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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
My Two Talks at the 40th Angoulême Comics Festival
Posted: January 29, 2013
Life begins at forty, so this year’s 40th Angoulême International Comics Festival in France promises to be a lively four days, this Thursday to Sunday, packed with so much going on, you’d need to make multiple clones of yourself to get to everything!
As in previous years, I’m giving two 90-minute illustrated talks in French which you’re very welcome to. They are part of a programme at the Conservatoire Fauré, the music conservatory, in the Salle Gershwin.
On Friday February 1st, from 5 to 6.30pm, I’m talking about Les Trente Glorieuses de la BD anglaise, celebrating the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies of British comics, from Eagle to Misty, three glorious decades of innovation and excellence when Britain was an international powerhouse of comics publishing.
And on Saturday February 2nd, again from 5 to 6.30pm, I’ll be exploring the extraordinary life and work of Jack Kirby: le Roi des Comics, or to give it my title, Kirby - King with a Kingdom. This ties in to the 30th anniversary of Marvel’s The Avengers and will span from his Golden Age beginnings to his vibrant late works and private art, as well as coverage of the recent lawsuit by Kirby’s family and heirs.
Hope some of you can come along, if only for part of these talks of mine - merci beaucoup!
Article: PG Tips - Best of 2012: An International Perspective
Posted: January 27, 2013
As Barbara Streisand sung perfectly in Hello Dolly, “Put on your Sunday clothes, There’s lots of world out there.” It’s the fifth year of asking my friends from around the planet to pick out one or more of the very best comics created and published in their countries. For me, this survey always blows my mind to discover so much creative passion taking comics in all sorts of fascinating directions. I hope you enjoy these snapshots from that “world out there” as much as I do. And I’ve thrown in a couple of links to videos to show the sort of mainstream TV coverage comics are getting these days. Once again, I am hugely grateful to these global correspondents, many of whom also contributed to 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die. What amazing times for our beloved medium we are living through right now! Read the rest of this article here…
Still Time To Enter Adventures in Comics 3 Competition!
Posted: January 25, 2013
Marine Studios in Margate, Kent have organised their third comics competition Adventures in Comics on the theme ‘The Great Tree”. Mike Garley, editor in chief of new monthly digital comic VS Comics, will be their guest speaker for their First Friday evening event on February 1st, and he has offered to publish the best three comics submissions in his digital comics edition.
In light of this exciting news, the deadline for submissions is being extended to the 30th January and publication of the paper compilation of entries has been postponed until the 21st February to coincide with Margate’s GEEK2013 gaming convention. All entries will be on display at Marine Studios 1st February First Friday and this exhibition will move to the Pie Factory in Margate for February 16th to 24th 2013, where the public will identify the stories they think should win. These “people’s-choice” picks will share the winners’ podium with my own personal choice as guest judge and comics aficionado! And I’ll be in Margate for GEEK2013 to speak on comics and announce the results.
Meantime, you’ve still got time to enter - so have a go and best of luck!
Article: Remembering Les Coleman
Posted: January 20, 2013
I was very sad to lose my friend Les Coleman on January 17th. I’d known Les for nearly thirty years, since the early days of Escape Magazine, to which he contributed several incisive book reviews and a double-page article on Charles Adams. I also commissioned him to write for The Cartoon Art Trust News during the Nineties. We both enjoyed exploring and discovering the worlds of underground and alternative comix, small presses, cartoons and art in general - among others his tastes embraced the work of Robert and Aline Crumb especially, Pascal Doury, Rory Hayes, Julie Doucet, Joe Coleman (no relation), Topor, Siné, H.M. Bateman, Diane Noomin, Bill Griffith, Peter Blegvad, Glen Baxter, René Magritte, Ernie Bushmiller, Louis Wain, Patrick Hughes, Herr Seele, Anthony Earnshaw, Caran d’Ache and Mark Beyer. Sharing knowledge and finds, discussing artists and stories, debating comics and art and life, conspiring on projects, always made our times together a pleasure. Read my Tribute here…
Article: PG Previews March 2013
Posted: January 19, 2013
It may be winter outside, but spring is already in the air as we look ahead to an especially strong month coming up in March for manga, both retro classics from Tezuka and Mizuki and bang up-to-date releases. The long-awaited sequel to James Vance and Dan Burr’s Kings in Disguise arrives, as well as the first original graphic novel by underground master cartoonist Kim Deitch and the debut of S.J. Harris’s much-anticipated Eustace (above). Mix in some illuminating history and theory, some classic reprints from American strips and comic books, and several more appetising items and you’ve got a tasty menu to choose from. Dig in! Read the rest of my PG Previews for March 2013 here…
UK Gets New International Comic Art Festival!
Posted: January 18, 2013
Mary and Bryan Talbot, winners of the Costa Book Award for Best Biography for Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, the first graphic novel ever to win a Costa, are the founder patrons, along with Fatale artist Sean Phillips, of a thrilling new venture in Kendal, Cumbria. This October, for the weekend of the 18th to 20th, the whole town will be celebrating the very best in comics from all over the world at The Lakes International Comic Art Festival. I have to keep things secret right now, but I have been assured by enthusiastic Festival organiser Julie Tait that some amazing big-names will be coming. Put these dates in your diary and follow upcoming announcements via their website. Kendal is going to be famous for more than just mintcake!
Russ Heath Retrospective in Palma Mallorca
Posted: January 16, 2013
Some of the very finest exhibitions of American comic book art in recent years are being organised at the Casal Solleric in Palma Mallorca, Spain. You may have seen their spectacular English-Spanish catalogues for the late greats, Wally Wood and John Buscema, now made more widely available through American publishers IDW. The exciting news is that their next major retrospective will be a Flesh and Steel: The Art of Russ Heath from January 24th to April 7th, curated by Florentino Flórez Fernández.
Heath’s long career spanned Marvel (or Atlas) Fifties horror, westerns, jungle girls and adventure to DC’s gritty war comics, notably Sergeant Rock, and from stunning black-and-white tonal work for Warren’s magazines Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella and Blazing Combat (above) to latterday work including an issue of Marvel’s Son of Satan, a favourite of mine, to very recent commissions. Because best of all, Heath is still alive, aged 86, and has lived to see this celebration of his masterful artistry. Be sure to keep a look out for the accompanying catalogue.
With a major Roy Lichtenstein Retrospective due to open next month at Tate Modern in London, it’s heartening that one of the unsung artists who was appropriated by Lichtenstein more than once, most famously with Irv Novick on “Whaam!” (below), should receive a museum art show of this calibre of his very own.
Jim McLauchlin at Newsarama reported March 14th, 2011: “Lichtenstein’s signature work is titled “Whaam!,” an image of a fighter jet being blown apart in mid-air. As you might imagine, yes…it came from a Russ Heath story published in DC Comics’ All-American Men of War #89. The original sold for over $4 million. Hell, 1967-era prints of “Whaam!” have sold for as much as $23,000. Russ Heath is surprisingly not bitter. Or at least he wouldn’t be if he had just got that glass of wine.
“They exhibited it at the Museum of Modern Art when I was living in New York, and they invited be to come and be a guest for the opening,” Heath remembers. “But I was chasing a deadline. Couldn’t make it.” In a cruel twist of fate, “Whaam!” was later exhibited in Chicago while Heath was living there, and later still in Los Angeles after Heath had moved to Van Nuys. Each time, he could not make the opening night gala festivities. He finally called Lichtenstein.
“Before he could get back to me, he died,” Heath says. “Anything to get out of buying me a cocktail, right? I figure I missed a free glass of wine, maybe three if you count all the showings. Someone owes me.” “
You can read more about Lichtenstein’s “Whaam!” in my introductory essay to the Cult Fiction exhibition. To be more accurate, the main composition for “Whaam!” comes from the Irv Novick panel shown above, but one glaring difference is the exploding plane on the right. Looking through my copy of All-American Men of War #89, it looks to me that Lichtenstein’s plane is probably based on a different story, another panel, in the very same comic book, this time by Russ Heath : ‘Aces Wild’, page 3, panel 3.
I also suspect that the attacking plane itself on the right has been adapted from a third source as it is drawn quite differently and with the kind of detail and observation that Lichtenstein would not naturally introduce himself. I wonder - has someone identified the source of this plane in “Whaam!”?
Article: PG Tips Best of 2012 - The End of Literature?
Posted: January 13, 2013
It was a good year, a very good year. Find out my choices for some of the very best comics, graphic novels and manga of 2012 - including Angelman (‘Engelman’ in the original German) by Nicolas Mahler, my Funniest Comics of last year. Here’s a short video I shot at the Fumetto Festival in 2010 in Lucerne, Switzerland, in Mahler’s exhibition, where I activate a nutty Angelman Mobile of a fight scene with his artch-enemy Gender Bender, thanks to the application of a hair-dryer (angel pink, of course!). Read the rest of my Bests here…
Article: Nina Bunjevac
Posted: January 6, 2013
With a cat’s fangs, ears and whiskers, Zorka Petrovic, Nina Bunjevac’s depressive antiheroine in her comics compendium Heartless, one of the strongest debuts of 2012 published by Conundrum Press, is like some feline version of Minnie Mouse transposed into a feverish Rainer Werner Fassbinder movie. With her sad, hooded eyes exaggerated inside pools of mascara, she drowns her sorrows: ‘I’ve been roaming the earth all my life, neglected, incomplete, unable to fill the void… Alone in the crowd, a stranger amongst my own.’ Bunjevac empathises with the displaced, having been born in Welland, Canada, in 1973 but raised and educated in Yugoslavia, only to return to Canada at age sixteen to continue her art training, a year or two before the outbreak of the Third Balkan War. Read the rest of my new Article here….
Amazing Deal as The Phoenix Goes Digital!
Posted: January 4, 2013
Happy New Year and Happy First Birthday to The Phoenix! Britain’s brightest and best new weekly story comic launched this time last year, with all-new, all-original humour strips and adventure serials in crisp colour aimed at the 8-12-year old in all of us. A subscriber right from the start, I enjoyed the delivery every Friday of the next issue and collected my copies into the handy binder too.
And now, for their first birthday, The Phoenix has added a whiz-bang digital version of its new weekly editions which comes as an App you can download for free with a brilliant free sample issue to give newcomers a taster. Amazingly, considering the full-price print version costs £2.99 each in the shops, they are offering the next six months’ subscription to the iPad digital version, that’s 24 weekly issues, for only £9.99 - or $13.99 (that’s more than 80% off!) ! Needless to say I’ve subscribed straight away via this link at iTunes and have already downloaded this week’s edition, No. 53 (below), onto my iPad.
It’s a great jumping-on issue with the return of Pirates of Pangaea by Daniel Hartwell and Neill Cameron, plus a new serial by Nick Abadzis of Hugo Tate and Laika fame, entitled Cora’s Breakfast, plus all the regulars and my absolute favourite funny comic, Star Cat by James Turner.
Panel Nine have created the software for Apple’s Newsstand for iPad service, and they’ve done a great job adapting the whole magazine for the tablet, adding the clever option of a panel mode where you can read each comic one panel at a time, highlighted and enlarged for greater enjoyment. It reads like a breeze, really fluid and intuitive, unlike some clunk, user-unfriendly systems out there.
So what are you waiting for? Make it one of your New Year Resolutions to subscribe to The Phoenix - it also makes a perfect present that last half a year long! Don’t delay, though, as the massively discounted offer is available only for the first week!
