Creative force Jackie Ryan lives a rewarding double life. She’s artistic director of Brisbane Writers Festival by day and, when her nights and free time allow, she’s a multimedia, multidisciplinary artist and the creator of Burger Force, the cult Brisbane underground comic series that’s released its sixth volume, Let’s Dance.

First launched in 2010, Burger Force is described by Ryan as a celebration of popular culture and a time capsule of Queensland performance talent, with each edition showcasing real people and real Brisbane landmarks that have been “comified”. Each issue’s story is told in a classic comic format that is created “through a ridiculously time-consuming combination of software and hand-retouching”.

The titular Burger Force refers to a pop culture detective agency that exists underneath a local fast-food restaurant and combines serving up tasty, cheap eats with thwarting the efforts of “diabolical masterminds” hell-bent on committing crimes against popular culture.

The idea for the project had been floating around Ryan’s brain for years but only came to fruition after she’d spent significant time working in visual arts, filmmaking and music video production and was writing a project initially conceived of for film.

“I guess, with all the other art projects I’ve done, writing has always been at the core of them, as has been working within a very strict budget,” Ryan says.

“So with this I wanted to do it without any budget in mind and figure out how to make it work later. I had a great time. The influences were pretty broad but included Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in the 1960s The Avengers. Also, I think that season two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was going on around the time I was thinking about this, too, so that definitely also played a role.

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“I started writing and I was thinking about doing something with sort of an American take on pop culture, with a British sensibility. But the problem was, of course, that I had come up with something that was not at all local – there was no beach or hospital in it, which was what Australia was making as entertainment at the time – and that was also the dawn of reality television, so production in Australia was getting cheaper and not more expensive. That was a real shame because I’d been exposed to so much great talent in Brisbane and knew exactly who I’d cast.”

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Audrey Niffenegger declared the project ‘marvellous, strange, funny and so, so stylish – the dream you have while sleeping it off after the best party ever’

At the same time as she was working on the project, Ryan was also teaching herself the basics of website design and “messing around with other design stuff” when she was reminded of the Italian comics that are known as fumetti, a term which refers to the use of word balloons with images to convey thoughts and ideas.

“There is a long tradition of that in Italian comics, where they actually use photographs of actors in comic book. I thought, ‘Why can’t I do that?’, but with a twist where the photographs are heavily edited to look like graphic art? I could shoot them and then cast them as comic book people. So, really, a whole group of collective influences came together in order to enable me to make Burger Force come to life.”

While its following may be underground and best described as cult, over the years Burger Force has gathered with some very famous and pedigreed admirers.

Ryan crossed paths with legendary Scottish comic artist and cartoonist Eddie Campbell when he was living in Brisbane. It was Campbell who passed the comic along to his wife, critically acclaimed author of The Time Traveller’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry, artist Audrey Niffenegger, who declared the project “marvellous, strange, funny and so, so stylish – the dream you have while sleeping it off after the best party ever”.

Similarly, while Ryan jokes that one should never meet their heroes, she did meet one of hers – actress Barbara Feldon aka Agent 99 in cult 1960s US comedy series Get Smart – at comic and game convention Supanova in 2015. They got chatting about Burger Force.

“I told her about her part in inspiring this. She asked if I had it with me, which I didn’t. I told her I could show it to her on my phone and I did and I also mailed her a copy,” Ryan recalls. “She actually wrote back – this beautiful, handwritten letter with these compliments – and I was blown away. I know they say you should never meet your heroes, but I am glad I did because I think that, every now-and-again, you meet your hero and they become even more heroic.”

Because of the time-consuming, labour-intensive nature of producing Burger Force, from scheduling shoots to the actual shooting of images that comprise the comic’s narratives, to compiling, editing and hand retouching them – and the fact she has a fulltime day job – Ryan doesn’t devote as much time to the project as she would wish. She jokes that “this is why the project dates back to the last century”.

“I started shooting for the first issue around the end of 2008 and it took me about 10 years to write the thing, off-and-on,” she says.

“Of course, I was doing other things, like earning a living, but some of the images from those original shoots are still ones that I am working from. I’m still terrified of losing them so I am constantly making copies while formats change so that I don’t lose these images of performances that are now 10, 12, 14 years old.”

Ryan’s fulltime day job, of course, is artistic director of Brisbane Writers Festival. She says she is lucky “to really love what I do for a living. I pretty much have my dream job”.

After the unmitigated success of the 2024 festival, this year the event will relocate to Brisbane Powerhouse. It’s a change of venue Ryan’s very much looking forward to.

“It’s a very hard job and it’s a not-for-profit, so we are constantly walking that line of not losing any money and making a loss,” Ryan says.

“There’s always far too much work to be done by far too few people, but I can’t imagine a better workplace. It’s very nice to get a vote of such confidence for the festival from the public that we actually needed to upgrade to a bigger venue with better capacity and, in that sense, it was a very nice problem to have. I am looking forward to being in that beautiful entertainment precinct, for sure.”

Burger Force 6 is available at burgerforce.com

The 2025 Brisbane Writers Festival runs October 9-12, with the program announced mid-year.