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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Toronto and Glasgow Calling!
Posted: July 21, 2012
So ‘Where’s Paul?”, you may well ask! I am off again galavanting round the globe, first off to Toronto for the Comics & Medicine: Navigating the Margins Conference, where I am giving the opening address on the current state of this fruitful and growing genre of graphic narratives. I am also looking forward to interviewing Joyce Farmer about her life and work, and in particular her tender graphic novel Special Exits about the last years of her father and stepmother. I will also be signing copies of my books with Joyce and another guest of the conference, Joyce Brabner, and having an informal conversation from 6.30pm at The Central, 603 Markham Street, next to The Beguiling, surely one of the best, and best-stocked, comics emporia on the planet, on Monday evening, July 23rd.
My other stop will be Glasgow where I am giving a free but ticketed talk, Who Are The Geniuses Who Transformed Comics Forever?, related to 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You DIe and tying in with Sarnath Banerjee’s current exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Art, 350 Sauchiehall Street Glasgow, G2 3JD, on Saturday June 28th from 3pm. You can book via their site or by phoning 0141 352 4900. Do hope some of you can get along to this.
Upcoming: MKomix Comic Fair & David Ziggy Greene’s ‘Hung’!
Posted: July 19, 2012
Tomorrow night Thursday July 19th, 6-9pm, it’s all happening in Milton Keynes, when the MK Gallery, 900 Midsummer Blvd, MK9 3QA, host the first MKomix Comic Fair organised by local talent Paul Rainey, creator of the brilliant science fiction epic There’s No Time Like The Present. It’s a free event and spotlights an exciting range of independent comics creators, for one night only, including: Paul Rainey, Rob Jackson, Rol Hirst, Andrew Cheverton, Jade Sarson, Ralph Kidson, Rob Wells, Emily Brady, Peet Clack, Suzanna Raymond, David Ballie, Aisza Sowa, Decadence Comics, Jay Eales and Selina Lock, William Axtell, Sean Azzopardi, Karen Rubins, Amy Letts, John Maybury, Jon Scrivens, Ash Pure, Dan Lester, Ricky Miller, Richy K Chandler, Steve Collier and Laura Watton-Davies. Don’t miss this opportunity to experience a broad range of modern British comics as well as the extraordinary comic-art exhibition by Norwegian legend Pushwagner.
Then this coming Saturday July 21st offers David Ziggy Greene’s exhibition at Orbital Comics Gallery, 8 Great Newport Street, London WC2H 7JA, part of this year’s 2nd International Alternative Press Festival. Entitled ‘Hung’, it will include samples of his regular illustrated journalism work for Private Eye magazine (UK) and Charlie Hebdo newspaper (France), illustrated, gig reviews for Stool Pigeon music paper (UK), zine work for Tonton zine (France) and Fanzine Helban (France) as well as featuring comic book pages from his recently published book Nager Avec Des Chaussures published by Éditions Même Pas Mal (France). Plus there’ll be extra work from special guest French artists including: Luz, Julien Loïs, Besseron, Terreur Graphique & Gilles Rochier. The show launches from 7-9pm and continues till August 5th.
Article: On Eagle’s Wings
Posted: July 16, 2012
As part of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s programme in this Olympic year, celebrating British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age, a small related exhibition entitled ‘On Eagle’s Wings’ was presented in Room 74 on Level 3 earlier this year (above), spotlighting British adventure comics from 1950 to 1969, the lifetime of the seminal weekly Eagle). In five glass-fronted cases were displayed both printed periodicals, most from the V&A’s own collections in the National Art Library, as well as Eduardo Paolozzi’s Krazy Kat Archive and the Renier and Rakoff Collections, and some original artworks including four pages lent from Peter and Susan Hampson’s collection of Frank Hampson’s Road of Courage biography of Jesus Christ in Eagle. Read an accompanying article which I was commissioned to write for the V&A Magazine here.
Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto becomes Bongo Comic Book
Posted: July 12, 2012
The massive 40th San Diego Comic Con International is in full swing right now and among the surprise announcements already is this news from Matt Groening’s Bongo imprint of the comic book expansion of Coldplay’s 6-million-copy global hit album Mylo Xyloto, another unexpected music-comics crossover. Here’s the variant cover of the first issue in this six-issue mini-series co-written by Mark Osborne.
Junko Mizuno for Faith No More at Brixton Academy
Posted: July 9, 2012
Manga’s Queen of the Cute and Creepy Junko Mizuno has designed this poster for Faith No More’s gig at Brixton Academy, London tomorrow night, the third of her cool designs specially made for this band. The webstore to get this and other Mizuno posters from is Secret Serpent.
Article: PG Tips No. 36: New Graphic Novels
Posted: July 9, 2012
This week I’m running four of my press reviews of recent UK-published graphic novels, originally published in The Independent and The Times Literary Supplement: The House That Groaned by Karrie Fransman; Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes by Mary Talbot and Bryan Talbot; Things To Do In A Retirement Home Trailer Park by Nye Wright; and Please God Find Me A Husband! by Simone Lia. Read my reviews in today’s new PG Tips Article here…
Article: Joumana Medelj
Posted: July 1, 2012
Aside from Wonder Woman, Black Widow, She-Hulk, Supergirl and a handful of others, the superhero genre has traditionally been male dominated, and so too has the comic book profession. But since 2006, following the July War and her return from exile, Joumana Medelj, a young illustrator and cartoonist based in Beirut, has been creating a distinctly local superheroine of her own named Malaak, the first of her kind in Lebanon. Having grown up in the Eighties during the civil war, Medelj was eager to make her character neutral yet rooted in her country’s history and mythology. So she imagined an alternate reality in which her ‘Angel of Peace’ is born from a cedar tree, magically springing from the earth itself. “It is the story of a young woman sent by Lebanon’s ancestral guardians, the Cedars, to save their land from an endless war”, she explains. Read the rest of my profile of Joumana Medelj here…
Bournemouth and Sheffield Calling!
Posted: June 27, 2012
The weather outside may not be totally frightful, but we pass midsummer and the longest day, and June comes to a close, where better to head off than down at the seaside in beautiful Bournemouth? I’m taking my bucket and spade there and giving a paper on adapting comics into dance with a focus on Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s TeZuKa at the Third International Comics Conference, entitled appropriately Comics Rock! on June 28th and 29th at Bournemouth University. The first day looks at comics and education with David Lloyd (V for Vendetta, Kickback) and Steve Marchant from Cartoon Classroom, and the second day examines comics and multi-modal adaptation, with Ian Edginton and I.N.J. Culbard on the guest list. Come and join in this stimulating exchange between creators, theorists and readers at the cutting edge of today’s thinking about the medium. This is always a great meeting of minds and sharing of ideas.
And as we move into July, I’m whizzing off to funky Sheffiled where I am producing and presenting a Comica Festival panel at the Children’s Media Conference in Sheffield on Thursday July 5th, 5-6pm in Hubs C, entitled Reading Between The Panels: Comics, Kids, and Verbal, Visual & Critical Literacy. Here’s the blurb about it:
Comics are a prime source material and language behind many of today’s most successful movies, games and TV shows. But what is the verdict on whether comics can improve children’s reading? Is it all hot air or can graphic novels and manga really stimulate even the most reluctant young readers? And how effective are they not only for verbal literacy, but visual and critical literacy? Hunt Emerson and Jim Medway, top cartoonists from The Beano and The Phoenix, and Mel Gibson and Russell Wall, leading educators from Northumbria University and the Stan Lee Excelsior! Awards, announced in Sheffield on the following morning of Friday July 6th, share their expertise in this passionate multi-media debate, introduced and hosted by Paul Gravett, co-director of London’s Comica Festival. Discover the latest thinking and trends in the comics medium and its multiple applications.
Looking forward to both of these gatherings and to making comics connections old and new.
Article: Frederik Peeters
Posted: June 24, 2012
In the classic film The Third Man starring Orson Welles, his sinister character Harry Lime jibes, “In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” In fact, Switzerland can also lay claim to “inventing” comics thanks to the pioneering albums of Rodolphe Töpffer (1799-1846), a teacher in Geneva. Nearly two centuries later, the Swiss capital is home today to a thriving graphic novel community and Frederik Peeters is one of its most daring exponents.
To avoid becoming clichéed or overprepared, Peeters prefers leaping into the unknown with each fresh project, whether in his candid, compelling breakthrough Blue Pills (in English from Jonathan Cape), his unsettling time-warp Sandcastle or his forthcoming psychodrama Pachyderme (both from SelfMadeHero). Autobiography, science fiction, crime, surrealism - whatever the genre, this versatile Swiss graphic novelist sidesteps formulas to keep surprising himself as much as his readers. During a visit to London for last November’s Comica Festival, courtesy of SelfMadeHero and Pro Helvetia, Peeters discussed his career to date and things to come with me at a special Comica evening at Gosh! Comics. Read my interview with Peeters in my new Article here…
Article: Kapow! 2012 A Report
Posted: June 17, 2012
Even before I arrived at London’s Business Design Centre, Kapow! 2012 already started for me while I was on the tube getting there, as I overheard three attendees discussing the guests - ‘So who is Charlie Adlard?’ One of them mentioned not being on the guest list himself this year. Only later, I twigged that he was Angelo Tirotto, writer-creator of the rising British mini-series from Image, No Place Like Home. Tirotto was planning to give out copies of his cleverly horrific Wizard of Oz re-mix as his business card; let’s hope he gets invited next year. Read the rest of my report on Kapow! 2012 here…
