Polina Oulinov is a very young girl who is taken on as a special pupil by the famous ballet teacher professor Bojinski. He is a very demanding educator, who refuses to adapt his standards to the talents of his pupils, and Polina has to work hard and make great sacrifices in order reach the level [...]
Continue reading...Monday, September 26, 2011
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Over the previous weekend it was announced that Dutch comic artist Minck Oosterveer had died in a motorcycle accident. He was only fifty years old. (Minck Oosterveer, photo by Jim Bella) Oosterveer will be remembered as a fervent activist for the appreciation of the continuity newspaper comic serial. With ‘Nicky Saxx’ in the Dutch daily [...]
Continue reading...Friday, September 23, 2011
A recent report by PISA, the Program for International Student Assessment by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reviews the impact of literacy on student proficiency. One of its focus points is the influence of the material that students read for pleasure, and their reading performance. It turns out that reading novels and [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, September 20, 2011
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The Maison de la Bande Dessinée in Brussels, near the Gare du Midi, may be less well-known than the Belgian Comic Strip Museum, but it is equally deserving of your visit. That is, if you are a comic buff who is mad about original art. Don’t expect any animation activities (except for some lone colouring [...]
Continue reading...Friday, September 16, 2011
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OK, let’s all calm down after that total abomination that was The Smurfs movie (does anyone have the name of a good therapist? I think our poor Wim needs help to get over the Smurfs movie – Joe), which still reaped in record figures at the box office. There’s more, and much, much better film [...]
Continue reading...Friday, September 16, 2011
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We know from our regular European Corrrespondent Wim that Belgium and Brussels loves its comics so much they have an actual festival celebrating bande dessinee to celebrate and promote their comics culture (if only we had that here, imagine…). Christoph has posted up a good, long video of one of the nocturnal celebrations of the [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, September 14, 2011
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Recently we mentioned that London was getting its very own BD festival (in conjunction with Comica), celebrating European comics work along with some top UK work. Well John Dunning tells us the full three day programme is now online. From the description: “From Friday, October 7th to Sunday, October 9th 2011, the Institut Français will [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, September 13, 2011
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If you’re a comic buff and you were planning on a weekend in Amsterdam, September might be a good time to do so. The city which always has been associated with illustrators and cartoonists (and which since 1968 has been the home to one of the best comic stores in the entire world, Lambiek) has [...]
Continue reading...Monday, September 12, 2011
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Highly respected German comics publisher Reprodukt is celebrating its 20th anniversary in style. This is the German publisher of people like Charles Burns, Craig Thompson, Max, Adrian Tomine, Posy Simmonds, Dupu and Bernerian and basically everyone who’s anyone in the world of literary comics. They’re also the native language publishing house behind names like Mawil, [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, September 7, 2011
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After having been ousted as director of L’Association, one of the most important independent comics publishers in France, JC Menu did not simply go away to die in some corner quietly. He mainly regrouped and is now returning to publishing with a new venture, strikingly called “L’apocalypse”. In a short note, reprinted at Stephen Betts’ [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, August 23, 2011
When the mother of young Zazie wants to spend a weekend with her new boyfriend, she asks her brother Gabriël to look after the little girl. Zazie looks forward to spending time with Gabriël, because he lives in Paris and she loves the Métro. Much to her chagrin, though, the métro drivers are on strike. [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, August 18, 2011
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Holy cow, there’s just too much comics intertextuality going on here ! Channeling the modus operandi perfected by Andy Warhol, in 2008 French cartoonist Jean-C. Denis created a portrait of Guy Peelaert‘s equally pop art heroin Pravda, holding that other famous Belgian female, Snowy. And all the while a quartet of angry or merely bewildered [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, August 16, 2011
So you read the damning reviews of the Smurfs movie, and you at least felt some slight unease at the first glimpses of the blue dwarves in the trailer, and this has really brought you down. Were these the cool cartoon characters you knew from when you were a kid ? Could it be we [...]
Continue reading...Monday, August 15, 2011
I am so looking forward to Jodorowsky and Moebius’ seminal European science fiction comic The Incal getting a much deserved new English language edition – coming from our friends at SelfMadeHero this autumn. If you haven’t read it, it’s one of those works that belong on the shelves of any serious collector of quality comics [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, August 9, 2011
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This autumn London comics lover can enjoy their very first Bande Dessinee and Comics Passion festival from the Institut Français from the 7th to the 9th of October, with a great mix of British and French writers and artists taking part. From the description: “The graphic novel medium has grown over the years to become [...]
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Wednesday, September 28, 2011
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