Alien comic anthropologists landing in Oz would soon gravitate to Melbourne, home of the infamous ‘Silent Army’ crew of comic artists, animators, stencillers, sticker-makers, public art-ists and visual inventors. There they would find evidence of much Silent Army shenanigans : glorious public art, numerous official and un-official exhibitions ( see www.theemptyshow.org ), several Big Day Out murals, and of course, central to any art-in-sequence, comic-makin-folk – a whole shebang load of publications : the PURE EVIL series (1-6), endless appearances in other compilations and the forthcoming ‘True Fantasy’ contributor anthology being collated by Michael Fikaris, the ‘Sparks’ compilation being curated by Lachlan Conn, and ‘Trails’ – the first of a hopefully regular series of newsprint size magazines being compiled by Lachlan, who is still welcoming contributions (trails@silentarmy.com) of sketches, drawerings, doodles, scraps, drugged out art, visual poems, found art, design, brut art, graffiti and anything else we can print. 

Silent Army books, paintings and live drawings can be witnessed as part of the 2005 Melbourne Stencil Festival, at the Meat Markets – 42 Courtney St, Nth Melb