As we shiver on a chilly February Thursday here’s Alex Fitch with the audio equivalent of hot chocolate and marshmallows; as ever check the Panel Borders site for more details and links to podcasts of previous shows:
Strip!: Transmission X, tonight at 5pm on Resonance FM, podcast after transmission at Panel Borders
Starting web comics month on the show, Alex Fitch talks to three members of the Canadian webcomics collective ‘Transmission X‘ in an interview recorded during last year’s Comica festival after their signing at Orbital Comics. Cameron Stewart is best known for his work on Grant Morrison’s Seaguy & Batman and Robin, but has also been responsible for a online crime comic called Sin Titulo which between its first instalment in 2007 and its 89th page last autumn won the 2009 Joe Shuster Award for Best Webcomic.
Also on the Transmission X site is a terrific collection of other strips in a variety of genres and includes Kukuburi and Butter Nut Squash by the prolific Ramón Pérez plus The Abominable Charles Christopher by Karl Kershl. While they were on the London leg of their European tour, Alex caught up with Cameron, Ramón and Karl and talked about working in a variety of genres on the web, how this contrasts with their superhero comics for more famous publishers and the experience of updating web comics on a regular basis.
WE ARE WORDS + PICTURES COMICS STALL, Saturday 6th February from 4 to 8pm, Notting Hill Arts Club, Notting Hill Gate, W11 3JQ (FREE)
We Are Words + Pictures are a London-based team of illustrators and writers who bring comics to new readers through events, workshops, publications and market stalls. WAW+P will be bringing illustrator Anna Saunders to Electric Sheep Subterranea, where she’ll be drawing alongside the screening, as well as a selection of ‘zines and comics, which will be on sale in the bar. WAW+P are contributors to the new anthology Solipsistic Pop edited by Eagle Award winner Tom Humberstone, which aims to showcase the best in current British small press and underground comic books, and will be available for sale at the event.
plus DJ Vented Spleen and others spin the decks while horror themed short films cap your evening entertainment…
Electric Sheep Film Club: Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Wednesday 10th at 8pm, Prince Charles Cinema, Leicester Place, off Leicester Square, London
Here’s your antidote to forthcoming Valentine soppiness: promising ‘red-blood kisses’ and ‘white-hot thrills’, Kiss Me Deadly is a noir classic that has lost none of its power to shock and surprise. Private investigator Mike Hammer, a thuggish, macho anti-hero, is drawn into a bottomless pit of conspiracy and corruption after picking up a mysterious and beautiful hitch-hiker. Exposing the black soul of America in the atomic age, this is as hard-boiled as it gets.
Previous podcasts:
Panel Borders: Gay Super (Duper) Heroes
Concluding our month long look at ‘Masculinity in American comics’, Alex Fitch talks to Brian Andersen about his self published indie comics So Super Duper, Sex and the Superhero and Unabashedly Billie… Alex and Brian chat about representations of gay characters in superhero comics, making the transition between web and print publishing and becoming a publisher of other people’s comics to help the proliferation of LGBT titles on the shelves.
Reality Check: Fall Out – The Prisoner in other media
Celebrating 42 years of the cult TV show The Prisoner – Alex Fitch talks to a couple of writers who have continued the adventures of Patrick McGoohan’s iconic character No.6 in other media. 1980s Doctor Who script editor Andrew Cartmel has written a new Prisoner novel ‘Miss Freedom’ while Sophia Cacciola from the band ‘Do not forsake me, oh my darling’ has written an album of songs based on each episode of the TV show. Also, actress and comedienne Jessica Fostekew reads from the novel accompanied by sound effects and music from the show…
Panel Borders: Ian Rakoff and comics at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Continuing our month long look at ‘Masculinity in American comics’, Alex Fitch talks to Ian Rakoff, a volunteer lecturer in sequential art at the Victoria and Albert Museum, who is primarily responsible for the museum’s acquisition of nearly 20,000 comics in their library. In advance of Ian’s lecture on February 3rd – ‘The Creation of the American identity through 20th Century comic strips’ – Alex and Ian talk about the latter’s lifetime interest in comics from being inspired by Captain Marvel as a child to buying rare 1930s comics as an adult off a stall in Cambridge Circus in the 1960s and issues such as the depiction of race and cultural stereotypes in comics and comic strips in the last century.
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