Comics have been doing the history thing for awhile: Art Spigelman's Maus (Penguin, 1986) told the story of the holocaust, and Chester Brown's Louis Riel (Drawn and Quarterly, 2004), tells the tale of the great Canadian revolutionary and visionary, just to pull a couple from the stack.

In this month's 'What It Is?', Bernard Caleo, who's made a few comics that pull in Australian historical figures, and Alex McDermott, who's written a bit of history, go toe-to-toe and present a blasphemous, absolutely-frickin'-historically-accurate version of the Australian story. At least, a couple of bits of it. In words and pictures.

WE WILL ALSO LAUNCH: Alex McDermott's Australian History For Dummies.

PLUS: the kamishibai (Japanese 'paper theatre') classic, 'The Calypso Ballad of Wilhelm von Blandowski'.