says, oh look, we wanna do this, we wanna do that. I said, you’re welcome to enjoy yourself. Let’s get it right. These are the rough ideas of what we want. You know, can’t go past this, do this, can’t do that. And we got some great riders. The next four issues were fantastic. And actually we did a Kickstarter on that

(00:37:41):
And it got quite a bit printed through the Kickstarter. And what happened was we now have sold out of issue four and I’ve just sold out of issue five, but I’ve got that reprinted. Now what’ll happen is eventually it’ll, cuz there was Rick one and Rick three were colored just to give example. And of course two, four and five are black and white. Cause we wanted that bit of a change with it.

Leigh Chalker (00:38:08):
Yeah, no, brilliant.

Gary Dellar (00:38:10):
And that went really good. So what’ll happen now is because it’s such a good seller at the moment, we are gonna put it into a trade, we’ll put it, it’s gonna be in Europe and it’ll be in America as well. So yeah, we’re really loving that. And we’ve got another five oh actually a bit more than that issues coming up, which we’re working on

Leigh Chalker (00:38:33):
Now. I’m, I’m gonna sort of come outta nowhere here and <laugh> Gary mate, I’m a little bit confused about your <laugh> issue numbers <laugh>, some of your stories jump a little bit.

Gary Dellar (00:38:55):
Look, the only issues you’ll have with is torn.

Leigh Chalker (00:39:00):
So what’s, what’s your thought processes there? You’ve got an issue five and then

Gary Dellar (00:39:10):
Torn tos an interesting comic. It’s a popular comic

(00:39:17):
I’ve sold out of, basically we got a thousand printed of issue one before I give because Peter’s a chance. Give him a chance, which is really fantastic. It was great for Peter and it was great for me. We got the character out and it actually did well. It actually did well. So we’re quite luckily we had a Gary Chandler cover on it, which helped it as well. Which brilliant. And he did a really, that’s a fantastic cover. Yeah. So that went well. And look, we probably sold for a comment that we didn’t think, I didn’t think was gonna go too well because in this world there is hundreds and hundreds of superhero comics. They are everywhere. <affirmative> Kickstarters, hundreds and hundreds of them and there’s just so many of them. But

Leigh Chalker (00:40:09):
What do you think tos got that made it go so well Met people’s eye?

Gary Dellar (00:40:19):
I think it’s the it’s part of being Australian <affirmative>. When we do the tables, we always say, look, they come up to it and say, oh is that Australian? We say yes. And they say, oh that’s fantastic. And then I take it, yeah.

Leigh Chalker (00:40:34):
So

Gary Dellar (00:40:35):
What happens is, and that’s what really sells a lot of ’em as well because, and then what happens is they bought issue two. Issue two was a big, big improvement on issue one. And of course now it just walks off the shelf. Now I’ve sold out of issue two, I’ve got a print again.

Leigh Chalker (00:40:50):
Well that’s not a bad problem.

Gary Dellar (00:40:53):
No it’s not a bad problem. But what happened was it’s taken a little bit longer than normal to get these issues out. So officially we will release issue three this year. But in the meantime why you’ve got a couple extra issues for yourself and a couple other people. They’ve got the ability to just buy a few pre issues in the future.

Leigh Chalker (00:41:13):
Just tantalizing the taste buds of a So are you

Gary Dellar (00:41:17):
S Yeah, but also my fear is, and this is what I didn’t like about the American numbering system, was that they sucked us all in. And I’ll give you example, spider-Man is a good one. Cause I used to fight Spiderman regularly until I hit the Clone Wars.

Leigh Chalker (00:41:37):
Yeah, yep.

Gary Dellar (00:41:38):
It’s just bloody ridiculous. I’m not buying these anymore because war,

Leigh Chalker (00:41:42):
You’re not the first person I’ve ever say

Gary Dellar (00:41:49):
Next say it’s all not true.

Leigh Chalker (00:41:51):
Yeah, yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:41:52):
Mean really a kicking ahead anyway. So what happens is, I stopped it but later on down the track, I think it was a couple years, dunno the times they stopped the numbering system.

Leigh Chalker (00:42:02):
Yeah, yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:42:04):
We got a friend coming up now who’s gonna come and visit us. Right.

Leigh Chalker (00:42:07):
Oh that’s alright mate. I’ll probably have a couple come up here in a while as well.

Gary Dellar (00:42:13):
They stopped the numbering system. So what it did is myself, I said well geez, luckily I’ve stopped collecting them cause it’s gonna be a really deaf nail for a lot of them. And my friends that were still collecting, they just went bonkers because what happened then was a lot of the comics then, they didn’t just put out one comic number one to six or one to, they put out nearly nine, 10 titles

Leigh Chalker (00:42:42):
Now

Gary Dellar (00:42:42):
Collector. Well if I was a collector store back then, there’s no way I could afford that. So

Leigh Chalker (00:42:49):
And then came the variant covers and the crossovers with what, five others that month and stuff. You had to be fully invested.

Gary Dellar (00:42:58):
Oh yes. Well that’s right. But that happened. That did happen cuz people will start doing it. Okay, we’ll do that, we’ll do that. And then what happened is you gotta realize these VA covers, they weren’t an Aussie comic where you get 500 or 200 of them and they will become rare. These were comics that print 10,000, 20,000 issues. So they’re not gonna become, become worth something unless it’s very, very small run or it’s a very good artist behind

Leigh Chalker (00:43:23):
Them. Yeah, yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:43:25):
So it got to the point now where a lot of people got these comment here, they’re worth nothing because it’s the same old story where you’ve got too many of them, nothing’s worth it, but if you’ve got less of them it becomes value. So that’s

Leigh Chalker (00:43:38):
Particularly with the movies and stuff now popping up, hey you know seem to get those particular character will make his debut boo in a movie and then suddenly four or five of the main comic books he’s been in over time jump skyrocketing price for everyone and invest in and stuff.

Gary Dellar (00:43:56):
Well that’s right.

Leigh Chalker (00:43:57):
Yeah. Well

Gary Dellar (00:43:59):
Always speaking about movies, I always find it interesting now because you see the way things are going with movies is that you’ve got your main characters and because of the copyrights and all that sort of stuff, I think a companies now say, well okay Iron Man, fantastic, let’s just ’em aside, give them a offset and then start promoting that because it’s worth it for they don’t have to pay any other royalties or anything and they get a new character out of it and that becomes their royalties and you’ll see she hopes a good one. I mean that’s a good example of it but that’s another story anyhow.

Leigh Chalker (00:44:34):
<laugh>. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No that’s fair enough. So with seeing your comic book collecting and your obviously voracious appetite for the collecting and Australian comics in general, what have you made of just veering off onto something I guess slightly askew you watch regularly the Disney plus shows and any adaptation you can find of any of the comic book to movies, TV shows.

Gary Dellar (00:45:02):
I watch everything and everything

(00:45:05):
As much as I can. Sometimes it gets a bit too far as in the work side of things that it of annoys me in some ways because the initial characters are the one that fed the whole comics series. You’ve got the Avengers, you’ve got Fantastic Fours, you’ve got Batman, you’ve got all those ones then and they’re the ones that fed the whole universe and the sales of comics now it makes it a bit hard now cause it’s changing of course in some cases. And it’s sad in some ways because I’m still old school. I love the old characters.

Leigh Chalker (00:45:46):
Yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:45:47):
And when it comes to say Marvel, yes I did say, like I said to you before I collected Koans cuz I loved them. But ultimately I loved the Fantastic four. They were my favorites out of all of them. Spiderman and Koan was okay. So that was great. And all the rest was just what I picked up through the news antsy and it was icing on the cake you read and that was really good.

Leigh Chalker (00:46:16):
Yeah, that’d cool. So that was your one. That was your one. Well hopefully they give you a big block bust and expansive. Fantastic four for you mate too. Well

Gary Dellar (00:46:27):
I hope so cause we haven’t got it yet.

Leigh Chalker (00:46:29):
Yeah, yeah, no, yeah they were a little bit flat I guess the <laugh> the last people that I recall. Yeah,

Gary Dellar (00:46:39):
I like the diplomacy there.

Leigh Chalker (00:46:41):
<laugh>. Yeah, well I watched them there was good. But you would’ve been devastated by Jason Mao was coning and though then wouldn’t you we’re gonna get harsh on Fantastic Four as a Conan fan. The dude looks part, he did a good job there. But I don’t know what was happening with that story man. But hey,

Gary Dellar (00:47:02):
It’s a, it’s, if the writing’s not good enough then you’re not gonna get the story and sometimes the actors can carry it but it’s still, if the writing’s not good enough, it’s just not gonna happen. Yeah. It’s one of those things and I’ve seen it so when I watch stuff now, especially when they try to revamp the old sixties and seventies and eighties sort of shows and put ’em in move, they just don’t get it. They really don’t get

Leigh Chalker (00:47:32):
It. Well mate, for one of the streaming services I read the other day, I dunno why I caught this, but apparently they’ve got the rights to come in now. I can’t remember who that is. And they’re planning on putting out seasons long per episode based on all of the short stories as accurately as they can. So hopefully interest, see how that goes. Cause I wish they’d do that to Solomon Kane. Cause I like Solomon Kane, anyone out there go check out him.

Gary Dellar (00:48:00):
Yeah, they, they’re all good and they will work. Cause we all know they work look at,

Leigh Chalker (00:48:05):
Oh yeah, yeah that worked to treat me so, but Solomon’s cool man, you know that hand and the trench coat and the different weapons and all that African voodoo stuff he’s got going on against Christianity and things like that’s good stuff. I like that. Yeah, it’s taking me back. But anyway mate, so well yeah, we’re coming into that Covid period that we were talking about. So about 2018, 2019 you’d, you’d been revving along with Rey for a little while there. What was the point where you decided what year thought process you decided I, I’m gonna start putting these comic books back out in the world.

Gary Dellar (00:48:49):
2018 was the main one.

Leigh Chalker (00:48:52):
So that was the main one you

Gary Dellar (00:48:54):
2018? Well actually we started just before that. Production of ones probably a little bit the year before but we weren’t if it happened to happen because usually if you put out a comic in Australia, a lot of times what atonia the concept is you write the synopsis, you either write it or you get the synopsis to someone else to write and give them the freedom to write what they need by the time that’s done. And then by the time the artist draws it, it gets inked and then it gets colored and then it gets letter and that can

Leigh Chalker (00:49:26):
Some

Gary Dellar (00:49:27):
Yeah, it does. Yeah. It’s usually between probably six months and two years. So that’s what happened.

Leigh Chalker (00:49:35):
People have to realize as well, like creators living lives and work and that sort of stuff and are trying to fit all this in into a

Gary Dellar (00:49:45):
That’s right.

Leigh Chalker (00:49:46):
Do the best they can. Yeah, for sure. So

Gary Dellar (00:49:50):
I’ve got example that course was Rick McLean number one. I’ll give you a example with that. Cause by the time he said Okay well I’m gonna do this, I’ll write the synopsis and I gave it to Hayden and I says, look you here’s your chance Shine to the world, let’s get it going. And he was absolutely brilliant with it. He did a fantastic job. We got Ben Sutherland to write it we’ve got Jeff s to color it and Darren close letter it. So that process took us a little while to get done and we got it out and that’s where it just took off. We were wrapped in that but that was probably, oh that was well over a year before we actually got it out.

Leigh Chalker (00:50:32):
Yeah. So you said before, once you started getting that and then I guess you’ve got the actual anthology book that has come out. You’ve also got Vex, which is another anthology book of short stories of varying, I guess genres of sequential work to and Rick, you know, start torn, you’re starting to get a bit of a role on you saying you going out to shows and meeting people and fans and stuff like that and people come to you and then Covid hits. So that would’ve slowed you down somewhat.

Gary Dellar (00:51:15):
I think you’ll find that Covid killed everything.

Leigh Chalker (00:51:18):
Yep. Okay. Yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:51:20):
Everybody sort of got the issue where you can’t go anywhere, can’t, you’ve gotta promote stuff to sell even on the, if you’ve got a webpage, if you’ve got Facebook, you can sell a certain amount on Facebook but it cuts everything out. You need to get out there and get it sold. That’s the only way you’re gonna build up readership. Yeah. As that. And you can get to the comic shops if they take them. That’s good. Cuz you use, that’s part of emotion side of it cuz you’ve gotta get him in the to sell em. That gives you more readership and then eventually, hopefully they come direct to you.

Leigh Chalker (00:51:55):
Yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:51:56):
You need to get that. You need between 1,002 thousand absolute gen total readers that are gonna keep coming back.

Leigh Chalker (00:52:06):
Yeah, yeah. That’s fair. That’s fair number. I dunno any different though Gary. I’ve only been in the game for so long, it’s like I don’t predate the period of comic

Gary Dellar (00:52:25):
Of hit.

Leigh Chalker (00:52:28):
Yeah, yeah. Cause I suppose you would’ve lost a couple of comic bookshops and stuff like that down there too.

Gary Dellar (00:52:33):
Absolutely heaps. Yeah,

Leigh Chalker (00:52:36):
Absolutely.

Gary Dellar (00:52:37):
If you go through all the comic shops then and now you’d say one fifth of them are gone.

Leigh Chalker (00:52:43):
Yeah. Yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:52:44):
In fiscal form a lot half of those say have gone to the internet

Leigh Chalker (00:52:52):
As in shops. Yeah, yeah. Online shops and that sort of stuff. So I noticed you’ve mentioned a couple of times and I’ve seen you’ve done a couple of Kickstarter campaigns with your re stuff. How have you found that? Was that something you wanted to investigate through the and stuff like that as

Gary Dellar (00:53:11):
Well during the covid? Because it gets you, your comic out there. Yeah. It’s not to bees knees, but it gets ’em out there and it showcases around the world what you’ve got. Yeah, we we’re very lucky cuz we’ve always put up products that A we found, well it’s good for ours cuz I’ve been popular and we’ve got a good following because of it. Now the Kickstarter was very interesting cuz you’re learning as you go along. The first one we put out was when we first put out re we just thought, alright, let’s put re back together. And at the time it was brand new and says, okay, well we’ll put out 144 page book and put it out every six months if we could. Yeah. Unfortunately it didn’t work out that way because it was just too many people, too much to keep track of and it was just very hard. So what we decided that we come back and says, okay, well look, we’ve still got another four issues that we can put out. Let’s spit it all up, put it in a new series and just do 52 page comics. Which has been really good because every time we a referee now we sell ’em out. So it’s really good that way. So we’ve lucky with that one we, we’ve covered our cost in em and it’s getting more popular. Our third issue is gonna be the best I reckon.

Leigh Chalker (00:54:24):
Yeah, yeah. I see. It was, that’s due out shortly, you were putting out a forward press version of a cover of, that’s couple of days, weren’t

Gary Dellar (00:54:36):
You? That’s right. Yeah, we started that out and yeah, we’re getting a lot of preorders on that one, which is good. And that sort of bypasses a lot of things, but we’ll still put it up as a Kickstarter as a add-on or something like that. The people that have already collected the originals.

Leigh Chalker (00:54:51):
Yeah,

Gary Dellar (00:54:53):
We always put ’em up every time we do a kick. We’ve got a big Kickstarter coming up as soon as the we’ve got a very special issue coming up, which is torn Southern Squadron Tina.

Leigh Chalker (00:55:02):
Oh yes, very good. Tell us about this if you may, sir. Well, you’re the man that can tell us, I guess, aren’t you, <laugh>,

Gary Dellar (00:55:10):
We’ve got a fantastic issue coming up. It’s gonna be, and believe it or not, this is gonna be very popular.

Leigh Chalker (00:55:18):
Yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:55:20):
I already know. I’ve already seen it. So it’s pretty good. We’ve still got a lot to do yet we’ve still got probably another four months or three months to do. And then all the bits and pieces that we have to do it, we’ve got a lot of stuff that’s gonna go in this kit started

Leigh Chalker (00:55:32):
And

Gary Dellar (00:55:33):
It is absolutely brilliant. It’s the first issue of three run. And this goes back to your saying that, oh, you’ve got a funny system with the numbering system. But the beauty thing about the numbering system is that we have gone to a system where we are doing three story arcs. So once the story arcs are complete, we can actually print them and then it’s part of the numbering system. So what we found now is that, the beauty about that is yes, I know I’ve sent you some already, but I haven’t sent you the rest yet. But the, they’re there or the just

Leigh Chalker (00:56:06):
Stop chasing me, Gary, stop Tea <laugh>. Anyway,

Gary Dellar (00:56:10):
What, like this one for instance, this is a good example.

Leigh Chalker (00:56:13):
That was a no, you sent that. I enjoyed that. I reckon that was a good story, man.

Gary Dellar (00:56:19):
Yeah, it is it, and this one was actually a character that I had had a while back, but luckily with Rob, we’ve got this app and the fantastic thing about it is that Peter Fairfax, a brilliant artist, has actually drawn and he’s joined the three issues. So that’s a three issue story arc.

Leigh Chalker (00:56:38):
Yeah, gotcha.

Gary Dellar (00:56:39):
So Fury, even though it’s number 20 or there it is number 26, that’s a story arc. So when I go to the tables, I put those three comics up there as a group and say, look, this is a fantastic science fiction, read it, you can take that home. It’s a state alone, it’s part of the torn universe in various ways. So you’ll have to read the whole lot to see where they fall in. And what happens to ’em is when I put ’em out, I found that because there’s a numbering system there, I’m getting a lot of people coming back, well I wanna buy the rest. So what’s happen,

Leigh Chalker (00:57:18):
You might be something there, Gary, you might be given too many secrets away, mate.

Gary Dellar (00:57:23):
It doesn’t matter. If it helps everybody out, that’s fine. I’m

Leigh Chalker (00:57:27):
Quite happy an excellent man.

Gary Dellar (00:57:29):
It’s working for us, even though it looks a bit disjointed at the moment, but once the people get into it and they understand they are wrapped quite a few, I haven’t got more here at the moment, but torn and seven Squadrant is part of a three story arc that falls under the numbering system.

Leigh Chalker (00:57:50):
So that’ll fit in there somewhere nicely.

Gary Dellar (00:57:53):
Yeah. So that’ll work out really good. So

Leigh Chalker (00:57:56):
Who’s your creative team on that one, mate?

Gary Dellar (00:57:59):
On? We’ve got that. That’s the torn seven.

Leigh Chalker (00:58:03):
Yeah.

Gary Dellar (00:58:04):
Yeah, that is of course Dave devise because it’s his current

Leigh Chalker (00:58:08):
Of course.

Gary Dellar (00:58:09):
And Ben Sullivan, he’s actually drawing it and it’s absolutely brilliant. Mate, this is gonna walk off the shelves. This is gonna be fantastic. We’re

Leigh Chalker (00:58:21):
A hell of an artist that Ben Sullivan, mate, I’ll tell you what I,

Gary Dellar (00:58:24):
He’s brilliant. He’s absolutely brilliant. And what can I say? It’s one of those things that needed to be done. It’s been a while before the Southern Squadron actually has been out, so this would be the first introduction of the Southern Squadron, which is a lot of people are waiting for it.

Leigh Chalker (00:58:44):
Absolutely. So you’re bringing them back mate, to fresh eyes for new people as the young old readers and stuff that they can come and sink their teeth. Oh

Gary Dellar (00:58:55):
Definitely. So that’s, look, you’ll just start reading it and it’ll be fantastic. And then of course what’s gonna happen then is what’s that three part is finished. That’ll be great for both Southern Squadron and Torn. But what happens is then Dave will go into his series and continue that membrane system. If you are a collector of Southern Squadron earlier days, click them now. Find as many as you can because they’re gonna be worth big money once it goes. It’s gonna be,

Leigh Chalker (00:59:24):
If there’s any grail hunters out there of Australia, there’s the word from the Reary publisher mate, go and track down those back issues out there in the wild and hang onto

Gary Dellar (00:59:34):
<laugh>. Absolutely brilliant. So that was getting back to the system of the numbering system. And the reason why that happened is because I didn’t like the way the Americans in the numbering system treated the fans. That’s all it was. And that’s exactly what happened.

Leigh Chalker (00:59:53):
Yeah, no, that’s fair enough man. That’s working for you. It’s like if it’s work and mate like why stop?

Gary Dellar (01:00:00):
Yeah. Well I won’t do V8 from that. I’ll just keep putting ’em out the same way. And people either buy it or they won’t buy it or they’ll like certain things and they’ll buy it. But in most cases it’s good that we, we’ve got enough for collectives to do it. And the other thing is also is that we, I’ve had tried with the Vari covers I’m not sure if you followed Toby.

Leigh Chalker (01:00:23):
Yes. I You’ve got a few of those variant covers for Toby. Yep. Toby, I’ve noticed. Yeah.

Gary Dellar (01:00:29):
Yeah. So what happened with Toby is on the second issue, we experimented and put out a probably 23 covers for Yeah, because what happened, the Toby, the first one sold really well. It sold actually fantastic cuz Toby’s our biggest seller and actually supports us with a lot of the other stuff we do. So that’s really good. I think what’ll happen is the Rick McClean will start supporting us soon, which will be good. And then that’ll alleviate a bit of the stress. And of course that does is it gives us the ability to really start now promoting all the titles, which is gonna be fantastic. There’s a lot of planned in the there’s a lot planned coming up, let’s put it that way.

Leigh Chalker (01:01:12):
Yeah, no that’s good man. You always gotta only forward, hey, you gotta have those little plans in motion and hit your little goals mate. Where are we with our goals? We’re just way in the ocean then

Gary Dellar (01:01:24):
And torn. And the good thing about it is, as I said we’ve torn with the Dun system, we’re so far ahead now with that we’ll be right for the next five, six years and then we can start really focusing on stepping it up a bit more and basically getting better quality artwork and changing a lot of the situations. So it’s gonna be really good.

Leigh Chalker (01:01:51):
Yeah, no that’s good man. It’s always, I like hearing positive, exciting stories like that, so I’m glad man. I’m very, very happy. So Gary, I’ve got mate next one. And I really like asking this word, the guests that have been on here so far. Why do you do it to yourself?

Gary Dellar (01:02:12):
Look, it’s one of those things where everybody has a hobby,

(01:02:20):
You know, gotta have a hobby in this world. And if you look at it in perspective and break it down your country, every country has it’s part of the persona of each company. If you haven’t got any creatives in your country or in your state or your town and it’s dead, it is absolutely dead. And I wanna be part of that and keep Melbourne alive, keep Victoria alive, keep Australia alive. And it is a situation where, look, there’s no money in it very much. Of course as we all know, you’re doing it as a hobby. But then again, let’s give you example. I used to go snowing skiing a lot now for me to go skiing in the early days, if I went for away for a weekend, that’ll be eight, $900 gone. Mm-hmm Still have a bit of entertainment of good fun and enjoy it. But you know what I mean, it’s a hobby. You do it because that’s it. Yep. So for me, this is a great hobby, but the beauty about it is I love as far as the tables go, as far as like we are now, I love the social interaction between everybody

(01:03:35):
And that’s what makes it worthwhile.

Leigh Chalker (01:03:37):
Yeah, that’s a beautiful thing me cuz one thing that’s attracted me to the live streaming and stuff too is meeting people talking to them face to face and hearing stories and that. Cuz I mean you, you’d never know either two little young fellas or young ladies that come up to you and buy a copy of Toby mate, that might be the turning point for them to start off a career in artwork or something themselves maybe. So you never know.

Gary Dellar (01:04:08):
We’ve told you I’m very lucky because what happened with Toby is we printed we did Toby originally with Dylan Nala and that was very popular and I did he couldn’t do it anymore after the issue one. So we went to issue two and we got Ben to do it Now we started getting a lot of inquiries from America and asking, we have, see what you got and see what you’ve done. But we haven’t finished the story arc. So a lot of the contracts won’t go ahead unless you finish the story arc.

Leigh Chalker (01:04:38):
Yeah, yep. So

Gary Dellar (01:04:39):
What we said is, look next, in the next year we’ll have the next three issues done, which will be three, four, and five. Then we’ll talk sort of thing. We’ll see what’s going on. Yeah. So what happened was we went back in the meantime and redid issue one so it’s all in the same process, same artist, same storyline. So it’ll be once goes into a tribe paper back then it’ll be everywhere.

(01:05:05):
So that’s what we did. And then what we got, we the Callon books, we got the activity books, we’ve got everything that we’re gonna play into it pretty much to try to finance all the rest of the stuff that we’re doing. And it actually gets better because I’ve got the story arc for that. The first two have written, of course I’ve got the other ones all synopsis done. I’ll have them written by the end of the year and then we’ll get the artist on it next year. I’ve got the synopsis for the next story arc, which is six issues and that’s a 1950s robot sort of thing, which I love. 1950s robots. So I love that sort of concept. And then we’ve got another story arc after that, which is another five issues and that that’s the monsters under the staircase sort of thing. So we’ve got quite a bit done for that. Plus we’ll be doing the children’s book, which is a bit like Golden books and stuff like that. So they, they’ll be coming out too soon so that be good. So there’s a fair bit involved in that. But the problem is I haven’t got enough time to do everything

Leigh Chalker (01:06:05):
<laugh> mate. It sounds like you are bloody busy mate. I’ll tell you what, you’d have notepads post it notes <laugh>, I’m surprised you there’s room for comics in the background. I’d have notes and paper going everywhere man. It’s like I have a bad enough time remembering what day it is after what.

Gary Dellar (01:06:24):
And of course like I said, we’ve torn, we’ve actually purposely gone ahead and got a lot of story arcs started and tried to get ’em completed because once we complete the first five issues then we’ll start regularly promoting them and regularly releasing them. Cuz then that’s gonna give us a bit more cloud. Lot of people are lucky cause if the people that come into the shops or the stores as in tables, they tend to pick up the issue first and second one and then they come back and say when’s the third one? Or if they like it that much they’ll pick up another issue further down the track and then they’ll just wait. Which is a beauty about it. So give you example, if we put this up on screen, this will be a good example of what is happening in the world of to this is another story that is gonna happen a little bit down the track.

Leigh Chalker (01:07:14):
Yeah.

Gary Dellar (01:07:15):
Now this gives you an idea of the way we are going with a lot of torn itself. So things are changing all the time and the stories are getting better, the universe is getting larger and it’s getting more tighter. And

Leigh Chalker (01:07:34):
Who’s your artist and writer on that one mate?

Gary Dellar (01:07:37):
Yeah, well Hayden Sparrow is the one that’s writing this, which is fantastic, is really great. And all these scripts that are coming out now is spot on. Same with Rob Block, he’s he’s gonna start doing a few more things and I’ve started writing just about finished the first three issues that I’ve done and I’m starting the next three issues now all these of course is we are talking about issue 40 to 50 and up above. So these are coming, this is just a bit of an idea of what’s happening.

Leigh Chalker (01:08:09):
Yeah. So it’s nice man. It looks nice.

Gary Dellar (01:08:13):
Yeah. This is a believe it or not because we’re going to the American market hopefully one day this is American artist. So we’re, see the thing about it is I’ve been doing this since 2018 and believe it now that things are starting to domino. It takes a while, as I said to you earlier in a piece, it takes a long process and you have to keep pushing it. And the main thing is you have to get out there on the tables, you have to get out there and get those new readerships and these sort of talkings are great because it gets it out there but it’s the legwork, you know have to yourself. You have to get to the shop and get it in the shops. Cause a lot of shops, if you talk to ’em they’ll just ignore you or they won’t wanna know you or they don’t even know what it looks like in some cases until they see it.

(01:09:04):
Yeah. <laugh>, it’s a funny situation but most of the time when they see it and they see that it’s done professionally, which is what the cops, they’ve done fairly reasonably well. They take it, it’s just a matter of getting everywhere at a lower cost if you know what I mean. Mm-hmm One of the things. But that gives you an idea. So we’re working ahead, we’re working ahead with Rick mcc, we’re working ahead with a lot of the other comments that we’re doing. Most of the ips that I’ve got, I’m trying to get ahead about my 20 issues if I can. Yeah, Toby’s probably the only slowest one because it takes a fair bit to get them up and running and it takes a fair bit to ride ’em because there’s so much in them. I try to put as much can in it and I purely make it as simple as I can and just make it an adventure.

(01:09:49):
Yeah. There’s no Shakespeare and new, oh no, what’s behind this? What’s behind that? There’s no Shakespeare on script or anything. I just wanted to make it fantastic adventure and you enjoy it as you go along and that’s what the kids love, the families love it. Cause just before we did before got Covid, I used to take Toby to all the libraries cuz they used to have little events and they were free, which was even fantastic, you know, go to ’em. So you put Toby on it and guess who goes to libraries? Families. Yeah, it was absolutely brilliant. So they just walked off and the kids loved it and the kids that couldn’t read, the parents are read to ’em and they show ’em all the pictures cuz they say, I mean you’ve seen Toby itself, you’ve got lots of funny things in it. You’ve got a few gags every now and again for the adults Love it too.

(01:10:39):
And it’s just brilliant that way you see. So yeah, they just walked off the shelf. So of course Covid sort of stopped that to a certain extent. So we took a little bit of time of issue two but issue two just took off cuz we sold a lot of issues ones and everybody come back for the second ones. And also what happened is we actually boost the sales because we put out, as mentioned before, the 23 covers that we put out, a lot of the artists said okay we’ll do this, we’ll do that. And we said okay well we’ll put it on Tony and we’ll see what happens. And we only printed that hundred of each one and basically I’ve got rid of them all. There’s still a few there but that was because a lot of the artists have their own following

(01:11:22):
So they follow through with it and they say I want this artist, it’s a bit like Hash Mattie. We got three covers done for issue two and bang, they sold out really quick, they were fantastic. And of course now we just keep ’em as posters and that we don’t, are not gonna redo those covers except for one of them will keep as a regular one and that’s it. And that also makes it because it’s very hard in the digital age, the digital age people come in and says oh it’s not worth collecting because you could print it any time.

Leigh Chalker (01:11:51):
Now you are talking about the PDF or copies of your comic books there.

Gary Dellar (01:11:57):
I’m talking about the printed copies.

Leigh Chalker (01:12:00):
Yeah,

Gary Dellar (01:12:01):
Once you put out a PDF then a lot of the times you lose that comic because it gets pirated. It’s around every, they will give it out here, which is good in one way cuz you get the promotion but you still sell the copies somewhere, you know, still wanna sell it on the table or something. So I limit myself with the PDFs. Matter of fact you don’t even see the PDFs on the website and a lot of the times I don’t give PDFs out time I do PDFs is on Kickstarter and I give that an option for anybody overseas that wants to buy ’em. They can buy ’em as a pdf but usually I can and have it so that okay if you wanna buy a print copy that’s what you get and then I give that. Yeah

Leigh Chalker (01:12:43):
That’s interesting to get your perspective cuz I know from talking to other people overseas they’re very big on the pdf versions of their comic books and stuff during Covid and that as well. International shipping costs went through the roof so

Gary Dellar (01:13:01):
They did

Leigh Chalker (01:13:02):
So they found it easier Mark more marketable to offer those things for international readers and stuff men. But you took me back there with Toby saying about the kids not even being able to read, looking at the pictures and enjoying ’em and mom and dad there with them and stuff. Cuz that’s essentially what it was like for me when I was a kid. Mate here sit down you book.

Gary Dellar (01:13:34):
Very lucky with Toby because we kept printing the first one and I kept giving them away because what happened is if we got a group anywhere in Australia, if they were a group that was promoting any sort of art illustration comic wise, we’d say okay well if you’ve got a course here we are gonna give you how many students you got 25. Okay I’m sending out for 25. Give ’em to the kids as a bonus. This is what they’re looking forward to, this is what is what possibly you could aim for or even beyond. And we probably, I’d probably, ooh about 1500, 1,500 went out just for that sort of process. And that was all of course by myself but it was worth it cause it’s that initial seed in their head

Leigh Chalker (01:14:20):
Mate, it’ll be worth it if one of those kids comes to you in a few years and they’re just the most amazing writer and local artist or creative, you know what I mean? And says Hey you gave me these in school and it stemmed me off on my direction.

Gary Dellar (01:14:39):
We’re already getting people asking us and ask say thank you And the drawing is fantastic. It’s just amazing. There’s got a long way to go of but it’s a start. Everybody starts somewhere. Just recently in the last probably three months, we probably got rid of a hundred comics that I’ve sent out to similar sort of schools and it says look, we’ll give you Toby number one cuz you haven’t had it before. Come ahead with it and see how you go. And they all reckon it’s great. It’s really the kids get enthusiastic. It says, oh look this is Australian. Basically it’s printed in Australia and that’s fantastic. So we still get people asking us.

Leigh Chalker (01:15:19):
Yeah I think that’s beautiful man that’s a lovely, lovely touch to yourself and Reary publications to do that for kids cuz more kids should read comic books. Everyone should read more comic books. Men like my God like comic books wouldn’t have got us here today as we found out with Gary. But mate, another question that I do, I found myself asking the guests as well as we begin to wind down what’s in your time doing this, when you look back on it now, what’s the thing you are most proud of or what’s the thing that is in your mind as the one that’s made you feel good about this whole journey and stuff? Man

Gary Dellar (01:16:08):
Look, I think I’ve touched on it and I think the beauty about it is as you know yourself is that every year since I’ve started this, and this is going back in 83, I still get people contacting me from way back in eighties about comps and if you’ve got any extra issues or anything. But the best thing about it is I probably get about between 20 to 50 people asking about comics, what to do, how to do. And I try to encourage ’em to go cause I’ll straight forward I just tell ’em straight out, right <affirmative>, this is situation, this is what it’s like in Australia. If it’s a long process, there’s not much money in it. If you’re lucky you’re doing it more at hobby. Hopefully at some stage you’ll get to the point where you’re that good at it, someone will start taking notice or you’ll get overseas or in the meantime if we actually get a comic industry in Australia it started, then things will start happening. So to answer that question, I’m happy and proud that I’ve helped as many people as I can. Even if it’s just a start and that’s good about it. And there’s a lot of people that contact me, A lot of people I get probably 30, 40 people sending their comics in

(01:17:26):
A bit like you know what, what’s happened in the past? They send them in, look can this print that? Unfortunately it’s very hard because I’ve only got a limited amount of resource now and I’ve gotta concentrate and focus on what we’ve got unless it’s very good or yeah, unless it’s very good you can’t be overwhelmed and you can’t take too much on board cause then you lose focus and then you’re gonna lose everything.

Leigh Chalker (01:17:54):
Well mate, speaking of that, everybody’s safe after your house. Fire incident next door. Oh

Gary Dellar (01:18:00):
Yeah was another interesting one wasn’t it? I was sitting in this room here right now and I was working on the is about four issues of torn. I just got ’em all sorted out. I’ve gotta get a couple more issues but because rev one and twos out there, I’m getting that many inquiries for issue three. When’s it coming, when’s it coming out? And I thought, okay, this is gonna be fantastic. I’m gonna get put it all together. I just got the last piece of artwork coming. Most of the artwork’s all done but a couple of them I just had to wait for a few adjustments in that the last piece coming. So I put it all together, I looked at it and said this is our best issue, wait till people see this. But in the meantime I was thinking, hang on here, someone’s smoking <laugh> in comic room. I said, oh no I don’t want smoke to be comic room. And I said this and it was a funny sort of smoke cause it was starting to smell like plastic smoke, how the bad plastic is. And I go, no, right, that’s not right. And then I started hearing this popping sound, pop, pop, pop. And I said no, no this is not right. So I ran out, we’ve got it upstairs. So I went upstairs, had a look downstairs and there’s this fantastic glow from our next door neighbor’s garage.

Leigh Chalker (01:19:17):
Oh no

Gary Dellar (01:19:18):
It wasn’t. Wasn’t any aliens visiting the damn thing was on fire and it’s only three meters away from the house. I thought, oh no, here we go, here we go. This is a finished, this is finished. And I said, oh no, all this work I can’t get, there’s no way I can get all the comics out of the house. It’s like three rooms and I’ve got hard drives here full up with stuff. Got all the artwork on it and at the moment we are in a process of renovating so everything’s in different spots. I thought oh this is it. This is where we finished. As how as that goes for a long time until we catch up, I thought this is, anyway, what happened is I ran downstairs, my partner, I said Jane, quick ring the fire brigade, get him here quick. And I ran outside and I got on the hose and the fire was coming out of the side of the garage from the top and I was just licking out the side and I thought, oh this is no good. Cause once it collapse and explodes and the heat will be too much cuz part of our house is weatherboard and of course the heat it will get to it and go bang.

Leigh Chalker (01:20:23):
Oh for sure.

Gary Dellar (01:20:24):
Yeah, once we got trees there right next to it, which is not gonna be good either. That’ll be a real good Christmas tree, that one. Anyway, we got the hose on it and I started just running it along the garage and of course that sort of slowed it down enough so that and once the fiber garage was less than five minutes and of course with their hose that was out within 20 minutes, half an hour. So we were lucky, we were very lucky that time.

Leigh Chalker (01:20:53):
And that would’ve been a weird feeling high about issue three and then suddenly total adrenaline and then no

Gary Dellar (01:21:09):
It was incredible. Now there’s a big story behind issue three now

Leigh Chalker (01:21:13):
<laugh>. Yeah, yeah. You’ll forever remember it as the next day

Gary Dellar (01:21:19):
What happened that day, but it’s out there and issue four is just about ready to go now. So cause what happened is, as I said when we first put it out, it was 144 page now that sold really well that absolutely picked up. There’s a lot of old people come back to it that used to read it

(01:21:38):
And there was absolutely a massive amount of people that come in and picked it up. So they’ve all of course now I’ve had to say, well okay, well that’s too overwhelming, too much to do. We’ve dropped it down to a 52 page, et cetera, et cetera. And we’ve done a new series and now we are right for the next 15 issues because we’ve got that much work for it. It’s hard to get people in, people are asking us to put it in. And of course I said look, you have to wait. If a spot comes up or we put it in, we’ll do it. So it’s very, very hard at the moment. And that’s the sad bit about it because you’ve got so many people that wanna put it in and that’s the reason why I believe it or not, we started Vex. Vex was with a lot of the work to come in, we said, oh look we can’t really put it in Rey because that’s a sort upper class. So what we did is we said, okay, let’s start Vex. It’s more of a zine related, it’s more of a everyday event that you can write about as in comic strip say a bit of depression or something that you’re going through. It’s also, we wanted to make it as a artsy sort of magazine and have different stuff in it as,

(01:22:48):
And we put it out as well as something that’s surreal, something totally different. And it was just a qu buyer of different sort events and we put out the first issue, we sold nearly 200 of them and I’m thinking what happened here? We didn’t expect that and it’s still consistently going off. So it’s been very good as far as that goes. So we put out issue two now. We we’re doing issue three now as well, so, which is pretty good. We’ve got probably three, four, and five already sort of set up but we haven’t actually put it together. So that’s another thing, it’s just one of those funny things that happen. You just go fish, <laugh>

Leigh Chalker (01:23:32):
<laugh>. Yeah, I guess particularly story of definite note in those bes is and not meaning to be rude to anyone else that’s in there. But the one that stuck out in my mind was the Jardine Yes story that’s in there. That’s an excellent story. Excellent artwork, well written talented man and too old bo that I had the opportunity to meet and get to know through you. Mr. D now mate one last thing before we rock and roll and leave these Mary viewers and people to their evening, what’s one piece I’m, I’m gonna probably suggest it’s the same thing you told me or those years ago, what’s the one piece of advice that you’d give to some young up and coming creative that’s out there sitting in their house mate and dreaming of doing this comic book sequential art stuff

Gary Dellar (01:24:36):
Nowadays? It’s in a lot of ways it’s changed back from when I started and the other people started because it was a lot harder back then, you know, had to really get out there. It was so costly to do things you had to go, I had to go to the local GI newspaper and they did all the stuff for me for free at the time, which was fantastic. So that was great. We had a lot of creatives that would help out and basically we got all the pride lines from someone else for nothing. They just did it because they liked the enthusiasm and what we had, what were gonna do and they loved the work that was in there too, which was great. Anyway, so that helped a lot anyway. But what it is now is it’s probably one of the best times to do, if you’re doing a comic or creative side of things, it’s the best time to do it because you can get out there and put your own product out.

(01:25:33):
If you’ve got the enthusiasm to think of something and write it down, you can always get an artist, you might have to pay ’em sometimes, but you can get it out or if you’re gonna do the whole lot you can do it as the main thing of course I always say to people is don’t leave it in your head and don’t leave it on your drawing board. Get it out, do as much as you can, get as much advice as you can try to get it. So it’s a little, at least it’s commercial but art is always art. There’s gonna be, someone always loves your art or someone’s gonna hate it. So you’ve still, no matter what people do, you’ve gotta get it out. So my advice is don’t leave it in your head, don’t leave it on the table, get it out. Or if you wanna start that process, go and ask people that have done it and help you.

(01:26:23):
Or in my case, if you gotta be honest too, you gotta be honest with everybody. If it’s not sellable in the sense that very, very bad, which I haven’t come across any because like I said, everybody all arts different, I don’t like blue poles and some of the stuff that they splatter on canvas and all that, you know look at it and say wow, sometimes it’s just blobs on things. So that’s a bit of a difference. But I do surreal stuff but it’s all your taste so that when you got it out there, you always gonna attract someone that loves your work. There’s always gonna be the haters. I’ve always said that some people might not like your work or they hate it or cetera, but there’s always someone’s gonna love it and that’s what you get the enthusiasm if you get that behind you, you will get it out there.

(01:27:17):
And I always say, don’t ever stop, just get it up. Simple as that. And you’ve got that experience too as well. Look where it’s taken, you look, and I know there’s probably eight or nine other people that have gone beyond just having it on the desk and they’re doing really well. They’re sitting in their own little areas and they’re selling it to not only their friends but now they’ve gone expanded out and it’s absolutely brilliant. It’s good to see. And the other thing is also is that reach out. I’m always here if anybody wants to talk about anything they can and if you need anything put together I can always help out. And the main thing is I can show you how to do it as I can show you how to do it, but at the end of the day you’ve gotta learn how to do it yourself because that’s the way the market is now. You’ve gotta get out there and that’s why it’s so easy now you can go to any digital place now if you give them the right file they’ll print it for you but you need to give them the right file because if you give them just pages and then you get an extra charge but you don’t want that less charges get

Leigh Chalker (01:28:20):
Less charges better for your back pocket made a or those parade.

Gary Dellar (01:28:26):
The main goal to start with of course is get the comic out. Then the next goal of course it’s all stepping stones. Yeah, fingers stepping stones. So you gotta get the comic out. Then the next step is you get it out, you gotta get the sales and the main stepping stones of course is you’ve gotta try to cover your cost. That’s the hardest bit. It’s always the hard bit and that’s where you’ve got a head start. If you get that for get cost, then you’re well on the way to start making it worthwhile. And then that starts, that is actually where it starts financing a lot of the other stuff. Toby was an example of that. I sold a lot of Toby’s to make it worthwhile to put out the other cop comics. And at the same time I gave said, okay, well that’s great for me, that’s fantastic, let’s help lot people out. So that’s when we start taking other people on board. We put ’em all in the label and then they give a bit of, that gives us a really massive area to promote these comments.

Leigh Chalker (01:29:24):
Yes. Well I think that’s great advice man. And I think anyone listening that wants to give it a go, have a listen to what Gary said there cuz it’s yeah, pretty much what you told me to the teammate back in the day where I sent you those bloody emails. So it’s mate I I’ve really enjoyed tonight Gary, I’ve I’ve learned a lot,

Gary Dellar (01:29:53):
Two or three hours.

Leigh Chalker (01:29:55):
Oh mate, I’ve no doubt, I have absolutely no doubt. But the best thing is about this mate, you can always come back and we can keep talking. So

Gary Dellar (01:30:05):
Yes, no, there’s a lot to talk

Leigh Chalker (01:30:06):
About. You’re always welcome mate and plying your wares and passing on your knowledge, mate. That’s what I like doing this show for is to learn about people and their pathways and roads and all that. We’ll probably wind it up there mate. So thank you very much for coming on the Tuesday Chinwe

Gary Dellar (01:30:27):
Probably. It’s been absolutely a privilege. And let’s all again, sometime

Leigh Chalker (01:30:31):
We will bud. All right everyone. So just remember you can always get by with a little help from your friends. Stay positive and community is unity. And don’t forget rev publications.com.au. Thank you. Have a nice night.

Voice Over (01:30:47):
This show is sponsored by the comx shop. Check out comx.cx for all things comics and find out what comx is all about. Then head over to comx.shop to pick up a variety of Australian comics from multiple creators and publishers. All for one flat hostage rate. And don’t forget to check out the comx channel on.