This spring will mark the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most remarkable events not only of 20th century history but of all of human history. It’s April the 12th, 1961 and something is about to happen that has never happened in all the long ages of the world; a mere few decades after the [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, February 22, 2011
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Scotland on Sunday has a two-page article discussing a forthcoming documentary “Scotland’s Amazing Comic Book Heroes” which is due for broadcast later this year. In it, according to the article, there is a claim made for Glasgow’s 19th century publishing industry to be considered as the ‘birthplace’ of the comics form due to the Glasgow [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, November 25, 2010
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The famous Bayeux Tapestry is often cited by some as an early form of proto comic strip and I am rather liking this animated version, complete with appearance of Halley’s Comet (from Open Culture, link via Routledge Arts):
Continue reading...Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Maeve Clancy has posted up a brief look at the history of comics, created for a community art project. It’s brief, but still interesting as a quick outline of the comics and I like that at the end she brings us up to date with comics creators in Ireland today, like Declan Shalvey, Philip Barrett, [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, October 12, 2010
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Panel Borders alerts us to a talk by the Victoria & Albert’s comics expert Ian Rakoff; Ian will be looking into representations of race and gender in early 20th century American comics with a talk entitled Ethnicity in 20th Century American Comics from The Yellow Kid to Tarzan at Oxford University’s Institute of Social and [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, September 21, 2010
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For a few years now, rumours had been circulating about celebrated seminal Flemish cartoonist and comic artist Willy Vandersteen’s activities during World War II. Comic historians discovered illustrations and cartoons in books and magazines published during German occupation time, which sympathised with the occupying forces or even presented a blatantly anti-Semitic sentiment. The style of [...]
Continue reading...Monday, July 5, 2010
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Chris Kowalski has this cool potted history of the comics form in a short video, from prehistoric cave paintings through the Bayeux tapestry as a proto comic strip to Rudloph Topffer, one of the touchstone creators for modern comics development, and Outcault with his Yellow Kid, the growth of newspaper strips in the early 20th [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, June 3, 2010
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Slashfilm has a peek at Xerxes, the prequel to Frank Miller’s tale of Spartan glory in ancient Greece, 300, which he’s been working on for some time: “The time frame begins 10 years before ‘300′ and the story starts with the Battle of Marathon” … “The lead character is Themistocles, who became warlord of Greece [...]
Continue reading...Saturday, May 29, 2010
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As ceremonies take place to mark the 70th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation and commemorate the astonishing bravery of so many, from the armed forces to the men on the famous ‘little boats’ who sailed into fire to ‘do their bit’, it seems like a a good time to look back to some of the [...]
Continue reading...Monday, May 10, 2010
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It Was the War of the Trenches By Jacques Tardi Published by Fantagraphics I’ve been pretty delighted to see the crew at Fantagraphics translating and publishing some of the excellent work of acclaimed French BD artist Jaques Tardi over the last year or so (with more to come), but I’ve been especially keen to read [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Dutch publisher Matrijs, which specialises in historical studies and materials, recently published a quite interesting and special book about the last year of the German occupation of Holland, called “Bezetting in Beeld” (The Occupation in Images). From April, 1944 up and until the Liberation in May, 1945 (now exactly 65 years ago), Frans Brouwer, a [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, January 27, 2010
A reminder that we have Martin Conaghan and Will Pickering coming to our Edinburgh store on Southbridge tomorow - Thursday January 28th – to sign copies of their recently published Burke and Hare graphic novel (reviewed here by Richard); for those with a literary bent and a fascination for history the boys will also be [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, December 8, 2009
I’m delighted to announce that the Edinburgh Forbidden Planet on South Bridge will be hosting Martin Conaghan and Will Pickering, who are coming through to celebrate the release of their fascinating new graphic novel detailing the grisly, true-life crimes of Messrs Burke and Hare, the infamous serial killers who saw the easy money to be [...]
Continue reading...Friday, November 13, 2009
FPI: Today I’m joined by Martin Conaghan and Will Pickering, the team behind Insomnia’s recently published graphic novel Burke and Hare, which draws upon one of history’s most famous cases of the infamous ‘Resurrection Men’ (or bodysnatchers) in Enlightenment era Edinburgh. Hi, guys and thanks for joining us – could you begin by introducing yourselves [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, October 22, 2009
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Angus McLeod has posted up two absolutely brilliant simple comics histories explaining the whole of World War One and World War Two in just a few minutes; a quick excerpt from 1914: I love the British Isles reaction to the German attack through Belgium “you wanker” and the donning of the war moustache is a [...]
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Thursday, March 10, 2011
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