Hi, I'm Rae Johnston and this is the Graphic Podcast. Graphic is a festival celebrating the art of graphic storytelling, animation and music at Sydney Opera House. Today's storyteller emerged during the revolutionary 80s British invasion of US comics along with Dave Gibbons, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Dave McKean and of course, long-time collaborator Peter Milligan. You're about to hear from a prolific creator who has done it all, from working with pre-Pixar computer animation, designing music videos to his 35 years as a comic artist and writer. Here's Brendan McCarthy. Enjoy. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, my name's Ben Marshall. I'm co-curator of the Graphic Festival along with Jordan Vazar. Can we have a big welcome, please, for Brendan McCarthy? I'm going to start my introduction for Brendan McCarthy by reading out a couple of quotes from colleagues of his, people who have been enormously influenced by him, who have gone on to influence many, many other people. Jamie Hewlett, the creator of Gorillas and Tank Girl, has said that every art form needs a game changer. From expressionism to surrealism, from the Beatles to the Sex Pistols, from Film Noir to the Nouvelle Vague. Someone or something has always been there to give an art form a push in the different direction it needs to keep it alive. That's exactly what Brendan McCarthy and Peter Milligan did for comics, and I effing love them. So fantastic quotes and echoed by Grant Morrison, who in his book Supergods said, in 1986, I was invited to the Birmingham Comic Convention. There I met the one of a kind artist, Brendan McCarthy. McCarthy was a styled and prickly genius whose hand has a direct line to his unconscious mind. Imagine you could take photographs of your dreams and you will have some idea of what McCarthy can do with his art. McCarthy minds his living dreams. Brendan's had a huge and varied career as you're about to see. Comics, film, pre-Pixar computer animation and much else. My fascination with his work started in the 1990s with his work with Peter Milligan. I sort of voraciously followed everything I could get of his work, including the snippets of the legendary Mad Max 4, which I'm so pleased eventually came to light in such a stunning way. We're really honored to have him today. He's going to do a presentation and there will be time for questions at the end. And Brendan, thank you so much for being part of this festival.

Thanks, Ben. Well, welcome, everybody, and it's nice to be here. I thought the best way, I'm going to assume most people don't know my work that well, as I'm one of these kind of, you know, industry secrets, as they call them. But so I've put together a little slideshow, which I'll click through and sort of comment on for about half an hour, and then we can have a chat afterwards. And it's just a little...