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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Interview Online at PopCultureHound
Posted: November 1, 2012
Chris Thompson has posted a wide-ranging interview with me from my earliest childhood discoveries of comics, through my involvement with comics fandom, starting Fast Fiction, working for pssst! magazine, then co-publishing Escape, to today and Comica Festival 2012, the 9th London International Comics Festival, whose stunning month-long programme lights up London from tomorrow night November 2nd.
You can listen to it online here and discover why my brother and I set fire to a cardboard airport in our garage!
Article: Comica Festival 2012 - Putting Comics First!
Posted: October 28, 2012
Among several hats, I wear one real favourite, as a co-director with Megan Donnolley and Peter Stanbury of Comica Festival. Together with some amazing sponsors, supporters and volunteers, we’re Team Comica, collaborating to make a festival that above all is about “putting comics first”. You can read an interview with me by Matt Badham from 2009, discussing the origins of the festival in 2003 and its developments over the years. In 2010, after initially being based at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Comica became independent and since last year has been set up as a not-for-profit social enterprise. This year’s 9th London International Comics Festival is without doubt the most ambitious yet. It kicks off next Friday, November 2nd for the rest of the month. So I thought this would be good timing and a good opportunity to discuss some of 2012’s packed programme. Read the rest of my Article here…
Dash Shaw Directs Animated Sigur Rós Video ‘Seraph’
Posted: October 24, 2012
Dash Shaw, American author of the graphic novels Bottomless Bellybutton, Bodyworld and the forthcoming New School out next April, all from Fantagraphics, has directed this atmospheric animated music video for the track ‘Seraph’ by cult band Sigur Rós. Take a look!
Seraph from Sigur Rós Valtari Mystery Films on Vimeo.
Article: Previews December 2012
Posted: October 21, 2012
Traditionally, December has been a somewhat low-key month for publishing, and as a result I’ve found no more than a Baker’s Dozen of my PG Tips to alert you to this time. Even so, there are some gems amongst this lucky thirteen, ranging in price ticket from a new comic-book mini-series co-created by a favourite of mine, Maxx inventor Sam Kieth, to Unearthing, Alan Moore’s collaboration with photographer Mitch Jenkins paying tribute to the other Moore of British comics writing, Steve Moore. In 2010, I saw Alan’s memorable live performance of this piece in the cavernous, low-lit Old Vic Tunnels under Waterloo station (photo above courtesy of Matthew Rees), so it’s great there’s now a more affordable available edition of its £100 boxed-set print-audio version. Also check out here some of the all-original graphic novels, reprints from the Golden Age and modern era, and translations from Europe and Japan. Read the rest of my Article here…
Article: Chris Ware - Building Stories
Posted: October 14, 2012
When is a book more like a game? When it’s a graphic novel that comes inside a boardgame-sized box and in fourteen different parts, from one-tiered, concertina-folded strips to giant broadsheet supplements. Instead of trying to squeeze a decade’s worth of his story’s diverse serialised formats into a single unified tome, as he did with Jimmy Corrigan (2000),Ware atomises Building Stories into a multi-faceted print object, adding unseen materials to fashion “something to hold onto” in our digital, virtual age. The puzzles start immediately on the box’s lid (above) with the title’s rebuses: the ‘B’ stands next to a bee; the ‘IL’ becomes Chicago’s state of Illinois; the ‘ding’ becomes a doorbell chime, all clues for what awaits within. So is the base of the box, which offers a cutaway drawing of the apartment building, the setting and occasional narrator of these stories mainly about its elderly landlady and her tenants - a couple whose childless marriage is crumbling and a single woman, who quickly emerges as Ware’s principal focus. You can take a look inside the box with me when I first opened it in the video linked above. And you can read the rest of my new Article here…
Article: Asterix the Briton
Posted: October 8, 2012
Asterix and Obelix come to our British shores in the fourth of their live-action movies, opening in France on October 17th 2012. Originally called Astérix & Obélix Au Service De Sa Majesté (or ‘On Her Majesty’s Service), it arrives in English under the title Asterix & Obelix: God Save Britannia on November 8th, in 3D and with Catherine Duneuve playing the British monarch. You can watch the French trailer below. This release is a good occasion to revisit how René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s best-selling double-act in France made the jump to Britain in comics form. Read the rest of my Article here…
Britain is Guest Country at Lodz Festival in Poland
Posted: October 4, 2012
Tomorrow I am heading off to the 23rd International Festival of Comics and Games in Lodz in Poland. Britain is their guest country this year and six major creators have been invited: Simon Bisley, Glenn Fabry, Melinda Gebbie, John McCrea, Dave McKean and Warren Pleece, so I’ll be in fine company. Other international guests include Igort, Brian Azzarello and Aleksandar Zograf. The whole programme is online here. I will be presenting on British comics for 45 minutes on Sunday at 3pm in Room 221 LDK (2nd floor) so hope you can get along. I’m really excited to discover more about the current comics scene in Poland.
Article: The History of the Comics Code
Posted: September 30, 2012
Near the top of the cover on nearly any American comic book from around spring 1955, you will find a strange little postage stamp containing the words “Approved by the Comics Code Authority.” For over first years, the “CCA” controlled what you were permitted to read in almost all comics distributed to America’s newsstands. So what is the origin of the CCA and how did it acquire this superpower? Read my latest Article here…
Erotic Comics & Censorship Panel at N.I.C.E
Posted: September 24, 2012
My Danish comics pal Henrik Andreasen sent me this souvenir snap of Tony Bennett from Knockabout, Melinda Gebbie, co-creator and artist on Lost Girls, and me at the N.I.C.E. festival in Kettering last Saturday afternoon. This was after our lively panel discussion and Q&A session about erotic comics and censorship, spanning from Crumb court cases to Crepax’s Valentina to Fifty Shades of Grey!. I’ll be running this as an upcoming Article on this site.
A very N.I.C.E. comics expo in Kettering yesterday
Posted: September 23, 2012
Reporting back from a perfect Indian Summer’s day of blue skies and sunshine, Warren Pleece and I had a great day at N.I.C.E. and sold almost all of the stock to delighted customers, both connoisseurs of his work from the days of Escape, Velocity, Crisis, A1 and others, and other who mainly discovered him through his work for Vertigo on Deadenders, Invisibles, Hellblazer, 20/20 Visions and more. It was a special pleasure to meet up with Russell Willis and Jamie Delano again, and big thanks to near-future Escape Artist Paul Rainey, creator of There’s No Time Like The Present, in development for the next Escape Book, for letting us share a table. Here’s a snap by Selina Locke from The Girly Comic of Warren mid-signing session, living the glamorous life of a graphic novelist with high-class catering courtesy of his co-publisher, namely me. You may notice my hand poised to grab the last few chips!
