For the seventh issue of Australia's giant romance comics anthology, TANGO, we are looking for stories which combine the themes of LOVE and SEDITION.

'Conduct or speech inciting to rebellion or a breach of public order; agitation against the authority of a state.'

The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary

Well, that's the classic definition. Today, in Australia, any protest can be seen as seditious - a protest against the Iraq war, against inhuman immigration policies, against draconian workplace laws. We are witnessing a creeping authoritarianism. The 'War on Terror' has provided the government with a pretext for enacting emergency legislation against its own citizens, increasing surveillance, and muzzling its critics. It's easy to be blamed for sedition today.  It's as easy as being unAustralian.

A true democracy, surely, recognises the ground on which it stands - that people will disagree, argue, challenge. That indeed we need to be seditious...

 
Imagine the Dixie Chicks locked up in Guantanamo Bay.
 

Michael Leunig going missing once his ASIO file exceeds one gigabyte.

Jesus was seditious. Ghandi. Satan. The role-call is long and illustrious.

But forget not that Tango is a romance comics anthology - we are looking for stories that are about sedition but also about love - for another person, for the cause, for one's comrades...

William Blake, greatest poet of his age, is tried for sedition for throwing a soldier out of his garden. He and his wife Catherine celebrate the case's dismissal by toasting the French Revolution and having sex in the aforesaid garden.
 
I have a little bit of a crush on Al Gore 
Red graffiti on a bike path in Northcote
 
A gay couple at a cafe are planning their wedding in between discussing the folly of the invasion of Iraq.The nice young man at the next table pricks up his ears and thinks that this is the right time to obey that fridge magnet that the nice Prime Minister sent him. 

Guy Fawkes, hanged for trying to blow up the English Houses of Parliament: who was the woman in the crowd weeping for him in the prologue to the film version of 'V for Vendetta'?

S11 and G8 protesters the world over, burning with passion for global justice, for a fight, for each other.

Think Orwell's 1984. Think Winston and Julia, and how politics can form and deform love.

Make your story from one to six pages in length. If you're contemplating something longer, you MUST contact to discuss this.

Let Bernard know that you're planning to contribute by April 30 2007, and please deliver your artwork by June 30 2007. Put these dates in your diary now. Go on. We will let you know if your work has been accepted for publication by July 30 2007.

Anyone can contribute. Anyone in the world. Our emphasis is Australian, but everyone is welcome to submit a story. Please forward this webpage to people that you think would be interested.

Content-wise, we would like Tango7 to be read by an adult audience, and we want our readers to be affected by the characters and ideas in the stories. So explicitly violent or sexual material, as would receive an 'R' rating in a film, probably won't get a guernsey. But you could always give it a go.

Tango7 will be somewhat smaller than its predecessors.


Page size (black)
175mm wide x 240mm tall

Bleed (pink)
5mm bleed around page

Recommended margins (blue)
Left, top margin 8mm
Bottom margin 10mm
Right hand margin 16mm

Artboard size to be submitted
185mm wide x 250mm tall



Page size (black)
175mm wide x 240mm tall

Bleed (pink)
5mm bleed around page

Recommended margins (blue)
Right, top margin 8mm
Bottom margin 10mm
Left hand margin 16mm

Artboard size to be submitted
185mm wide x 250mm tall


The 16mm right and left margins are to accomodate the pinch next to the spine: the book will be square bound.

As with Tango6, the author's name and page number will be printed across the bottom of each page, unless this disrupts the artwork.

You can supply your artwork as a good quality photocopy, or digitally. If supplying in digital format please send files on cd or the url of download space. Please supply work at 300dpi in the format that best suits your work (vector | bitmap | greyscale). If unsure in supplying digital format please send artwork via post and we will scan.

Postal address:
Cardigan Comics
PO Box 130
Carlton South 3053
Victoria
Australia

If your work is selected to be published in Tango7, Cardigan Comics will then ask you for $10 per page of the story that will be printed - thus if yours is a 4 page story, we will ask you for $40 - to help offset the printing costs.

As a published contributor, you will receive an author's copy and will be able to buy additional copies at a reduced price.

And, you'll be invited to the big launch party. WHY will it be so big? Well...

The year 2007 marks the 10th year of Cardigan Comics and of Tango, and we are very happy that our seventh issue, the sedition edition, will be published this year, hopefully in the springtime, when young people's thoughts turn to sedition.

If the Fates smile upon this project, it will be released before the 2007 Australian Federal election.

There is a wealth of materials and stories out there to inspire stories about love and sedition: we live in a country where anti-sedition laws are being passed, books are being taken off shelves, and artists are being told what sort of stories they can tell.

http://ozsedition.blogspot.com/2006/10/public-broadcaster-calls-for-self.html

And ever since there have been ruling parties, there have been people who wanted to upset them.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1706274,00.html

Keep an eye on the Cardigan Comics website, where we will keep posting various stories about seditious ideas and people as possible inspiration for your story.

For more information contact the editor,