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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
10th Beja International Comics Festival in Portugal!
Posted: May 21, 2014
Here’s the spiffing poster for the 10th Beja International Comics Festival in Portugal, where I’ve been invited to join local and international guests over the weekend at the very end of May. I’ll be giving some talks and joining some panels, alongside exhibitions including a retrospective and tribute about the late, great Italian maestro Guido Crepax, with his son and daughter attending. Looking forward to the festival enormously, as there’s a new wave of brilliant Portuguese creators emerging right now, including London-based Francisco Sousa Lobo. Hope to meet some of you there and I’ll be reporting back here on my discoveries.
Article: Books To Read: Best Graphic Novels July 2014
Posted: May 10, 2014
Coming up in July 2014 are these wonderfully diverse and diverting graphic novels, comics and manga for your comics-reading pleasure. And the creative roster comes from far and wide: America, Austria, Britain, China, Finland, France, Italy, Japan and Singapore. There really is a whole world of great comics being made out there and available in English. Explore and expand your horizons! Read my PG Previews here…
Alternative Press Takeover Tomorrow!
Posted: May 9, 2014
What are you doing tomorrow? One unmissable comics event is the Alternative Press Fair who ‘take over’ the London Radical Bookfair at the palatial Bishopsgate Institute close to Liverpool Street station. Several comics creators and self-publishers will be exhibiting and participating from 10am to 5pm Saturday May 10th, and best of all, admission is free!
Comics Unmasked on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch!
Posted: May 9, 2014
I’ve been invited to join Tim Lovejoy and Simon Rimmer this Sunday May 11th on the Channel 4 morning show Sunday Brunch to talk about Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK, the exhibition I have co-curated with John Harris Dunning which is now running till August 19th at The British Library. Joining me will be Beano, Dandy, The DFC, Phoenix and Private Eye cartoonist Wilbur Dawbarn who will be drawing comics live and giving some tips to the presenters. If all goes to plan, we should be on live around 9.55am. Hope some of you can catch this, or catch up with it later on 4OD!
Comics Unmasked on BBC Breakfast News!
Posted: May 7, 2014
Thanks to John Freeman for this screen shot of my appearance last Sunday morning May 5th on BBC Breakfast News with Dr David Huxley to talk about the Comics Unmasked exhibition at The British Library.
First Graphic Novel Winner to be announced at British Library!
Posted: May 6, 2014
Myriad Editions have announced the shortlist for this year’s First Graphic Novel Competition and I’ll be hosting the exciting Award Evening with the finalists and judges in the Conference Centre at the British Library on May 23rd as part of the events programme for the Comics Unmasked exhibition. You can book tickets here for £5/£4/£3 - hope to see you there!
The Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition is a biennial competition open to all previously unpublished cartoonists, writers and artists. Following the 2012 success of Gareth Brookes’ The Black Project, the winner of the latest competition is announced at this special event in the presence of the judges, who include novelist Meg Rosoff and cartoonist Woodrow Phoenix. The prize is publication by Myriad and a week-long artist’s retreat. Check out the six finalists’ entries here!
Article: Comics Unmasked - A Curator’s Perspective
Posted: May 5, 2014
If you’re a comics collector, or historian-cum-hoarder like me, you may have invested in some rare collectors’ items enshrined in their ‘Mylar snugs’ or stashed away some well-thumbed copies in the attic, but who has the biggest and best collection of British comics in the country? It may well be The British Library, headquartered near King’s Cross in London, the official depository for all things published in the UK and Ireland and home to a major new exhibition Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK. Made of ten million bricks, it’s the largest 20th century public building constructed in Britain. And its surface buildings are merely the tip of an iceberg of printed matter, in five basements stretching like a multi-storey Batcave down to a subterranean 24.5 metres. Huge bound volumes of daily newspapers, weekly comics, monthly magazines and books of every description line their shelves and those in an even huger storage facility, their Fortress of Solitude in Boston Spa, West Yorkshire. Somehow they have to find room for 3 million extra items every year and counting. Read the rest of my article here…
Article: Comics from the Heart of History
Posted: April 29, 2014
The non-fiction graphic novel can make difficult histories approachable and unforgettable. In the follow-up to their 2012 Costa Biography Award-winning Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, Mary and Bryan Talbot join artist Kate Charlesworth on Sally Heathcote Suffragette (Jonathan Cape, £16.99), launching at The British Library’s exhibition Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK on May 2nd with an interview with The Observer‘s Rachel Cooke and premiere screening of the documentary about Bryan Talbot, Graphic Novel Man. While the three co-creators have grounded their account in thorough research and annotations, the Talbots choose to humanise the struggle for women to be granted the vote by showing key events from 1905 to 1916 through fictional eyes. Read my latest PG Tips reviews here… and watch the Talbot movie trailer here…
Comics Unmasked Promo Video Online!
Posted: April 29, 2014
Co-curator John Harris Dunning and Adrian Edwards from The British Library join me in this new video to introduce the imminent exhibition Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK, the biggest exhibition of British comics ever seen in this country, opening May 2nd and running till August 19th:
Article: Francisco Sousa Lobo - The Dying Draughtsman
Posted: April 26, 2014
Like a Kafkaesque ‘K’, ‘Francisco Koppens’ is the metafictional persona of the London-based Portuguese artist and writer Francisco Sousa Lobo (above in his photo entitled ‘Booby Trap’). Everything around Koppens seems to be dying: his marriage, his drawing skills, his job prospects, his body, his faith. For him God has changed into a bristly clownface, grinning from the moon or a pitch-black painting. With Portuguese fatalism, Koppens seems ready to end it all, but holds back because he can’t find the style or method to ‘write that goodbye note’. His solitary, secret compulsion is to draw comics telling ‘stories of sex and violence, where the hero undergoes a dreadful tribulation, at the mercy of strong women’. But these instil such shame in him that he draws over them, obscuring and censoring them until they become almost solid black, like a dark monochrome painting. Some of these strips he posts to the Pope, most he tears to pieces. The scraps where the corners of four panels meet form crucifixes, echoing the cross looming over the couple’s loveless double bed. Read my new article about Francisco Sousa Lobo and an exclusive new 2-page strip for ArtReview here…
