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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Craig Thompson Talks With Marcel Theroux
Posted: January 20, 2012
In case you missed the very special news over at the Comica Festival site or the small advert on this site, this coming Monday January 23rd offers you the rare chance to hear Craig Thompson speaking about his extraordinary and ambitious graphic novel Habibi, published in the UK by Faber & Faber, and to listen on his Comica Conversation with interviewer Marcel Theroux. This is Thompson’s only speaking engagement during his long weekend in London ahead of the Angoulême Festival in France. Click here for full details and the link to book tickets for £8 via WeGotTickets. Book now and meet and hear one of the world’s most thoughtful and powerful living graphic novelists.
1001 Comics Reviewed by Dazed & Confused
Posted: January 20, 2012
Great review just posted on the Dazed & Confused website covering the fab new guide I have edited, 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die :
Avoid pangs of regret over failing to explore The Secret of the Unicorn with Tintin whilst stepping through those blindingly pearly white gates by immersing yourself in this biblical guide to world-class comics. This supremely colourful compendium of all embracing genres features the finest and most aberrant works of sequential art, graphic literature, bandes dessinées, tebeos, fumetti, manga, komiks, strips and historietas, to name but a few. From a dewy-eyed Maya in the blissfully romantic Mask of Glass, to the bloodsuckers in 30 Days of Night, 1001 Comics traces our fantasies and nightmares that have eclipsed imaginations over the past two centuries.
It took an international team of 68 comic connoisseurs to present these 800 images that include the various guises of perpetually evolving Batman and X-Men series and the contemporary intricate designs of Craig Thompson’s Habibi. This brainchild of Paul Gravett indeed shatters preconceptions surrounding the capacity of the comic experience. Designed for any young whippersnapper wishing to discover the adventures of the fiercely close-together-armed dinosaur Gon, and also for those mature enough to wholeheartedly appreciate the erotic Italian allures of Valentina, it’s the niftiest escapism for any eyes.
How DO you judge a graphic novel?
Posted: January 17, 2012
This Saturday, January 21st at 2pm, I’ll be in at the University of Sussex in Brighton to host a lively panel discussion entitled ‘Judging a Graphic Novel’ with Hannah Berry, ILYA, Ian Rankin, Corinne Pearlman & Bryan Talbot, five of the six-person jury of Myriad Editions’ First Graphic Novel Competition (Steve Bell is absent as he is on his hols). Submissions were requested for between 15-30 pages of a graphic work in progress, fiction or non-fiction. Most of the seven shortlisted finalists will be there and will present and read extracts from their projects, before the panelists discuss the judging process.
The finalists are:
A Rat’s Tale by Adam Blackman & Dylan Shipley
The Black Project by Gareth Brookes
Dryland by Con Chrisoulis
Naming Monsters by Hannah Eaton
Amber Sands by Tom Eglington
The Enlightenment of Iwan James by Thom Ferrier
The Facts of Life by Paula Knight
Nobody will know who has won until the day itself, when the winner will be announced at the First Fictions Festival. Join me for this exciting event, and check out other comics events over this weekend with Bryan and Mary Talbot, Nicola Streeten and Nye Wright. You can book tickets via PayPal here.
Article: Zeina Abirached
Posted: January 15, 2012
Faced with virtually no opportunities to get her personal comics published in Lebanon, Zeina Abirached came to Paris in 2004 and was signed up as the first author of a new publishing house, Editions Cambourakis. Abirached is still haunted by her birthplace, Beirut, which is as much a character as a location in her four acclaimed solo graphic narratives to date. Born in 1981, she grew up never knowing anything other than civil war, but despite the fact that her family lived close to the divided capital’s contested demarcation border, she was somehow cocooned from it. Read my full article here…
The Graphic Novel Renaissance in Newsweek
Posted: January 9, 2012
I met reporter Maya Jaggi at last October’s BD & Comics Passion festival (returning May 25-27 this year) at London’s French Institute. Later she interviewed me at length to help with her extensive feature on The Graphic Novel Renaissance for the January 2nd 2012 edition of Newsweek magazine. She covers quite a lot here, tying it all in to the 25th anniversary of the first part of Maus in book form. She quotes me saying:
‘1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die, also out this fall, spans almost two centuries, yet half the entries were published after 1990. Its editor, Paul Gravett, says that after decades of being “stuck in genres and formulae,” comics have broken free. ... Gravett sees comics as akin to handwriting, “a very intimate, personal form, and a powerful way of synthesizing thoughts on paper. When we draw and write in an interacting flow, it taps into the unconscious - not so different from art therapy.” ‘
Be sure to read the rest of this well-researched state-of-the-artform survey.
Article: Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Posted: January 9, 2012
Five of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s emotionally wrenching short stories - ‘Hell’, ‘Just A Man’, ‘Beloved Monkey’, ‘Occupied’, and ‘Good-Bye’ - have now been adapted directly from his drawings into a new animated feature film. Tatsumi the movie premiered at Cannes last May, where a special Charity Gala Premiere raised funds for the relief efforts in Japan. It has gone on to win awards including Best Animated Film at the Sitges Festival in Spain and Best Film at the Dubai International Film Festival and opens in the UK on January 13th. Tatsumi is directed by the Singapore film-maker Eric Khoo, who skilfully interweaves the five tales into Tatsumi’s own life stories, as recounted in part in his acclaimed manga memoir, A Drifting Life. Read my full interview with Eric Khoo here…
Interview by Becki Burrows on ‘Oh Deary Me’
Posted: January 4, 2012
Just before Christmas, I had the pleasure of meeting blogger and multimedia producer Becki Burrows at a preview screening of Tatsumi, the powerful and award-winning new animated movie about Yoshihiro Tatsumi, the inventor of ‘gekiga’, a darker, more dramatic form of Japanese comics. Directed by Eric Khoo, it opens in the UK on January 13th. Becki has just posted this mini-interview she made with me on the night here on her website Oh Deary Me together with her commentary and links for the Tatsumi film, which I also heartily recommend you go see. And do check out Becki’s vivacious and informative Oh Deary Me website.
How/when did you get into comics and what is it about them that you find appealing?
It was TV that got me into comics first - Thunderbirds, Tintin and Batman shows led me to discover their original comics and from there I was hooked. I love how comics stimulate both sides of my brain, make me read and look at the same time and fill the gaps between the panels - and then the stories and emotions they create.
What is your favourite comic and why?
Impossible to choose just one! All I can give you is my favourite right now, this instance, which is a manga called Saint Oniisan [by Hikaru Nakamura, see ‘scanlated’ panel below], about Jesus and Buddha coming down to present-day Earth and renting a Tokyo apartment for their holidays, it’s hilarious and utterly original.
You’ve just finished editing ‘1001 Comics’ - tell us more about the content…
The first 500 entries cover more than a century, from 1837 to around 1985, the last 501 entries cover the last 25 years or so. That reflects how many amazing, innovative comics have been produced all over the world in these recent years. This is connected to the rise of women’s role as comics authors and to the medium expanding from traditional genres and tackling every subject you can imagine.
Do you think the traditional medium of the comic can survive the increasing desire for virtual reality… how / why?
Comics are already working brilliantly online and as apps, and at the same time we’re also seeing a renewed appreciation of the beauty of books as tactile objects, graphic novels with fantastic production and design, and the return of the hand-crafted. Comics are our oldest storytelling form… right back to cave paintings, so they can survive anything and will evolve as they have always done as technology changes.
What did you enjoy about the Tatsumi film?
I especially enjoyed the chance to get to know the man behind the manga and appreciate what drives someone to devote themselves to their life’s dream of making powerful stories in their own unique way. It proves the secret power of comics - one person, with pen or pixels, can make a reader react emotionally to something as ‘simple’ as motionless, silent drawings and words on a page.
Article: Grzegorz Rosinski’s Thorgal
Posted: January 1, 2012
Translated into more than twenty languages, including English through Cinebook, with sales soaring into the multiple millions, the Thorgal series stands as a highly successful and original hybrid of adventure, mythology and science fiction in its own right. The creative duo behind the first twenty-nine volumes are Belgian author Jean Van Hamme, famous for his best-selling XIII and Largo Winch thrillers, and the remarkable illustrator Grzegorz Rosinski. Read the full article here…
Two YouTube Video Interviews
Posted: December 29, 2011
Here are the links to two recently posted videos from interviews I was involved with this year that have shown up on YouTube.
The first is from the Bradford Animation Festival at the National Media Museum where I had the pleasure of talking with the brilliant American graphic polymath Richard McGuire.
The second clip is from an interview with me at FIBDA, the International Comics Festival of Algiers, by the great guys from LeJamMag where I talk (mostly in my version of French!) about 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die and where comics are heading. Happy viewing!
Article: PG Previews For February 2012
Posted: December 26, 2011
Hey, Happy Holidays and Condiments of the Seasoning to one and all! I’ve found some more glistening needles in the giant haystack of sequential art productions looming on the horizon of February 2012 (all based on publishers’ advance listings, although actual dates may vary), and not a single licensed property, computer game, TV, movie, toy or other dreary genre recipe tie-in among them, just that very welcome combination of originality, innovation and respect for creators’ rights and readers’ intelligence and taste. Read the full article here…
