Broken Frontier

West Australian based publisher Gestalt celebrates 5 years of creating indie comics.

Gestalt Publishing  was founded by Wolfgang Bylsma and Skye Ogden in a pub  in Applecross, Western Australia in February 2005.  Five years later, and despite Ogden having relocated to Japan, they’re returning to that pub to celebrate their fifth birthday and unveil plans for the next five years.

Those five years have seen the landscape change for comic publishing internationally, with many independent comic publishing houses closing their doors.  The international distribution Gestalt sought and received was also threatened by the global economic downturn, which nearly excluded their Flinch anthology (featuring original work from World Fantasy Award-winner Shaun Tan) from the US and Canadian market.

“We started the company with a commitment to being here for the long game, and that has paid off,” said Managing Director Wolfgang Bylsma. “We’re in a stronger position now than ever before. Our publications list has grown substantially in the last 12 months, and we’re set to publish at least four more original grpahic novels in 2010, including the creepily beautiful Changing Ways, written and illustrated by Justin Randall.”

To mark the fifth birthday, Gestalt are flying in the creative team behind the recently published Rombies book.

Tom Taylor is a Melbourne-based playwright who writes Star Wars: Invasion (for another publisher) alongside Gestalt titles Rombies, The Example, two stories in Flinch, and the upcoming Brief Cases.

Skye Ogden is a Tokyo-based writer/illustrator responsible for Vowels, ‘The Daemon Street Ghost-Trap’ in Flinch and, of course, Rombies. 

The event will see both Taylor & Ogden discussing their ongoing vision for the book (and it’s continuing story) and signing books.  There will is also be live music from Gestalt’s own Anton McKay and the immensely talented Tracey Read.

Where: Clancy’s Canning Bridge, 903 Canning Highway, Applecross, Western Australia
When: Thursday, 18 February 2010 from 7pm