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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
London’s first International Alternative Press Festival
Posted: May 24, 2011
Spring has sprung! Those enterprising zinesters Peter Lally and Jimi Gherkin and a host of helpers over at Alternative Press have organised the first International Alternative Press Festival, an exciting London celebration of self-publishing empowerment and the biggest ever alternative comics event in the UK. Why not come along to their opening party this Friday night May 27th at The Miller, 96 Snowsfields Road, London Bridge, London, SE1, then a whole weekend of wonders, from a huge fair to panels, workshops, talks and more at the Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, near Holborn tube, admission just £2. This includes a special IAPF discussion which I am hosting on Saturday May 28th, 1.30pm, entitled ‘From Angoulême With Love!: International Alternative Comics’. In a passionate conversation, French publisher of Editions PLG, writer, curator and expert Philippe Morin discusses with me the growth over the last thirty years of fanzines, small press and independent labels around the world and notably as a vital part of France’s International Comics Festival. How have alternative comics evolved and where are they heading next?
On Saturday night, Orbital Comics Gallery one block from Leicester Square tube open the UK’s first ever exhibition of Slovenian comics, spotlighting the stirling anthology Stripburger and there’s an afterparty at The Crown Pub, 51 New Oxford Street, WC1, venue for The Comix Reader‘s monthly meet-ups (and whose issue 2 is due out!). Founded in 1992 in Ljudmila, Stripburger is a constantly innovative magazine which won the Angoulême Alternative BD prize and for nineteen years has been a unifying force in European and global comics, expanding the possibilities of the medium. Artist Gasper Rus will be over for IAPF and he’ll be at Orbital chatting with me and some UK contributors to Stripburger, including Nobrow artiste extraordinaire Jon McNaught, about ‘The Slovene Scene’, free on Monday June 6th, from 7-9pm. There’s a kaboodle of other Stripburger talks at Orbital and events elsewhere, all mistress-minded by Ellen Lindner and running through till June 11th. Get along to as much as you can!
This Week’s Article: PG Tips No. 34 - Obvious Impostures
Posted: May 22, 2011
At the 9th Annual Open Illustration Forum at University College Falmouth this March, on the theme of Metamorphosis: Interpretation and Adaptation in Illustration, acclaimed Lewis Carroll illustrator John Vernon Lord commented, “While every writer uses the same language of words, every artist uses their own self-invented language.” This is especially true when graphic novelists bring their idiosyncratic vision and personal perspective to adapt existing texts into comics. In the process there may be losses but also gains. Some great works of literature have been abridged too far, infamously those condensed into sixty-four pages at most in the much-reprinted American comic book series Classics Illustrated, which began in 1947. Once derided as Classics Desecrated, many of those primers and their modern successors should be viewed as works in their own right which also deserve credit for instilling in some readers the curiosity and courage to explore the unillustrated original. More recent attempts in graphic novels to retain every last word, for example when adapting Shakespeare’s plays, have resulted in some unwieldy, Zeppelin-scale speech balloons imbalancing the pictures. The Bard was not writing for this medium, of course. His unedited plays could still work in comics, if only enough illustrations and pages could be alotted to express them fully. Read the full article here…
CNN Feature: The Top Five Political Comic Books
Posted: May 20, 2011
This week, Nuala Calvi from CNN interviewed me from almost an hour about political graphic novels and asked me the select my ‘Top Five’ of all time, not an easy process to narrow down. The feature is online now so click here to find out my choices, read more about them and check out comments and favourites from other readers around the world.
This Week’s Article: Finnish Comics
Posted: May 15, 2011
This week’s article first appeared in Finnish on May 11th 2011 in the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. For those of you not fluent in Finnish, I’ve translated the article in to English!
Few countries have made such an impressive plea for attention and acclaim for their comics as Finland with the publication in English of the first Finnish Comics Annual. But do they deserve it? How do Finnish comics, or sarjakuva (serial pictures), really compare to the output of other nations? Fortunately, editor, journalist and critic Ville Hänninen does not attempt some generalised impression of the state of all Finnish comics today or stick to safe ‘Greatest Hits’ or a Top Twenty of Best-Sellers. Instead, he provocatively cherry-picks 33 stories by 20 “real virtuosos”, all solo writer-artists who do everything, born between 1958 and 1982, eight of them women. Cumulatively, they represent Hänninen’s perception of a rich seam in Finnish comics of “bizarre atmospheres and peculiar worlds”, of “realities where something is not quite right”, comics that can be “a bit strange, sure, but damn funny.” Read the full article here…
Upcoming Comics Events
Posted: May 12, 2011
There’s lots to look forward to over the coming week in terms of comics events.
This weekend, many will be heading to Bristol for the International Comics & Small Press Expo, whose highlights include American guest Rick Veitch of Swamp Thing, Bratpack and dream journal Rarebit Fiends fame, and Gary Spencer Millidge talking about his eagerly anticipated biography from Ilex Press, Alan Moore: Storyteller.
If you’re in London this weekend, support the fabulous fundraising event Aid for Japan on Sunday at The Conway Hall near Holborn, and there’s also the launch for issue 4 of The Zoom by ace 10-year-old Zoom Rockman at the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green.
And then next Tuesday May 17th, Nick Hayes has organised in Dalston a whole evening of delights to launch his excellent ecological update of Coleridge’s ballad as The Rime of the Modern Mariner, including the premiere of a live theatrical interpretation.
Hope to see some of you at these upcoming happenings and keep checking my Things To Do page for more dates for your diary or iPhone!
An Amazing Long-Long Lunch
Posted: May 12, 2011
Yesterday, I had an amazing long-long lunch of lively conversations with Savage Pencil, Oscar Grillo, Mario Cavalli and Dave McKean at The Union, Soho. Big big thanks to Oscar, Mario and Dave for the invite and scrumptious food and wine. Oscar is about to jet off to Buenos Aires where he has an exhibition of his drawings and paintings entitled Gente de Londres (London People) opening May 19th at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, with works by guests Dave McKean, Mario Cavalli and Matt Cruickshank. McKean has wrapped up his next major book collaborating with Richard Dawkins, The Magic of Reality: How we know what’s really true, out in September, and he’s looking forward to a very rare, well-deserved holiday driving round Scotland for ten days. And Mr Pencil is beavering away on secret wonders in his Streatham studio, whose fevered creation Mario is filming - more about this to come! As a souvenir, here’s a post-prandial portrait of us, taken by a stranger for us - thank you sir!
This Week’s Article: Jon McNaught
Posted: May 8, 2011
Renowned Canadian graphic novel genius Seth recently enthused: “England has produced another artist recently who has completely won me over, Jon McNaught. Two fantastic books in a row. I am an admirer.” Seth is not alone. A recent graduate from UWE, Bristol, McNaught is making his name as one of Britain’s most sophisticated poets in comics. A landscape printmaker, he brings the mark-making and colour-mixing of traditional lithographs and relief prints to the medium, refining each borderless panel in his square-in-square grids down to its sparsest elements and painstakingly drawing and separating by hand each layer of colour, typically black, grey, pale blue and sunset pink. His narratives are less concerned with plot, drama or action than capturing melancholic moods and ephemeral plays of light and shadow, connections and contrasts between the man-made and natural worlds, and the extraordinary in the ordinary. Read the full article here…
This Week’s Article: Street Angel
Posted: May 1, 2011
Welcome to Wilkesborough, a district definitely on the rough side of the tracks, and it seems aptly named after John Wilkes Booth, US President Lincoln’s assassin. Its streets, pavements, alleyways and dumpbins are home to an unlikely junior heroine, Street Angel. Like a lot of youngsters in comics, from Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne to Little Orphan Annie and Tintin, Jesse Sanchez has been orphaned and has had to grow up fast. She’s reinventing herself and her life, living by her own rules, finding unexpected inner resources and survival skills. Read the full article here…
Ideas May Blossom! More London Comics Events
Posted: April 27, 2011
As well as the Comics @ Sci-Fi London weekender at the BFI Southbank this weekend, on Sunday May 1st there’s also another National Collectors Marketplace jammed with rarities and bargains at the Royal National Hotel, and also please do support Egaku 2: Draw for Japan at Cafe OTO, 22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, where you can buy lovely drawn and print collectables all sold in aid of the Japan Relief Fund.
A few advance online tickets may still remain for Alan Moore’s Dodgem Logic extravaganza looming decorously on Wednesday evening May 4th at The Round Chapel, Hackney, with Kevin O’Neill, Melinda Gebbie & Savage Pencil among the illustrious guests.
On Thursday night May 5th, Nobrow Gallery over in Shoreditch unveil their latest exhibition by the gifted graphic storyteller Stuart Kolakovic, as seen in A Graphic Cosmogony, which goes by the intriguing title of Under the Damp Earth.
And then next Saturday May 7th there are celebrations for Free Comic Book Day with Lunchtime Signings, 1-2.30pm, by 2000AD Stalwarts Dan Abnett, Al Ewing and Robbie Morrison at Gosh!, and with David Hine and Shaky Kane promoting The Bulletproof Coffin at Orbital Comics from 5pm.
Always keep an eye out for lots more comics-related events in my Things To Do section, listed and linked for you, and please let me know any you hear about or are involved with.
This Weekend: Moscow & London Comics Festivals
Posted: April 26, 2011
One big weekend and trust me, I’m attending not one but two big comics events in two big world capitals! It’s a massive thrill to be invited to KomMissia this coming long weekend, my first every trip to Moscow, with much appreciated help from The British Council and Goethe Institut. As director of London’s Comica Festival, I’m joining Nastya & Heehoos from KomMissia and other comics festival organisers from Angoulême, France, Helsinki, Erlangen in Germany and Komiksfest in Prague to plan an exciting pan-European collaborative comics project entitled Respect, bringing together a team of comic artists to Moscow to create comics about tolerance and understanding between different peoples living together in our modern cities. British artists participating in this are Kripa Joshi and William Goldsmith, who both head out next in early May for six days to work together and complete this anthology. Meantime, this international guests coming to Moscow this weekend include Belgian visionaries , from Spain the brilliant Blacksad duo Canales & Guarnido, and Italy’s Western maestro Ivo Milazzo of Ken Parker fame.
Now if Moscow isn’t exactly on your doorstep, perhaps you can make it to the brand new comics festival in London, Comics @ Sci-Fi London, a totally free weekender of super-star guests, panels, small press fair and much more, all at the BFI Southbank. It’s all organised by the tireless Alex Fitch, who runs the unmissable weekly broadcast and podcast Panel Borders on Resonance FM. I’ll hopefully be jetting back to London on Sunday in time to join the afternoon and host the last panel from 3.30pm on genre crossovers between Horror and Noir with Hannah (Britten & Brülightly) Berry, David (Strange Embrace) Hine, Denise (Hellblazer) Mina, and Mark (Lovecraft) Stafford.
Hope to see some of you at one or other of these capital celebrations of comics!
