Category: Uncategorised Page 1 of 2

Sons of Comtec is LIVE

On August 6, 2025

It’s me and Ben’s new comic, available as a paperback book, or simply a PDF ebook if that’s all you need or can afford right now. How I envy your excitement as you RUSH to Kickstarter to order your copy NOW, RIGHT NOW!

NOW, I said!

Sons of Comtec is a graphic novel about the unsung heroes of the modern world: businessmen. (Yes, female businessmen too.) In this golden era of prosperity, unmarred by war, repression, or poverty, isn’t it time we mere artists paid tribute to the selfless corporate executives whose Big Ideas made it all possible?

Michael Kupperman, Eisner Award winner and creator of Tales Designed to Thrizzle and Snake ’n’ Bacon, says…

Patrick and Ben rip the lid off of the corporate world in this startling exposé that’s also the funniest and most surreal comic I’ve read in a long time.

And Ryan Estrada, co-author of Occulted, Student Ambassador, and the Freeman Award-winning Banned Book Club, says…

Patrick and Ben are two of the world’s most beloved and influential goddamn weirdos, and Sons of Comtec is just the kind of masterwork that all aspiring goddamn weirdos dream of becoming goddamn weird enough to create.

These two have either perfectly parodied the current power structure of the world we all live in, or they need both an intervention and a prison sentence, in either order. I am not sure which, but I thoroughly enjoyed this weird-ass comic.

Mlervin makes Reynaldo privy to some big future plans.

Too farcical to be satire, but too surreal to be farce, Sons of Comtec is an arrangement of vignettes from the multi-storey dream factory that is Comtec: a towering mega-corporation that does… something. Elevators? Conference rooms? Comtec — always a step ahead of the competition — truly has it all. And what it doesn’t have, it will make.

Meet Mlervin von Camelanche, the visionary executive who owns a small Buddha statue, and Reynaldo, his solid but reluctant number two. Meet Winter Stylez, a Woman in Business™ shattering the glass rungs of the corporate ladder. Meet two leprechauns — I just realised this book has two separate leprechauns in it.

"Great Barry's ghost!" cries Winter Stylez. She has witnessed something perhaps best unwitnessed.

Other things Sons of Comtec has in it:

Climate-conscious new product concepts
Neckties of importance
An inspiring TED Talk
Poetry
Sexual tension (not the good kind)
A special appearance by… well… we won’t spoil it, but a certain someone you might know from a little book called… the Bible
The most sincere apology in the history of business
A single flower
And… you?

Yes, you can put your very own self in Sons of Comtec, immortal and forever respected — just like a successful company! But not if you wait too long to back the project, and certainly not if you miss the crowdfunding period altogether! A bright future without regret awaits you beneath this link.

Or this one

mutter mutter mumble Genuine Rolex mutter mutter gnashing of teeth

If you use LinkedIn and hate every moment of it, Sons of Comtec is the book for you. Order copies for yourself, your suit-wearing colleagues, and your boss, who will enjoy it because he thinks it’s making fun of all those other bosses.

Over a decade in the making, Sons of Comtec is a slim but dense serving of unadulterated comedy, timely yet meaningless. You should back this book because it will make you laugh a lot, which you need and deserve.

70-80 pages (including front and back matter); 182 × 257 mm (7.2 × 10.1 inches); black and white; paperback. Printed in and shipped from Japan!

Don’t wait

If you think you’ll want a copy of Sons of Comtec at some point, please do order it now, through the Kickstarter crowdfund. You will be helping both us (the author-publishers) and yourself. This is indie publishing; you can’t idly visit Amazon dot com months from now when it crosses your mind again and expect to find Sons of Comtec waiting conveniently for you there. I mean, maybe…? Look, you’ll be able to get it if you really want it, but the best and easiest time is definitely, definitely right now.

Think of how Sons of Comtec will look on your office shelf, next to your pristine copy of The Art of War and fully solved Rubik’s Cube, marking you as a trend-aware business leader of taste and sense. You might, from time to time, thumb through its handsome leaves, appreciating the texture of its papery wisdom. Someday, when your busy schedule allows, you might even read it. “Perhaps when you retire,” offers the admiring journalist, with a sympathetic smile. You give a wry chuckle. “If I retire.”

The future is yours for the taking. Summon a copy of Sons of Comtec into your business-savvy hands RIGHT NOW.

Sons of Comtec is nigh

By Patrick Alexander

On August 1, 2025

In Uncategorised

Hello everyone. I know, you want more comics from me. Well then. It is time for Sons of Comtec.

Sons of Comtec: A very serious work of sequential graphic narrative, about the most important people in the world.

Sons of Comtec is an extremely silly graphic novel¹ about businessmen — even some female businessmen, for you ladies with modern ideas. If you subscribe to my YouTube channel, you’ll have already learned about it from the video below, which features voice-acted excerpts, an introduction to the main characters, and the front cover illustration being painted from start to finish!

My co-author and fellow genius, Ben Hutchings, is a legend of Australian comics, whom you might know from… well, anything from his long-running comedy zine You Stink and I Don’t, to his celebrated children’s comic Mini Mel and Timid Tom, to his award-winning educational works like The Invisible War and Follow Your Gut.

He and I have been collaborating on the slab of comedy nonsense called Sons of Comtec for over ten years, and at last it is time to trap its soul in book form and sell it to YOU.

…And that’s where you come in.

An excerpt from Sons of Comtec. Reynaldo is not yet ready to embrace Mlervin's outside-the-box vision concepts.

Ya see, to make this book happen, we’re crowdfunding it! On Kickstarter! This will begin in mere days, and what you can do right now is check out the pre-launch page and click the big button that says, “Notify me on launch”. That way, on launch, you’ll be notified!

Be ye notified

And should you desire to be actually in the book — you, yourself, immortalised in its very pages — such opportunities will be available but limited, as soon as the crowdfund kicks off. Hence, the handy notification.

The staff of Comtec. Shall you be among them?

I’ll be real with you though, because I hate FOMO marketing: you probably won’t miss out. You are part of a dedicated but small audience. But, you never know, right? Maybe Sons of Comtec will be favoured by the algorithm and attract thousands of cashed-up new fans three minutes after it launches. It can happen.

Actually, that’s the other reason you might like to click that “Notify me on launch” button: it makes us look popular and helps the project to succeed. So if you do that, thank you!

An excerpt from Sons of Comtec. He wan', it would seem, baneenee.

Apparently mid-week is the best time to launch a crowdfunding campaign, so expect something to happen around Tuesday, August 5th, depending on your time zone, how tired I am after work that day, and so on.

The campaign will run for 30 days and 30 nights, which as you may recall is how long it took Almighty God to pout mightily and destroy the Earth by flood. In my mercy, I intend to merely ‘flood’ your RSS feed with non-stop reminders to back the campaign! Ho ho!

Indeed, now that Sons of Comtec is your new favourite book, you probably want to learn more about it. Well, there’ll be more to come in that regard, to keep us all ‘big energy’ and slavering during the crowdfund! Say it with me: I am FOCUSED, I am LOCKED IN, I am a WINNER with HOT WINNER STINK. Now say it to your wife! Now say it to your young children! Say it to them daily! Schedule a time and stick to it!

Congratulations, you are now on the road to business success! A road that leads where? That’s right: to Comtec.

A graphic novel is a comic that you have to take seriously if you want to be taken seriously. ↩︎

Oh and hey I’m on Mastodon and Bluesky these days, if that interests you. I’m not using them a lot, but it’s another way to stay up-to-date and/or get in touch. And my email newsletter is still a thing — sign up on this website’s Contact page!

Pink Chickens, readable again

By Patrick Alexander

On February 17, 2025

In Uncategorised

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to make for several years, ever since my comics websites stopped working. It’s a PDF version of Pink Chickens, my incomplete kids’ comic that ran in Mania magazine from 2001 to 2002. Many of you have, patiently and persistently, asked for it — so here it is, in my Ko-fi shop!

Oh, PDFs aren’t convenient for you? You’d prefer hi-res JPEGs of each page? Those are included too.

HOT DIGGETY DOG,
LET ME AT IT AND THOSE

You can download it for free, or pay any amount for it. There’s no obligation at all, but of course if it gets a lot of support, I can prioritise similar projects like a Tobias and Jube (Mania years) PDF, a collection of Pink Chickens illustrations and archival material — that sort of thing.

In any case, thank you for still caring about Pink Chickens, nearly 25 years after the fact! I still occasionally get out-of-the-blue fan emails about it, which is extraordinary.

Another thing I’ve been meaning to get around to — for literally decades now, I guess — is selling original Pink Chickens comic pages/artwork. So if you’re keen for that too, do please let me know! (It’s time-consuming to set up, is all, but worth the bother if I know people are interested.)

In the meantime, enjoy the comic again. Or… god help us… for the first time?? Dolly, Mustard, Basil, Frupert, Pidgie and Mucus are waiting for you.

Squishbook

By Patrick Alexander

On November 20, 2023

In Uncategorised

While you’re in a spending mood, it’s time to tell you about Squishbook, the best thing you can buy for a primary-school-aged child at this exact moment. (Or ‘elementary-school-aged’ for our toothy alien friends.)

Squishbook is half comics and half about making comics, with a whole extra half on top, of silly nonsense and thoughtful advice — occasionally a challenge to distinguish — all one hundred and fifty percent of it for CHILDS. Perhaps your childs, or any curious and creative childs you might be aware of in your vicinity. You can learn much more about it at the crowdfunding page beneath this link.

Also this link! Squishbook!

It has been exhaustingly compiled by the excellent David Blumenstein, who assembled a crack team of sensitive and whimsical inner-child-havers including Ben Hutchings, Scarlette Baccini, Ive Sorocuk, your hero Patrick Alexander, and the ever-popular Many Others.

Contributor portraits by David Blumenstein

My bits in Squishbook include:

Erntnence Rotisserie-Ha’pennyworth’s Catalogue of Hats, which is two pages of very much what it sounds like
A drawing of a truly appalling unicorn, perhaps the worst yet, suitable for colouring in if you can choke back your vomit for long enough
Answers to children’s questions, for which the publisher (not me) is legally responsible
Blip Blop Chronicles, starring Li’l Atishoos — a four-page comic about the naughtiest child in the world furiously succeeding at it

Here’s a tiny bit of Blip Blop Chronicles for you, in both roughly pencilled and expertly inked forms:

Squishbook is partly funded by the City of Melbourne but partly funded by YOU, right now, as you head to the crowdfunding page and order some copies for all the children you can think of and also any Grown-Ups with a Sense of Wonder that you haven’t been able to rid yourself of socially.

The crowdfund ends in one week-ish (November 28th) and is already near its goal, but you know what? The print run actually costs twice as much as the goal! So if you can help to push the final total way past that goal, that would help to soothe David’s stress-related brain rash, I bet.

Will you still be able to order copies from the Pozible page after the crowdfund ends? I… I think so? I’m pretty sure yes you will. But if you are reading this in time, go and place an order now and get a cool thing for someone’s Christmas. “Ooh mama, it’s gonna be a zing-daddy boobly-o!” as the beloved carol goes.

2022 catch-up

By Patrick Alexander

On November 29, 2022

In Uncategorised

Lately I’ve had barely any time to do stuff, let alone update this website to let you know that I’ve done it. Let’s get you caught up!

Voting comic part 2
Scrampbonk dot com
Getting serious with Ko-fi
- Memberships
- The Ko-fi Shop
Mr Frisky’s Unbelievable Planet
Anything else?

Voting comic part 2

Ever since Dennis and Ken slappo’d their way into Australian voters’ hearts back in 2013, those same besotted voters have been requesting a follow-up comic explaining the electoral system for the federal Senate, with its tentacle-long, bone-white ballots of terror. I’m happy to report that I managed to complete that comic in plenty of time for the election back in May, and you can read, download, and share it right beneath this link.

It was a huge amount of work to produce, and I did so with no sponsorship or outside support, because I like democracy and I wanted to help people. If that makes you want to click a Like button, try the Donate button instead, on my Ko-fi page! Yes, retroactively: even perhaps years after the fact, if that’s when you’re reading this. It’s like royalties! Go and donate! Yes, even if you’re not Australian! You think I don’t see you? I see you.

As for the international perma-meme that is Voting comic part 1, this year you might have seen it distributed in full-colour print alongside the campaign materials of Queensland Greens MP Michael Berkman and the teal candidate for Cowper, Carolyn ‘Caz’ Heise, as well as posted on the Facebook page of, uh, the Hunters and Shooters Society Australia. Can any doubt Dennis and Ken’s appeal across the entire spectrum of politics/sanity?

And… what’s this? You Can’t ‘Waste’ Your Vote… in Cantonese?? Yeah, that happened too. Phew! Big year for the boys.

Scrampbonk dot com

What this is is, I got really fed up with web two-point-oh, and sick of bloated-corpse wordpress too, and made a new, simple, easy blog (using publii) that I can post things on, when I make them! Comics, writing, illustrations, videos, whatever. Really tired of trying to keep up with social media websites as they rise and fall. Who has the time! Anyway add scrampbonk dot com to your bookmarks, or RSS feed if you’re on the cutting edge. Old Internet is still there, if we want it. Add me to your webring.

Getting serious with Ko-fi

I’m trying to gradually transition back to doing more creative work and personal projects, and the support of my… fans? Followers? Fellow weirdoes? — will be invaluable in making that possible, so I’ve been putting some time and effort into making my Ko-fi a worthwhile place to be.

Memberships

You can now become a monthly member to enjoy my new work earlier than ordinary internet plebes, see works in progress and other weird scraps, and even receive the exciting Envelope of Wonder in your actual, touchable mailbox throughout the year, if you so desire.

*Contents (sans letter) of the first Envelope of Wonder. What will be in the next one? Fun and surprises, that’s what!*

Monthly membership is a really, really effective way to help me create more of the stuff that you love, now and into the future. The financial support is straightforwardly helpful, but also encourages and motivates me on a mental and emotional level too. It’s like… tangible proof that people believe in my work. Thank you!

The Ko-fi Shop

You may notice that my Ko-fi page now also features a shop! Yes! Right now you can buy a retro-sparkly Tobias and Jube “We’re DOOMED!” sticker; a vinyl Dennis and Ken “SLAPPO!!!” sticker; a charming, never-appeared-on-the-internet, all-ages comic called Mr Frisky’s Unbelievable Planet; and a members-only zine of terrible, terrible, terrible actually brilliant crosswords, which is apparently yet another thing I do. More goodies will be added little by little, both physical and digital.

*What’s that? You need a hundred of these? Contact me re: bulk discounts.*

But wait! Before you click that “SPEND ALL OF MY MONEY” button… what day is it today? Because if it isn’t yet January 8th 2023, there is a sale on right now. You can get twenty whole percent off everything in the shop, simply by visiting it via this link:

SPEND MERELY 80% OF ALL OF MY MONEY

And if that doesn’t work for some reason, just enter the code “YOWZA20” at checkout.

Oh, and! And! If you become a monthly member, you get automatic shop discounts anyway! Do the discounts stack? Sure, why not! (I’m actually not sure but I think so.)

Mr Frisky’s Unbelievable Planet

Hang on, Patrick, what was that about… a new comic?

Ah, yes! Sort of!

*Clockwise from left: Mr Frisky, tiny Mr Frisky, Milkshake*

As it says on the shop page:

A short comic I made in 2007, now shared with the world 15 years later!

Take a dubiously educational journey of discovery with Mr Frisky and his susceptible pal Milkshake, as they venture into the wildest, weirdest places on Earth and look at fish.

SUITABLE FOR ALL AGES. A perfect no-reason-in-particular gift for friends, students or teachers, niblings, or any marine biologists you happen to know.

That’s right, I had a completed 20-page comic sitting around for 15 years that I just never found the right opportunity to publish in any way. But now you can buy it in a slim, attractively designed, beautifully printed volume, at, as I may have mentioned, my Ko-fi shop.

It’s a little slab of delightful giggles and you will enjoy it, as will everyone you know or will ever meet. Buy ten thousand!

If you’d like to read a little about the design process of the Mr Frisky book, I blogged about that here, and if you’d like to see some exciting unboxing photos of the real thing, take a look here. And while you’re in an ogling mood, cop a load of these:

Phwoar! Yeah, I understand, you want it! Go and get it. (And don’t forget, the checkout code “YOWZA20” gives a 20% discount until a week into 2023. Yowza!)

I want to make more books like this, so don’t hesitate to encourage me.

Anything else?

Isn’t that enough?? Oh, you want the second episode of Comedy Purgatory? You want more crazy music? You want really, really new comics, not just plenty of comics you haven’t seen before like Mr Frisky and the Dark Horse Presents ones that I’m putting up on Ko-fi (and then Scrampbonk dot com later)? You want… youtube videos? After all this time?

Well my friend, we are in hyaku pasento resonance on those matters: I want those very same things. Support me on Ko-fi and help to make it all happen.

By the way, don’t forget you can join my mailing list on this website’s Contact page. Right now I rarely use it, but it’s potentially a great way to stay up-to-date while circumventing the invented need for social media. I’ll at least use it for important announcements, so pop in your email address and you won’t miss out. I promise I am not well-organised enough to be annoying.

And hey, is there anyone reading this blog post who was alerted to it via RSS? Leave a comment! I’d love to know that people are still using that.

Insufficient Stories

By Patrick Alexander

On January 5, 2015

In Uncategorised

Insufficient Stories is the title I’ve given to a project I’ve been working on bit by bit, little by little, for a few years now. I started writing tiny little stories in my free time; they accumulated; I did some live readings; I kept writing them; and now I’ve made videos of them. I decided I would make these videos once I had 31 stories: one story each day for a whole month; like a Bible devotional but funnier. But after recording the videos I discovered I’d miscounted, so there’s 32.

The shortest of these stories is eight words; the longest is 1900-odd. In a slightly-more-than-a-month-long special event, they will be published on this website (with full text) and on my tumblr (video only), one story per day, starting January 12th and ending February 12th. (You could also follow along by subscribing to my youtube channel.)

I’m eager and excited to read these stories to you, in pre-recorded form! They are funny and weird and people like them, and at one point, I believe I may have written the most beautifully executed pussy joke in the history of the form. It’s pretty high-level but I’m confident that by the time we get there, you’ll be well convinced of my genius and, for that reason, paying close attention. If we work together we can pull it off I reckon. But just in case you’re not up to it, please share these videos with all your friends and followers. Let’s journey together into etc. etc.

Oh and even though it’s just videos of a dude sitting in a room, reading at the camera from a book, I expect to receive Insufficient Stories fan art before the slightly-more-than-a-month is out; I want to be quite firm about that from the outset, thank you.

You can now buy prints.

By Patrick Alexander

On September 18, 2014

In Uncategorised

Truly announcing my deeply official society6 store:

Patrick Alexander Monetises His Assets!

Right now boasting a shitload of art prints, hopefully including all the pictures from recent-ish years about which you have said to me, “I’d love to buy a print of that.” But if not, please tell me what’s missing — I’ll clean it up and make it available. (This invitation includes comic pages too, not just illustrations.)

I can put these pictures on other products as well, like t-shirts, smartphone cases, wall clocks and so on, but they require a little extra design work, so if there’s something in particular you’d like to see, let me know.

So! This is nice.

PIN ME TO YOUR WALL.

Dark Horse Presents #36

By Patrick Alexander

On May 23, 2014

In Uncategorised

The first picture is a peek at my four-page comic, Bunbun and Sadhead; the second is a peek at another four-page comic by me, Job Interview; and the third picture is the cover of Dark Horse Presents #36, IN WHICH THEY BOTH APPEAR, just as the volume itself appears this very moment in the racks or on the shelves of comic shops all across this ever-flatulating great brown earth.

Here is a review of the issue, which correctly highlights the magnificence of my contributions/centrepieces.

Oh hey look at that writing on the cover; look at those words, ‘Stan Sakai’ and ‘Jaime Hernandez’; yeah those guys are my colleagues I guess. Don’t make a big deal out of it though. Oh yeah, ‘Mike Mignola’, I guess he’s a guy who exists or whatever.

(Hey while you’re writing that comic shopping list, remember I have a PDF doodle book you can get, too.)

Dark Horse Presents #28

By Patrick Alexander

On October 6, 2013

In Uncategorised

mrs-plopsworth-title-web

Gosh! Dark Horse Presents issue #28 has been out for a couple of weeks, but I was too busy to post about it.

mrs-plopsworth-image-01

Anyway there’s an eight-page comic in it, by me, called Mrs Plopsworth’s Kitchen, and I think it’s one of the best comics I’ve ever done.

Some website called it “easily the highlight of the book”; some other website summarised it in a positive tone, thusly:

Patrick Alexander’s “Mrs. Plopsworth’s Kitchen” somehow manages to be adorable and disturbing at the same time, although words like “surreal”, “endearing”, “hilarious”, and “grotesque” could apply as well. As an added bonus, the story breaks part way through, with its second half finishing off the issue.

Wow! It’s accurate!

mrs-plopsworth-image-02

Buy it in a comics shop, if they have any copies left! Otherwise order it in? Or you can buy it digitally also, I believe. Or just borrow a friend’s copy or something.

You Can’t ‘Waste Your Vote’!

By Patrick Alexander

On August 18, 2013

In Uncategorised

Update, February 2019: The famous comic about Australia’s preferential voting system, starring Dennis the Election Koala and Ken the Voting Dingo, has been revised, updated, and completely redrawn in spectacular full colour! Please find it at its new home here.

This blog post will remain here, but if you’re looking for that comic and want to share it, please use the current version, not this one. Thank you!