A wild and wacky take on surf scene
It is a wild and wacky look at the South African surfing scene, wrapped up in a horror comic about a legendary surfer’s valiant struggle against the exploitation of surf culture by big business and the not-so-secret plundering of our coastal resources by international mining companies.
TO be launched at the KZNSA Arts Café in Bulwer Road, Durban, on Friday 6 December, is The Legend of Blue Mamba, a graphic novel created by ND Mazin (aka Andy Mason).
It is a wild and wacky look at the South African surfing scene, wrapped up in a horror comic about a legendary surfer’s valiant struggle against the exploitation of surf culture by big business and the not-so-secret plundering of our coastal resources by international mining companies.
The story began in the mid-1990s when Andy created his own Blue Mamba surf brand for his pre-teen sons and their surf-mad friends, but soon found its way into a Durban surf mag, before
becoming an underground comic series published in the Durban fanzine Mamba Comix.
The strip then morphed into the web-comic Azaniamania on the surfing website wavescape.co.za, before taking its final shape as a colourful graphic novel in which all of these previous strips are collected alongside a substantial addition of new material.
Drawn in the classic underground comix style, pioneered by Gilbert Shelton and R Crumb, the book documents the rise and fall of Blue Mamba, a homeless urchin who becomes a wave-riding champ and legendary soul surfer before being lured by YT Sharke, the Mephistophelian CEO of Toxacorp (Pty) Ltd, into selling his face to be used in the branding of their toxic products.
When he tries to back out of this Faustian pact, Blue’s face is literally ‘ripped off’ and he is left faceless and bleeding in the gutters of a sleazy Durban precinct known as Nu Babylon.
Determined to get his face back, he becomes SubCommandante Mamba of the World Revolutionary Ecological Combat Kabal (WRECK) and mounts a fierce but ultimately doomed ‘armed struggle’ against Toxacorp.
According to Andy, “Blue Mamba is a chameleonic repository of our deepest hopes, fears and contradictions.” The book, along with Blue Mamba merchandise including posters and T-shirts, will be on sale at the launch and at the KZNSA shop.
Copies of the book can be purchased online from readersden.co.za or blankbooks.co.za
