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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Books To Read: Best Graphic Novels April 2015
Posted: February 15, 2015
Blimey! April is bursting with alluring releases, and here’s my cull, an attempt to narrow the choices down to a more manageable shortlist for your consideration. You might choose biographies, here of Pablo Picasso, Gavrilo Princip, The Smiths or Han Shan and Shih Te, two of China’s greatest poets, or a fanciful alternative past of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage.
Or if you prefer first-person autobiography, this month’s offering range from the classic naval gazing (sorry!) of sailor Sam Glanzman, to Israeli newspaper strip cartoonist Asaf Hanuka’s The Realist (above, from Archaia Press), recording life’s moments big and small, one page at a time. And of course, there’s plenty of ‘pure’ fiction and fantasy transporting you back to the American Civil War to very possible near-futures of overcrowding or rising sea levels. Take a stroll and a scroll through my A to Z of April’s absolute showers, and join me each month as we take a glance ahead together. Read my recommendations for April 2015 here…
Maurice Vellekoop: Cockadoodle - Erogenous Art
Posted: February 14, 2015
Following along the trail blazed by lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel in Fun Home and Are You My Mother?, Toronto native Maurice Vellekoop is gestating a combined coming-out and coming-of-age graphic memoir of his own for Pantheon entitled I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together.
Cockadoodle: The Erogenous Art of Maurice Vellekoop is a flamboyant new exhibition curated by Bren O’Callaghan (see his introductory video below), that uncorks the Canadian artist’s contribution to illustration, underground comics and contemporary erotica. It is Vellekoop’s first London solo exhibition with a wide selection of his erotic output on show alongside other work. All are welcome to the Opening Night on Thursday 26th February, 18.30-20.30, when acclaimed British comics artist and author Woodrow Phoenix will guide the audience around the exhibition, in conversation with the artist, Maurice Vellekoop. The exhibition runs from February 27th to May 2nd 2015 at Space Station Sixty-Five, Building One, 373 Kennington Road, London SE11 4PS.
Read Vellekoop’s profile, interview and brand new comic here…
Valentine Day Highlight: The Girl Who Tempted Me
Posted: February 12, 2015
“I knew Lola would cause TROUBLE the first day she came to the farm!”
In The Girl Who Tempted Me! Kirby with Simon subverts several prejudices many modern comics readers have about the romance genre. Roy Lichtenstein is a lot to blame for this disdain, I think. His paintings of jilted women gushing waterfalls of tears supports the cliché that all love comics were formulaic tear-jerkers, where weak women pined for boyfriends and marriage and showed no hint of real passion. Having read a few more pre-Code romance comics thanks to my friend Ian Rakoff, I’ve found that the best can be as raw and vital as the best crime or horror comics of the early Fifties. READ FULL STORY…
Richard McGuire In Conversation With Paul Gravett in the House Of Illustration
Posted: February 8, 2015
Richard McGuire is here. Here in London, with his widely acclaimed graphic novel Here released by Hamish Hamilton. I’m really looking forward to talking with him this coming Tuesday February 10th about how he developed, expanded and reimagined his original short black-and-white comic ‘Here’ into this full-length, full-colour graphic novel. Our conversation runs from 11.30am to 12.30pm at the House of Illustration at 2 Granary Square, King’s Cross, London N1C 4BH, next door to Central Saint Martins. And best of all it’s completely free, though you will have to email to reserve your place to: rsvp [at] houseofillustration.org.uk Hope you can make it along and there will be time for Q&A and book signing too. The wonderful Steinberg-esque photo portrait of McGuire above is by and © Sarah Shatz.
Best Graphic Novels of 2014: An International Perspective
Posted: February 8, 2015
Fasten your seatbelts as we traverse the planet for a second time and catch up with my amazing 1001 Comics correspondents from Australia, Belgium, Finland, Italy, New Zealand, Poland and Spain. They each pick their favourite graphic novels created and published in their countries last year (cover above from Quiet little Melody by Sebastian Skrobol from Poland). Huge thanks once again to these international connoisseurs for their discrimination and insight. How could anyone ever get bored with comics, when there is this much diversity and creativity enriching the medium all around the world, just waiting to be discovered? All you need to do is stay curious… Read this second part of the Best Graphic Novels 2014: An International Perspective here…
HETA-UMA & MANGARO: 40 Years Of Wild Japanese Graphics
Posted: January 23, 2015
Back in the post-hippy, pre-punk early Seventies in Japan, Yumura Teruhiko (above in a fashion advert) was the trailblazer of a consciously raw, hand-made and apparently craftless graphic style, for which he coined the term ‘heta-uma’, broadly ‘unskilled-skilled’, or ‘bad but good’. Rejecting the period’s empty polish and inhuman perfectionism, ‘heta-uma’ was a much-needed injection of Pop Art Brut. Yumura rejoiced in exuberant scrawling and collage, off-register colouring and Japanised English, often embracing yet subverting imported American ideals from romance comics or muscle-building adverts. Under the mock-Westernised pen-names ‘Terry Johnson’ or ‘King Terry’ from ‘Tokyo Funky Studio’ or ‘Flamingo Studio’, his covers and comics appeared in the monthly manga magazine Garo. Read my report and watch my video about two French exhibitions on underground manga here…
Peter Pontiac (1951-2015)
Posted: January 21, 2015
Sad news in from The Netherlands. The legendary Dutch underground comics visionary Peter Pontiac, pen-name of Peter J.G. Pollmann, died last night aged 63. Pontac should have been far better known internationally than he was, but his comics and graphics were published in Dutch, English, Spanish and Italian anthologies like Modern Papier, Tante Leny Presenteert, Wipe-out Comix, Cocktail Comix, El Vibora, Anarchy Comic, Mondo Snarfo and Puck Comic Party.
Pontiac was the special guest and exhibited at the HIU8, the 8th edition of the Happening Internazionale Underground, in Milan on May 17th to 19th 2002 (poster above). An interview with him ran in an underground special of the Italian magazine The Artist #5 in 2003. His comics were also translated into French along with work by all the other Tante Leny artists in the two-volume anthology Tante Leny Présente from Artefact in 1977 and 1979.
Over on Broken Frontier, there’s a good overview about Pontiac by Bart Croonenborghs from 2011. That year, Oog & Blik published a wonderful 368-page hardback in Dutch of his short comics entitled Rhythm.
His landmark graphic novel about his father’s role in the War, Kraut won the Marten Toonderprijs Prize in 2011. It was included in the guide I edited, 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die, but so far has not be put into English.Forbidden Planet International ran Wim Lockefeer’s commentary on this remarkable memoir.
To the end, Pontiac was still working. His final work, a new graphic novel entitled Styx of de Zesplankenkoorts aptly about death and dying, will probably be published in its unfinished or almost-finished version. Here is an obituary feature on the NRC.NL news site, and here’s a Vimeo video of him talking about his Styx project and showing pages in progress. In it Pontiac says, “If he comes and gets me, I’ve had him, it’s 1-1. But then the book must be finished. Otherwise it’s 2-0 and I won’t allow death.”
STYX of de Zesplankenkoorts from voordekunst on Vimeo.
Best Graphic Novels of 2014: An International Perspective
Posted: January 15, 2015
Comics is a Big World! All too often our terms of reference and our co-ordinates can be rather provincial and blinkered, sticking to what we know. This regular annual survey is one of my favourite features on my website, because it lets me learn about amazing comics I might never otherwise hear about. In several cases, this coverage below is the first, and perhaps only, English-language exposure these comics may get. So join these trusted connoisseurs, members of the team who helped me compile the 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die, as they reveal the best releases of last year in Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Serbia, South Korea & Sweden! The cover above (sans text) is from Korporativni pandemonium (‘Corporate Pandemonium’) by Zoran Penevski & Aleksandar Zolotić, published by Besna kobila in Serbia. Read Part 1 of this global survey here…
Dylan Horrocks: All Pens Are Magic
Posted: January 9, 2015
In his solo debut graphic novel Hicksville (1998), Dylan Horrocks envisaged a modest, perhaps unattainable utopia for his chosen medium in the eponymous remote coastal town in his native New Zealand, whose every citizen appreciates the wonders of comics. Hicksville’s symbolic lighthouse brims over with a Borghesian library of masterpieces, including unknown comics composed by Lorca and Picasso.
Horrocks soon found himself hired by New York giant DC to script, but not draw, commercial comic books like Batgirl (#39-#57, a 19-issue run, extract below) and Hunter: The Age of Magic (one mini-series and 25 issues), a dream ticket for some, but for Horrocks a nightmare he had to escape. “It almost killed me as a cartoonist. I was writing in a voice that wasn’t mine and felt trapped in other people’s wish-fulfilment fantasies. Eventually, I lost my cartooning voice entirely, and my lifelong faith in stories and art.” Read how Dylan Horrocks found his way back to comics in his new graphic novel Sam Zabel and The Magic Pen here…
Books To Read: Best Graphic Novels March 2015
Posted: January 1, 2015
Hello again and Happy New Year to you all, may it be your best ever! In fact, 2015 will mark the 10th anniversary of my website and to get things started here are my suggestions for the finest titles to look out for coming out next March. For my personal recommendations this month, eagerly anticipated by me, I have selected not one but two excitingly original graphic novels.
First up, after The House That Groaned, for her second graphic novel, Death Of The Artist (Jonathan Cape) sees Karrie Fransman up her game and take on five different styles, media and personalities, as she reunites with university friends to compare and contrast their creative hopes and fears. Here’s a sneak peak of the book’s brilliant die-cut cover and title page beneath to whet your appetite!
And then Behind The Curtain from SelfMadeHero is a joint graphic memoir by Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal, their first collaboration on a story of their own rather than adapting a classic. In it they relate their lives in communist Poland through a period of minor and momentous changes and challenges. My full reviews will follow. Meanwhile, details of these two intriguing, life-enhacing comics, and much more to look forward to, are laid out below for your delectation. Read my latest Article here…
