Brokowski

Brisboners cont.

Guess it's that time of the month and I must produce Bandit fan art. Sorry team.

Brisboners

Was in the mood to make more Heeler Bros smut with a sightly more fleshed out environment, so to speak. 

Looks like inhibitions at their uni share house dropped pretty low after the big win. 

Page 7

So the Tasmanian Devil was heard more than seen and for fresh faces on the island the ruckus they make when feeding hinted that there truly was some enormous sinister creature lurking amidst the Forrest.

Fun peripheral bit, It was rumored that The Looney Tunes character was actually based on Erroyl Flynn. Why? Well Mr Flynn (Tasmanian born), known for having an awful temper and acting generally violent and insane, was buddies with Jack Warner (Warner Bros film exec) however around the t...

Bikie

A really charming guy.

Digger

So, according to American novelist Gore Vidal, during WWII, Australian soldiers were notable for "rolling over on their stomachs quite obediently."  One Australian soldier, John O'Donnell wrote of his time in New Guinea that the African American troops,  really "loved white-ass" which he was happy enough to provide. Of course there were likely plenty of "butch" Australians and "sissy" troops from other countries (concepts of sexuality at this time still functioned more along gender ...

Jackaroo

Another character within the Australian masculine mythology structure. Young men who are out training on usually remote stations to get experience in the field. Obviously for my purposes we are just going to assume they all fuck. 

Gold Fields

Another important beat in the formulation of Australian national identity was the gold rush (Started in 1851). Men came from all over in droves to find their fortune. Government at the time didn't like the riff-raff profiting and as such introduced licenses to stake your claim on the gold fields, which of course meant wealth would only continue to concentrate in already wealthy hands.  This led to the Eureka stockade riots  and the poor folk fought back against the tyranny, this led...

Page 6

As you can expect, labour in Australia's early day was executed primarily by the convict population. In some ways they had to adapt to whatever group that happened to arrive and pray someone knew some basics of trades like tailoring, farming etc. This was particularly difficult in the earliest days in Australia. As Robert Houghes recounts in his book The Fatal Shore, in 1788 "Only a third of the prisoners could work- 320 men out of the 966 victualled from public stores. More than 50 convicts ...

Bogan

Apparently the etymology of bogan is somewhat contested. But I do like that one early usage was a Banjo Paterson poem describing a "bogan-shower" as "Three rain drops and some dust". He was referring to a region and not a people but it's sort of fitting in a modern bogan being considered one of the unrefined and unwashed masses sort of way. 

Bushranger 2

Another lil' sketch tribute to the bush-ranger based on a pose in William Strutt's 1887 painting on the subject done six years after Kelly's execution.

Bush ranger

Felt like warming up with a bush-ranger sketch. Bushrangers are perhaps one of the first truly Australian (post colonial) groups which really formed national identity. Firstly the term was for escaped convicts but soon came to encompass robbers who escaped authority by fleeing to the bush.  Though often ranging from murderous to insane, they captured public imagination and were able to brand themselves anti-authoritarians and even defenders of the common man versus the tyrannical British...

Page 5

Terminology at the time didn't really contain a specific for homosexual interaction, insomuch as it was an act which fell under an umbrella of most 'sex crimes'. The law didn't differentiate homosexual acts from buggery of a woman or bestiality for that matter until roughly the 1880s when the implied understanding of homosexuality specifically as a concept emerged within the law. Earlier court records are littered with funny euphemisms regarding it, unnatural acts being the most common phrasi...

Page 4

During this period of incarceration in Van Diemen's (1839-1853) what was known as "probation" was taking place. It was in a way surprisingly progressive for the time, with men serving 7-14 year terms being sent to these more or less open settlements to undergo a mixture of education, religious instruction, and of course, hard labor. (life sentences were sent to more typical, and generally brutal prison institutions IE Port Arthur. ) You would work your way up a ladder of progressively lighter...

Updates

Curious as to how y'all feel regarding how active you'd like this to be? As it stands we are aiming for completed page release on weekend. But otherwise what about WIPS etc? does this have value or just bloat?

Page 3

As noted on the WIP: Upon arrival convicts would be examined in detail as there were no other real ways to keep identifying records should an absconder need to be apprehended. Recorded descriptions ranged from matter of fact to almost poetically insulting. For these inspections convicts were of course stripped naked to optimize humiliation and dehumanization. A good place to start in a comic which depicts them all as dogs, I thought. (dog, in Australia being pretty much the most aggressive in...

Page 2

Convict condemned to death for his part in the cooking pot riot.

Page 1

Commander of the first fleet.

Cover WIP

Further tweaking of the cover.

A nod to the screen adaptation of For the Term of His Natural Life.

The Enormities Known to Exist

I think we've settled on a title, at least for the time being. Some background on the title:

This was a phrase used by the anti-transportation league in Tasmania who were lobbying England to cease sending convicts to the colony. Those 'enormities' of course being sodomy, which while the crown could care less about most things the free persons of Tasmania complained of, they really clutched their pearls at the thought of all the steamy sex taking place in the absence of ladies between co...

WIP, still whippin'

On first pass I thought I would have a much brighter palette for the day to kind of contrast the ultimate bleakness of the situation, but felt like it was washing things out too much and an overcast stormy kind of day was more fitting. Also wanted to add a few more tiny lil people working to give more background narrative/life. Also the threat of a flogging frame.

WIP Continued

Some progress as I fiddle with tangents and positioning etc. I think this one is nearing final form. 

One of the big things I want to explore which is  inherent to this comic is how sexuality was viewed in a  very different light at the time and was way more complicated than I think our usual modern narrative about past same sex interaction is. It wasn't as simple as the laws which clearly prescribed the weightiest punishments. It was very tied up within class (in British...

Early page WIP

Getting some ideas of how I want to pursue the environment. (got excited and decided to jump in to a page.)

Upon arrival convicts would be examined in detail as there were no other real ways to keep identifying records should an absconder need to be apprehended. Recorded descriptions ranged from matter of fact to almost poetically insulting. For these inspections convicts were of course stripped naked to optimize humiliation and dehumanization. A good place to start in a comic which dep...

WELCOME!

Hey there new friend,  welcome to my Patreon. Currently working on a new comic "Hard Yakka" An unlikely pair come together, discovering a whole new career opportunity. Working Men, putting in work.

Love + Respect

-Bro Kow Ski

Setting

Some quick space references.

Back-Slang

Took a break from scripting to get a little more practice in (I wanted to draw fucking). I think I'll be doing some slight redesigns ultimately on both for some variety (head shapes etc) before moving much further in the art department here. 

Beyond that, still concerns around the uniform, if I wanted to be # accurate, convicts had to contend with 40 plus buttons on their uniforms with strict enforcement on how they were worn, lest you get the lash. For my sanity, and qu...

Early design

Some early days design work getting a feel for it.

The 'parti-colour' uniforms were both useful in being highly visible, and also humiliating as they gave a prisoner the appearance of a jester.  These were given primarily to those serving life sentences (which more often than not were not actually ones entire life) while those on shorter sentences wore entirely yellow uniforms. Yellow was also the chosen colour as in the symbolism of the day it was associated with disgrace.  T...

Layout and Pacing

After writing a fair bit of script I spent the lions share of yesterday preparing my big-wall-o-pages. I find having a large physical reference helps when working down a script to visualize what needs to be said where for maximum impact. Also It gives you a good idea overall of how panel size/space etc will contribute to story conceptually. My usual process is to only work a few pages layout at a time and thus panels shapes are more improvisational at the time to my mood about that specific p...

Words words words

The current research collection as well as a  kindle edition of The Sex Lives of Australians: A History. From here I'll be working through and revisiting the bits I'm hazy on, as well as digging around open source academic articles. (Also considering re-reading At Swim, Two Boys because It's gay, Irish and a fantastic reference for speech patterns. Yeah it's about 70 years later than this story but maybe I just want to reread it whatever.)

Also, trying to hunt down affordable/exist...

Onwards

Hello beautiful people. Tomorrow  I will be posting the completed FIFO to itch.io here:

https://brokowski.itch.io/fifo

And with that two-ish years work will have come to an end! Milestone. Life Event. Wow.  But wait there's more! Physical copies are set to be published in the upcoming months. Mostly they will be sold through conventions however, once I have the link for the online shop I'll put it up ...

Sub Roo is still in the mood

insatiable.