Willy Linthout at the Ghent comic fair in 2008 (photo Helliwood)

For this book, Linthout has started from a book that his mother wrote.  It’s a real book, he told Flemish comic blog Strip Turnhout, “It’s full of recipes and other things that are good to know, such as ways to sober up as quick as possible.  It says how we should deal with herbicides, but also how to bake a chocolade cake, or when there’s a sale on in Greece.  It’s really a book of things that we should know.  The strange thing, however, is that my mother never used the book.  She never prepared any recipes from it, and she never ever went to Greece.”

Linthout will once more use his alter ego Charles from The Year of the Elephant, and will do the art of the book in his well-known sketchy pencil style.  The story itself was written in close collaboration with his brother Theo.  “The book will be even more autobiographical than the previous ones“, Linthout says, “A writer should write about the things he knows.  But then again, I like to mix reality and fiction in my comics“.

The first episode of the book will be published by Dutch publisher De Bezige Bij in March 2011, and the next three will be published in 2011 and 2012.  As was the case with The Year of the Elephant, the complete book will later also be available as a collected edition.  As yet, no information is avaible whether this book will be translated as well.

(The books by Willy Linthout are published in English by Fanfare / Ponent Mon)

This weekend sees not one, but two great comic events. First up it’s the Comica 2009 final week – which looks rather good with a trio of conversations happening at the ICA:

First up on Sunday 22 November; Reinhard Kleist, author of the great I see A Darkness, the biography of Johnny Cash, published recently by Self Made Hero is in conversation with Charles Shaar Murray. I See A Darkness was much loved by both myself and Joe – see Joe’s review for more details.

On Monday 23 November, Comica welcome Flemish cartoonist, Willy Linthout in conversation with Michael Rosen. Linthout’s  autobiographical Years Of The Elephant, has been much acclaimed for it’s difficult and emotional tale of the author’s grief following his son’s suicide.

And finally, after his appearance at Thought Bubble Leeds on Saturday 21st , Ben Templesmith will be appearing at the ICA on Tuesday 24 November. Templesmith’s particularly graphic artwork has featured on 30 Days Of Night, Fell, Wormwood and Welcome To Hoxford. He’ll be tlking with writer/director Philip Ridley who will then go on to introduce a preview screening of Heartless, his “dark, horror-tinged urban fantasy starring Jim Sturgess as a young photographer who feels as if his life has been blighted by the birthmark that covers half of his face”.

Comica certainly looks and sounds like it’s been a huge success. Congratulations to Paul Gravett and everyone else involved with Comic 2009.

(the poster art for SPX 2009 by Gahan Wilson)

We’ve written about Linthout before on the blog (see here – Joe).  His earliest work was published in Wordt Vervolgd, the Dutch edition of legendary  (À Suivre) magazine. In 1983, however, he began a collaboration with the Flemish comedian-actor Urbanus, and went on to create more than 130 enormously popular albums that sold millions of copies. In 2004 Linthout’s world crashed when his son took his own life.

(a page from the English-language edition of Years of the Elephant by and (c) Willy Linthout, translated by Michiel Horn, published Fanfare/Ponent Mon)

The only way he was able to deal with this blow, was by processing his reactions to that experience in the graphic novel Years of the Elephant, which was first published in a series format in Dutch by Bries, French by Les Editions Sarbacane and is being published this year in an English-language edition by Fanfare/Ponent Mon. The book won the Dutch Stripschapspenning award for best literary graphic novel (2007), the Flemish Community Cultural Award (2008), the Bronzen Adhemar (2009) and the Carolus Quintus Prize(2009).

Willy was to appear at SPX with the generous support of the Flemish Literature Fund, but sadly we’ve heard from Stephen at Fanfare that Willy has had to pull out at short notice due to health reasons; hospital treatment was required but we’re assured he is doing fine and Stephen is hoping he may be able to do an appearance later this year at Comica (more on that as we hear, of course); the English version of Years of the Elephant will still debut at SPX next weekend, however, so if you are going, do keep your eye open for it. For more information on the Small Press Expo and the Ignatz Awards, please visit the SPX site here.

Wim Lockefeer lives in Belgium, where he’s being very modest by not mentioning that his original articles here on Linthout helped point Fanfare to the artist’s work; you can read more of his thoughts on his own Ephemerist blog.