George Hall (cartoonist)

George Hall (born 1960) is a 1980's Australian comic book writer/artist. He drew two separate strips for the mid-eighties anthology comic [http://comicsdownunder.blogspot.com/2007/04/reverie-remembered.html Reverie] , alongside creators Paul Harris, Peter Hughes, Robert Shaw, Fil Barlow, Michael Dutkiewicz and Ian C. Thomas.

Hall was born in in Bairnsdale, Victoria. He was with Reverie for its entire seven-issue run, and created Sandy Star: Rebel Force (Reverie 1-3), a sci-fi strip, and Bloodgard (Reverie 4-7), a dark superhero concept.

The Reverie Years

Reverie was the brainchild of Gary Dellar, who envisaged an anthology title similar to British weekly comics, although with a semi-regular schedule. Dellar also had the help of Paul Harris, whose experience in advertising contributed to production values.

The comic was available through newsagents between 1983 and 1986, lasting seven issues.

During the course of its run, other artists came on board, some of whom went on to work in the mainstream American comics. Most notable is Michael Dutkiewicz, who went on to work for DC Comics. Fil Barlow, creator of Zooniverse, also was a contributor to Reverie.

Reverie filled an important role at the time, giving new creators a chance to develop their skills and giving established artists a new platform for their talents.

Hall joined Reverie in the months before its first issue, proposing a strip he'd first devised during his last year of high school. His first episode was co-plotted by his then-wife, Zora Marko. His second Sandy Star episode also featured background art by Dellar. In the latter part of the Reverie run, he concentrated more on writing, allowing a talented teen-aged artist an opportunity.

From Sandy Star to Bloodgard

George was self-taught, but worked to master the learning curve of published work. He experimented with various techniques during his first three episodes, such as having a background artist in Sandy Star's second episode, while tackling duotones in the third. He even welcomed a different artistic interpretation of Bloodgard after its initial episode. On the writing side of things, his Bloodgard episodes utilized different characters' perspectives for each chapter (Bloodgard third and fourth episodes). Generally, Bloodgard is the better written of his two strips.

The Australian fan press reaction to his work was more favorable to Bloodgard than to Sandy Star: Rebel Force.

In Reverie 3, he introduced an early version of Bloodgard as a secondary character, to assist the plot, then switched entirely over to Bloodgard in Reverie 4, with Sandy Star's last appearance being to introduce Bloodgard's origin and ensure a smooth transition to the new strip.

Bloodgard was a chilling concept. The first two episodes started off as typical superhero fare, only to twist by the end of the second episode, where Bloodgard destroyed the two major global superpowers of his timeline and took over his world. Episodes three and four dealt with the first story arc, where he drew four non-powered versions of himself from other timelines in a bid to destroy them. Had Reverie continued publishing past issue 7, the arc would have ended with one of the four alternate timeline duplicates donning a different set of Bloodgard armour to become the new Bloodgard and take the series further.

The strip anticipated trends in comics that would crop up in the mainstream American ones a few years afterward.

The second episode of Bloodgard featured the art of fourteen-year-old Mark Ryan, who stayed on the strip through to Reverie 7. George continued as writer.

Recent Creative Endeavours

In recent times, Hall has written a novel called A Question of Theories and explored publishing it via print-on-demand publishing. He has also written a screenplay of the same name. It is not known if there will be a comic book version of this story.

The novel is a non-superhero work, a satire on American movies of the nineties, and has been described as a cult thriller with a weird love triangle.

He continued working on the Bloodgard concept over the years, renaming it to Terrorgard and has recently started writing a prose version, updating it from its original 1980's millieu. At this point of time, three chapters have been written.

He has also delved into film-script writing and script-editing, though only at development stages. The next few years will tell how successful he is in this field.

External links

* [http://www.geocities.com/Ian_Thomas_Graphics/Reverie.html Ian Thomas' Reverie Tribute Page]
* [http://hayase.net.au/wiki/index.php?title=Reverie Reverie listing on Hayase Australian Comics wiki]
* [http://www.tabula-rasa.info/AusComics/Reverie.html Reverie listing on Tabula Rasa's Australian Comics]

References

* [http://comicsdownunder.blogspot.com/2007/04/reverie-remembered.html Comics Down Under article on Reverie's place in the Australian comic scene, and George's part in Reverie.]
* [http://www.tabula-rasa.info/AusComics/AustralianComics.html Tabula Rasa article on 1980's Australian comic scene.]
* [http://lambiek.net/artists/d/dutkiewicz_michal.htm Michael Dutkiewicz entry, Lambiek.net.]