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Angoulême: the official selection
100 days before the festival takes place, the official selection for the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée has gone up on the Festival’s website, and it’s impressive. As an Anglophone who only occasionally dips her toes into Francophone waters, most of the titles are French and utterly unfamiliar to me, but the list proves [...]
Continue reading...The Economics of Interstellar Trade
17. October 2008
You may already know that Paul Krugman, best known for his column in the New York Times in which he’s been methodically demolishing the Bush administration for some years, has won the Nobel Prize in Economics. What’s less well known is that Krugman is a keen science fiction reader, and is soon to be taking [...]
Continue reading...Uzumaki – Katherine ventures into the endless labyrinth of mysterious spirals
15. October 2008
All horror stories, whether told in films, comics, books, or around a campfire after sunset, have in common the aim of making their audiences afraid. But there are many different ways to make people afraid. For a quick hit of instant fear, you can jump up behind them and shout “BOO!”, the way slasher flicks [...]
Continue reading...Katherine embraces her inner Elf
6. October 2008
Elfquest is older than I am, which makes it all the more astonishing that it’s taken me this long to start reading it. Even though it has all the elements of something designed to appeal to me – a fantasy setting, a well-constructed and complex plot, intelligent use of the comics page – I somehow [...]
Continue reading...City of Stones, City of Smoke – Katherine walks the streets of Berlin with Jason Lutes
15. September 2008
This week Katherine Farmar has a very special treat for us. Jason Lutes carved a reputation for himself with Jar of Fools, which started life in Seattle’s The Stranger before being collected later by Drawn & Quarterly, along the way earning him praise from many, including the New York Times and Chris Ware. Later came [...]
Continue reading...“The human whose name is written in this note shall die…”
5. September 2008
A little over a year after the final volume was published in English, I’ve finally gotten around to finishing one of the most hyped and most heavily-spoiled manga series ever: Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s Death Note. Death Note is based on the highest of high concepts: “The human whose name is written in this [...]
Continue reading...Comic browsing on the web
29. August 2008
A few titbits I’ve come across in the past week or so, and some more substantial morsels too: The American woodcut artist Lynd Ward was an early pioneer of “novels in pictures”, or “graphic novels” as we call them now, though Ward’s work is unlike anything you’ll find in a comics shop today. [...]
Continue reading...Apocalipstix
22. August 2008
The Apocalipstix Written by Ray Fawkes, art by Cameron Stewart Published by Oni Press Here’s an object lesson in marketing: 90% of my reason for buying The Apocalipstix was the title, because even if it isn’t an Invisibles reference, it’s a bloody cool title. Unfortunately, the content of the book doesn’t quite measure up. The premise is one [...]
Continue reading...The pen is mightier than the sword – especially when writing a Death Note
20. August 2008
“The human whose name is written in this note shall die…” No manga series has truly hit the big time until it’s got at least a TV adaptation, whether live-action or anime (or sometimes both), and preferably also drama CDs, character song CDs, light novels, visual novels, video games, and miscellaneous “character goods”. But it’s relatively [...]
Continue reading...Tor
6. August 2008
US science fiction publishers Tor (who also work with Macmillan in the UK) have recently launched a new website, which is currently the host of a lot of top-quality SF-related blogging, art and comics pages by the likes of Farel Dalrymple, Todd Lockwood, Shaun Tan and Charles Vess, and fiction by (so far) John Scalzi [...]
Continue reading...The adventures of Bryan Talbot
5. August 2008
Recently I read The Adventures of Luther Arkwright by Bryan Talbot. I don’t mind saying that it blew my tiny little mind. I already knew Talbot was a genius (he did create Alice in Sunderland, after all), but I don’t think I’d appreciated just how jaw-droppingly wide his range is. The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, [...]
Continue reading...“Aqualung, my friend”*
4. August 2008
Aqua Leung by Mark Smith and Paul Maybury Regular readers of this blog may recall me saying that fantasy is my favourite genre, and that I’d like to see more straight fantasy comics being made. Well, my prayers are being answered, because Aqua Leung is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind when I said [...]
Continue reading...Chute de Vélo
4. August 2008
When I first read the family drama Chute de Vélo by Étienne Davodeau, I was stunned by it. I immediately decided that at the earliest opportunity, I would have to do a translation of it for ComixInflux (see here for more on ComixInflux – Joe), so as to bring it to a wider audience. Recently [...]
Continue reading...Katherine confesses her guilty BL passion
25. July 2008
Everybody’s got cultural guilty pleasures, or semi-guilty pleasures: that cartoon series you loved as a kid and can’t stop loving even though you should have outgrown it, the stack of Laurell K. Hamilton novels that you hide behind the sofa when you’ve got company (“guilty pleasures” and Laurell K – was that a subtle [...]
Continue reading...Katherine looks back at The Magnificent 49ers and To Terra
16. July 2008
In the 1970s, a new group of manga creators caused a stir in Japan. They were known as “the Magnificent 49ers” or “the Year 24 Group”, after the year most of them were born: 1949, or the 24th year of the Showa era. They created manga with a complexity of storytelling, depth of emotion, and [...]
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23. October 2008
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