Dave McKean dons his professorial robes to join the staff at the new Hogwarts! Okay, only kidding – in fact Dave (one of my absolute favourite artists in any medium) is seen here in academic gown (sadly he’s already removed the rather nifty hat that goes with it) after receiving an honorary doctorate from the [...]
Continue reading...12. September 2011
The annual Ignatz Awards (always a good pointer to some seriously top Indy comics works we should all be paying attention to) were announced at SPX, the very busy Small Press Expo, in Bethesda at the weekend and boy, looked like a damned good haul for Secret Acres (via Tom at Comic Reporter): Outstanding Artist: [...]
Continue reading...8. September 2011
I am utterly delighted to report that one of my very favourite books from last year, Louis: Night Salad by Glasgow-based Metaphrog, has been specially commended in the announcment for the shortlist for the Scottish Children’s Book Awards. Speaking to Metaphrog a little earlier we were racking our brains but none of us can recall [...]
Continue reading...6. September 2011
I’m sure many of your remember us blogging about the fab idea that is the Stan Lee Excelsior Awards (see here), the brain child of Paul Register and an event which has gotten hundreds of schoolkids involved in reading and discussing comics and, just as important, getting them involved in the selection of their favourite [...]
Continue reading...22. August 2011
The huge Science Fiction Worldcon took place over the weekend in Reno, Nevada, while I was busy enjoying the Book Festival here in sunny Edinburgh, and that means the prestigious Hugo Awards were given out to honour the good and great of science fiction and fantasy. And among the worthy winners this year I am [...]
Continue reading...12. July 2011
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Paul Gravett kindly lets us know that the Observer/Cape/Comica graphic short story competition and prize will be continuing this year, the fifth time it will have run, which is good news for Brit comics and comics creators. I did worry that in our current climate of slashing cutbacks that something like this might have been [...]
Continue reading...5. July 2011
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Friday 1st of July saw the first Stan Lee Excelsior Award ceremony take place in Sheffield’s Ecclesfield School. You may recall us blogging about this new award a while ago when organiser Paul Register, the Learning Resource Centre Manager, first filled us in on the awards (see here). Rather nicely they were not chosen by [...]
Continue reading...28. April 2011
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Lauren Beukes scooped the most prestigious science fiction literary award in the UK last night, winning this year’s Arthur C Clarke award for Zoo City, published by Angry Robot. I’ve not read it yet, but you have to love a book described as “Jeff Noon crossed with Raymond Chandler”, so one to add to the [...]
Continue reading...12. April 2011
I was out and about over the weekend and somehow managed to miss noticing that the shortlist for this year’s Eisner Awards had been announced. Still better late than never! I’m delighted to see Metaphrog and Gerry Alanguilan both featuring on this year’s nominations, and I notice Fantagraphics’ translation of Jacques Tardi’s powerful It Was [...]
Continue reading...18. March 2011
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I missed spotting this but luckily the excellent Tom Spurgeon had them up – the shortlist of nominees for the Doug Wright Awards for (English language) Canadian comics work is up: Best Book Bigfoot by Pascal Girard (Drawn and Quarterly) Chimo by David Collier (Conundrum Press) Lose #2 by Michael DeForge (Koyama Press) Moving Pictures [...]
Continue reading...8. March 2011
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Down the Tubes reports that this year’s Dundee Comics Day, now part of the Dundee Literary Festival at Dundee University, will include a competition to create a new character and short story (up to two pages) aimed at a younger reading audience (comparable to the readership of the Beano). The competition is in conjunction with [...]
Continue reading...4. March 2011
The judges have been busy and the formidable task of winnowing down the 54 eligible science fiction novels (from some 22 different publishers and imprints) for this year’s Arthur C Clarke award – no easy task, there were some quite brilliant writers, established and new, among those (see here). The judging panel consisted of Jon [...]
Continue reading...28. February 2011
Torque Control has up the list of the eligible novels for this year’s prestigious Arthur C Clarke awards; it isn’t really a longlist as such, but for simplicity’s sake it seems easier to refer to it that way. The final shortlist of nominees for the UK top literary science fiction award will be announced this [...]
Continue reading...8. February 2011
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I missed this over the weekend, but the annual Annie Awards for animation took place in LA with awards spread over some 25 categories. Big winner of the night wasn’t Pixar, surprisingly, but DreamWorks with How To Train Your Dragon, which took the coveted Best Animated Feature gong (could that be an indicator of possible [...]
Continue reading...3. February 2011
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Paul Register, Learning Resource Centre Manager at Ecclesfield School in Sheffield, has been explaining to us about a new comics award which he’s been involved in setting up and, rather nicely, it is an award which is being powered not by judges drawn from industry sources but from readers in schools. More specifically some 14 [...]
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14. September 2011
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