Simone Lia

Simone Lia

Simone Lia came to light with her quirky comic called Fluffy, a rabbit in denial who believes that Michael is her dad.  She originally published it through Cabanon Press whilst working with Tom Gauld.

Gauld told her to abandon her children book illustration, as they were restrictive, whilst with comic books you can continue the story with as many pages as you like.  

Her simplistic style lets the message ring out and its charm available to people who may not necessarily appreciate art. The message within the story processes quicker, due to the extraneous variables being stripped away and the bare characters and dialog left. Simone never tells us weather Fluffy is a boy or girl, and that lets the reader identify it as they wish – she says ‘Interestingly the girls said she was a girl and the boys said he was a boy. I think the reader subconsciously finds a way that a character relates to him or herself and looks for similarities.’[1] The comics so simple, we can place ourselves within the characters, relating to the odd daily occurrences… perhaps why the series was so popular.

Simone portrayed the ‘child’ as a rabbit instead, as they’re ‘much sweeter’[1] and portrayed vulnerability. Fragments of conversations that she overhears and those of her own making inspire their dialogue.  Their adventures are also partly inspired by her own life, for example Fluffy and Michael have a holiday in Sicily to escape, Lia took the journey herself to visit family.

Simone used a very drastic change in her life in her latest work, ‘Please God, find me a husband!’. She had just been dumped by email and was praying and felt God answer her prayer in a subtle way, and wanted to explore deeper into the relationship. She then visualised her spiritual journey through her quirky drawings, Because it was such a personal story, it took her four years to complete,[2] doubt within herself thwarted progress. Lia’s innocence and sense of humour make the book less of a preach to Christianity and more of an honest description of being a catholic in the modern world.

---

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/feb/14/fiction.laurabarton

[2] http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/art/an-interview-with-simone-lia-about-her-autobiographical-graphic-novel-please-god-find-me-a-husband/2012/06/15/

---

[1] http://cotlzine.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/simone-lia-interview.html

Shaun Tan

Tan uses an absence of symbols and objects with particular meaning in order to avoid miscommunicating ideas, such as the use of a red flag instead of a union jack in the following image from The Rabbits, a book by John Marsden and illustrated by Shaun Tan.

“I try to remove references, or at least muddle them a bit or make them more obscure so there’s more space for the reader to interpret things freely” - [1]

The union jack already holds a history and context in which would lead the reader onto other thoughts, ones that aren’t important in the telling of the story and scene.

‘The Rabbits’ is based on the settlement of the Europeans in Australia, but to avoid using the Union jack makes the story applicable to any new settlement and colonisation, not just the British on Australian soil.

 “As an artist illustrating a text, I’m always trying to question any assumptions I might have a reader. For instance, in adapting John Marsden’s written allegory of colonisation, ‘The Rabbits’ as a picture book, I was careful to avoid actual rabbits. To do so would only defuse the essential metaphor of the story.”[2] Tan has used stylised, sharp and geometric rabbits, far from the fluffy bunnies children adore. These rabbits are the ‘invaders’, so their crisp suits and sharp edges give a menacing tone.  They’re depicted from the ‘natives’ point of view, digging up the land and introducing strange machines. The front cover mimics a nineteenth-century painting by E. Phillips Fox depicting the arrival of European settlement. [3]

---

[1] statelibraryvictoria. ( 2011). Shaun Tan: Do you encourage open interpretation of your work?. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cb37WdbBgk&feature=youtube_gdata_player. Last accessed oct 14.

[2] Radio National ABC,Lingua Franca. (2010). Words and Pictures, an Intimate Distance. Available: http://www.shauntan.net/comments1.html. Last accessed oct 14.

[3] Brooke Collins-Gearing & Dianne Osland. (2010). Who will save us from the rabbits?: rewriting the past allegorically. Available: http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/ojs/index.php/tlg/article/view/227/225. Last accessed oct 14.