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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Our Favourite Orb: Adventures In Comics 4 Winner!
Posted: June 23, 2014
For the fourth year, Marine Studios in marvellous Margate have organised their Adventures in Comics international competition, this time on theme of ‘Orbs’. I was asked to pick my favourite, so here’s what I wrote:
Orbs come in a brain-spinning diversity of spherical forms in these inventive two-page comics from hither and yon for this fourth absORBing, absORBant but not exORBitant compilation of Adventures in Comics. You might expect a fair share of crystal balls, and some ghostly manifestations, extraterrestrial life forms, magical sprites, alien motherships, royal and religious treasures and our own Sun and Planet Earth. But how about the eye of Sauron, goldfish bowls, a mysterious egg, even rockstar Roy Orbison and his eyeball?
The funniest of all may be a humongous ball of wool and the weirdest viewpoint or ‘camera angle’ must surely be from the inside of a bowling ball looking out through the holes as the fingers poke in! As every year, it’s agonising to pick just one overall winner with so much talent, technique and imagination on display and styles and stories stretching from the ridiculous to the sublime.
But the story that made me smile and laugh out loud and stayed with me the most was Steve Alexander’s brilliantly nutty family secret behind a forgotten British sporting hero, the world’s heaviest wrestler, Bill ‘The Orb’ Orbison (see below). Champion!
Steve wins a copy of the spiffing catalogue I have co-authored for the British Library’s exhibition Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy In The UK. All the 2014 entries are readable online at the AIC website along with their creators’ biographies.
Read The Blog At The Crossroads here.
