The ‘What It Is?’ shows feature comic book makers and raconteurs live on stage, performances of kamishibai (the Japanese art of paper theatre), and drawings drawn before your very eyes,- to titillate and amaze. A vaudeville of ink on paper, talking heads, outrageous action. Your host: the Svengali of Melbourne comics, Bernard Caleo.

And we start with…Sergei Eisenstein (pictured left): two-fisted comic book theorist.

Michael Camilleri (author/artist of 'Itinerant Fighting Monk', the graphic novella in Going Down Swinging #30, 2010) and Bernard Caleo (editor of The Tango Collection, 2009) wrestle with Eisenstein's 'montage' theory and argue about it being more useful for comics than film. Also, the classic kamishibai tale 'Sergei's pram' (2011). Also, a 'collective comic', drawn live.

We welcome gold coin donations at all Readings events, with proceeds going to the Readings Foundation.

All welcome.