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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Learn To Create A Graphic Novel with Simone Lia!
Posted: January 12, 2014
If your New Year’s Resolution is to finally make that graphic novel that’s been buzzing around in your head or brewing in your notebooks, here’s a practical and informal Graphic Novel Course to help you make it happen. The brilliant Simone Lia, author of Fluffy and Please God, Find me a Husband! (Cape), is leading this course designed for anyone who would like to explore their own creativity and create narratives with words and pictures. All backgrounds are welcome; the workshops are suitable for beginners who do not have formal art training.
Four sessions will be run on consecutive weeks with drawing workshops that help explore creativity and story telling through sequential art. The sessions will help prepare students to write their own graphic novel. There will be a two week break after the fourth session to allow each person time to work on a fuller story to share with the group over weeks five and six. The next course begins on the 16th January, Thursday evenings between 6-9pm at Number 57, 57 Loampit Hill, London SE13 7SZ and costs £150 or £120 for concessions. Make 2014 Your Year to Change Comics Forever!
Article: PG Previews March 2014
Posted: January 11, 2014
Another New Year is underway and I’m looking ahead here to this coming March, when these brand new titles will start hitting the shelves of quality comics stores and bookshops near you. It’s always hard to pick one standout title, but I am genuinely buzzed that David Lapham is returning at long last to his first, and to my mind, still his very best solo creator-owned series, Stray Bullets, completing the story he left hanging, starting a fresh story arc and compiling all 41 issues into a bumper, back-straining Bible of criminal depravity. Back in the day, I was struck by his first issue as a massive jolt of creative energy, proof of a talented mainstream comic book illustrator suddenly proving himself fully capable as a complete author, writing and drawing some of most stomach-knotting modern noir graphic novels I’d seen. Bowled over, I wrote a fan letter about Stray Bullets #1 which appeared in his first letter column. Lapham is an exemplar of an American industry professional taking control of his career and copyrights and making the comics he wants, the way he wants.
I hope some of these tips will appeal to you as much as they appeal to me. Where possible, I’ve added links to images, interviews and info to tell you more. Join me through 2014 for another year of this ever-changing, ever-surprising medium in glorious full flow. And I can’t leave without a cheeky self-promotion for my own new book Comics Art which is coming out in the USA from Yale University Press. You can order it via your comics store using Diamond Order # STK633734.
Read all my tips for March 2014 here…
Article: Leo Baxendale
Posted: January 2, 2014
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The undisputed, uninhibited guru of ‘The Beano Spirit’, Leo Baxendale was credited by UK comics historian Denis Gifford in The World Encyclopedia of Comics as “the most influential and most imitated comics artist of modern times”. Generation after generation of British children have grown up with his hilarious strips and dozens of cartoonists have imitated his styles as they changed over the years.
It was sixty years ago, in 1953, that Leo Baxendale created Little Plum (above), Minnie the Minx and The Bash Street Kids while living in Preston. Letters were flying back and forth between D. C. Thomson, publishers of The Beano in Dundee, Scotland, and Baxendale, who sent them drawings of his creations from scripts, plots and storylines written by himself. By the time he moved to Dundee at the end of November 1953, Little Plum, Your Redskin Chum had burst out of the pages of The Beano starting on October 10th 1953. Barely two months later, on December 19th 1953, Baxendale introduced Minnie the Minx, and another two months or so after that, on February 13th 1954, The Bash Street Kids completed a hat-trick and triple whammy. Read the rest of my feature and interviews here…
Comics Art Wins Broken Frontier Best Book on Comics Award!
Posted: December 30, 2013
What a great way to end the year with the announcement today that my new book Comics Art from Tate Publishing (and next February from Yale University Press) has just been voted the Best Book on Comics of 2013 in the 10th Annual Broken Frontier Awards. Thank you to everyone who voted!
New Year’s Resolutions? Make Your Own Graphic Novel!
Posted: December 30, 2013
How about making one of your New Year’s Resolutions to make that graphic novel in you a reality next year? If you’re looking for inspiration, encouragement and practical advice, why not strengthen that resolution by coming to The Guardian’s Masterclass on How To Create A Graphic Novel on Sunday January 26th at King’s Place, London? Here’s a photo from the first Masterclass of (from left to right) me, Audrey Niffenegger, Pat Mills, Roger Sabin and Alex Fitch. I’ll be introducing the next Masterclass and Karrie Fransman, Toby Litt and Martin Rowson will be sharing their expertise. Best of luck!
Season’s Greetings from Tjavs & Tuff och Tuss!
Posted: December 23, 2013
At this time of year I like to look out some of the magical old comics I’ve picked up cheap while on my travels. Here are a couple of festive charmers from Scandinavia - two annuals by Ingvar from 1953 and 1938 starring Tjavs, a feisty Danish pup, and Swedish dog-and-cat duo Tuff och Tuss from 1954. Wishing you all the very best for the holiday season and a wonderful New Year to come!
Article: PG Tips: Best British Graphic Novels of 2013
Posted: December 21, 2013
This year kicked off surprisingly well for graphic novels in the UK with two Costa Awards nominations and one winner (Joff Winterhart’s Days of Bagnold Summer made the shortlist in the Best Novel category, while Mary & Bryan Talbot’s Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes won the Best Biography category). 2013 wraps up with graphic novels getting their first ‘Best of the Year’ round-up in The Independent, making Glamour magazine’s ‘hot book trend’ for 2014 and storming the British Library for next summer’s major exhibition. But do comics need this legitimising? Probably not, but it can’t hurt to cut through pictophobes’ prejudices and there’s little chance that cultural acceptance will tame cartoonists’ maverick imaginations, judging by this year’s harvest of titles published in the UK. Read the rest of my Year in Review here…
Comics Art Nominated in Broken Frontier Awards!
Posted: December 18, 2013
I am highly chuffed once more today, because my new book Comics Art from Tate Publishing has been nominated for a 2013 Broken Frontier Award in the ‘Best Book on Comics’ section. Far be it for me to influence your choice, but voting opened today and here is the link to all the categories!
Ellen Lindner’s The Black Feather Falls UK Launch!
Posted: December 17, 2013
Ellen Lindner, American graphic novelist, author of Undertow, is back in London this Thursday December 19th for the UK Launch for The Black Feather Falls: Book One at Orbital Comics, London from 7.30pm.
As I wrote back in September, this “... truly classy period murder mystery set in the Twenties ...by an American ex-Londoner, now based in Brooklyn, The Black Feather Falls almost reads like a love-letter to the London and Britain she misses so fondly. Her title is not a reference to some waterfall, but describes the feathery clue which drops from a Holy Bible. This is one of the few possessions of a down-and-out double-amputee, apparently a survivor of World War I, who is found beaten to death in Jermyn Street in London’s fashionable St James’s district. Witness to this horror is American optician’s assistant and our narrator Tina Swift. When the police dismiss the case as accidental death, Tina is determined to get to the truth behind it, with help from sensible stenographer Miss McInteer, whose boss has been sent a black feather and has now disappeared. Chillingly, during the Great War a white feather, a symbol of cowardice, was given to men who did not enlist.
“Sharply dialogued and elegantly designed and coloured, with a keen eye for period locations, manners and fashions, notably her passions for eyewear and knitwear, Lindner’s mystery entices and intrigues in the very best Agatha Christie tradition. Like me, you’ll find yourself hooked as it is serialised first online at Act-i-vate Comix and then in print in four parts by UK publishers Soaring Penguin Press.” Get your copy at this Thursday’s launch!
Article: Yves Chaland - Dreams of Spirou
Posted: December 16, 2013
The Beano, the longest-still-running kids weekly comic in Britain, isn’t the only one with an anniversary in 2013. Also debuting in 1938, Spirou, both the Belgian weekly and the titular hero in his red hotel groom outfit, celebrate 75 years this year. In the land of bande dessinée, Belgium really knows how to put on a birthday party and among the numerous exhibitions and publications (and plans for a theme park), one of the most intriguing items is Spirou by Y. Chaland. This affectionate and revealing investigation charts the deep passion of Frenchman Yves Chaland (1957-90) for Spirou and his long-held dream, ultimately only partially realised, of following in the footsteps of originator of the character, Rob-Vel (alias Robert Velter), and time-travelling back to become another of Rob-Vel’s early successors on the series, following in the footsteps of Jijé (the Hergé-like pen-name of Joseph Gillain) and André Franquin. Read the rest of my new Article here…
