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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Cheltenham Literature Festival Spotlight On Graphic Novels
Posted: September 25, 2015
Graphic novels are becoming an essential ingredient of any self-respecting, culturally alert literary festival across the UK. I’m delighted to be chairing a panel discussion at this October’s Cheltenham Literary Festival entitled Get Graphic: The World In Words and Pictures, where I’ll be talking with award-winning author Evie Wyld about her graphic memoir Everything is Teeth and with Simon Grennan about how he turned an Anthony Trollope novel into the visual masterpiece Dispossession. It takes place on Wednesday October 7th, 6:30-7:30pm in The Salon, Montpellier Gardens, with live drawing from Joe Sumner. Do join us if you can.
Dave Gibbons Guests at CanalCon Sunday September 20th!
Posted: September 17, 2015
It may just be the world’s first Comic Convention on a canal! CanalCon is this Sunday September 20th on board the Floating Cinema barge and on the astroturfed canalside steps leading up to Granary Square, home of Central Saint Martin’s College of Arts. It’s the finale of the Extra-Terrestrial London four-day programme.
It kicks off from 12 noon with a free Comica Comiket offering the chance to purchase great comics and graphic novels direct from publishers like Rebellion (2000 AD), SelfMadeHero, Knockabout, First Second, Soaring Penguin, Centrala Books, Escape Books and more, while House of Illustration are running a series of workshops on board the barge. Then from 7pm to 8.30pm I will be interviewing Dave Gibbons, stellar writer and artist from Dan Dare and Watchmen to Martha Washington and Kingsman: The Secret Service, live from the barge. He’ll also be answering your questions, drawing live and signing limited edition prints of this Martha Washington pin-up (below) in aid of charities.
Come and join us for CanalCon - it’s going to be Extra-Terrestrial!
Enter the 9th FNAC-Salamandra International Graphic Novel Prize
Posted: August 10, 2015
This competition is open to all nationalities and languages and began in 2007, when Jorge González won it with his masterpiece Fueye. The FNAC-Salamandra International Graphic Novel Prize goes to an original, totally new and completely unpublished graphic novel (so it cannot have been serialised or previewed in print or online, for example), and it must be a project exclusively entered for this competition, of 96 pages in total.
The minimum number of pages to enter is 16, in black and white or in colour, A4 size, with a detailed 2-page synopsis. Deadline is November 27th, announcement in January 2016 and the winner gets 10,000 euros, in two payments, one on winning, the other on publication of the finished graphic novel. The address to send your entry to is: Ediciones Salamandra, c/ Hermosilla, 121, 1o B - 28009 Madrid, Spain.
There are more details in Spanish in this pdf from Salamandra’s website and in a French pdf on the Cité de la BD site. If you have any questions, contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) - best of luck!
Enter the Hibana Global Manga Contest by September 30th!
Posted: August 10, 2015
Hibana (or ‘spark’ in Japanese) is a recently launched monthly manga magazine from Shogakukan, in the spirit of the late, lamented IKKI. And you could have your comics published in this by entering their new manga contest open to creators worldwide. To enter, you have to create a new manga story (in Japanese) of a maximum of 32 pages (or less), or a minimum of 16 pages if it’s a humorous one. You can also enter four-panel vertical strip or ‘yonkoma’ but you need to submit at least 10 of these. Image dimensions of the pages is 180 X 270 mms, while they should be on paper no bigger than 257 X 354 mms. You can submit your entry digitally, but they still need to send in a printed version to enter.
As for the theme, it’s wide open, in any genre you like, but they are after a new character who appeals to both men and women. The deadline is September 30th and there are two prizes, a Grand Prix of 300,000 yen and a Grand Prix Special of 500,000 yen. One or other winner will have their work published in the January 2016 issue of Hibana, and the Special winner gets the amazing opportunity to continue their project professionally.
You need to send your entry to: 101-8001 Chiyoda-ku, Hitotsubashi 2-1, Shogakukan Spirits-zôkan « Hibana » henshûbu, Hibana-Shinjinshô, Japan, and put the title and all your contact details on the back of each page. Also enclose a stamped, addressed envelope to return your entry. The winners will be announced in the December issue of Hibana - and yes, it really could be YOU! More details on their website (in Japanese!).
Barefoot Gen: Hiroshima 70 Years After
Posted: August 5, 2015
It was a Monday morning, 70 years ago. On August 6, 1945, the sun was shining. It seemed like just another ordinary summer day as six-year-old Keiji Nakazawa made his way to school. Looking up, he was surprised to see an American B-29 bomber flying over head. No air-raid warning sirens had sounded. 43 seconds later, a bomb nicknamed ‘Little Boy’ exploded 1,800 feet above him. In an instant, Keiji and thousands of other residents of Hiroshima were hit by an atomic bomb. Read about the powerful manga Barefoot Gen here…
Pulp Festival: Comics Art At The Crossroads
Posted: July 31, 2015
What position do comics occupy today as an art form? All too often, they seem to have been sidelined by galleries, museums and funding bodies. Perhaps it’s symbolic that PULP Festival, which set out in 2014 to reposition comics from the margins to the crossroads with other arts, takes place on the Eastern outskirts of Paris: not far by train but perceptibly distant from the capital’s epicentre. Read my report and enjoy my video tours here…
Sung-hee Kim: Conscientious Korean Cartoonist
Posted: July 21, 2015
Budding South Korean writer and artist Sung-hee Kim began by majoring in international economics to please her parents, until one day the wind wafted a copy of the student newspaper across her path. “I took this as the answer,” she recalls. “I joined the newsroom and became the paper’s editorial cartoonist.” Her true calling had begun. Read my article and interview about her and her new 2-page comic here…
Learning To Read From Comics
Posted: July 12, 2015
During Comica Festival 2014, at the inaugural discussion day S.M.A.S.H. at The Barbican Library, I got talking with two such London schoolteachers who were introducing their young pupils to graphic novels using The Arrival and Mouse Guard. They each kindly agreed to let me interview them about their challenges and achievements in doing this. Read my new Article here…
Books To Read: Best Graphic Novels - September 2015
Posted: July 8, 2015
Rich pickings coming up from September 2015, with something for pretty much everyone. Take your pick from fictionalised biographies of the great artists Bosch and Pascin to unique interpretations of Aesop, Anthony Trollope, Philip Pullman and Jean-Patrick Manchette, from punks in New Zealand to an outed cop in Jamaica, from fearless self-revelations about an abusive relationship or cancer in the family to searing documentaries from Mexico and Iraq, and perhaps the biggest story of all, Jens Harder’s Alpha (above), nothing less than a trilogy on the evolution of our entire planet and species. Scope and ambition aplenty in my carefully selected highlights this month - explore and enjoy! Read all about them here…
Karrie Fransman: Death Of The Artist
Posted: June 27, 2015
Karrie Fransman‘s second graphic novel Death Of The Artist asks whether youthful dreams are inevitably snuffed out by adulthood’s encroaching responsibilities. Assorted deaths big and small, symbolic and real, menace throughout her inventive, insidious psychodrama, whether in the opening photo of the protagonists playing dead on the grass, or that ‘little death’ of an orgasm, or a tragedy which gives the whole project purpose and poignancy. Read my review of Death Of The Artist here…
