Archive | Books RSS feed for this section

Chip Kidd on book design

22. May 2012

0 Comments

Missed this until I had a wee back-browse through some videos, but the always fascinating TED lectures series has a fairly recent (March, I think) talk up by Chip Kidd – it isn’t specifically about his comics work, rather about his approaches to book design in general, but it is a funny, fascinating and well-presented [...]

Continue reading...

Gaiman addresses the graduating class

21. May 2012

0 Comments

Neil Gaiman, suitably gowned, robed and hatted and looking very happy, gives the address to this year’s graduating class in this video uploaded by the University of the Arts: Neil Gaiman Addresses the Class of 2012 from The University of the Arts on Vimeo.

Continue reading...

Sendak and Spiegelman….

12. May 2012

0 Comments

This I’d never seen before Joe putting it up on the site, and Neil Gaiman’s post where he asked this: “When I heard this morning that Maurice Sendak had died, I asked the New Yorker over Twitter if they could unlock a two page comic: art spiegelman and Maurice Sendak in conversation in 1993, drawn by [...]

Continue reading...

Sendak – picture tributes…

12. May 2012

1 Comment

Maurice Sendak (1928-2012), another genius lost… Tom at The Comics Reporter had an excellent roundup, but here’s just a little of the pictures I’ve seen this week: (Paul Harrison Davies – part of a collection of tributes at The Mooks Tumblr) (Dan Hipp) (Evan Doc Shaner) (Sarah McIntyre) (Fred Blunt) (Mike Maihack) And Maihack’s piece [...]

Continue reading...

Goodnight, Max

10. May 2012

0 Comments

I know I posted on the sad passing of the great Maurice Sendak yesterday, but Charles Santoso’s tribute art is simply too lovely not to share on here. And on a related note Neil Gaiman asked the New Yorker very nicely if they could unlock a couple of pages of comics by Sendak and Art [...]

Continue reading...

Maurice Sendak, RIP

8. May 2012

1 Comment

Terrible news for all lovers of books – the great Maurice Sendak has passed away at the age of 83, from complications arising from a recent stroke according to the NY Times article. It’s impossible to overstate the towering influence Sendak has had – quite probably the pre-eminent illustrator of children’s books in the last [...]

Continue reading...

Where Have All The Illustrators Gone – A Reminder….

6. May 2012

2 Comments

That’s Adrian Tomine’s cover to Pynchon’s Inherent Vice. Here’s the Independent article decrying modern illustration. And here’s what Dan Franklin of Cape had to say…. (emphasis mine) “I think a) it’s fashion”, he says trenchantly. “And b) there aren’t that many great illustrators. It’s rare you can come across someone who can draw. Even when [...]

Continue reading...

Jane Rogers wins Arthur C Clarke Award

3. May 2012

0 Comments

The UK’s most prestigious literary award for science fiction writing, the Arthur C Clarke Award, was announced last night and among a shortlist that boasted some true heavyweights of the Brit-Lit SF world’s talent, including China Mieville and Charlie Stross, the winner was a relative unknown, Jane Rogers, with the Testament of Jessie Lamb, published [...]

Continue reading...

Comics make New Writing Scotland

3. May 2012

0 Comments

New Writing Scotland is a fairly prestigious anthology in Scottish publishing circles which acts as a showcase for the best of new and emerging talent, with the first professional appearance of works, taking in both prose and poetry. And now, I am told, for the first time in it’s 30 annual edition history, it has [...]

Continue reading...

Science Fiction at the National Library of Scotland

2. May 2012

0 Comments

Ken MacLeod directs us to a science fiction exhibition currently being run until the end of June at the National Library of Scotland on George IV Bridge in Edinburgh’s Old Town (a few minutes walk from our Edinburgh store in fact), where they have had some great exhibitions on Lewis Carroll and on Graphic Novels [...]

Continue reading...

More from The Strand

27. April 2012

0 Comments

The other week we blogged about how a contractual dispute at New York’s famous Strand bookstore had been dragging on for quite some time, leading some of the union staff members involved to outline the dispute in comics form (see here). Greg Farrell drops us a line to say that a new section of comics [...]

Continue reading...

Where Have All the Illustrators Gone? A Reminder

26. April 2012

3 Comments

A reminder to all the artists out there of our illustration challenge – in response to the recent assertion by some in UK publishing that we had a serious lack of good illustration talent our own Kenny, also a publisher in his own right, issued an opportunity and a challenge to the artists among our [...]

Continue reading...

Hysterical Women and Graphic Grrrlz

25. April 2012

0 Comments

Edinburgh’s lovely Central Library (opposite the National Library on George IV Bridge, just one bridge along from the Edinburgh FPI as it happens) is holding a very interesting-sounding event next week, Hysterical Women and Graphic Grrrlz. Illustrator and zinemaker Heather Middleton will give a talk on on the diverse types of comics created by female [...]

Continue reading...

Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, A Princess of Mars: Burroughs’ heroes a century on

17. April 2012

1 Comment

An unexpected and rather lovely package arrived for me the other day from the Library of America, a pair of quite beautiful small hardback editions of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes and A Princess of Mars. On May 14th, 1912, Burroughs recorded that he had finished writing Tarzan of the Apes; a century [...]

Continue reading...

Let your fingers do the walking

16. April 2012

0 Comments

This isn’t comics but I suspect anyone involved in book design and publishing will find it interesting, not to mention the many artists who these days work with a tablet and digital pen to draw directly onto their computer – it’s a video AT&T Tech has posted up about a digital system developed by Bell [...]

Continue reading...