The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

From our continental correspondent – Esprit BD

3. February 2012

One of the most rewarding experiences at the Angoulême Comics Festival has to be the Pavillon des Jeunes Talents, the tent that showcases the best entries to the yearly competition for young cartoonists. Every year, hundreds of young artists from all around the world send in a sample of their work, typically a three-to-four page [...]

From our Continenal Correspondent: Angouleme – the best of the rest

30. January 2012

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I didn’t go to any of the talks or interviews at Angoulême this year, partly because I didn’t feel like standing in line for hours, and partly because this year’s menu was plentiful enough. Just attending the many exhibitions took most of my time here. There was a very good show in the Comics Museum, [...]

Counting down to Angouleme – the exhibitions

25. January 2012

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One of the main reasons for going to the bande dessinee festival in Angoulême, next to bumping into some of your heroes in the street and ending up having coffee with them, are the exhibitions. It seems the organisers are trying to crank it up a notch with every edition. Last year Art Spiegelman won [...]

Counting down to Angouleme – the selection

19. January 2012

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With lodgings, accreditation and train all dealt with, it’s time to start really preparing for the Smorgasbord of comics that is the Angoulême Festival. In this post I’ll be highlighting some of the more surprising or noteworthy titles on the several short lists, honour lists or other sélections that the Festival has. On the Sélection [...]

10 best of 11

5. January 2012

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As is customary, our beloved editor inquired about what we thought were the best books of the past year. ”Just pick your top three or something”, he said. I picked 10. It’s been that kind of year, so sue me. For good reference, I divided them into neat little departments. The Dept of Epic Awesomeness [...]

Peellaert & The Bee Gees

4. January 2012

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In 1968 Belgian pop art cartoonist Guy Peellaert (of Jodelle and Pravda fame) designed a video for the Bee Gees song Idea for French TV. Amazing Man par excellence Eric Reynolds tracked it down on Youtube, and so we present it to you. It may be totally off topic, but I personally really liked this [...]

Herge’s Heir

14. December 2011

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As is probably well-known by now, Stephen Spielberg managed to successfully turn Tintin into a movie. Alan Baran, an intimate friend of Hergé’s and his last private secretary, was also the man who conducted the first negotiations with Spielberg. And he liked what he saw. UK and European audiences have already enjoyed the film and [...]

Comics at NATO

12. December 2011

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This coming Tuesday, December 13th, is the 30th anniversary of the declaration of martial law in Poland, which was essentially one of the first events that ultimately led to old Soviet Block falling apart some ten years later, and liberal thinkers across the globe announcing the End of History. Since it also ultimately led to [...]

Expocomic announces 2011 winners

6. December 2011

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At the Expocomic festival in Madrid, Spain, the winners of the 2011 awards were announced last week. The lifetime achievement award went to Esteban Maroto, who is probably best known for his work for various Warren Publications magazines, such as Eerie, Creepy and Vampirella. He is also credited with the design of Red Sonja’s [...]

New Swarte

28. November 2011

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I Love Joost Swarte (warning, Flash heavy site). The capital “L” in the previous sentence is not a typo – I Love his work, and especially the very carefully designed small press books he produces for various occasions. One of these is a small leporello-type booklet which was originally published to celebrate the National Readers [...]

Best of the year, a la Francaise

24. November 2011

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The French take their comics very seriously. Every year the 65 members of the Association of Comics Journalists (or ACBD) select a number of books from the deluge that typically appears between November 1st and October 31st. This list is then trimmed down to a shortlist, which contains a mere 15 books, which are “comics, [...]

Corto Maltese and the Freemasons

22. November 2011

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If you thought that freemasonry was the exclusive domain of Alan Moore and his From Hell, think again. The Corto Maltese stories by Italian comics godfather Hugo Pratt is supposed to be riddled with references to the Freemasons and their secretive beliefs and practices. Indeed, so much so that the French Freemasonry Museum in Paris [...]

Folio And Folia

16. November 2011

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Some beautiful books are announced with great fanfare and cannot be missed, even if you wanted to. Others arrive below the radar, and seem to be suddenly there, leaving you amazed at how you didn’t see them coming. One such book is Folio Et Folia, which is scheduled for publication for October 13 by the [...]

Dutch comic genius collected

10. November 2011

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Two Dutch giants of illustration and comics have recently seen their complete comics work collected in major editions. And even though they have the same background, their output couldn’t be more different. Joost Swarte is well-known as the inventor of the term ligne claire, and, with his extremely stylised version of the graphic style [...]

That other Tintin movie

28. October 2011

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If you are tired of waiting for The Secret of the Unicorn to finally hit your local multiplex this weekend, or if you prefer the quaint, rather old-fashioned Tintin to the Indiana Jones in Plus-fours that Spielberg seems to have turned him into, this might be something for you. In 1947, a long time before [...]

Archive | From our Continental Correspondent RSS feed for this section

From our continental correspondent – Esprit BD

From our Continenal Correspondent: Angouleme – the best of the rest

Counting down to Angouleme – the exhibitions

Counting down to Angouleme – the selection

10 best of 11

Peellaert & The Bee Gees

Herge’s Heir

Comics at NATO

Expocomic announces 2011 winners

New Swarte

Best of the year, a la Francaise

Corto Maltese and the Freemasons

Folio And Folia

Dutch comic genius collected

That other Tintin movie

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