Ubby's Underdogs : The Legend of the Phoenix Dragon
Brenton E. McKenna
(illustrator),
Broome
:
Magabala Books
,
2011
Z1767589
2011
single work
graphic novel
young adult
adventure
Ubby is a smart, young Aboriginal girl who is twice as tough as the streets she lives on. She is the leader of a rag-tag group of youth known as the 'Underdogs'. When Ubby meets Sai Fong, a Chinese girl who has arrived fresh off the boat from Beijing, street life in Broome takes on a multitude of new dimensions. From the moment the two girls meet, they find themselves immersed in a series of bizarre adventures influenced by Aboriginal and Chinese myths and legend, and secrets never before exposed.
'This is a heroic tale that measures the limits of courage and friendship. Ubby's Underdogs: The Legend of the Phoenix Dragon boasts a multifaceted narrative with staggering graphic detail in order to introduce a series of complex characters with links to other worlds. Amidst a backdrop of fictionalised Aboriginal and Chinese mythology in the unique multicultural town of Broome, Brenton's first graphic novel leaves you gasping for air and in anticipation of things to come.'
(Source: Magabala Books website; http://www.magabala.com)
Ubby's Underdogs : Heroes Beginnings
Brenton E. McKenna
(illustrator),
Broome
:
Magabala Books
,
2013
6067575
2013
single work
graphic novel
children's
'It is the late 1940s and Broome, a small pearling town in the heart of an ancient land, is still recovering from WWII. Ubby, a smart, street-wise Aboriginal girl, is the leader of a small rag-tag gang known as the ‘Underdogs.’ Ubby’s Underdogs: Heroes Beginnings (Book 2) is storytelling on a remarkable scale. It continues with established characters that have links to other worlds amidst an intricate backdrop of Aboriginal and Chinese mythology. In this second graphic novel of the Ubby’s Trilogy, efforts to locate Sai Fong, the Dragon Summoner, by Ubby and her gang have been halted by the ambitious Pearling Master, Paul Donappleton. Yupman, the guardian of Sai Fong, is pushed to breaking point as his past reaches out to strike and his greatest fear now sits upon the horizon.' (Publisher's blurb)
Ubby's Underdogs : Return of the Dragons
Brenton E. McKenna
(illustrator),
Broome
:
Magabala Books
,
2019
15403204
2019
single work
graphic novel
young adult
'It is the late 1940s and Broome, a small pearling town in the heart of an ancient land, is still recovering from WWII. Ubby and her gang of Underdogs cross into the Forbidden Zone on the Broome coastline in a desperate bid to locate their missing friend Sai Fong who has disappeared without a trace. What they encounter is worse than anything they could ever have imagined. To survive, the Underdogs must call upon the local gangs to unite, solve the mystery of the Dragon Summoner, and make contact with the mysterious Phoenix Dragon to fight the battle of all battles against an evil and unearthly enemy. What is at stake is the future of humanity itself.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'Bashed, beaten, rejected — how could writing a uniquely Australian comic book saga be this hard?
'In the process of becoming Australia's first-ever published Indigenous graphic novel author and publishing his epic three-volume magnum opus, Brenton E McKenna was battered physically and emotionally.
'It started as a boy's dream to create a novel-length comic depicting a fantasy world set in an Australian outback town.'
Source: Introduction.
'The dynamic relationship between Aboriginal groups and ethnic immigrants in Australia remains theoretically unconstructed as it largely falls outside the binaries of race and ethnicity. Historically, Aboriginal people have developed longstanding contacts with Asian groups, traversing national, cultural, sexual and legislative boundaries. Although indigeneity and diaspora embody disparate and even opposite meanings, there are synergies between diasporic identities and Aboriginal people who suffer from dislocation due to the enduring impact of colonisation and migration. The postcolonial adaptation of liminality or threshold may provide an apt framework for theorising the literary representation of a convergence of border-crossing and diasporic experiences of Aboriginal and Asian Australians in the marginal, interstitial and in-between spaces. Due to a shared predicament and a sense of comradeship, Aboriginal–Asian encounters forge communitas, which does not suggest inherent subversiveness or unproblematic co-option. This paper considers Ubby’s Underdogs (2011, 2013) by Brenton E. McKenna and A Most Peculiar Act (2014) by Marie Munkara to explore Aboriginal–Asian relations under the White Australia policy. Through the recurrent theme of Japanese and imaginary Chinese invasions, these novels complicate the crossings in the porous and precarious borderlands, remap the intersecting power relations and reroute Aboriginal characters back to the centre.' (Publication abstract)
'The dynamic relationship between Aboriginal groups and ethnic immigrants in Australia remains theoretically unconstructed as it largely falls outside the binaries of race and ethnicity. Historically, Aboriginal people have developed longstanding contacts with Asian groups, traversing national, cultural, sexual and legislative boundaries. Although indigeneity and diaspora embody disparate and even opposite meanings, there are synergies between diasporic identities and Aboriginal people who suffer from dislocation due to the enduring impact of colonisation and migration. The postcolonial adaptation of liminality or threshold may provide an apt framework for theorising the literary representation of a convergence of border-crossing and diasporic experiences of Aboriginal and Asian Australians in the marginal, interstitial and in-between spaces. Due to a shared predicament and a sense of comradeship, Aboriginal–Asian encounters forge communitas, which does not suggest inherent subversiveness or unproblematic co-option. This paper considers Ubby’s Underdogs (2011, 2013) by Brenton E. McKenna and A Most Peculiar Act (2014) by Marie Munkara to explore Aboriginal–Asian relations under the White Australia policy. Through the recurrent theme of Japanese and imaginary Chinese invasions, these novels complicate the crossings in the porous and precarious borderlands, remap the intersecting power relations and reroute Aboriginal characters back to the centre.' (Publication abstract)
'Bashed, beaten, rejected — how could writing a uniquely Australian comic book saga be this hard?
'In the process of becoming Australia's first-ever published Indigenous graphic novel author and publishing his epic three-volume magnum opus, Brenton E McKenna was battered physically and emotionally.
'It started as a boy's dream to create a novel-length comic depicting a fantasy world set in an Australian outback town.'
Source: Introduction.
