Comic book artist Ant Sang talks to David Larsen about his ‘transformational journey’.
Photo / Damon Keen
Photo / Damon Keen
"I heard this smashing of glass." Ant Sang is very soft-spoken. He doesn't emphasise what he's telling me by stressing words or raising his voice; he could almost be embarrassed. The answer to my question happens to involve a violent death, but he doesn't want to be a drama queen.
"A lot of us students were out drinking in town, and I thought someone had thrown a bottle or something. Then one of our friends came round and said that another one of our classmates had just been hit by a car. So we all went round the corner and I saw my friend just lying face-down in the middle of the street. His body was convulsing. Ambulance workers came, and they cut off his clothes, the way they do."
I know exactly what Sang is describing, because I've seen it happen: not, thank God, in real life, but in the pages of The Dharma Punks, his eight-issue comic series from the early 2000s. A questing black and white religious/political/sociological/philosophical epic set around Karangahape Rd and Grafton Cemetery, the series is one of the landmarks of contemporary New Zealand comics. Its success led to Sang being hired to design the characters and backgrounds for bro'Town, and it has just been republished as a single-volume graphic novel, after a Kickstarter campaign which reached its target in five days.