Comics Infrastructure Questions: Canada/Australian Parallels?

[dewline]

jasonfranks just posted linkage to an interview he did recently that got my attention about some of the parallels between Canadian comics creators and their Australian kin:

In Australia, everything is local. The scene is going a bit more national now, thanks to the internet, but our cities are so geographically remote that even that is difficult. There's currently one publisher with direct market distribution, one with newsstand distribution, and a few traditional publishers who provide a very small amount of work for the bookstore market, but that's it. These days we have a few options as far as the circuit goes, but that's a very recent thing. Five years ago there was one per year. If you want to seriously do comics, you have to look overseas. Our population is small, and domestic sales are proportionately low. Also, it's hard to get out of the slushpiles without some facetime. Facetime costs thousands of dollars in airfare and accommodation. It's a battle!

Granted that we've had an inside track on getting ourselves organized faster with a better infrastructure to some extent, and living next to the Elephant also helped somewhat...and yet I can't help but feel more than a little sympathy for what feels like a shared situation.

What say you?