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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS


Article: Comics Art - My New Book from Tate/Yale

Posted: November 10, 2013

I am a bit chuffed, because my brand-new book Comics Art (cover above by Joost Swarte, a detail from his cover to Raw Vol 1, No. 2, coloured by Françoise Mouly) is being launched on November 9th from 6.30-8.30pm at Foyles (the American edition of Comics Art is being published in February 2014 by Yale University Press). I chaired a Comica Conversation with five cutting-edge British innovators who are all illustrated and discussed in the book: Gareth Brookes, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, Katie Green, John Miers and Woodrow Phoenix (snap courtesy of Corinne Pearlman below).

Comics Art joins a prestigious list of accessible introductory studies from Tate Publishing, the ‘Contemporary Art’ series, all with the word ‘Art’ in their title (eg. Land Art, Street Art, Design Art, Installation Art etc). It was originally going to be titled Comic Art, but this term had been already used by Tate Britain in the subtitle of their 2010 exhibition Rude Britannia, looking at humour in British visual arts, including comics from H.M. Bateman and Leo Baxendale to Viz. I was brought in as a consultant for this show and wrote this essay for the catalogue, which in turn led to this Tate commision for Comics Art. It’s one of the perennial problems in the English language that ‘comics’ strongly implies comedy. To perhaps sidestep this, Peter Stanbury, who once more designed this book, and I came up with the alternative term ‘comics art’ which derives from the idea that comics, in the singular, IS a medium and not limited to being humorous. Of course, we call comedians and comediennes ‘comics’ as well, so it’s still open for misinterpretation. Read the rest of my Article here…

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My Books






Comics Art by Paul Gravett from Tate Publishing



1001 Comics  You Must Read Before You Die edited by Paul Gravett


Comics Unmasked by Paul Gravett and John Harris Dunning from The British Library


All contents © Paul Gravett, except where noted.
All artwork © the respective copyright holders.