Connoisseurs of small but delicate comics work have a good excuse to plan a short trip to Antwerp for tomorrow.  On Friday 25th May, a delightful exhibition of original drawings and prints by celebrated New Flemish Name Olivier Schrauwen will open in the Bries Space, a small-scale art centre run by the same people behind the excellent Bries European comics publishing house.  Schrauwen has made an exclusive new print run of his extremely rare comic, Greys, only available at the show.  The show is open on May 26th and 27th in the afternoon, and later until July 1st on appointment.  Olivier Schrauwen’s work is published in English by Drawn & Quarterly.

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.

Directed by James Huth

Starring Jean Dujardin, Michael Youn, Sylvie Testud, Daniel Prevost, Alexandra Lamy

Lucky Luke, the lonesome cowboy who can drawn and shoot faster than his shadow has been around for a long time – 1946, in fact, since the great Morris first drew his Wild West hero. Over the decades he’s remained popular, being translated into many languages (including, now, a good array of BD albums from Cinebook in the UK) and into other media. Previous filmic outings have never proven as good as the long-running comic though – until now. I actually first saw this live action take on Lucky Luke a couple of years ago at my annual pilgrimage to the Edinburgh International Film Festival. I’d decided to go but didn’t have high expectations – to be honest I was thinking it was likely to be around the level of the live action Asterix films from France, that is to say passable but not especially good. I was pleasantly surprised – my friends and I at that Film Festival screening laughed continually throughout the film and spent a good while in the pub discussing it afterwards. All of us agreed it was so choc-full of details it demanded another viewing on DVD at home.

And then a couple of years passed and for some reason it simply never got a UK release, which infuriated me – terrible to see a great film at a festival, tell everyone about it but they can’t see it… I’m delighted to say that now that is being rectified with a DVD release at the end of this month. I was lucky enough to get an advance disc and re-watching the film I found it even funnier than the first time around. In fact it’s one of the funniest films I’ve seen in years (puns and jokes abound even in the closing credits although it might stretch your French a little to get them!). The film is loaded with humour, from jokey dialogue and characters through to more subtle jokes in the background or in the wonderfully detailed sets, which are as close as a live-action can get to re-creating the look of a comic, all the buildings looking like they have been sketched freehand without a ruler, giving Luke’s world an appropriately cartoony appearance while still remaining very Western. Visually it draws on the comics but also from a rich tradition of American Westerns, from the iconic landscapes of a John Ford flick to the Spaghetti Westerns of the great Sergio Leone (with, I think a tip of the hat to Mel Brook’s magnificent Blazing Saddles).

In fact the opening flashback of young Luke witnessing the murder of his parents by desperadoes is heavily indebted stylistically to Sergio Leone (no bad thing in my book). Flash forward again and we have our cowboy hero meeting the President in a special railroad car (comically wreathed in cigar smoke, a jokey nod to the fact our once smoking cowboy now just has a blade of grass in his lips instead of ciggies – better example for the kids!), in a scene that borrows from Leone’s operatic Once Upon a Time in the West. The railroad is coming to unite both side of the United States and make it into a full nation. But before he can drive in the golden rail spike to unite the lines to the coasts Luke’s old stomping ground of Daisy Town has to be sorted out. Once a peaceful haven it is now a riot of outlaws under the leadership of gambler and conjurer Poker; the President asks Luke to clean up the town and so our hero rides in alone to the viper’s nest. He may be outnumbered and out-gunned but Luke, with his trusty steed Jolly Jumper, is in a class of his own and the jail is soon full of villains. All seems well until Poker forces a proper, old school Western showdown in the street. Needless to say he can’t outdraw Luke, and as the shot rings out he falls dead… Luke is mortified, he uses his guns but never kills, and thinking he’s taken a life could destroy him faster than any gang of bandidos…

And I won’t tell you anymore of the plot because I don’t want to spoil it for you. But the story is only one half of the tremendous fun on offer here. The film is quickfire gags and some brilliant characters (Calamity Jane, toughest gal gun in the West, but with a girly crush on Luke under that hard as nails exterior, Jesse James constantly quoting Shakespeare like a true ham, James and Billy the Kid trying to light one of Luke’s blades of grass to smoke it and getting wasted), the cowering locals in Daisy Town will only venture outdoors in barrels for protection, the details in sets and even clothes are just perfect. It’s full of enough humour so that the younger readers the the comics are aimed at will be kept laughing, but it also has plenty of little asides aimed at the adult audiences, not to mention the plethora of references to other classic Western film that will reward the adult viewer. It’s pure, wonderfully played, wonderfully detailed fun throughout and Dujardin, here in a pre The Artist role, is perfect as a live action Luke, although of course when the French cast talk to him he sounds more like Looky Luke! But the French language in such an American genre as a Western actually adds to the good natured humour of the whole film. Unmissable fun and one of the funniest flicks I have seen in years.

Win Lucky Luke!!!

Lucky Luke (in French with English subtitles) is released on DVD on May 28th – and in more good new we have three copies up for grabs. To be in with a chance of bagging one, just drop us a line at joe(dot)gordon(at)forbiddenplanet(dot)co(dot)uk with your name and contact details and the answer to the question: Lucky Luke is so fast he can out-draw even his own what?

And, as Wim blogged about just recently, a whole series of short animations featuring Nix’s dangerous comic book twins is planned for this autumn, so expect to see a lot more of the deadly duo!

Panel Borders: Belgian graphic novelists, tonight at 8pm on Resonance FM, podcast on Panel Borders afterwards

Starting a trio of shows about international comics, Alex Fitch talks to pair of Belgian graphic novelists about their work. Creator Ivan Petrus discusses The Neuport Gathering, his moving and harrowing tale of Allied soldiers during the First World War, and in an interview recorded at last month’s Comica Comiket, Alex talks to artist Maarten Van Wieleabout his “graphic trash novel” Paris which features sex, drugs and degradation in the French fashion industry (and recently published in English by Knockabout).

Electric Sheep Podcast: Comics and film

In a pair of interviews looking at the crossover between comics and film, Alex Fitch talks to Stefan Hutchinson about his comic book ‘Demons 3′ – a sequel to Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava’s classic 1980s horror films – and to comic book artist Dave McKean about his film of the Port Talbot Passion play, The Gospel of Us. Alex And Stefan discuss the writer’s Haloween comics ‘Nightdance’ and ‘First Death of Laurie Strode’ plus his documentary, Halloween: 25 Years Of Terror. Alex and Dave also talk about the artist’s collaborations with Richard Dawkins and Michael Sheen, plus his earlier film MirrorMask.

recent podcasts:

Panel Borders – John Higgins: Before (and after) Watchmen

Concluding our month of shows about British comics, Alex Fitch talks to writer, artist and occasional self-publisher John Higgins about his career so far. Alex and John talk about the latter’s first experiences in comics, being published in Bryan Talbot’s Brainstorm and 2000AD, his landmark collaboration with Alan Moore on Watchmen and his new strip The Crimson Corsair, which is being serialised in prequel series Before Watchmen.

Reality Check: The work of Warren Ellis

In a Q & A recorded at last year’s SCI-FI-LONDON festival, Iyare Igiehon (BBC 6music) discusses the work of Warren Ellis with Matt Jones (BERG design), Matthew Sheret (We are words + pictures) and Kieron Gillen (X-Men). Jones talks about SVK, the new comic by Ellis and D’Israeli, commissioned by BERG, Sheret discusses how Ellis inspired him to become a writer and Gillen talks about his friendship with the writer and their Marvel collaborations.

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.

The site for this year’s BD Passion event celebrating French and British comics culture is now live and choc-full of details of some great bande dessinee gigs in the heart of London. Taking place over May 24th to the 27th, the festival will include a reading group with Paul Gravett (doubtless in his full Jackanory mode), comics workshops with Christophe Arleston and Luke Pearson, talks by the acclaimed creator David B, Tom Gauld and Guy Delisle (how much do I want to be at that gig?!), Rosinski talking Thorgal, workshops on digital comics, Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill talking, Karrie Fransman holding a masterclass, broadcaster and comics lover Jonathan Ross discussing his love for the medium and more. Last year’s event was very well received and this year sounds even better, so if you are in the area you are going to want to get along to some of it. The events are again in the London Institut Français, 17 Queensberry Place, SW7 (nearest tube: South Kensington)

Sarah McIntyre has been off on her travels to Belgium and the Netherlands, and of course she took some time to explore some lovely bookstores and pick up a fine haul of French language comics and children’s illustrated books. There are some lovely pics up on her blog of some fabulous looking old and new comics (including some of the old Catholic church approved comics which were an important part of the early Belgian comics scene, complete with imported works like Steve Canyon, censored to suit the overseeing clergymen’s views) and just look at some of he bookstores in old gallery style shopping arcades in Brussels, I could happily spend hours browsing somewhere like that…

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!