Design and Art Australia Online

Comic book artist, was born in Melbourne on 22 October 1958, daughter of an Australian ex-WWII serviceman father and a Japanese mother. In the 1980s she worked for Countdown and drew stars such as Madonna for the ladies’ page. By the late 1990s she was living at Glebe with her partner Michael Hill (lecturer UTS) and drawing strips about beautiful young androgynous Gothic figures, often dead or living-dead, whose form and acts are inspired by and parody the sentimental romances of Japanese 'girls’ manga’, although her Japanese cousins comment that her drawings are like wood blocks compared to the fine line of manga, she told JK in 1999.

Since 1997 Louise Graber has been chief artist, co-editor and publisher of the Graber Hill mini comic B.L.A.C.K. ( Black Lights Angels ComiKs ). As in the cartoon world of manga , her strips are peopled with childlike youths (a touring rock band) cheerfully indulging in violence and lots of sex. Uncharacteristically, her protagonists are mostly dead. Atypically she draws one cel a page and spends about a day drawing a single page. Hence she can only produce about four issues of B.L.A.C.K. a year (though they usually come out even less regularly).

Among other exhibitions, Graber was included in the 1998 international comic exhibition at Croatia, in the 1999 Artists and Cartoonists in Black and White exhibition at the National Trust S.H. Ervin Gallery and in Savage Pencils at Silicon Pulp in 2001. She spoke at the S.H. Ervin closing forum on 'underground comics’ on 14 March 1999. Original cartoons for her most recent character, Martin Lumen – an Australian alternative cartoonist she began to draw in 1998 – are in the DAA b/w file. There is, in a private collection, an original frame from B.L.A.C.K. 5 (a couple of her characters screwing in the back of a car, one saying 'I think I’m getting the hang of it’). In 1999 she had a strange drawing of a heart signed 'black light angels’ on website One (www.geocities.com/SoHo/Nook/3508/one/oneframes.html).

B.L.A.C.K. Online, http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Arena/6807, is the 'officially sanctioned’ fan page for Black Light Angels ComiKs, while B.L.A.C.K. is an Australian independent graphic comik produced by Graber Hill. The B.L.A.C.K. team is Michael Hill, publisher, and Louise Graber, artist, writer and editor. The site includes 'Articles’ (B.L.A.CK news, fan rantings, reviews, poetry and 'general babble’), 'Issues’ (reviews of issues of Black Light Angels ComiKs), Images (sketches and special pictures) etc.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007