It’s using words and pictures.

Yes, it’s comic books. Or as they’re often referred to these days, Graphic Novels – though that’s a bit of a snooty term. Really, what they are is books that use the conventions of the humble comic strip – frames, speech balloons, figurative drawing – to tell stories. Call ‘em whatever you like. Me, I like the term ‘book comics’.

Anyhow, there’s been a phenomenon developing overseas, over the past twenty years or so, whereby ‘real’ book publishers (Penguin, Jonathan Cape, Pantheon) have been publishing these sort of books, and thus bringing them to a more mainstream audience. And, in the last couple of years, Australian book publishers have begun to publish book comics by our local talent, as well as overseas publishers taking an interest.

And the thing is, the hub of almost all this book comic activity in Australia is Melbourne. If the writers / artists of this developing form weren’t born here, then they’re moving here, from the north and from the west. Melbourne is becoming the comic book capital of the country.

So. Let’s have a quick survey of the books and the artists who make up the Melbourne-based vanguard of this new narrative approach.

Many people will know Shaun Tan’s work as a picture book maker (The Red Tree, The Lost Thing) but in 2006 Lothian Books published his amazing, wordless comic book The Arrival, a fable of immigration in which the main character is forced to leave his family and his homeland and must come to terms with the new place which he escapes to.

The wordlessness and the very solid, grounded, convincingly realistic nature of Tan’s fantastical drawings draws the reader right into the protagonist’s experiences. The Arrival has been recognised internationally as an outstanding work, winning the Best Book award at this year’s Angoulême comic festival in France. Shaun is from Perth but has recently relocated to Melbourne.

Melbourne lawyer-cum-artist Nicki Greenberg‘s graphic adaptation of The Great Gatsby, the classic jazz-age novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was published by Allen & Unwin last year. In this beautiful hardback, Nicki presents the frames of the comic book as photos in an album.

The characters have been transformed by her mischievous and fluid penwork into a series of creatures, monsters and variously alien or insectivorous lifeforms, with a good dash of The Muppets thrown in. In this way, Nicki’s Gatsby is very definitely an interpretation of the book, in the way that (say) the Robert Redford film was: it’s another way of looking at this novel, of feeding our ideas about it. And, as I say, it’s gorgeous.

Mandy Ord is one of the great workers in the field of local comics. Originally from Canberra, but now (of course) living and creating in Melbourne, I first saw her comics in a self-published, photocopied A5 booklet Wilnot. Mandy produced several issues of Wilnot in the 1990s while at art school, and her distinctive, almost woodcut style of drawing, with her one-eyed autobiographical stand-in, can be seen in many anthologies of Australian comics.

Last year, the Finlay Lloyd publishing group released Mandy’s book comic Rooftops, a beautiful story that begins with seeing the film Ghostbusters on a rooftop cinema in Melbourne. It transforms into a meditation on coincidence, Gilligan’s Island, friendship, the purpose of one’s life and Bill Murray.

The Sacrifice, by Bruce Mutard, is another book published by Allen & Unwin. Bruce is another person who has been toiling away in the salt mines of Australian comics for decades, on his own comic book Street Smell and the book comic The Bunker, which was released by the North American comic book publisher Image Comics.

Released earlier this year, The Sacrifice is the first volume in a trilogy focusing on the journey of Robert Wells, a bloke in Melbourne around the time of the beginning of World War II. Robert is a pacifist, but as the aggression of the Axis powers escalates, he has to face the decision of whether or not he should enlist.

Bruce’s black-and-white pen-and-ink artwork is, in a sense, classic comics fare, but to see this technique used to depict Melbourne of the 1940s (particularly St Kilda and the CBD) is genuinely thrilling. The character-building and depiction of the communities that surrounds Robert is also another signal achievement of this first book of three.

The influence of manga, or Japanese comics, is also being felt upon Melbourne comics. Queenie Chan‘s three-book series The Dreaming was published by North American manga company, Tokyopop. Queenie was born in Hong Kong, grew up in Sydney and moved to Melbourne.

The Dreaming is a story about twin girls who go to a boarding school deep in the Australian bush, a site of mysterious goings-on, disappearances and intrigue – shades of Picnic at Ranging Rock. Queenie’s latest book is a collaboration with multi-million book selling author Dean R. Koontz, In Odd we Trust, featuring Koontz’s already-established character, Odd Thomas. It was published by Del Rey last month.

So this is a brief survey of what’s happening in Australian comics in Melbourne. If we cast the net wider, we would catch the Brisbane based Scotsman Eddie Campbell, the Perth based publisher Gestalt Comics. And if we went deeper, we’d catch a large group of people working on their comics who are the next big things.

So keep your eyes peeled. And read a book comic.

Bernard Caleo makes comics too and runs Melbourne-based Cardigan Comics, which publishes Tango, an almost-annual giant anthology of Australian romance comics. He is currently looking for submissions for the next one, Tango8: Love and Food. Visit the website to find out how to submit.