I dread the times when I’m suddenly confronted with my own tendency and talent for procrastination. For years I’ve been meaning to do a samizdat translation of the graphic novel, Ferme 54 by Galit and Gilad Seliktar, after meeting up with them at the Angoulême Festival in 2009. I even started a page on Stephen [...]
Continue reading...29. March 2011
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It would seem that with the coming of spring, festivals all over Europe awake from their hibernation and start blooming again (hmm, that simiile didn’t quite work the way I had intended). To wit : The festival of Bastia, On the French island of Corsica, kicks off the season on March 31st. Until April 3rd, [...]
Continue reading...25. March 2011
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Cleet Boris is the creative alias of Hubert Mounier, a French singer-songwriter and former singer of the alternative pop band, L’Affaire Louis’ Trio. Boris is also a very gifted cartoonist, with a style that is very much within the Clear Line – Atom Style tradition. But, as the song goes, music was his first love, [...]
Continue reading...17. March 2011
Fans are a strange and curious lot. They never have enough of a good thing, and if necessary, they’ll go and create their own missing story featuring their favourite characters. Tintin fans are no different – you’d think that 22 books (23 if you count The Soviets) would suffice, especially with at least half of [...]
Continue reading...16. March 2011
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Daniel Lieske is a German illustrator and cartoonist who’s currently working full time as a graphic artist in game development. In his spare time, he finds enough inspiration to create a wonderfully atmospheric and beautifully lit web comic like Wormworld Saga, which is currently unfolding in no less than seven languages. Judging from the first [...]
Continue reading...14. March 2011
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One of the best things about the Angoulême Festival (and you’ll have to excuse both my banging on about the festival, and the fact that I’m only coming back to it again now), is the Compétition Jeunes Talents, which every year brings together the best and brightest young cartoonists in the country. Many of the [...]
Continue reading...11. March 2011
(cover to La sexualité des Français by and (c) Georges Wolinski, published Drugstore/Artes Editions) French BD enfant terrible (even though he’s already 77 years old) Georges Wolinski (NB – link is in French) has a new book out : La Sexualité Des Français de De Gaule à Sarkozy (French Sexuality from De Gaulle until Sarkozy, [...]
Continue reading...7. March 2011
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From March 4th through to the 13th, the thirtieth edition of Anima, the International Animation Film Festival of Brussels, will take place, kicking off with The Borrower Arrietty, the latest film from the famed Studio Ghibli (a huge fave of ours – Joe). Over the next ten days the festival will screen no less than one [...]
Continue reading...3. March 2011
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So, everybody’s recovered from last month’s Angoulême extravaganza ? Then it’s time to get back in gear and get ready for some more conventionalising and festivalisation ! To wit : This week, from the 2nd until the 6th of March, the Italian city of Bologna is all abuzz with the new edition of the Bilbolbul [...]
Continue reading...24. February 2011
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We may not have had a government for a world-record-beating period of time now, but at least we Belgians sure know how to promote our comics abroad. At the request of the Flemish Literary Fund, cartoonist and illustrator Pieter De Poortere (a firm favourite with the FP blog crew) has designed a mural dedicated to [...]
Continue reading...21. February 2011
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… and Romanian comics to boot ! Amongst the many hopefuls presenting their wares in Angoulême’s Nouveau Monde tent, which collected all small-press, alternative and off-the-mainstream publishers, were two cartoonists from Romania who were trying to prove that, yes, there are comics in Romania! To that purpose, Hardcomics’ Sorina Vazelina and Matei Branea used a [...]
Continue reading...17. February 2011
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Good news for those among you who would like to know more about the rich Flemish comics culture. One of our most beloved icons, Marc Sleen’s Nero, has just had one of his albums released in English. The book, The Ghost of the Sand Street, was translated because many tourists who visited the Brussels Comics [...]
Continue reading...14. February 2011
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As a follow-up to last year’s Pierre Feuille Ciseax festival,and as an appetizer for this year’s edition (which will be held from October 3rd to the 9th), the ChiFouMi group has built a grand overview exhibition on all things OuBaPo. This show tries to give an overview of what OuBaPo stands for, what types of [...]
Continue reading...4. February 2011
The Angoulême Festival is a smorgasbord of francophone comics (well, it is in France, so what do you expect ?). Still, there’s a sizeable British contingent around, from publishers to independent creators and (of course) fans, if you know where to look. We tracked a few of them down to the far corners of the [...]
Continue reading...2. February 2011
English-speaking public with very particular ideas about what comics should be. Or the Anglophone publishers in Angoulême. Alex Bowler from Random House had come to Angoulême looking for direct contacts. As a British publisher, he faces great competition from US firms, who often buy the rights to a book for the whole world and not [...]
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1. April 2011
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