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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Woodrow Phoenix: Empathy Generators
Posted: June 26, 2015
Few creators have been stretching the capacities of comics to fully involve the reader as persistently as London-based all-rounder Woodrow Phoenix. From his New Wave roots in Fast Fiction, the UK’s small press scene in the early 1980’s, through such genre mashups as Sinister Romance (1988) or Sugar Buzz (1998), or co-conceiving Nelson (2011, below), a fictional biography told in short stories, one per year, by multiple cartoonists, Phoenix keeps setting himself challenges to refine and re-define the medium, and exceeding them. Read my new article, interview and Woodrow’s new 2-page comic here…
Books To Read: Best Graphic Novels - August 2015
Posted: June 13, 2015
Nordic comics make a splash this month with Sweden’s Kim W. Andersson, Norway’s Benedikt Kaltenborn and Finland’s Tommi Musturi, whose The Book Of Hope makes it as my PG Tip for the top graphic novel of a very diverse and enticing month of upcoming titles. It’s also quite something to look forward to the first graphic memoir from underground legend and Zippy the Pinhead mastermind Bill Griffith. I hope you enjoy investigating the comics, graphic novels and manga selected below - part of my monthly service to help you broaden your reading horizons! Read my recommendations here…
Britain is Guest Country at Munich Comicfestival June 4-7
Posted: June 3, 2015
Eddie Campbell, Rob Davis, Rufus Dayglo, Jock, Dave McKean, Audrey Niffenegger, Mike Perkins, Posy Simmonds and Bryan & Mary Talbot are among those invited to celebrate British comics at this weekend’s Munich Comicfestival. I will be interviewing several of them (in English) over the coming days, and there will be a vibrant exhibition of original art to accompany them. Rufus Dayglo has designed the Tank Girl-themed poster. Come and join us if you can! More details here…
Hervé Di Rosa: The Last Comic
Posted: May 14, 2015
“The great names in comics have affected me every bit as much as the great painters I love.” Growing up in the 1960s, relatively isolated in Sète on the French Mediterranean coast, Hervé Di Rosa got his culture fix from reproductions of fine art in books and from comics. “I saw no difference between them in scale or validity.” Starting to exhibit his art in 1980, Di Rosa with his brother Richard and Robert Combas drew on their passions for both art and pop culture to pioneer the radical French ‘Figuration Libre’ movement in the 1980s. Unlike most earlier Pop artists, who were not necessarily raised on comics, Di Rosa explains, “I don’t cite comics in a superficial way, I incorporate their techniques into my work.” Read my profile of Di Rosa and his brand-new comic here…
Best Comics, Graphic Novels and Manga Coming July 2015
Posted: May 2, 2015
Poetry Is Useless and Pain Is Really Strange! Those are the titles of two of this July’s upcoming comics for your consideration on this Free Comic Book Day! Spain makes a flourish this month too with intriguing books by Joan Cornellà, Santiago Garcia and Max de Radigues, as does Israel with the Hanuka twins and Boaz Lavie on their ravishing graphic novel The Divine. Lots more to explore here, so here’s hoping you find some titles special to you which you can look forward to. To pick one this month, I’ve plumped for Island, the bold project of Brandon Graham and Emma Rios at Image, a ‘comic magazine for comics’ offering 112 oversized original colour pages for the insane price of only $7.99. I have a soft spot for creator-driven/friendly anthologies and Island comes with that tingle, a bit like it’s 1974 all over again when the first Métal Hurlant was about to turn French comics upside down. As these latest PG Tips show, that revolution has not slowed down since and shows no signs of doing so soon… Read my latest column here…
Sonny Liew & The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye
Posted: April 25, 2015
Singapore gained its independence in 1965. Without doubt the most surprising and perceptive account of the five subsequent decades comes as a graphic biography of one extraordinary comics artist, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (Epigram Books, 2015 and Pantheon, 2016). At over 300 pages, this metatextual memoir is the most ambitious project yet by Sonny Liew. Read my profile about and interview with Sonny here together with his brand-new two-page comic…
From Tintin to Persepolis, Five Politically Significant Comics
Posted: April 24, 2015
To accompany Catherine Nixey’s cover-featured lead article about the goals and controversies surrounding the Islamic superhero team The 99, as featured in The Times’ Arts Section on Friday April 10th 2015, I was commissioned to pick out five significant previous examples of politically significant comics and graphic novels for a sidebar. Here are the ones The Times chose… More…
Meet The Authors of Pablo, A Graphic Biography of Picasso!
Posted: April 14, 2015
A gorgeous collection is out now from SelfMadeHero of Julie Birmant and Clément Oubrerie’s four-volume graphic biography of Picasso, entitled Pablo. Taking in Picasso’s early life among the bohemians of Montmartre and his turbulent relationship with his model and lover Fernande, this stunning book shows how the artist’s style developed in response to his friendships and rivalries and follows the artist’s career from his origins in penury to the advent of modern art.
Birmant and Oubrerie are guests at the London Book Fair, where I’ll be interviewing them on a panel discussion about ‘The Art of The Graphic Novel’, 4-5pm tomorrow, Wednesday April 15th, and then later that evening the two of them will be in a Comica Conversation at the Institut Français with me and signing their book. This is a free event but you need to RSVP please to book a place by email to: box.office [at] institutfrancais.org.uk - see you there!
This event is co-hosted by COMICA Festival, the Institut Français, SelfMadeHero and the London Book and Screen Week.
How I Got To Now: Paul B Rainey Interview
Posted: March 28, 2015
Over on Escape Books website, I’ve just started posting ‘How I Got To Now’, a six-part interview with brilliant British author Paul B Rainey. The first episode is entitled ‘Teatime On The Planet of the Apes’ and begins his travels and travails through comics, culminating in his graphic novel There’s No Time Like The Present, published in a handsome hardcover dustjacketed edition on April 1st. To celebrate this and hear Paul in conversation with Steve Walsh, come to Gosh! Comics this Wednesday from 7pm for the 25th Process meet-up - free, all welcome and followed by book signing. See you there!
Malcy Duff: Playing With The Rubble
Posted: March 22, 2015
Not uncommon in Japan in modern manga, the three dots of an ellipsis are used inside an otherwise blank thought balloon to convey a person’s innermost, inexpressible thinking process. In I Trimmed A Tree So A Lorry Could Pass (Good Press, April 2015), Malcy Duff takes those dots from balloons above his character who is brushing his teeth, then standing on his lawn, and enlarges them so they occupy a whole page. These three dots almost symbolise the Edinburgh-based artist’s own associative approach to stretching, deforming, even breaking the medium’s visual storytelling. “Narrative is a very dangerous thing”, comments Duff. “So it is gravely important we continually blow it to smithereens and play with rubble.” Read Malcy’s profile, interview and new two-page comic here…
