Tag Archive | "bande dessinee"

Counting down to Angouleme – the selection

Thursday, January 19, 2012

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With lodgings, accreditation and train all dealt with, it’s time to start really preparing for the Smorgasbord of comics that is the Angoulême Festival.  In this post I’ll be highlighting some of the more surprising or noteworthy titles on the several short lists, honour lists or other sélections that the Festival has. On the Sélection [...]

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Judith Vanistendael in Brussels

Thursday, January 19, 2012

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The excellent Belgian comics creator Judith Vanistendael will be at the Librairie Galerie Brusel, 100 Boulevard Anspach, on the 20th of January at 6pm to promote her new book David, les Femmes et la Mort, being published by Le Lombard. It’s an intriguing looking tale of a man facing almost certain death after a cancer [...]

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Counting down to Angouleme : Spiegelman speaks

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

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The tradition dictates that whoever wins the Grand Prix at the Angoulème Comics Festival, is invited to curate the next edition of the Festival.  This means that he or she will probably get a major retrospective exhibition (which are always a treat in their own right), but also that the festival will focus on particular [...]

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10 best of 11

Thursday, January 5, 2012

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As is customary, our beloved editor inquired about what we thought were the best books of the past year.  ”Just pick your top three or something”, he said.  I picked 10.  It’s been that kind of year, so sue me.  For good reference, I divided them into neat little departments. The Dept of Epic Awesomeness [...]

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Killoffer’s album art

Thursday, January 5, 2012

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BD Gest reports on a new album by Renaud, the limited two disc edition of which comes complete with an 80-page CD-sized illustrated work/comic by the excellent Killoffer. Nice. (thanks to Simon Gurr for the tip):

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Herge’s Heir

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

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As is probably well-known by now, Stephen Spielberg managed to successfully turn Tintin into a movie.  Alan Baran, an intimate friend of Hergé’s and his last private secretary, was also the man who conducted the first negotiations with Spielberg.  And he liked what he saw. UK and European audiences have already enjoyed the film and [...]

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The new Vanistendael is very promising

Thursday, December 8, 2011

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Only a year ago, SelfMadeHero published the English edition of Flemish cartoonist Judith Vanistendael‘s moving graphic novel, Dance By The Light Of The Moon (which was an official “Sélection” for the prestigious Angoulême Festival, usually a great mark of quality comics work), a gripping story about life, love, differences and similarities and how you never [...]

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Expocomic announces 2011 winners

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

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At the Expocomic festival in Madrid, Spain, the winners of the 2011 awards were announced last week.   The lifetime achievement award went to Esteban Maroto, who is probably best known for his work for various Warren Publications magazines, such as Eerie, Creepy and Vampirella.  He is also credited with the design of Red Sonja’s [...]

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New Swarte

Monday, November 28, 2011

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I Love Joost Swarte (warning, Flash heavy site).  The capital “L” in the previous sentence is not a typo – I Love his work, and especially the very carefully designed small press books he produces for various occasions.  One of these is a small leporello-type booklet which was originally published to celebrate the National Readers [...]

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Best of the year, a la Francaise

Thursday, November 24, 2011

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The French take their comics very seriously.  Every year the 65 members of the Association of Comics Journalists (or ACBD) select a number of books from the deluge that typically appears between November 1st and October 31st.  This list is then trimmed down to a shortlist, which contains a mere 15 books, which are “comics, [...]

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Corto Maltese and the Freemasons

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

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If you thought that freemasonry was the exclusive domain of Alan Moore and his From Hell, think again.  The Corto Maltese stories by Italian comics godfather Hugo Pratt is supposed to be riddled with references to the Freemasons and their secretive beliefs and practices.  Indeed, so much so that the French Freemasonry Museum in Paris [...]

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Cool Jazz and Comics

Thursday, November 17, 2011

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You might recall a few months back Wim talked about a cool-sounding, jazz-inspired comics short story collection involving Philip Paquet (see here) – now there’s a short video with Paquet about a collaboration with the Brussels Jazz Orchestra. It’s in Flemish rather than English, but you can still enjoy some top musically inspired comics art [...]

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Folio And Folia

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

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Some beautiful books are announced with great fanfare and cannot be missed, even if you wanted to.  Others arrive below the radar, and seem to be suddenly there, leaving you amazed at how you didn’t see them coming. One such book is Folio Et Folia, which is scheduled for publication for October 13 by the [...]

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Lady S vs The C.I.A. … no contest

Friday, November 11, 2011

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Lady S. Volume 3 – Game Of Fools By Jean Van Hamme and Philippe Aymond Cinebook “Suzan and her father are taking a well-deserved break in the south of France. But their holidays are cut short when several men burst into the house and kidnap James Fitzroy. What Suzie doesn’t know is that the attackers [...]

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Dutch comic genius collected

Thursday, November 10, 2011

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Two Dutch giants of illustration and comics have recently seen their complete comics work collected in major editions.   And even though they have the same background, their output couldn’t be more different. Joost Swarte is well-known as the inventor of the term ligne claire, and, with his extremely stylised version of the graphic style [...]

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