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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
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…
A Conversation With Shaun Tan
Posted: August 26, 2011
I’m looking forward immensely to interviewing Shaun Tan this coming Tuesday, August 30th, up on the top floor at Waterstone’s Piccadilly.
Tan is probably best known for the multi-award-winning wordless graphic novel The Arrival, chosen as book of the year by the Angoulême International Comics Festival and now also available as a lavish boxed set with a complete second volume, Scenes From A Nameless Land, full of preparatory drawings and detailing his creative process. He has also scooped an Oscar no less for his animated adaptation of his own book The Lost Thing from 2000, reissued this year along with The Red Tree (2001) and The Rabbits (1998), the latter written by John Marsden, in the compilation Lost & Found from Arthur A. Levine Books. Tan is over here this month from Australia for the Edinburgh International Book Fair and for a selling exhibition in London at The Illustration Cupboard. He is also launching the UK edition of The Bird King, a beautiful new gatherum of sketches, projects and personal artworks published by Templar, who also released Tales from Outer Suburbia in Britain.
Tickets for my conversation with Shaun can be booked online for £5 (or £3 for Waterstone’s Loyalty Cardholders) or you can get more info on 0207 851 2400. Don’t miss this chance to meet one of the world’s most gifted and sensitive graphic storytellers.
Favourite Comics From The Fabulous Fifties!
Posted: August 25, 2011
Ah those Fabulous Fifties! To tie in with the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain and to preview one tumultuous decade from my massive forthcoming book, 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die, I’ll be giving an illustrated lecture about such revolutionary Fifties comics characters as Dan Dare, Dennis the Menace, Astro Boy, Asterix, Andy Capp, the new Green Lantern, and many more at Wokingham Library in Berkshire. Admission is free, so I look forward to see you on September 8th at 7pm.
This Week’s Article: Previews For October 2011
Posted: August 23, 2011
Now I do understand that publishers are looking for the safe bets and surefire bestsellers to stay in business, that creators need to earn a living and pay the mortgage somehow, even if it means not working on concepts they have originated or derivative wannabe imitations, and that readers often much prefer to stay inside their comfort zones and follow fan-favourite characters or spin-off crossovers from other media they know and love. So, for some, the prospect of yet another first issue of Wolverine & X-Men or a Star Trek mindmeld with the Legion of Super-Heroes for goodness sake is thrilling stuff. But what really excites me are those comics, manga and graphic novels that push me into my “discomfort zone”, that surprise, provoke and engage me, that affirm that this medium is wide open, forward-looking and determined to tackle anything and everything. So I’ve gleaned these goodies for you from what’s lined up to be released in October 2011 (although actual dates may vary) based on publisher advance listings. Forget Stan Lee’s dead-end promise of “The Illusion of Change”, this is “Real Change” and it’s happening right now. Join me, take a chance and take a step into the future of comics. Read the full article here…
