Harvey James, who created the very fine A Long Day of Mr James – Teacher for Blank Slate’s Chalk Marks imprint, has a new work coming later this year from Blank Slate Books, this time a full length graphic novel, Zygote. And lucky us, he has just set up a new website for Zygote where he is teasing us with some imagery already. Quite confident this one will end up on the blog crew’s collective Must Read Radar, bookmark and follow now, I think you’re going to want to be reading this one.
And on the Harvey theme, our own Kenny points me to this post Harvey put up last year “It’s Only a Matter of Time Before We Find Out Where Dan Clowes Hid the Bodies”. It’s a delightfully tongue in cheek – and yet offering circumstantial evidence to support the satirical claim - examination of the work of Dan Clowes, not from the usual Salinger of comics revered approach but from the angle that close study of some of his characters and his dialogue for them (especially that which is clearly a comics alter ego for Clowes himself) reveals a shocking truth: that Clowes is either about to embark on a murder spree to cull some of humanity, or that he already has some bodies stacked up in the woods, basement chest freezer (delete as applicable).
“I think the most prevalent theme in his comics has been entirely overlooked, and it stares me in the face every time I see his stuff- that Dan Clowes wants to kill a lot of people, and has possibly already killed. Let’s examine the evidence!” It’s well thought out with frequent references to many Clowes strips, and it is bloody funny…
And on one final Harvey James note, he is the guest on the excellent Inkstuds show where he discusses Mr James and the upcoming Zygote, go and have a listen.
It’s been a while since I looked at Classical Comics, way back in 2009 with the adaptations of Romeo & Juliet and The Tempest. Of which I ended with:
“They may come across as worthy reads to this reviewer but to children in their teens, turned off by the complex, exaggerated, theatrical language of Shakespeare I can see these full colour, well illustrated graphic novels being a very attractive alternative and a wonderfully exciting breath of fresh air.”
And that’s been proven to me several times this past year, as the Shakespeare graphic novels found their way into the school library to be eagerly read and enjoyed by several of the great readers in Year 6. Noticeably though, the children gravitate towards the Quick Text versions – sufficiently fast paced and succinct to give them a good read without bogging them down.
But what I have here is the original version of Stoker’s classic. A classic I first read as a young teen, and loved for the originality of his idea, and the creeping, oncoming horror that works its way into your head far slower and effectively than any of the Dracula movies I’d seen by that stage. Reading it here sent me back to that first experience, of a novel that chilled, that thrilled, that genuinely scared me so much I couldn’t tear myself away.
And reading it all over again, in this abridged form that utilises Stoker’s original words, I had a real sense of all the excitement of that first reading.
Or at least it did after a little perseverance. Because that first section of the book, maybe 30 odd pages, is really heavy going – as though Stoker’s words were doing battle with the adaptation itself and I found myself reading the words with scant attention to the artwork at times. There’s simply too much here, too much on the page, too much to properly construct a symbiosis of words and pictures.
BUT BUT BUT - crucially, it’s only the first section. Once that’s over and done with it’s as if a lightness descends on this darkest of tales, with Cobley relaxing and settling into a far more confident flow.
And once that happens Johnson’s artwork becomes far more integral to the adaptation, and everything settles down to a much more enjoyable read. There’s a far better sense of flow, of integration of words and pictures and we’re presented with many pages of lovely layouts, although there is a feeling that Johnson’s art, with a strong US comics style, is eminently more suited to the action sequences than the slow, creeping horror of what is actually a rather slow moving tale.
Here are just a couple of highlights, where Johnson really makes those ages work – such as this montage where writer and artist combine beautifully to summarise Dracula’s journey to Whitby, as the doomed ship he sailed on comes to port:
Or this piece, with Renfield detailing his meeting with his master:
So yes, once over that initial trouble, this had most of what I was after with an adaptation of Dracula. It certainly manages to get across everything I remember so vividly from the novel, and that is always a sure sign of the success of an adaptation of a work I’d previously read and enjoyed.
Overall, without having seen the Quick Text version, I do have a sneaking suspicion that I’d have had far fewer problems with this in that format, and sense the words and pictures would fit far more comfortably throughout. As it is, this original version is a flawed yet fulfilling adaptation of a book you really should read at some point in your lives.
Okay, we’ve had more than a few reports on here from the recent Angoulême comics festival in France (see here), but here’s a wonderfully unusual one to point you towards, a torrid tale of teased yarn, sneaky undercover knitting, street art and comics at Europe’s most important bande dessinee bash. Yes, it could only be Deadly Knitshade herself, Lauren O’Farrell, one of the Fleece Station Mafiosi abroad, creating some of here woollen wonders around the festival (I still grin recalling seeing her knitting a fantastic Nessie at Hi-Ex in Inverness a couple of years back) and she’s posted up a report with loads of pics of her work and some of the other fab street art created around Angoulême that caught her eye too, go and have a look for a very different Angoulême report.
I know I am a little slow with this one as a couple of other sites have mentioned it already in the last few days, but since Charles Vess was kind enough to drop us a line about it and send us some pages I have to post it up as it is a rather nice story, plus it gives me a good excuse to show off some of Charles’ gorgeous artwork, which is never a bad thing in and of itself, of course (and I am also being self indulgent, perhaps, because I adore Charles’ work, especially when he delves into forms he clearly loves, such as foklore, myth or, as here, traditional folk songs handed down the years. He has a wonderful way of bringing these to visual life). Begun in 1995 and published by Charles’ own Green Man Press, he worked with a number of highly respected fellow creators, including Neil Gaiman, Jane Yolen, Sharyn McCrumb, Charles de Lint, Jeff Smith, Midori Snyder, Emma Bull (and English songwriter Graham Pratt), Elaine Lee, Delia Sherman and Lee Smith on what would become an Eisner winning collection.
(above: The Three Lovers by Lee Smith and Charles Vess. Below: The Galtee Farmer by Jeff Smith and Charles Vess)
Charles has gifted the Book of Ballads to one of the world’s great literary collections – The Library of Congress. The stories, adapted from old English and Scottish songs, originally handed down by the old oral tradition, were adapted into graphic form. The collection now residing in the revered halls of the Library of Congress consists of some 132 original art pages, as well as notated scripts and preliminary layouts for each story. Martha Kennedy of the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division commented that “(Vess’) style of contemporary drawings illustrating narrative comic art is only sparsely represented in the Library’s collections and will go a long way towards filling this particular gap in its holdings.” How lovely to see more comics work being preserved for the public in one of the great libraries of the world; kudos and congratulations to Charles, his collaborators on the original Ballads and to the Library of Congress for recognising the importance of such work. I’ll leave you to enjoy a couple more gorgeous pages Charles was kind enough to send us (thanks, Charles!):
(above: The False Knight on the Road by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. Below: The Daemon Lover by Delia Sherman and Charles Vess)
The Guardian newspaper – often a very good supporter of comics and graphic novels, as well as being home to some of the best editorial cartooning in the UK – is holding an Open Weekend at the end of March (Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th). There will be a wide variety of events, talks, workshops and more taking in many areas the paper regularly covers, from culture to economics, and a variety of guests, including two of their top cartoonists, the brilliant Martin Rowson and Steve Bell. Steve is on the Sunday at 1.45pm and then again at 3pm talking about how to create cartoons, while Martin is on the Saturday at 1.45 talking about satire and then giving a workshop at 3 also on the Saturday. Check the Guardian site for more details. (via Bloghorn)
(one of Steve Bell’s picks from his own cartoons from 2011 – “The Lowry Crapper”, commenting on the announcement of massive public sector cuts in Manchester while drawing on the iconic work of Lowry)
The excellent comics creator and artist Al Davison explains why he likes books, spurred on by the early destruction of their family books by his father and his own youthful experimenting by cutting and pasting different parts of different books together to make something new (I’ll forgive him for cutting into books, something of a cardinal crime usually to we booksellers):
I’ve looked at Pearce’s Mike Battle before (here and here) and although I had reservations, I’d enjoyed it, especially the later issues where he’s beginning to find an artistic style. But with Last Admin Hero he’s reprinting issues 8-10 of Sgt. Mike Battle, and some of the problems are back, along with a new problem of trying to switch his storytelling to a multi-issue storyline. More on that in a moment.
It’s certainly a change of pace for his action series starring the very all-American, all-over-the -top, all-action hero Mike Battle, here relegated to a supporting role, with the male lead going to the weedy bloke working as a temp in the admin department of some secret US military organisation. Or as Pearce puts it:
“The ridiculous scenario that entered my head was what if terrorists took-over the building, I was the only person to stop them and all I had was the contents of the stationary cupboard”
And that’s it really. Die Hard with the office admin temp in the Bruce Willis role, set against the backdrop of the Sgt. Mike Battle universe in the S.H.I.E.L.D. era of Jimmy Bond-esque superspies. Here’s his first scene:
John Trojan is just a lowly office temp, thrust into the limelight here when he just happens to be on a toilet break as the agents of A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. storm the building he works in, the brilliantly designed Section D – a straight up yours to the UN building opposite. They’re intending to sell out the good ol’ U. S. of A. and flog its secret-est secrets to the highest bidder.
Panic ensues, or rather it would, if the folks in charge weren’t trying to figure out something much more important:
In some ways that A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. gag is the very essence of this comic. Enjoy that and you’ll find a lot to enjoy.
The simple concept works really well at the start, with the turn it all on its head idea of the last guy in the building being genuinely a bit useless. There’s clever gag after clever gag, all playing on our familiarity with the stuff Pearce is pastiching. Again, another war-room funny:
I have to admit though, I think Pearce’s work is more suited to shorter tales, where he gets to keep things fresh and light and clever and succinct, within the confines of a single issue. Stretched out over the three issues here, the simple concept feels just that – stretched, and just that little bit thin. By the end, it’s a little overdone, a little tired. I was lagging by the end, I really was, and the joy of the original gags had gone.
Art wise, quite naturally, it’s between the really rough first issues and the more nuanced, stylish stuff that came after it. There are faults, of course there are, but you can easily overlook them, enjoy the nice art when it pops up and generally get swept up in the adventure. Flawed but fun.
And Pearce certainly knows how to fill the book with some genuinely interesting and worthwhile extras – an alternate ending courtesy of Pearce’s wife, a brilliantly done tongue firmly in cheek trailer, loads of concept art and behind the scenes stuff (did you all catch the Akira reference in the cover by the way?).
Last Admin Hero is available from Graham Pearce at the Sgt Mike Battle website. And if John Trojan’s adventures have set your heart racing, Pearce promises Last Admin Hero II is coming soon(ish).
Greetings Forbidden Astronauts! First up a big thanks to Joe Gordon for inviting me to write this director’s commentary. My name is Karrie Fransman and I am a comic creator who’s scribbled strips for The Guardian, created comics for The Times and just published my first graphic novel, The House That Groaned (which has garnered imperssive praise from the likes of revered director Nic Roeg – Joe), with Random House’s Square Peg. You can visit the interactive website here: www.thehousethatgroaned.com and watch the trailer:
I’ve often talked to myself in my head (sometimes not very politely), so thought it appropriate to write this directors commentary as a schizophrenic conversation between myself and I. So, Fransman. What’s with all the little cut-out windows on the front cover of your comic? I made this cover because I like to create comics that are interactive with the reader. This was the perfect way to entice voyeurism and to introduce the characters in their little rooms. It also follows a theme of the book echoing the metaphor of a body where you can peel back the ‘skin’ of the cover and see inside, to the meat and bones of the decaying building with leaking pipes, rats and vein-like wires.
Wait. Haven’t I seen that house somewhere before? You should have- the cover is based on my/your childhood dolls house, which my dad and uncle kindly took turns to drive down from Edinburgh to Derby to London a couple of years ago. As soon as I got it, I gutted it and built a comic inside called ‘Behind The Mirror’. You ‘read’ it by looking at the scenes through the windows sequentially from top left to bottom right (as you’d read the panels on the page of a comic). It’s based on the ‘Bloody Mary’ Ghost myth… or Candyman if you’re a horror fan, and was exhibited alongside some of my other ‘experimental comics’ in Belgium at Strip Turnhout festival last December.
I like to fit stories into weird and wonderful places; jewellery boxes, frames on walls, iPads etc. and I’m currently working with my super-crafter aunt Denny Fransman on some stained glass comics. You can see more of my comic experiments here.
Right, so back to the book. What’s it all about then?
The book (as you may have guessed by now) is about a house. 141 Rottin Road is a beautiful Victorian house converted into six, one-bed apartments. On the outside the house is lovely but inside it, like every one of us, is slowly decaying. There are black-outs, burst pipes, and rising damp. I guess most London renters have experienced something similar! These incidents force the lonely residents out of their little apartments and into contact with one another.
The residents pay homage to the grand tradition of weird and wonderful comic characters from Super Hero villains to horror Manga. There’s Barbara, the made-up make-up artist. Matt, the photographic retoucher who can’t touch. Janet, the tormented dietician. Old Mrs Durbach who literally blends into the background. The hedonistic Marion, matriarch of the Midnight Feast Front and twenty-something Brian, the diseasophile who is attracted to women who are sick or dying. You can zoom through the windows of the house and meet the characters on our interactive website created by Jonathan Plackett here.
Hold your horses. A diseasophile? You’re a sick, sick girl Fransman. Well, funny you should say that. The diseasophile was inspired, in part, by the fact that I was a sick, sick girl. I had the deadly meningococcal meningitis when I was younger, a lovely illness called Henoch Shonlein Purpura (Where your feet swell up and purple spots appear on them), Iritis and Asthma. I would have been the diseasophile’s ideal gal. It doesn’t take a shrink to guess this probably explains my fascination with fallible bodies!
Brian, the ‘diseasophile’ of the book, initially appears to be a freak- he hangs out in doctors waiting rooms and hospices to meet girls with greying skin and disfigurements. But when we see him salivating over the skeletal bodies of anorexics in magazines we realise perhaps his behaviour isn’t so very different from that of our own society.
Take it you studied Sociology at Uni? Wow! How did you guess? I studied psychology and sociology and no, I never went to art college. I was really inspired by corporal studies and how the body is more than just biology. I gave two papers on ‘The Body as a Canvas in Comics’ where I explored some of the theories that inspired these characters, at Comica Symposim 2011: Transitions: New directions in Comic Studies and Graphic Medicine conference at Leeds Art Gallery, which is part of Thought Bubble.
I highly recommend visiting either conference next year. It is like going to comic university! There are papers on anything from ‘Comics in Architecture’ to ‘Arabian Propaganda Comics’. SO interesting! I am launching a video based on the papers I gave on www.comicsforum.org on 24th February. It has lots of original art and discusses theories of many theorists from Susie Orbach to Judith Butler… so keep your eyes peeled (Ugh. Horrible phrase).
So, you’re interested in comics then? Yes! I know there are many trendy thangs who dip their toes into comics via illustration and refuse to ever use a speech bubble… but I am a comic creator through and through. I started out on the small press scene stapling my comics together and selling them (or not selling them as the case often was!) at all the UK cons. I met so many talented people and loved the way you can pick a mini comic off the table and briefly glimpse the world through the artist’s eyes.
I wholeheartedly love the medium. I love the way it is unpretentious and accessible to all regardless of age, nationality or education. I love discovering more about all the many genres of comics from Indi to Superhero to BD to Manga. I love the enthusiasm of the UK comic crowd and how they are defining their own scene separately from the huge US, French and Japanese markets. And I love the brilliantly talented young (and old!) people I get to meet while teaching at comic projects with London Print Studio and House of Illustration.
God bless comics, one and all!
Oh bugger off already. It’s not cool to be a happy artist!
O.K, O.K. I’m taking my love elsewhere! I’ll leave you with a few images of the making of The House That Groaned: from script to scamp to final art work. Thanks for reading people!
Karrie.
FPI would like to thank Karrie for taking the time to take us through her new book; you can catch up with Karrie on her site here (which you really should have bookmarked by now). The House That Groaned has just been published and is available to order now.
INJ Culbard already has a busy 2012, with the new Deadwardians series at Vertigo, a story in SelfMadeHero’s Lovecraft Anthology II, a new collaboration with Ian Edginton – Princess Of Mars, and a new Lovecraft full length graphic novel The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward all in the next couple of months.
But that’s certainly not the end of his comic output. SelfMadeHero have announced that the Deadbeats series, written by Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer, and featured here back in 2011, is getting a release as a full graphic novel in the autumn:
“We are delighted to announce a forthcoming title in our original fiction series: Deadbeats written by Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer and illustrated by I.N.J. Culbard.
This autumn, Lackey, Fifer and Culbard will be transporting you to 1920s Chicago and a world of jazz, jalopies and tentacles in this creepy adventure like no other. Wait a minute, ‘tentacles’? That’s right – Deadbeats pays homage to the American master of “weird fiction”, H. P. Lovecraft. If you know anything about the authors, you’ll see that a Lovecraftian obsession runs deep within them.
Chris and Chad are dulcet toned denizens of the interwebs (ahem! and California and Yorkshire) who host the extraordinarily popular, HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast. Both are massive fans of Lovecraftian stories, movies and comics and this is reflected in the podcast, where they discuss a specific H.P. Lovecraft story each week – “what it’s about, how it reads, why it may have been written and what other works of art it has influenced”.
I.N.J Culbard is known to many as the award-winning graphic novelist who adapted Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness into critically acclaimed graphic novel. If you already know Culbard’s work then you’ll no doubt be looking forward to his adaptation ofThe Case of Charles Dexter Ward, out from SelfMadeHero in May.”
I always get a kick out of watching time-lapse videos of artwork coming together and Stefan Eriksson’s video of the Joker and Batman is pretty cool, starting off with very basic outlines, through the magic of time lapse it progresses within a few short minutes into a very stylish painting:
Morrison and Burnham’s Batman (Inc.) meets Peter Blegvad’s much missed Leviathan:
Meanwhile, over at the Hitsville UK website, we’ve come to the end of the web serialisation of issue 1. Does this mean new pages will be forthcoming? (Yes)
Is there any sign of issue 2 coming soon? (Not really!)
John tells us that “issue 2 is on its way but the finished version won’t be with us for a little while. We’re going to do it a little differently this time round and put pages up on the website first, so there’s not such a huge gap.”
Good news and bad news then! But definitely a comic that’s worth the wait.
“Smoo #4:Marlow. This issue deals, in an abstract sort of way, with being a teenager, and then, years later, realising that for all you don’t feel like one, you find yourself being a grown up. It was written in response to my parents moving away from Marlow, the small town in SE England where I spent my teenage years. Each copy comes with a print of a hand-drawn map of the town and, while stocks last, a tourist postcard and excerpts from the local newspaper, “The Marlow Free Press”. B&W, white card cover, 28 A5 pages.”
“Moreton’s imagery, his simplicity, his white sense, his line; all go towards making interesting and ultimately thought-provoking comics, not in a huge, must be shocking way, but in the smaller sense. This is work to absorb, then stop, think, drift, ideas and memory kicking in, triggered from these lovely, lovely comics.”
Yes, I’m a fan, whatever made you think that? In truth I did find a few minor problems with it, in as much as it’s shifting slightly towards the style of his comics as abstraction series The Escapologist and away from what I’d previously loved about Smoo. But nonetheless, a great little comic… have a look:
Last week was the annual self-inflicted idiocy/torture that is 24-hour comics day. The day when a LOT of comic artists around the world decide, like the insane people they are, that the thing they would most like to do is draw a full 24-page comic in 24-hours.
Obviously this is madness. But it’s bloody good looking madness in many case. So this week, instead of the usual selection of art from around the Internet, I thought I’d post a few choice examples of the 24-hour comics 2012 here….. most of them I’ve grabbed from 10centticker, which is hosting/collating a lot. Bless them for putting them altogether – but if you have one you’d like a mention for – hit the comments.
First up, and simply amazing is Darkness by Boulet. 24 Hours. 24 HOURS. Bloody hell, that’s just incredible, polished, beautiful stuff…
Likewise, equally amazing… Dan Berry with Cat Island. Although, like he says, his hand paid the price. (Worth it though.)
Raina Telgemeier (whose Smile is a huge, huge success at the school library – onto our 4th copy now -by far the most borrowed graphic novel we have – yet STILL it hasn’t been officially released by Scholastic in the UK. Madness):
That’s the proposed cover image for the new Self Made Hero book by David Hine and Mark Stafford – only just announced over on Mark Stafford’s site:
“Well, the contracts’s been signed, so I guess it’s actually going to happen! Self Made Hero are going to publish The Man Who Laughs, another collaboration between me and the writer Dave Hine, after our piece for Hero’s Lovecraft Anthology. This one is an adaptation of one of Victor Hugo’s lesser read novels, best known amongst fanboys as the basis of the Conrad Veidt film that inadvertantly inspired the look of Batman villain the Joker, it’s actually a tragic, decidedly strange political fable of fate and facial disfigurement in the reign of Queen Anne, and I’m going to be drawing 160 odd pages of it this year for a 2013 release. Here’s a cover image me and Dave used to pitch the idea that’s being used to promote the book in Angouleme right about now. I’ll tell you more as the work goes on….”
Tue, Feb 7, 2012 posted by Joe
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