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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
What’s Paul Gravett Getting Up To Next?
Posted: June 15, 2012
Hi! I’m just back from interviewing Seth at the 5th Oslo Comics Expo (look out for an upcoming Article all about this), which was a blast, and meeting up again with Joost Swarte, Chris Ware, Jason, Marc Bell, Matthias Wivel and Fredrik Strömberg (above), among many, many others (thanks to Ulli Lust for this snapshot!). I am also back from curating Posy Simmonds’ first ever retrospective at the Belgian Comic Strip Centre in Brussels. I also took part in a Critics’ Roundtable on Robin McConnell’s excellent Vancouver-based radio show Ink Studs, discussing with Tom Spurgeon from The Comics Reporter and blogger Jog Mack such gems as Blank Slate mega-anthology Nelson, R. Kikuo Johnson’s The Shark King, Spain Rodrigruez’s Cruisin’ with the Hound, Derf Backderf’s My Friend Dahmer, Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? and Sempé‘s Monsieur Lambert. Go listen online.
So what am I getting up to next? You can catch me over this weekend, firstly on Saturday June 16thm at Foyles Bookshop in Charing Cross Road. I am joining their first Illustration Day as part of the Sketching The City Season. As well as a talk by legendary illustrator David Gentleman about his new book on London and ace demos by Karrie Fransman and Simone Lia, I’ll be giving an illustrated talk at 3.15pm on The Pleasures of Reading Comics. To come for the whole day, you need to book and pay £8/6 concs. for tickets, but to come just to my talk, there is no charge, so go ahead now and email events[at]foyles.co.uk and simply request a free ticket for it.
Then on the Sunday June 17th, I’ll be at Nobrow’s first East London Comics & Arts Festival or ELCAF at Village Underground, 54 Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, London EC2A 3PQ. I will be interviewing the brilliant French artist and writer Blexbolex, creator of Abecedaria and Dog Crime, who is launching his latest dazzling graphic novel No Man’s Land from Nobrow. I am really looking forward to our conversation which runs from 3.30 to 4.30pm - and admission to ELCAF is free.
And the following Thursday June 21st, I’ll be once more with the ubiquitous Karrie Fransman for the opening of her one-woman exhibition Experimenting with Comics at the Orbital Comics Gallery near Leicester Square tube. As part of the launch party from 7.30pm, Karrie will be talking about her exhibition, I will explore some of the history of experimental comics, and webcomics wizard Daniel Merlin Goodbrey will present some of his own and others’ digital comics experiments. It’s all free and may well help expand your horizons about what comics are capable of.
Hope to see YOU at one or more of these free London events I am participating in!
Article: Previews August 2012
Posted: June 14, 2012
The summer is hotting up with first-rate new releases on the near horizon. Major new, or newly translated, graphic novels are drawing closer from Zeina Abirached, Gabrielle Bell, Jeff Lemire, Rutu Modan, David Prudhomme, Rich Tommaso and Steven Weissman. On the strip front, offerings span from Peanuts-precursor and simply one of the most poetic evocations of childhood in all of comics, Percy Crosby’s Skippy, through to the biting satire on the music world in Savage Pencil’s Trip or Squeek from The Wire magazine. There’s manga old and new in Tezuka’s Barbara gem and new Anglo-Japanese collaboration Ketsueki. Add to that two different takes on childhood in China, Little Death visiting from Austria, and a quartet of strong new British entries from Blank Slate, firing on four cylinders and not a blank among them. Rumpy-pumpy never goes out of fashion, so one prequel worth your attention is Howard Chaykin’s return to his celebration of sleaze and kinkiness in Black Kiss 2. It’s a comeback with some reason to exist, compared to the dreary rehashes I am saving you from, idea-starved, loveless products of the bored-rooms of America’s comatose copyright-hungry corporations. Avoid, avoid these rehashes please, and instead boldly step into some of these more life-enhancing titles out in two months, more or less. Wonders await you… Read the rest of my new Article here…
Article: Posy Simmonds
Posted: June 3, 2012
As Britain celebrates Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee over this extra-long June weekend holiday, it’s a good occasion to celebrate our very own ‘Queen of Comics’, Posy Simmonds. Awarded an MBE, she was recently invited to a Royal reception for the Jubilee, one of only two cartoonists attending (the other being Gerald Scarfe). Over the past few months I have been collaborating with her to curate her first ever career-spanning exhibition. Retrospective Posy Simmonds: Essentially English opens on June 12th at the beautiful Art Nouveau, Victor Horta-designed Belgian Comic Strip Centre in Brussels and continues until November 25th 2012. I’ll be adding photos from the exhibition shortly, but in this week’s Article I’m presenting the texts I have written for the explanatory graphic panels, plus some sneak peaks at some of the treasures going on display. Read the rest of this Article here…
June Is Busting Out All Over With Comics Events!
Posted: June 2, 2012
June is busting out all over with some great comics events in London, across the UK and abroad. I’m involved with a fair few, so here’s some of my mad itinerary. I hope some of you can catch up with me at some of them.
First up, I am heading off for the first time to Norway and have the wonderful opportunity to interview the evocative Canadian graphic novelist Seth on Saturday June 9th, 4.00-4.45pm at the Oslo Comics Expo. Other international guests include Marc Bell, Tom Devlin, Jillian Tamaki, Chris Ware and Joost Swarte, so it’s going to be a fantastic weekend. I am also taking part in a seminar on a national centre of comics art in Norway, on behalf of Oslo’s comics library Serieteket at 11.30am on the Friday June 8th.
I’m jetting off from Oslo direct to Brussels next to put the finishing touches on the exhibition I have curated entitled Retrospective Posy Simmonds: Essentially English, opening June 12th at the Belgian Comic Strip Centre. It’s been a privilege to rummage through Posy’s drawers and collaborate with her to select some marvelous originals covering her entire career, including her earliest childhood comics and unpublished ‘deleted scenes’ from Gemma Bovery, for her first ever complete career survey. It’s on till November 25th, so there’s no excuse not to pop over to Brussels to see it!
Then the following weekend there are two great events in London. On Saturday June 16th Foyles Bookshop in Charing Cross Road holds its first Illustration Day as part of the Sketching The City Season. As well as a talk by legendary illustrator David Gentleman about his new book on London and ace demos by Karrie Fransman and Simone Lia, I’ll be giving an illustrated talk at 3.15pm on The Pleasures of Reading Comics. To come for the whole day, you need to book and pay £8/6 concs. for tickets, but to come just to my talk, there is no charge, so go ahead now and email events[at]foyles.co.uk and simply request a free ticket for it. Do come along.
Then on the Sunday June 17th, I’ll be at Nobrow’s first East London Comics & Arts Festival or ELCAF at Village Underground, 54 Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, London EC2A 3PQ. I will be interviewing the brilliant French artist and writer Blexbolex, creator of Abecedaria and Dog Crime, who is launching his latest dazzling graphic novel No Man’s Land from Nobrow. I am really looking forward to our conversation which runs from 3.30 to 4.30pm - and admission to ELCAF is free.
Don’t forget that Arvon Foundation are offering their acclaimed, intensive Graphic Novel Residential Course in Shropshire from June 25th to 30th with top tutors Bryan Talbot and Hannah Berry - if you’re lucky, there are still a few places left if you book up very soon. Otherwise, if you’re in London, drop by the Comica Social Club on Wednesday June 27th, the city’s buzzing monthly hub of comics connectivity on the last Wednesday of every month in the ballroom bar of the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank from 6-9pm or later. You can join via the Comica Social Club 2012 Facebook page.
As June comes to a close, where better to be that 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.
And finally looking ahead into July, I’m producing and presenting a Comica Festival panel at the Children’s Media Conference in Sheffield on Thursday July 5th, 5-6pm, entitled Reading Between The Panels: Comics, Kids, and Verbal, Visual & Critical Literacy. Joining me to discuss the validity of comics as a literacy catalyst and tool will be cartoonists/educators extraoridnaires Hunt Emerson and Jim Medway, comics scholar and activist Mel Gibson and filmmaker Russell Wall. It’s going to be a lively session ahead of the Stan Lee Excelsior Awards being announced on the Friday morning.
You know, these really are amazing times for comics, and I hope you can join me at some of these upcoming events. Say hello if you do. Enjoy the summer, come rain, come shine!
Article: Mark Beyer
Posted: May 28, 2012
Having been deliciously disturbed by his comics initially in the pages of Raw, I first met Mark Beyer in 1982 when he was invited to London for the comic art exhibition Graphic Rap at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Luckily, I had the opportunity to interview him for the second issue of Escape Magazine, one of the very few interviews he has ever granted. I closely followed Beyer’s work from his self-published titles like A Disturbing Evening (1978) to his Amy and Jordan strips and graphic novels and his forays into painting, but eventually I lost touch with him, apart from a 2003 exhibition at the Berlin Comics Festival.
So I was thrilled to discover at the ‘Off’ festival at this year’s Angoulême International Comics Festival in France that Beyer is making new silkscreen prints for insane Marseille publishers Le Dernier Cri. Head honcho Pakito Bolino kindly put me in contact and out of this reconnection have emerged a trove of unseen treasures such as these two pieces above (1976) and below (1978), a brand-new two-page comic for Art Review, and further answers and insights from Beyer about his uncanny, unique expressions, akin to ‘Outsider’ Art, in the fields of comics and painting. Beyer is back.
Arvon Calling: Graphic Novels Course June 25-30
Posted: May 21, 2012
The Arvon Foundation is offering its next annual creative writing for graphic novels course in the depths of the beautiful Shropshire countryside on June 25th to 30th this year. This time around, Bryan Talbot, award-winning creator of Luther Arkwright, Tale of One Bad Rat, Alice in Sunderland and Grandville, is joined by co-tutor Hannah Berry (Britten and Brulightly, Adamtine), with Mary Talbot (Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes) as the guest speaker. There are a few spaces still available (it’s been fully booked the last two years) so, if you’d like to do it, now’s your chance! Here’s a link to the Arvon course and also to the Arvon write-up which I gave of the course on this very site, with comments from Paula Knight and Kate Greene.
Article: PG Preview for July 2012
Posted: May 20, 2012
You know, if you can look past the largely moribund and regressive side of the American comic-book market with its stale tie-in prequels and sequels (this month, they are trying to fob us off with retreads of He-Man, Eerie, The Crow, The Saint, and Bloodshot, would you believe), I think you’ll discover that we are living in amazing times for comics. Each month brings another bumper harvest of significant works, whether long-lost classics reissued, translations from all over the world, comic-art studies, biographies and monographs, or brand-new original graphic novels. I’ve picked out these diverse print publications below for your delectation, all due in July, or near enough, and spanning British comics and bandes dessinées to manga and acclaimed pieces from Quebec and The Netherlands, a last major piece by the lamented Harvey Pekar, a little-known antecedent of the graphic novel written by none other than William Burroughs, and perhaps the single most expensive item I’ve ever selected, at one thousand dollars, a limited edition six-volume set of Robert Crumb’s sketchbooks. Hopefully there’s something to tempt almost every taste, if not every pocket! Read the rest of my PG Preview here…
Article: London Super Comic Convention - A First-Year Report
Posted: May 10, 2012
The UK comic convention season is now in full swing, following last month’s first Spring Comica Comiket Independent Comics Fair in London. This coming weekend, Cambridge hosts its first dedicated festival, CamCon with some superstar guests, while the Bristol Comics Expo bounces back, after a few rather compromised years divided between two limited-entry hotels, and reoccupies the spacious Passenger Shed at Brunel’s Old Station with room enough for all.
And throughout May there are more big weekend events to come in London, from the second Kapow! Comic Convention at the Business Design Centre, Angel, on May 19th & 20th to the Institut Français’s second BD & Comics Passion Festival in South Kensington from May 24th to 27th, as well as another gigantic London MCM Expo filling ExCel in Docklands from May 25th to 27th. So, keeping in the convention spirit, here’s my report from a brand new one launched in London earlier this year. Read my new Article on the first London Super Comic Convention here…
Article: Napoli Comicon Report
Posted: May 6, 2012
Spotlighting the theme of ‘Comics and Literature’ symbolised by a giant typewriter (above) with panels on the keys in the entrance, the 14th Napoli Comicon in Naples, Italy made some bold changes this year which heralded significant growth for the years ahead. After being held in Castel Sant’ Elmo, a titanic castle dating back at least to 1275 and overlooking the Bay of Naples, the Comicon transferred to three massive pavilions at the Mostra d’Oltre Mare down in the main city. The castle had included huge gallery spaces and a state-of-the-art auditorium, but presented some awkward transport issues, as there is only one road leading up to the castle, and only one going back down. Otherwise it meant walking up steep hills and flights of stairs. The remote venue also cost a lot to open to the public, so for most of year it is not used now. What may have been lost in this relocation in terms of prestige historic spaces was more than made up for by the capacious exhibition halls of the Mostra d’Oltre Mare, with the bonus of a large central outdoor space for a live music stage and for the public to gather and hang out. This relocation definitely worked, attracting on the Sunday April 29th alone as many people in one day as in all four days of last year’s Comicon. Total registrations reached 50,000 visitors, a new record, making Comicon a serious rival to Lucca Comics & Games, Italy’s granddaddy of comics festivals. Read the rest of my report here…
BD & Comics Passion Returns May 24th to 27th!
Posted: May 4, 2012
After its hugely successful debut last October, once again London’s prestigious Institut Français hosts a packed, star-studded festival of comics, graphic novels and bandes dessinées, BD & Comics Passion in association with Comica Festival.
This year’s line-up spans from the wildest reaches of heroic fantasy, in the worlds of Thorgal and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, to the cutting edge of politically charged graphic novels by David B. and Guy Delisle. With nearly thirty events including live drawing, talks, exhibitions, workshops, a drawing jam with cult chanteuse Mesparrow, and a dress-up party of Victorians vs. Decadents, this innovative festival will have something for everyone! And yes, every event is in English, merci beaucoup!
Join me on the opening night, Thursday May 24th, when I will hosting from 7-8.30pm a lively Reading Group who will discuss together over a glass a wine the remarkable albums of Iranian-born Marjane Satrapi: her powerful memoir Persepolis, as well as her bittersweet family story Chicken With Plums, and her account of women’s lives Embroideries. Tickets cost £5, and right after there will be a screening of the movie adaptation of Chicken With Plums, co-directed by Satrapi and not due for cinema release in the UK. For details and booking online click over to the BD & Comics Passion What’s On webpage.
After an afternoon of book signings, highlights of Friday evening, May 25th, include the prize ceremony for the festval’s two comics competitions, a drawing duo between Guy Delisle and Tom Gauld, and Jonathan Ross being interviewed about his love for comics and bandes dessinées. Saturday May 26th is the big, big day and night with workshops, films, signings, and another drawing duo between Jean-Louis Mourier and Luke Pearson on their shared passion for trolls. Add to this presentations by Pat Mills & Kevin O’Neill, David B. on his new book Best of Enemies, and Guy Delisle, winner of the best graphic novel of the year at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, followed by a drawing jam with French singer Mesparrow and a costume ball till 2am, and you have a stunning, unmissable programme.
There’s still plenty more to enjoy on Sunday May 27th, including a further talk by David B. on his use of dreams in his comics, a Masterclass with Karrie Fransman, a workshop for digital comics on iPad, and the first ever discussion in London by Thorgal illustrator Rosinski. I will be chairing a Q&A session with Nicolas Duval, director of the forthcoming animated adaptation of Régis Loisel’s dark take on Peter Pan, opening with the UK premiere of a 13 minute sneak preview, winner of the Best Short Film Award at the Paris International Fantastic Film Festival.
And this is far from everything at BD & Comics Passion, in fact there is so much going on, how do you choose? One solution is the great innovation this year of two super-value package deals on tickets, making the festival even more affordable. The Fan Pass gets you all five main events on Saturday for only £15, while The Addict Pass entitles you to an amazing ten top events over the festival’s four days for only £25! Book early to be sure of getting these bargain offers. Looking forward to seeing lots of you there!
