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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Top 25 Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga: February 2020
Posted: November 25, 2019
The saying goes that there are two ‘mountains of manga’: Tezuka Osamu and Tsuge Yoshiharu. Unlike Tezuka, so little of Tsuge-sensei‘s oeuvre has appeared in any translation, so it’s a milestone that his masterpiece is finally released this month. And my other highlight from Japan is Asano Inio’s brooding reflections as he takes a break from his ongoing Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction. Read about these and my other PG Tips for February 2020 here…
Top 15 Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga: January 2020
Posted: November 4, 2019
Time to look ahead with ‘2020 vision’ to the Brave New Year fast approaching us and pick out next January’s most intriguing and promising new releases. We kick off with a suitably multi-coloured, multi-faceted graphic biography of the legendary David Bowie, illustrated with Pop Art panache by Michael and Laura Allred. Read more about all fifteen of my recommendations here…
Top 20 Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga: December 2019
Posted: October 6, 2019
This has been quite a year for comics and now it comes to a close with my final select selection of panelological pleasures for your consideration. How better to understand the human experience of momentous history than through those who lived through it? And those who go on to create graphic memoirs about it? Like Mawil who conveys his boyhood in Communist East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Or the late Frank ‘Big Black’ Smith who recounted the Attica Prison uprising of 1971 to writer Jared Reinmuth, who has now adapted this into comics form. Read more about these and my other twenty recommendations for December 2019 here…
Top 20 Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga: November 2019
Posted: September 9, 2019
There are lots of highly anticipated graphic novels coming up this autumn, but for me this all-new, 192-page collection of mirth and meditations by 85-year-old RaymondBriggs may be the most significant. Also new from the UK is Sarah Lippett’s second graphic novel, again a deeply personal, revelatory memoir. Read about these and more of my recommendations here…
Top 35 Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga: October 2019
Posted: August 12, 2019
Families matter, despite, or because of what they do to us. And family matters continue to provide some of the most affecting subject matter of graphic novels on the autobiography spectrum. Take a look at my 35 PG Tips for new titles coming into print from October 2019 - enjoy!
Top 40 Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga: September 2019
Posted: July 19, 2019
Our cup of comics truly overfloweth this month, possibly the most PG Tips I’ve ever selected - forty in all - in one of these listings. Major creators are releasing major works. Marion Fayolle tops my recommendations, joined by Chris Ware and the first episode of Craig Thompson’s 12-issue ‘maxi-series’. Read the rest of my suggested titles here…
CONTEST OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMICS FESTIVAL BELGRADE 2019
Posted: July 13, 2019
Announcing the Call for Entries to the 2019 edition of the CONTEST OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMICS FESTIVAL BELGRADE.
Application Deadline: AUGUST 15th, 2019
Address: SKC Happy Gallery, SALON STRIPA, Kralja Milana 48, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia
Propositions and Rules:
Participants are not age-limited
HIGH QUALITY COPIES ONLY, up to 4 pages, will be accepted. Works have to be sent via post office (e-mails excluded). Along with their work, participants are also required to send a filled APPLICATION FORM for the International Comics Festival Contest 2019 that can be downloaded HERE
Required language: English
Submitted entries can be previously published
Theme, style, technique and genre are free-choice
Page numbers should be written on the back of each page
Submitted entries will be reviewed for official awards, sponsors’ prizes and the festival exhibition.
(Works that propagate racial, religious, nationalistic, political, personal or any other form of intolerance; express hate, insult, bad language or in any other way disdain individuals, organizations, notions or entities; have propaganda of activities and ideologies related to legal entities, organizations, associations, movements, terrorist and extremist groups; contain pornographic content, will not be taken into consideration.)
Awards & Prizes:
Grand prix of the Festival (includes 1000 €)
Awards for the best traditional style comic, the best alternative comic, the best script and the best graphics
Special jury award for inventiveness
Awards in the category up to 15 years of age: Young Lion special award (the best entry in the category), Special jury award for the best idea, Special jury award for maturity and imagination
Special jury award for the youngest author
Sponsors’ prizes
Additional information:
http://www.salonstripaskc.rs
http://www.facebook.com/comicsfest
e-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Top 21 Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga: August 2019
Posted: June 2, 2019
Month after month, hundreds of new comics arrive on the English-language market, and it’s my pleasure and privilege to scour through them to find some intriguing, exciting, surprising suggestions for your consideration. Top of my list for August 2019 is Kevin Huizenga’s involving dual portraits of a married couple’s outer and inner lives in The River at Night. And these two highly praised and promising French bandes dessinées arriving in translation take the time to explore the ramifications of abuse and grief. Take a look at the new titles I have found for you this month…
Top 20 Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga: July 2019
Posted: May 5, 2019
For me the stand-out UK highlight for this July has to be Kate Charlesworth’s highly anticipated Sensible Footwear: A Girl’s Guide, in which she vividly recreates the often hidden history of lesbians in Britain from 1950 to the present. In sensitive wash illustrations, she evokes formative experiences of growing up in the North and the gradual realisation that she was ‘different’. And from the USA, we are being spoilt this year with not one but two graphic novels by Love & Rockets co-auteur Jaime Hernandez, crafting with real devotion some of the most compelling contemporary characters not just in comics, but in any medium. Read about these and my other PG Tips here…
Top 34 Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga: June 2019
Posted: May 2, 2019
More rich pickings this June when it comes to English-language comics, kicking off from Europe with a piercingly honest confessional by Ulli List (above) and an anthology of warped fantasies by the Bouncer team of Jodorowsky and Boucq (below). Read about all 34 of my latest PG Tips here…
