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...Wednesday, August 31, 2011
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In 1992, Spanish cartoonist Max (creator of the fantastic Bardin The Superrealist) created a video clip for the song Tierra by Spanish pop group Radio Futura. Thanks to La Cárcel de Papel‘s Álvaro Pons, and while we’re waiting for the new Max book, which has been announced for the end of the year, we can [...]
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...Friday, July 22, 2011
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With a title like Jesus hates Zombies : A Jurassic Kinda Life (215Ink), the third installment of writer Stephen Lindsay’s over-the-top survival epic, you at least have a comic that delivers what it promises. Elaborating on the premise that any theme from popular culture gets better if you throw it together with a few random [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, July 20, 2011
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Those among you who have a soft spot for the little blue dwarves that are the Smurfs, who are awaiting the upcoming Smurfs movie with dread in their hearts and would rather dwell on the fact that Smurfs creator Peyo originally created some actually pretty fine comics, and who happen to be in Paris, are [...]
Continue reading...Monday, July 18, 2011
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This may be quite old news, but with the current financial climate and its effect on government spending (or increasing lack thereof) across pretty much every Western country on things that are deemed to be unnecessary, such as art or health care, it may be a source of inspiration. On July 4th, the creators of [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, July 12, 2011
As always, this year’s Fall List from Drawn And Quarterly is a joy in and of itself (new Clowes, Seth, Tomine, Beaton and Barry collected! More Nipper!), but there’s one book that I would like to draw your attention to in particular : The Adventures of Hergé, by Jose-Louis Bocquet, Jean-Luc Fromental and Stanislas Barthelemy. [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, June 30, 2011
Finnish comics have always been something of an enigma to me. The fact that the language is completely foreign may have something to do with that, but mostly it would seem to me that international promotion of Finnish comics, beyond the typical in-crowd, is a fairly low-key affair. Or rather was, because this year witnesses [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, June 23, 2011
With the Spielberg-Jackson movie slated for the end of the year, it would seem that all Tintin news these days is limited to standard American marketing and PR style fodder (this just in : Weta is preparing a series of limited-edition statuettes based on the movie’s characters, with Haddock being the first in line). Let’s [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, June 15, 2011
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Good news for fans of vintage 60s pop material: Fantagraphics (one of our favourite publishers) recently announced (in their own, “you have to find it if you’re really interested” kind of way, burying it deep in their site) that they have acquired the publishing rights for the English language editions for two classic albums by [...]
Continue reading...Monday, June 13, 2011
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Illustrator and cartoonist Gary Panter, whose art has been described as expressionist new wave punk, recently had an exhibition in the Martel Galerie in Paris, with lots of sketches and paintings, a fair amount of Jimbo material and quite a lot of Smokestack strips. Even though the exhibition is already over, you can still check [...]
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Tuesday, September 13, 2011
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