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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Article: Luke Pearson - Dull Ache
Posted: February 19, 2012
“I’ve got to get this stuff out somewhere.” To represent his inner muse, the cover of Dull Ache, a 2010 gatherum by young British prodigy Luke Pearson, shows a cutaway outline of his white head, swimming - perhaps drowning - in a stormy undertow of images and ideas. His brain is empty, save for a small, abstracted black skeleton with an overgrown skull. That skeleton is his mind’s eye and its dotted lines of sight project through its host’s eyeballs. Today’s Article also includes a preview of a brand-new two-page comic created by Luke for the next issue of Art Review Magazine. Read my Article and see this Strip here…
Article: The Best of 2011 - An International Perspective
Posted: February 12, 2012
Once again for the fourth year in a row, I’ve corralled some of my international friends and correspondents, many of them contributors to 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die, to reveal what they consider one or more of the very best comics published during 2011 by creators and publishers from their own countries. It’s easy to forget that there is a bigger, wider world of comics out there than Anglo-American or English-language material. So let’s head off around the planet, from Argentina and Austria, via Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Italy and Japan, to Russia, Serbia and South Korea, to discover the amazing comics being produced worldwide. Read this new Article here…
Interruption: RCA Visual Editor Exhibition
Posted: February 9, 2012
Last night I went to the private view in the Hockney Gallery at the Royal College of Art in London for Interruption, an exhibition of experimental sequential stories, most of them made into unique books by fifteen RCA students from diverse cultures (Poland, Mexico, Korea, among others) and studies, including animation and typography: Rachel Taylor, Giulia Garbin, Salt Tse-YIng Chiang, Cynthia M, Natalia Lewandowska, Anna Suwalowska, Miguel Angel Valdivia, Emma Rudge, Joseph Rudi Pielichaty, Yeni Kim, Lara Lee, Neringa Plange, Sophie Westerlind, Serena Katt and Phil Goss.
For many, this is their first taste of storytelling using still images, sometimes with, but mostly without text, and some using photograhs or even pop-up book technology. More or less new to narrative, the students all took part in the Visual Editor elective of the Visual Communication department. Andrzej Klimowski and Debbie Cooke set them the challenge of creating a story by requiring these constraints and contents: “An Interruption, A Female Acrobat, A Small Animal, and an Object from The Wellcome Collection.” I was invited in for a hugely enjoyable and stimulating day to watch each student’s presentation of their project and offer them some feedback.
Here are a few examples from the exhibited work, kindly photographed by Richard Doust (and to give you more of a flavour, take a look at last year’s Visual Editor on the theme ‘Panic!’). Go see these one-of-a-kind micro-editions for yourself. The show is on for free till Sunday February 12th.
Talk with Nye Right at Apple Store Regent Street, London
Posted: February 7, 2012
A week on Thursday, February 16th, from 7-8pm upstairs at the Regent Street Apple Store, near Oxford Circus in London, I’ll be in conversation with Nye (full name Aneurin) Wright, discussing his remarkable graphic memoir about coping with his dying father during his final months, Things to Do in a Retirement Home Trailer Park from Myriad Editions. The event is free, you just need to RSVP to editorial[at]myriadeditions.com
To give you a flavour, here’s my early review from my Previews article in December - hope to see some of you there:
I first met American-born, Brighton-based Nye Wright at last summer’s Hypercomics exhibition in London and discovered he was self-publishing this extraordinary anthropomorphic memoir about him and his father Neil. Now complete and issued as a handsome hardback by enterprising British publishers Myriad, it’s worth noting that the book’s title comes with an asterisked subtitle: ‘...When You’re 29 and Unemployed.” This of course refers to the author Nye, who not only portrays himself as a big, muscular, healthy, two-horned bull, but one that comes in cobalt blue (the same skin-tone as his rhino father). In fact, only some of the characters here are animals - owls bears, lizards - or in the case of Nye’s roommate Miguel, a reddish-brown chihuahua. The rest, particularly the women, remain human. Dividing the story into three parts, ‘Arriving’, ‘Settling In’, and ‘Moving On’, Wright offers 31 different activities ranging from pill-counting, learning about hospice and caretaking to, of course, drawing, which he does especially well, limiting his colour scheme to just blues and dark oranges with shades of grey. Myriad have posted some sample pages on their website.
The story moves back and forward through the years, charting the course of Neil Wright’s smoking and emphysema - described by one doctor as “like a train going over a cliff.” There’s wit as well as pathos here, for example when Nye is perturbed by being asked to give his father an enema, and his Dad responds: “You know what your Mother and I learned when you and your sister were born?” “That you can do anything as long as you breath through your mouth.” The sheer flexibility of comics allows Nye Wright to portray the impossible and visualise states of mind. So in one chapter, Nye Wright can fantasise about becoming a vengeance-driven Dark Knight-style superhero or ‘Authorial Persona’, seeking revenge on the literally capitalist pigs of the tobacco corporations in “the sleepy hamlet of Carcinogenia”. The ending, his father’s death, cannot come as a surprise but the route the author takes us on to get there is constantly unpredictable and compelling. At 306 pages, the result is a strikingly unusual and daringly inventive addition to the arena of autobiographical, reconciliatory comics by siblings about their sometimes difficult parents, and to the burgeoning field of ‘graphic medicine’ exploring in both frank and funny terms the real, complex impact of illness and death on the the whole family.
Opening Mary & Bryan Talbot’s Exhibition at Orbital Comics
Posted: February 6, 2012
I was delighted to say a few words of introduction to open Mary and Bryan Talbot’s exhibition of artwork from their new Jonathan Cape graphic novel Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes at the refurbished, white-cubed Orbital Comics Gallery, London last Thursday, February 2nd 2012. I was also able to introduce Lee Harris, Bryan’s first publisher, who launched his career back in the Seventies with Brainstorm Comix, to say a few words.
I’ve just discovered that video paparazzi Rich Johnston from Bleeding Cool and Tim Pilcher both filmed these speeches, from different angles, and have put their videos online. Go look and join us in toasting the Talbots’ brilliant first collaboration. Be sure to visit this exhibition, on till March 2nd, and pick up Dotter, which I’ve just reviewed it for The Independent.
Article: British Comics: A Cultural History
Posted: February 5, 2012
As I found when compiling the book Great British Comics back in 2006, British comics is a vast landscape which any single volume would struggle to map out fully and whose boundaries easily blur, most notably with the American comic book industry. The problem is that, the same few comics, characters and creators have kept getting the lion’s share of the analysis leaving huge areas languishing. Aside from the works of Martin Barker and Roger Sabin, James Chapman, author of British Comics: A Cultural History, rightly points out the paucity of scholarly research until now into British comics, which lags behind America or France and Belgium for example. Read my review of Chapman’s new study here…
See you in Margate for Adventures in Comics 2!
Posted: February 1, 2012
After the success of last year’s pilot, Marine Studios in bracing Margate, Kent have secured Arts Council funding to stage a bigger and better programme celebrating local, national and global comics under the sequel-movie title, Adventures in Comics 2. I’ll be there near the seafront for the opening night this Friday February 3rd and giving a free talk from 7pm to tie in with 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die. I’ll be asking, ‘Who are the Five Geniuses who Changed Comics Forever?’ Who would you nominate? I’ll share some of my candidates who appear in the 1001 Comics Guide and signing copies afterwards!
You will also be able to see the finalists of their 2-page-comic-challenge to create a story under this year’s theme: ‘Life Boat’. I’m really looking forward to somehow picking a winner or two. The standard looks pretty high to me. Here’s the short intro I wrote for the newsprinted anthology collecting some of the best entries and on sale for a mere £2.50 (see cover below):
“If you are looking for proof of the talent in the contemporary British comics scene, take a look here at the diversity and inventiveness of creative responses to what might seem the simplest of brief, namely to craft a two-page comic on the theme ‘Life Boat’. These selected entries to the Adventures in Comics 2 contest demonstrate an impressive variety of approaches, settings, genres, styles, media, layouts and interactions between the visual and verbal, from wordless, apart from graphic symbols, to highly textual.
“The assorted takes on the actual title range from the literal representation of an RNLI lifeboat rescuing an unlikely coupling of species or a Close Encounters-style mother ship to a lethal beetle or the Moon itself as the origin of life on Earth. Are you ready to be transported to a terrifying gondola plying the nocturnal canals of Venice or a beached armour-plated destroyer that was once a ship of death? In the imaginary storyworlds of comics, anything is possible, from a grassy backyard transforming into a stormy seascape to a park statue coming to life.
“Other contributors revisit and revise timeless myths. The Biblical tale of Noah’s Ark lives on in a desiccated dystopia, while Superman’s Kryptonian origin gets an illuminating twist. And others cartoonists serve up comic, tragic and tragi-comic tales of survivors, saved at sea from death by drowning, although not every survivor is happy about their new lease of life. So climb on board right now and set off into an uncharted ocean of vibrant graphic narratives!”
Adventures in Comics 2 also offers the chance to sign up for some great Inspiration/Perspiration Workshops in crafting your own comics with the brilliant Karrie Fransman, Merlin Evans, Chie Kutsuwada and Ai Takita-Lucas, and thanks to the Arts Council, they come at the affordable price of £10 each for a substantial session, usually 11am to 4pm. You can download the whole programme and link to the online booking form here with dates and details. Just complete it and email to Kam Rehal: kam[at]hkd.uk.com If you don’t make it to the opening on the 3rd, AIC2 continues till February 26th.
Article: PG Previews For March 2012
Posted: January 31, 2012
Assorted comics from as far afield as Austria and Australia, and from Japan, Italy, Germany, France and Belgium, as well as Britain and America, are among the temptations I’ve found coming up in March 2012 (all based on publishers’ advance listings, although actual dates may vary). Browse through my PG Tips and see what tickles your fancy. I hope you find this a useful monthly service to plan your comics-buying budget and stoke your anticipation for treats in stores soon. Read the full article here…
See You in Angoulême!
Posted: January 24, 2012
The 39th Angoulême International Comics Festival gets underway this Thursday, January 26th, till Sunday, under the auspices of Grand Prix winner and 2012 President Art Spiegelman. This is my 27th trip, my annual pilgrimage and I can’t wait. This year, I’ve been asked to interview special guest Eddie Campbell, whose collected Alec is amongst the nominees for the Essential prize. That International Encounter takes place on Friday, 28th, 11.30-12.30 in the Salle Bunuel of the Espace Franquin in the town centre. Who would have thought nearly thirty years after Alec began, including episodes in Escape Magazine and the first three Alec collections also released by Escape, that Eddie’s autobiographical comics would be recognised in France?
My other engagement this year is on the Saturday 29th, 1.00-2.30pm, at the Conservatoire Fauré, where I will be talking (in French!) about ‘le making of’ the massive guide I edited, 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die, which is coming out in French as the 1001 BD You Must Have Read In Your Life from Flammarion on March 14th to coincide with the Paris Book Fair. Here’s the cover and you’ll see that author and authority Benoît Peeters has written a brand new introduction, which I’ll be sharing with you in English on publication. Also French liaison and contributor to 1001 Comics, Nicolas Finet, with his colleagues, has revised the selection, replacing around 100 entries unknown in France with extra French entries, all of them fascinating gems of bande dessiné. Find out what’s missing and what’s been replaced. I’m also hoping to meet up with many of the 1001 Comics co-writers attending and share a toast to our communal achievement of this ambitious reference work as it spreads around the world (the Spanish and German editions are already underway).
So if you’re in the ‘International City of Comics’ in the coming days, do come to these events if you can (though there is so much going on, it’s a dizzyingly rich programme). And otherwise I hope we’ll have the chance to meet. I’ll be reporting on the Festival in full shortly. A bientôt!
Article: Current Comics in The Middle East
Posted: January 22, 2012
To this day, one measure of the freedom of expression in any society is how outspoken its cartoonists are allowed to be in newspapers, magazines and increasingly in book-length comics or ‘graphic novels’ aimed at adult readers. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi‘s memoir of growing up in Tehran and as an exile in Europe, and Palestine, a first-hand account of what trained journalist Joe Sacco witnessed in Gaza, are two best-selling examples published in the West.
The role of socially and politically engaged comics of this kind, through their techniques of reportage, autobiography, satire, and commentary on everyday life, has also become increasingly significant in the Middle East, where the medium has typically been confined to a juvenile audience. Censors may have tried to suppress them, but throughout the ongoing ‘Arab Spring’, new types of comics are also enjoying their own ‘Spring’ as one of the most accessible, low-tech ‘social media’ to spread personal viewpoints and protests. Read my full article here…
