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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
John Morrow Launches Comic Book Creator at Orbital!
Posted: June 5, 2013
Don’t miss the chance to meet John Morrow, co-founder of TwoMorrows and publisher and editor of Jack Kirby Collector, who is in London for the first time this coming Saturday June 8th at Orbital Comics near Leicester Square. He’ll be in conversation with writer and JKC columnist Barry Forshaw and artist Jason Atomic, curator of the ‘Hail to the King’ exhibition.
Morrow and the panel, chaired by Chris Thompson, will discuss Kirby and other great artists and writers, as well as launching the new TwoMorrows magazine Comic Book Creator, whose debut issue cover-features ‘Kirby’s Kingdom’ (above). Click here to read a preview! Come along to this fun, informative and free discussion which kicks off at 7pm.
My UK Comics Talk This Saturday at Strasbulles Festival!
Posted: June 4, 2013
I’m looking forward to visiting this year’s 6th Strasbulles European Comics Festival in Strasbourg, France, where I’ve been invited to talk about the current creative scene in British comics. This Friday, June 7th at 11am, I’ll be lecturing in French and projecting loads of images and info, spreading the word about what is happening in graphic novels and more in this country. If you’re around, do come along, it’s at the Librairie Kleber bookshop as part of a day of talks about comics.
Article: Junko Mizuno - Crazy In A Good Way
Posted: June 4, 2013
In 2005, Milk Gallery in New York invited Japanese artist Junko Mizuno to join photographer Annie Leibovitz, fashion designer Betsey Johnson and others to participate in The Pony Project. Mizuno recalls, “Every artist was provided with a huge, blank My Little Pony toy for them to customise. I made mine into ‘Witch Pony’ wearing a black hooded cape.” Her sinister twist to the sugary-sweet girls’ craze encapsulates her distinctive blending of ‘kawaii’, the cult of cute in Japan, with the macabre and erotic. Read the rest of my Article and Junko’s new two-page comic here…
Article: Sequential App: Interview with Russell Willis
Posted: May 28, 2013
In this digital age, the comics medium is transforming again and more rapidly than ever before. This week, Sequential, an innovative, game-changing app for iPad, is launched in the UK and Ireland. Its initial line-up of titles is really strong with outstanding graphic novels by the likes of Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell, David Lloyd, Brian Bolland, Hunt Emerson, Gilbert Shelton, Nick Abadzis, Terry Wiley and Darryl Cunningham, with many new titles coming into the store every week. The initial range included Dapper John: In the Days of the Ace Rock and Roll Club by Campbell, the crime thriller Kickback by Lloyd, and the bumper compilation of The Certified Hunt Emerson.
Last month in London, Sequential’s energetic publisher-entrepreneur, Tokyo-based Russell Willis (above), joined me and several of the creators he is publishing to present an exclusive UK preview at Comica Festival at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design (you can watch Rich Johnston’s two short YouTube videos from that evening below). Today, I caught up again with Russell back in Japan, now that his much-anticipated Sequential app finally goes on sale via the iTunes Store. Read my interview here…
Cannes Palme d’Or to Movie of ‘Blue Is The Warmest Colour’
Posted: May 26, 2013
In 2011, visitors to the Angoulême International Comics Festival chose Julie Maroh’s moving 156-page graphic novel about young lesbian lovers, Le bleu est une couleur chaude (‘Blue is the warmest colour’) from Glénat editions, as the Public Prize. Today, the 66th Cannes Film Festival awarded the live-action film adaptation by Abdellatif Kechiche, retitled in France as La vie d’Adèle, as this year’s Palme d’Or winner. In a first, Kechiche’s two actresses Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux also won top awards. You can see a clip here.
Described as Chapters 1 7 2, the film covers and expands on the first half of the graphic novel, with presumably Chapters 3 & 4 to come and complete the story. Once again, as with Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, a remarkable graphic novel becomes the source of a remarkable film. So who will be releasing Maroh’s book in English, I wonder? Expect a bidding war for the rights now!
Posy Simmonds’ Sketchbooks Online at The Guardian
Posted: May 25, 2013
In the first in a series of artists, Posy Simmonds has allowed The Guardian online to take a peek through her sketchbooks. Listen in as she talks through some of her pages with Becky Barnicoat and explains why Princess Diana had exactly the come-hither eyes she was looking for to model Gemma Bovery.
Posy will be drawing live together with French guest artist Étienne Davodeau, author of The Initiates (NBM) at BD & Comics Passion in association with Comica Festival next Saturday June 1st. Don’t miss this - a few tickets are still available here!
Vimeo Video of My Kosmopolis Festival Talk in Barcelona
Posted: May 22, 2013
KOSMOPOLIS 2013 // Llenços infinits. Còmics del segle XXI. Paul Gravett (VO En) from CCCB on Vimeo.
The stimulating, innovative literary festival Kosmopolis held in March at the CCCB in Barcelona have just posted the complete one-hour presentation I gave there about 21st Century British Comics. The flattering but lengthy introduction by Javier Calvo is in Spanish but fast forward about seven minutes and you’ll get to the start of my rather frenetic but hopefully informative overview of GB Comics today. The video seems a bit dodgy tho, so you might want to just listen! And muchas gracias again to Kosmopolis and The British Council for inviting me and Karrie Fransman, Dave McKean, Paul Rainey and Peter Stanbury, it was truly inspiring.
I’ll be giving another version of this talk (in French this time) at the Strasbulles European Comics Festival in Strasbourg, France at 3pm Saturday June 8th, hope to see some of you there!
Deadline June 14th for Animate Europe Comics Entries!
Posted: May 22, 2013
There’s still time left to enter your proposal for the Animate Europe International Comics Competition. The Brussels office of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom has put out the call for seven graphic short stories on “Europe”. The competition will be carried out in two phases. Phase I will select seven finalists. Professional and amateur comic artists are invited to send in the first two pages of their graphic short story as well as a summary of the story in text form. Entry deadline is Friday, June 14, 2013.
I am among the judges on an international jury who will nominate seven finalists. The finalists are invited to complete their graphic short story of up to eight pages. Each participant will receive a contribution of 500€ for their complete picture story. Entry deadline for the complete picture story is Friday, November 15, 2013. Out of the seven finalists the jury will choose the first prize winner. The contributions of all finalists will be presented to the public during an event including a press conference on Tuesday, 3 December 2013 at the Belgian Comic Strip Centre in Brussels, and the best comics will be published.
So how do you enter? What are they looking for? Here’s some introductory info:
“Who doesn’t know him? Asterix the Gaul who rebelled against the Romans and in his adventures travelled all over Europe. He brought the tea across the Channel, relished Belgian Waterzooi and enjoyed Greek wine. A true European avant la lettre! Other comic strip heroes aren’t much impressed by barriers, be they geographical or mental either. Europe has an eventful past – what does its future look like? Do we even need a European “super hero” to rescue the Union? What do you foresee for Europe?”
Have a go and good luck!
Article: BD & Comics Passion
Posted: May 21, 2013
No matter how much you think you know about any subject, there’s always more to learn and all of us are really ‘Initiates’ who can either stay in our comfort zones or consciously decide to keep an open mind and keep on discovering. If you’re curious, ready for something different in your comics reading, and want to explore contemporary comics culture from both side of the Channel, there are few better, or more cool and convivial, ways than visiting BD & Comics Passion at the Institut Français in London. This third annual long weekender celebrates the very finest in British and French graphic novels, once again in association with Comica Festival.
Among the guests, both Étienne Davodeau and Marc-Antoine Mathieu are coming over. Matthieu has had two books in English already, the allegorical Dead Memory from Dark Horse and in The Museum Vaults, a commission from the Louvre Museum no less, from NBM. Mathieu is over on Saturday to talk about his latest translated book, 3” (below), his audacious new graphic novel experiment, launching in English from Jonathan Cape in print and digital versions of a high-velocity whodunnit which lasts an intense three seconds! Are you eagle-eyed enough to solve this mind-expanding mystery? Read the rest of my latest Article here…
Panels at Image Duplicator Show & London LitFest!
Posted: May 19, 2013
I’m looking forward this coming week to being involved in two lively panel discussions of comics and their relationships with art and with literature. This Thursday May 23rd from 7.30pm, as part of the Image Duplicator exhibition on show at the Orbital Comics Gallery, I am joining artists and exhibition co-curators Jason Atomic and Rian Hughes and A&D Gallery director Daniel Brant to discuss the Roy Lichtenstein Controversy and consider whether, and if so when, it is appropriate to ‘appropriate’ popular culture, in particular comics, in art. Come and join in the debate- and yes, it’s free!
And then on Sunday May 26th at 2pm, I am off to the Purcell Room on London’s South Bank to chair Drawing The Story with Mary Talbot, writer and co-author with Bryan Talbot of the Costa Biography prize-winning graphic biography, Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, Glyn Dillon, creator of The Nao of Brown (above), and Stephen Collins, cartoonist for The Guardian and author of the excellent debut graphic novel The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil. We’ll be discussing comics status and potential in literature and beyond. Tickets cost £10, hope to see you there!
