Auckland-based Ant Sang would have to rank as one of the true unsung talents of the New Zealand comic book scene, first emerging as a cartoonist in the early 1990s with the punky, grunge-inspired Filth. It was an impressive debut but it was also a product of its time, quickly reaching its sell-by date. But Sang's new comic book, The Dharma Punks, shouldn't suffer the same fate, even though it is set in the same mid-90s period as Filth.

"I've been doing comics since about 1994," recalls Sang when I meet him at a Karangahape Road cafe. "I did my first mini-comic, Filth then, which continued to do until '97. Then I went hiatus, ran out of steam and figure out a new kind of comic project to do." 

However, The Dharma Punks can be seen as conscious extension of Filth, with the band, Chopstick, the lead character and friends sharing the same names as characters in Sang's former comic. "With the Filth stuff, I didn't have any ideas as such," reflects Sang. "They were just little rantings, stories, snippets... but The Dharma Punks is like me trying to do a full-blown serious comic. Looking back at Filth now it seems a bit dated. Dharma Punks is set in that era anyway - 1994. The death of grunge and all that. What the story is about is me looking back at what I was going through at that time and trying to make a story out of it. Not an autobiographical story, though. With Filth, people thought that I was Chopstick [also the lead character of The Dharma Punks], and when they met me they were quite surprised that I wasn't this miserable punk guy. It's a fictional story."

So why return to the same era with The Dharma Punks? "The time doesn't appeal to me as such," reasons Sang. "I just wanted to finish off the Filth stuff and the only way I could do that was to do a story where the characters progress out of that era and move on. I tried to do some other comic stories after Filth but none of them worked."

Buddhism and punk might seem to be strange bedfellows but according to Sang, the two philosophies go hand and hand. "Dharma Punks deals with stuff that I've been through over the past couple of years," he explains. "The name Dharma Punks comes from a Jack Kerouac book, The Dharma Bums. I know that the beat poets were into exploring spirituality and mysticism. Dharma Punks is like '90s punk version of that. The two things sort of go together for me because looking into Buddhism and getting into punk rock comes from being really disillusioned with life and society. They're both ways of looking for an answer, a lifestyle. Possibly, they can go together; possibly not. And that's what the story's about. Chopstick is on this mission and things go awry and he has to find himself."

Chopstick's mission, which involves the bombing of a McJob-style fast food restaurant, becomes more than a simple political statement when plans go wrong and innocents could be hurt. What has he got against burgers and fries then? 

"It's more multinational corporations," notes Sang. "As to how to battle such corporations, who knows? Which is basically what the story is about. Should Chopstick blow up the building or not? It's a question that becomes bigger as the story goes on."

The Dharma Punks will be launched in April and Sang ambitiously plans to release the rest of the eight-issue series over the eight following months. The Dharma Punks will be distributed through book shops and comic stores and Sang hopes to create a professionally published package that can then be sold to an American publisher. If the premier issue is anything to go by, Sang won't have any trouble following in the footsteps of Dylan Horrocks and other New Zealand cartoonists who have found success overseas. 

Musically, Sang establishes a soundtrack of sorts for the Dharma Punks in the first panel, name-checking local acts Loves Ugly Children, Shihad, Darcy Clay, Shaft and Nudie Suits. "They're all bands I like," admits Sang. "Time-line wise, they might not be realistic. I'm not sure how many of those bands were around at the time but they're bands that I liked listening to then and now. It's just my little thing."

And does he still listen to such full-on music? "I've kind of mellowed out," laughs Sang. "I can't listen to sort of stuff throughout the whole day like I once could."

Sang has also attempted to limit his artistic influences by not reading too many comics. "I don't read a lot of them," he states. "There are not a lot out there that really impress me. Technically, Paul Pope [creator of comics such as Heavy Liquid and THB] has inspired me terms of getting loose with brushwork but also having really tight pencils and trying to get some energy. I like his action and movement. I've tried not or read too many comics because I get easily influenced by things. So when I'm working on Dharma Punks, if I suddenly get into another artist, that will affect the way the comic reads and the tone of it," he admits. "I'm trying to be a bit secluded until I get this done."

this article originally featured in Pavement April/May 2001 issue 46