Over the weekend of June 2nd and 3rd, the Stripdagen in Haarlem, Holland, is where it’s at. This year the main theme is comics from the Arab world, from Morocco to Qatar, with lectures, interviews and exhibitions. Other exhibitions focus on the work of Peter van Dongen, Lamelos, Rudolf Valster and Stripdagen VIP par excellence, Joost Swarte (never a bad thing to have a helping of Swarte, we think). And lots more, of course!

At the same time, the 17th edition of the Rendez-vous de la BD in Amiens, France takes place, with lots of, mostly French creators (unsurprisingly), exhibitions on the series Aquablue and Okko and on venerable satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo (still going despite the firebombing of their offices a few months ago), and on American short stories in comics format.

One week later (7th to 10th June), there’s the Internationaler Comic Salon in Erlangen, Germany. With more than 400 artists present from all over the world and an expo with no less than 150 German and international publishers, this is a great opportunity to meet all of comics in one venue. Information on exhibitions and events has not been published as yet, although you can see the shortlist for the pretigious Max und Moritz awards here on the blog.

From June 4th to 10th, the Sismics Festival d’Images in Sierre, Switzerland, has people as varied as Italian cartoonist Guido Volpi, graphic artist Terhi Ekebom, the Swish Remake collective and American-Swiss illustrator Randy DuBurke.

Finally, 16th and 17th of June are the dates for the Strasbulles festival in Strasbourg, France. Guest of Honour is Korean comic artist Kim Jung-Gi, who is as yet not really well-known beyond the world of Manwha, but hopefully this exhibition of some of his sketchwork will change that. In addition to this, this year’s guest country is Germany, with exhibitions of work by and interviews with (as yet unnamed) German authors.

Recently, Schuiten has been in the news with new productions that are perfect examples of this “one extra step”. First, there was the stamp he designed for the Belgian Post Office to commemorate the centennial of the Titanic disaster. It wasn’t Schuiten’s first assignment for the Post Office – in the past he designed stamps commemorating information scientist Paul Otlet, designer Henry Van de Velde and the Belgian endeavours on the Antarctic continent. This time, though, he took it one step ahead, by designing two stamps as a perfect stereogram. When looked at using a special viewer (which is included in the package), the stamps melt together to form an exquisite 3D rendition of the ship’s final hours.

Schuiten’s most recent book, La Douce, takes this even one step further. The book is one long ode to the Type 12 Atlantic, a belgian-built locomotive that was used around the middle of the Twentieth Century. Five locos of this type were built, but only one survived the sixties, largely thanks to railway men who thought it was too beautiful a machine to just scrap. Schuiten discovered the locomotive while designing the Brussels Railway Museum, which is slated to open in 2014, and immediately fell in love with it. The problem with the comic format, though, is that you can only suggest movement, and a such, it is rather a limited medium to use for a celebration of a machine that was essentially built for speed.

For that reason, Schuiten collaborated with 3D visualisation specialists Dassault Systemes to embed movement and speed in the comic. Dassault created a number of splendid 3D animations, that the reader can call up by holding the book up to any webcam. Thanks to Schuiten’s eye for detail, though, the animations are not just some kind of DVD extra, but play an actual role in the story itself.

As that other great Belgian graphic designer, Ever Meulen, said so many years ago, “Use the mood of the past to rewire your brain for the future”. François Schuiten is doing just that.

The Titanic stamps are available from the BPost website; La Douce was published recently by Casterman, and costs 18 Euros.

There are stories on the history of Python, Python for beginners, the real killing joke, and more. The surviving Pythons also contribute themselves, with two stories by Terry Jones, some travel journals (what else) from Michael Palin, interviews with Eric Idle and John Cleese, but above all, a vintage and virtually lost comic by Terry Gilliam, based on a script by French surrealist supercartoonist, Fred from almost half a century ago.

The magazine is available from all good newsagents in France and Belgium, so start emigrating (or at least nip over for a visit). And, just to see how your French is going, here’s some wordplay by the master himself, Gotlib :

GOTLIB – clin d’oeil aux Monty Python by ecran-total

These classic one-page gags about a boy and his dog (and the rest of their extended family) were created in 1959 by Belgian cartoonist Jean Roba, in collaboration with Maurice Rossy.  For 25 years they ran as a very popular feature in the famous Spirou magazine, and also had a very succesful run in album format. Later, books were published by Dargaud until Roba’s death in 2006, when his former assistant Laurent Verron, took over the series.

The film, which has a budget of 16.7 million Euros (13.8 million pounds, fairly big by European standards), follows strongly on the success that the Tintin and Smurfs films had in France, but also of box office hits based on popular titles like Astérix and Le Petit Nicholas, or more recently L’Eleve Ducobu and Marsupilami (which came out just a couple of weeks ago here).

At the helm of the Boule et Bill adventure are Alexandre Charlot and Franck Magnier, who earlier wrote the Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis megahit.  Writing a consistent script based on a long series of short gags proved a bit too problematic, however, and for that reason they opted to write a prequel to the comics, telling the story of how 7-year old Boule first met his favorite cocker spaniel.

It is as yet unknown when the film will be released in cinemas, or even whether it will be released outside of the francophone world.  Earlier, two animated TV series were only shown in French- and Dutch speaking countries.  However, after a short run in the British comic Valiant in the 1960′s (as A Dog’s Life), Boule et Bill seems to have started a new English language carreer, with new albums being published by British publisher Cinebook, as Billy & Buddy (two albums so far), so who knows, perhaps the film will reach across the Channel after all.

Friend of the blog Eric de Graaf also contributed a strip to the collection: he tried to summarize the iconical film, Soldaat Van Oranje (Soldier of Orange), an early film by director Paul Verhoeven from 1977 (now known far beyond the Netherlands for his major Hollywood works), based on the memoires of national hero Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema and his adventures during World War II.  And once more Eric proves to be in a league of his own: instead of doing a linear summary, he focuses on the intricate relations of the main characters.  Starting from one of the key scenes in the film, he cites a scene for each of them that illustrates their role in the film, while in the background the greyed out coast of Holland is shown, waiting for its liberation.  Class!

In the Best Publication For Early Readers (up to age 7) category, we find the delightful L’ours Barnabé (Benjamin Bear) by Philippe Coudray (published by Candlewick / Toon Books).  I didn’t know this comic before I saw an exhibition about it at this year’s Angouleme Festival, and I was immediately in love with the apparent simplicity of the art.  The stories too, which are quite often completely without words, seem easy and “for kids”, but quite often have a more subtle streak, not unlike Philippe Geluck’s Le Chat.

Also in this category, the delightful Emile Bravo‘s take on populair fairy tales (which seem to have become quite a meme these days) in  Beauty And The Seven Squat Bears (la Belle aux ours nains, Yen Press), the third in his all-ages series about a group of diminutive bears who like porridge but also work in mines.  You may want to get your kids acquainted with the originals before you give them these books to read, but once they get the humor and the anarchical mix that Bravo makes of the stories, they’ll never have enough.

The jury’s love for off-kilter humor is also clear in the fact that my fellow Fleming Nix is nominated twice with this Kinky & Cosy compendium (NBM) – once in the Best Humor Publication category, and once as Best Publication Design (and the book, with its shiny red cover and the googly eyes really is worth it).

In the category Best Reality-based work we find the Vertigo edition of Marzi by Marzena Sowa and Sylvain Savoia, about the daily life of a young girl in Poland during the 80s and 90s (which I wrote about before).  I like how this book originated as a series of shorts in Spirou magazine, and was published as a regular album befor getting recolored, reformatted and generallly re-imagined as a graphic novel memoir and getting picked up by DC.  More power to them!

And finally, in the category Best Graphic Album, Bubbles & Gondola by Renaud Dillies (NBM), by far the best visual interpretation of general melancholy I have ever read.  The sweet but never sugary illustrations make it a book that young readers will love, but the deeper story about loneliness and being at one in the world, will certainly appeal to those who have lived a little longer.

And naturally I also have to mention one other book close to our heart, not from the Continent but still from Europe, Blank Slate Books’ highly unusual mutliple-artist Nelson, nominated in the Best Anthology section. Well done to all the creators.

Frodo De Decker is a 30 year old cartoonist from Flanders who specialises in short, silent strips that typically chronicle the adventures of a rather hapless little guy, who ends up in one pickle after another.  Earlier De Decker released a number of one-page gags in an Ipad app, but now the brand new Dutch publisher Syndikaat has published his first, full-length book, Blijven Roeien (Don’t Stop Rowing).

De Decker follows fellow cartoonist Pieter De Poortere (who we love and have covered a number of times) in that he leaves the one-page format behind, and strings together the pages into a longer story, in which Otto, his main character, is the perennial butt of the joke.  He never seems to be in control of the situation, but rather tumbles from one calamity to the next.

Blijven Roeien has everything to appeal to an international audience, and the fact that translating the book is not really necessary, can only help its appeal to readers outside of Belgium!

Frodo De Decker, Blijven Roeien – published Het Syndikaat, 2012.  17 EUR.

(photograph - Blog De Comics)

Until the 6th of May, the Sala El Águila exhibition hall in Madrid, Spain, is putting on an exhibition about the legendary Moro studios.  Dubbed The Announcement of Modernity, the show illustrates the groundbraking genius of Jose Luis Moro who from the 1940′s until the 1970′s, together with his brother Santiago, pioneered modern animation in Spain, and for that reason often is dubbed the Spanish Disney.

Most of Moro’s output was within the field of advertising, and it’s no suprise that the large part of the exhibition is dedicated to the numerous innovative animated ads that the Studios put out during the 50′s and 60′s.  They were not only very productive (at one point the studios had three hundred employees and produced hundreds of ads per month), but also very succesful creatively.  In five years the studios won three Golden Palms in Cannes, awards in Venice and in total over a hundred advertising awards in international festivals.

La Familia Telerín

For most Spanish viewers, the Moro studios will however forever be linked to the television series La Familia Telerín, which featured stories by Santiago and quite groundbreaking designs by Jose Luis.  The success of this series in Spain and in many Spanish-speaking countries, would introduce Spain to the abundant merchandising and marketing that is so typical for animation project these days.

The announcement of Modernity, in the Sala (C / Ramirez de Prado, 3 – 28045 Madrid), until May 6th.  More info here.

Cartoonist Alex Robinson (his self-portraits get more self-depricating every time) is one of the guests of honor at this years ComiCS festival in Castellón de la Plana, together with Catalan surrealist wizard Max and topical cartoonist Manuel Fontdevila.  The festival, which runs from March 28th until April 1st, also features exhibitions on the South-African Bitterkomix antology, Catalan cartoonists Calo and Ruben Fernandez (who also does an illustrated concert), and a special show of original work by Catalan cazrtoonist Rubén Lardin that appeared in various American publications.

A side show on animated films features a showing of the celebrated feature Arrugas (Wrinkles), which we wrote about before.

A detailed programme for the event can be found on the ComiCS blog.

The next issue of the Stripburger anthology, which is based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, but operates on an international scale, will be focused on the theme of work.  Once work was what you did to survive, to bring food on the table, or to express yourself.  Nowadays the boundaries between work time and free time seem to have gone completely, which makes us wonder about the nature of work.  Is it a process towards some specific goal, a manner of creating things ?  Is money a necessary element ?  Is an artist creating or working ?

Stripburger invites cartoonists and graphic artists from all over the world to contribute to Working Title, their upcoming international anthology and exhibition.  Deadline for submissions: 31st May.  More info on technical details : burger@mail.ljudmila.org, or Stripburger / Forum Ljubljana, Metlekova 6, SI – 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.

In the mean time, you may want to partake in the latest Stripburger issue (56), which is all about recipes, with contributions by Sarah-Louise Barbett, Peter Kuper, Marcel Ruijters, Da Steff, Vincent Lefebvre. The cover was created by Matej Stupica, and the issue also features interviews with Croatian writer and cartoonist Darko Macan, and with Slovenian comic artist and illustrator Marjan Manček