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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Article: Reinhard Kleist - Cuba & Castro
Posted: September 17, 2011
Acclaimed for his 2006 comic-strip biography of Johnny Cash, Cash: I See A Darkness, the Berlin-based graphic novelist Reinhard Kleist was given an open ticket by his publishers to visit any country he liked to create an illustrated travelogue. He chose Cuba, Fidel Castro’s one-party state and last outpost of socialism. “I had strong, romanticised images of Cuba in my head but I wanted to find out what lies behind them. Is Cuba really like Buena Vista Social Club? Is the Revolution really doing any good for the people or are the ideas now corrupted?” Waking up in Havana on March 9th 2008, Kleist began an intensive four weeks of talking to people, sketching, writing and photographing, with help from his local friends. “My questions got bigger and bigger. And every answer led to more questions.” Read the full article here…
Soho LitFest: When Novels Get Graphic
Posted: September 14, 2011
This just in! The nifty new Soho LitFest at The Soho Theatre in Dean Street, London and presented by The Oldie Magazine, invited me to arrange a panel discussion on adult comics and I was lucky enough to bring together two outstanding graphic novel artists and collaborators with Alan Moore.
Melinda Gebbie‘s exquisite painted art has brought to comics a level of grace and craft rarely seen in the art form. Her career as a cartoonist dates back to the classic Underground era, where her work appeared in numerous comics, including the seminal all-women anthologies Wimmen’s Comix and Tits & Clits, as well as her own solo book, the sexually charged Fresca Zizis. A native of San Francisco, Gebbie resides in England and is a frequent contributor to Alan Moore’s projects, most notably as the co-creator and artist for the Cobweb character in the America’s Best Comics line. Sixteen years in the making, Lost Girls represents her life’s work.
Kevin O’Neill is the British comics illustrator best known as the co-creator of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (with Alan Moore), Marshal Law (with writer Pat Mills) and Nemesis the Warlock for 2000AD (also with Pat Mills). With one of the most unique and detailed styles in comics, he has deservedly earned an enormous worldwide fanbase. Very appropriately, the latest episode of LXG: Century is largely set in London’s legendary, sleazy Soho.
Come and meet them both on Sunday September 25th in conversation with me for an hour and then signing their books. And fingers crossed, there just might be a few of the very earliest copies of my new book 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die which I’ll be signing afterwards as well. To book tickets online, go to Soho LitFest, or better still, bring someone with you by phoning 020 7478 0100, quoting ‘publisher’ and getting two tickets for the price of one!
Article: 9/11 - The Past & Future
Posted: September 11, 2011
The 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America on September 11th has brought a plethora of media coverage through articles, books, documentaries on TV and radio and other artistic responses. When it comes to interpretations in comics, I already covered American Widow by Alissa Torres and Sungyoon Choi here, while this year America’s cartoonists are collectively confronting this subject today in their Sunday newspaper cartoons and comic strips which are also on display at MoCCA in New York and online.
Amid all of this in-depth, if not overwhelming, focus on what many claim to be an historic world-changing day, I’ve decided to look at two brand new comics, one a short 12-page story by Joe Sacco, the other a 118-page album co-written and drawn by David B. Two of the world’s most perceptive and original graphic historians have taken arresting and contrasting perspectives on 9/11 and its roots in the past and repercussions into the future. Read the full article here…
TeZuKa : Manga Meets Contemporary Dance
Posted: September 4, 2011
One of the comics culture highlights of this coming week, apart, of course, from my free fun-packed talk in Wokingham Library this Thursday September 8th on Favourite Comics from the Fabulous Fifties, partly a pre-taster of my imminent book, 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die, is TeZuKa at Sadler’s Wells, London. From September 6th to 10th only, the worlds of Japanese comics and Belgian contemporary choreography combine in an audacious world premiere conceived by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, with an original score commissioned from composer Nitin Sawhney.
As their website explains: “Cherkaoui explores Tezuka’s fascinating world, a blend of tradition, science fiction and contemporary reality. Two of Tezuka’s manga stories, Astro Boy and Buddha, have particularly captured Cherkaoui’s imagination in creating this new work. TeZukA will feature lighting and visual design by Willy Cessa and costumes by fashion designer Sasa Kovacevic. Tezuka’s original illustrations will be projected alongside work by video artist Taiki Ueda and live calligraphy by Tosui Suzuki. Using the dancers’ movements to trace the physical evolution of Tezuka’s drawings, from a line on a blank page to a single Japanese kanji (letter) to a fully-formed manga character, Cherkaoui will bring the ‘God of Manga’‘s philosophy, drawings and characters to life.”
For a preview, take a look at the above special behind-the-scenes video which shows you rehearsals and an interview with Cherkaoui himself. Both Cherkaoui and Tazuka biographer Helen McCarthy are giving introductory talks at Sadler’s Wells, free to all ticket holders. Don’t miss this extraordinary production. I will be seeing it for myself this Wednesday and will blog my review of it here afterwards. It’s yet more evidence of the thrilling interactions now being encouraged between comics and other artforms.
This Week’s Article: PG Tips No. 35
Posted: September 4, 2011
Sometimes a person’s most fleeting glance or micro-expression, a seemingly throwaway comment, simply sharing their presence, can become transfixed with significance, freeze-framed in the memory like a panel in a comic, always there to revisit and linger over. The visual and verbal registers of graphic novels seem well suited to pinning down these butterfly-like subtleties, as this selection shows. Read the full article here…
Draw Your Weapons: 50 Years of Commando
Posted: September 1, 2011
Only a few weeks after the Imperial War Museum London hosted Comics & Conflicts, a two-day conference and programme of activities around war comics in association with Comica Festival, tonight the National Army Museum in London has opened a 50th anniversary exhibition dedicated to D.C. Thomson’s pocket-sized Commando picture libraries. Britain’s favourite war comics were launched in 1961 and are still going today at over 4,400 issues, mixing reprints with brand new stories. You can even subscribe to them online for £110 per year direct to your door. Original artworks from classic Commando covers will be on display at the Museum, admission free, and there’s a programme of talks and workshops and a specially commissioned poster. For full details see the dedicated page on their website.
BBC World Service on Graphic Novelisations
Posted: September 1, 2011
Yesterday, The Strand, the arts programme on the BBC World Service with a huge global listenership, invited me in to discuss the trend for turning literary best-sellers, current and classic, into graphic novels, with a focus on Bloomsbury’s new adaptation of the best-selling novel The Kite Runner, set in Afghanistan. My five minutes open the show and which you can listen to here. I also managed to work in a positive plug for Rob Davis’s new laugh-out-loud adaptation of book one of Cervantes’ Don Quixote and a final recommendation for another original graphic novel set in Afghanistan, namely The Photographer, my book of the year in 2008, by Emmanuel Guibert and Didier Lefèvre (First Second).
Thinking Outside The Box
Posted: September 1, 2011
“Did you say Comics?” The Society of Authors in association with Comica Festival have invited Sarah McIntyre (Vern & Lettuce, Morris the Mankiest Monster, You Can’t Eat A Princess) and I to co-host a lively panel discussion entitled Thinking Outside the Box, to talk about all the new publishing opportunities in comics and graphic novels aimed at children and young adults. Sarah and I will be joined by some of the leading UK creators and publishers of young people’s comics & graphic novels on Tuesday September 13th, namely:
Patrice Aggs (Count Karlstein, The Boss), John Aggs (The Boss, John Blake), Sally Kindberg (The Comic Strip Big Fat Book of Knowledge), Ben Sharpe (editor of new UK weekly comic The Phoenix), Lizzie Spratt (editor at Walker Books) and Andi Watson (Glister, Gum Girl).
Go here on the SoA’s site for more details and to book tickets at £10. It’s a great opportunity to learn about how to get your comics from idea to proposal and finished book and find a suitable publisher. It’s also a chance to meet and network with some key players in this growing field, nurturing future generations of comics readers and makers. See you there!
Happy 94th Birthday, Jack Kirby!
Posted: August 28, 2011
Today would have been Jack Kirby’s 94th Birthday, so why not raise a toast today and proclaim, “Hail to the King!”
You can listen to the special Kirby live panel event I hosted with Charles Hatfield (The Kirby Collector), Jason Atomic (Hail to the King exhibition curator), David Hine (The Bulletproof Coffin, Detective Comics), Garry Leach (Marksmen, Marvelman), Ed Hillyer (Manga King Lear, Skidmarks), and Mike Lake (Forbidden Planet, Lakesville) at Orbital Comics in July, which is now available as an Orbital Podcast.
I also recommend you read Chrissie Harper, Kirby connoisseur and contributor to my next book, 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die, out in October, who has written an important, insightful posting commemorating Kirby’s glories on her blog today.
A visit to the virtual Kirby Museum is also a must.
You can also watch four YouTube movies I filmed as a video-guided tour, floor by floor, to ‘The House That Jack Built’, the amazing Kirby exhibition Dan Nadel and I co-curated for the Fumetto Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland for ten days in May 2010: Ground Floor; First Floor A; First Floor B; and Second Floor.
And then check out my own assorted Kirby articles and book reviews here on this very site.
Happy Birthday, Jack!
This Week’s Article: Anthony Earnshaw
Posted: August 28, 2011
To mark Anthony Earnshaw’s death ten years ago in 2001, his work is currently on show at Flowers East, London, and in a monograph The Imp Of Surrealism from RGAP (Research Group for Artists Publications), ahead of a four-month retrospective at Cartwright Hall, Bradford, in March to July, 2012.
Twentieth century comics, from Herbert Crowley’s The Wigglemuch and George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, to Peter Blegvad’s Leviathan and Tony Millionaires Sock Monkey, have been home to some distinctly odd critters, but previously unpublished examples from the late Eighties prove that Earnshaw’s Wokker has lost none of his essentially Northern English absurdist delirium. Read the full article here…
