The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log » General

Sunshine week

Joe — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:02:40 +0000

No, the title doesn’t refer to our hopes of continued nice, spring weather – Sunshine Week is a campaign by a group including the American Society of News Editors; it’s aimed atopening up “a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information “, using comics to generate awareness of this important topic (although with the shiny emblem in the middle of their chests you could also mistake the kids in this for Iron Man fans, which would be ironic given his pro-government stance in Civil War) and runs from March 14th to the 20th, check the site for details. (via Wim’s Ephemerist)

New Iron Man 2 Trailer #2

Crowbar — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:21:52 +0000

New Iron Man 2 trailer #2 is here! An even bigger look into the new movie featuring War Machine and Whiplash. Check it out! Thanks to www.hollywoodreporter.com

More Moore teenage girl Manga – now with teen Gaiman

Richard — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:10:43 +0000

Okay, we showed you the Alan Moore as Manga schoolgirl strip by Ryusuke Hamamoto at the end of last year. But it seems there’s more to come, with a special teenage manga girl appearance by ….. unruly hair, black leather jacket ….. yep, that’s Neil Gaiman:

(via Comic Alliance and Neil Gaiman’s Twitter)

Magus – the Alan Moore conference

Joe — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:01:47 +0000

Leigh Walton reminds us that the Magus: Transdisciplinary Approaches to the Work of Alan Moore is coming in May (28th and 29th) at the University of Northampton and that the poster for it is seriously all sorts of awesome:

Blog 5 years old last week, shops much older

Kenny — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:42:47 +0000

I found this advert for the business which grew into FPI when I was looking back through a pile of old Escapes (Paul Gravett’s pivotal 80’s comics mag – soon to return we hear). This is from 1985 and beautifully drawn by Phil Elliot and shows our mostly robot clientele streaming into the shop. At this time I was in fact the Saturday boy – only becoming a partner in very late 1985. My saturday boy duties being making tea, fetching dinner and supposedly sending out mail order parcels. From time to time this was disturbed by fairly serious hangovers and long periods sleeping under the packing bench. Great advert I think – and we really did carry nearly everything that was in Escape including foreign language comics I remember – something we probably wouldn’t do now – given they were really the only comics books at the time.

Here come the Swedes!

Joe — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:02:25 +0000

(cover to Hey Princess by Mats Jonsson, published Top Shelf)

One of our favourite Indy publishers, Top Shelf, is following up their From the shadow of the Northern Lights anthology of Swedish underground comics which I really enjoyed a couple of years ago (see review here). This time they have a number of titles bringing some of the thriving Swedish comics scene into the sphere of the English language reader, something we’re obviously rather pleased about -- we’re well aware of some great comics work going on in other countries and languages which, frustratingly, we know we’ll probably never get to read, so its terrific when a publisher steps up and puts in this kind of effort.

(120 Days of Simon by and (c) Simon Gärdenfors, published in April by Top Shelf)

Avoid the Future has this short video promo and interviews with three of the artists behind he Swedish invasion: Mats Jonsson (Hey Princess), Kolbeinn Karlsson (The Troll King) and Simon Gärdenfors (The 120 Days of Simon -- I’m sure many of you will get the literary pun). Top Shelf also has Frederik Stromberg’s Swedish Comics History coming in the same month and, I’m especially pleased to see, a second volume of From the Shadow of the Northern Lights; rumours that Brett Warnock and Chris Staros were given secret shares in Ikea (who are introducing a new comics themed Top Shelf to their Billy bookcases) and signed photos of Abba as thanks cannot be confirmed at this time. Seriosuly though, it is great to see this -- we keep saying there’s a big, wide world of all sorts of comics work out there and its brilliant to see work we’d probably never see otherwise getting translated like this.

The Man in Black

Joe — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:30:16 +0000

SelfMadeHero has a video up to accompany Alex Fitch’s interview with German comics creator Reinhard Kleist discussing his brilliant Johnny Cash bio-graphic novel, with art from the book, photos from his Comica appearance and footage of Reinhard sketching:

The Man in Black and White from SelfMadeHero on Vimeo.

Best new cover for a loooong time

Richard — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:02:24 +0000

The new Vertigo series I, Zombie by Chris Roberson and Michael Allred has not one but two great covers. Although no matter how good Allred’s cover is, the Darwyn Cooke variant just blows it away:

Described as “a smart, witty detective series with a mix of urban fantasy and romantic dramedy … told from female zombie’s perspective”, I, Zombie is out later this year. More details on the Vertigo blog.

Multiple Comic event Valentines weekender…..

Richard — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:04:43 +0000

First up it’s the Alternative Press Fair on Saturday 13th Feb: “A day of zines, comix, poetry, radical literature, printmaking and anything else self-published! Then from 6pm there will be a birthday party to celebrate our 1st year – with music, spoken work, DJ’s and open mic. So come along and be a part of the day.”

The fun starts at midday and carries on till 6pm, after which there’s a night of food, an open mic, there will be a few open djing spots for budding small press dj’s (so bring along your mp3 players) and Thee Awkward Silences playing an acoustic set. If anyone wants to bring along comics they can be sold on the communal table. Plus, there’s also the chance to get hold of the “Blue Birocalypse” promo poster (shown above) which will be live screen printed on the day.

Full details on the APF website.

And the the very next day, it’s the turn of the We Are Words + Pictures bunch to have a bit of a two part all-dayer.

Part 1: 3-7pm – Drop In + Draw.
A mini-mini convention with group draw sessions, and tutorials. Artists present for sketches and advice include Jamie McKelvie, Adam Cadwell and Tom Humberstone. It’s open to all ages, £1 entry just to cover materials, under 12s get in free.

UPDATE: …from Julia Scheele: “it’s not open to all ages anymore, since the venue has decided not to allow children on the premises – last minute and without good reason.”

7:30 to late: Modern Romance.

“A night of sunshine pop and four-color mayhem, comic art and live illustration, compered by Robin Ince ”
Entry – £5 per person (£4 concessions). The W+P artists will be hanging around to DJ until late into the night. Valentines Day, music, dancing and comics – who could ask for more?

Full details here.

Comix Influx reports on Angoulême

Joe — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:00:39 +0000

Stephen Betts has posted up a good report on the weekend’s Angoulême comics festival on Comics Influx, covering the exhibitions in some detail, the BD albums he was busy picking up and some of the new faces, including, I am delighted to see, some of our faves from the British scene: “It was great to see a good representation from the British small press in Angoulême this year – the best for several years that I can recall. Gareth Brookes, Peter Lally and Jimi Gherkin were flying the flag for Alternative Press, and seemed to be having a fine time (as recorded by Ellen Lindner), and Francesca Cassavetti, Sean Azzopardi, Dan Lester and Oliver Lambden from London Underground Comics were there with their B.A.S.T.A.R.D.s anthology. Sarah McIntyre and Dave O’Connell also attended the festival for the first time, and inform me that they had a great time.”

(Stephen gets his copy of Siamese Twins 2 signed by Takayo Akiyama, pic (c) Stephen Betts, borrowed from his Flickr)

There’s more from Stephen and photos to be found on the CI site, while Sarah McIntyre has been posting up thoughts, photos and sketches of the festival on her LiveJournal too and as I mentioned last week Stephen was live-Tweeting the festival on the CI twitter, all the relevant posts from him (and others who used the same tag) can be found on their Twitter under the hashtag #angou2010. and as mentioned previously Tom at Comics Reporter has also been busy collating mutliple links to reports from different folks on Angoulême, which you can find here.

(its thos glorious British B.A.S.T.A.R.D.S at Angou; Dan Lester, Oliver Lambden, Francesca Casavetti, Sean Azzopardi and Ellen Lindner, photo shamefully pinched from Sarah McIntyre’s blog)