By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 7/28/2015
Magnetic Press launched last year with an audacious business plan: bringing French graphic novels to the US market. While French materials has had its ups and downs in the US, Magnetic has been at the forefront of what has to be called a French invasion, as French comics have found popular and critical success. Both […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 7/23/2015
The Comixology-Delcourt team-up to bring some of the finest French language comics to the English speaking world via digital is just the start. Europe Comics is another digital initiative, this one launched by Mediatoons, licensing agent for Média-Participations, publisher of Dargaud, Dupuis and several other imprints, and Izneo, the French Comixology. The website is a bit bare bones at the mo, but according to the PR, “the joint digital initiative will encompass the online distribution of European works in English, the international promotion of European authors and the creation of a European comics online directory” by bringing together work from beyond the Media Participations portfolio:
Behind EUROPE COMICS is a coalition of 13 European comics and graphic novel companies: the publishers Ballon (Belgium), BAO (Italy), Cinebook (UK), Darkwood (Serbia), Dibbuks (Spain), Dargaud (France), Dupuis (Belgium), Le Lombard (Belgium), Tunué (Italy) and Timof (Poland); the Turkish agent Akan Ajans and the French audiovisual company Ellispanime. EUROPE COMICS is coordinated by Mediatoon Licensing and co-funded by the European Union.
The overall objective of the venture is to bring European comics and their authors closer to an international audience of readers and comics professionals. A diverse catalog of mainstream series, fiction and non-fiction graphic novels for adults and children’s titles will be made available in English and in digital format, while European authors will be promoted at live events across Europe and the USA. The www.europecomics.com website will aspire to become a reference for international comics professionals as it will provide useful information regarding European publishers, trade events, academic studies, etc. Also, a number of comics properties will be developed into animated series.
The EUROPE COMICS catalogue will be distributed to all major online retailers and libraries by French digital comics platform izneo.com.
Among the serie published by Mediatoons: Lucky Luke, Spirou, Titeuf, Blake & Mortimer, XIII, Blacksad, the works of Sfar and Loisel, etc etc etc, and that’s what I found in a 30 second search.
So yeah, more great comics in English! Woo hoo!
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 7/2/2015
What better way to celebrate the Beat’s 11th anniversary than with a preview of one of our all time favorite comics, Corto Maltese by Hugo Pratt, now being reprinted in lovely English language editions from IDW and Dean Mullaney’s Euro comix imprint. This volume goes on sales today and follow’s Corto’s ravishingly romantic and lushly inked adventures in South America from the Mosquito Coast to Barbados to a deadly struggle among Jivaro head-hunters in the Peruvian Amazon.
Corto Maltese: Beyond the Windy Isle
Hugo Pratt (w & a & c)
The second of twelve volumes presenting the definitive English-language edition of Hugo Pratt’s masterpiece in the original oversized B&W format!
TPB • BW • $29.99 • 120 pages • 9.25” x 11.75” • ISBN: 978-1-63140-317-0
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 7/2/2015
Woot, now this is cool. The amazing artists Bengal and Tony Sandoval will be appearing at the Magnetic Press Booth (#5534) and many cool books will be on display. In case you’ve missed it, Magnetic has turned out some of the best looking books over the last year—Love The Tiger to name just one—and this booth is well worth checking out. Deets:
SIGNING AND EVENT SCHEDULE
WEDNESDAY (Preview Night):
6:00pm – 9:00pm BE THE FIRST TO GET YOUR HANDS ON OUR NEW STUFF!
THURSDAY:
12:00pm – 1:00pm Catch TOM DELONGE (Poet Anderson, Blink-182, Angels&Airwaves) on CBR’s streaming “Con Yacht” channel! (online)
3:30pm – 4:30pm DAVE DORMAN (Wasted Lands) SIGNING (Magnetic booth)
5:00pm – 6:00pm: FRANCISCO HERERRA (Bitten) SIGNING (Magnetic booth)
FRIDAY:
11:00am – 12:00pm: MP Publisher MIKE KENNEDY will be a panelist on PUBLISHERS WEEKLY’s PANEL “THE FRENCH COMIC INVASION” (room 29AB) more info here
1:00pm – 2:00pm: DAVE DORMAN (Wasted Lands) SIGNING (Magnetic booth)
2:30pm – 4:30pm: TONY SANDOVAL (Doomboy) SIGNING (Magnetic booth)
5:00 – 6:00pm – FRANCISCO HERERRA (Bitten) SIGNING (Magnetic booth)
8:00pm – 10:00pm: MAGNETIC GOES TO THE EISNER’S!!! (Wish us luck!)
SATURDAY:
12:00pm – 1:00pm: DAVE DORMAN (Wasted Lands) SIGNING (Magnetic booth)
1:15pm – 2:30pm: TOM DELONGE INTERVIEW & SIGNING (The Nerdist, Petco Park)
1:30pm – 2:30pm: FRANCISCO HERERRA (Bitten) SIGNING (Magnetic booth)
3:00pm – 5:00pm: TONY SANDOVAL (Doomboy) SIGNING (Magnetic booth)
5:30pm – 7:30pm: BENGAL (Naja, Meka, Luminae, Cassyno) SIGNING (Magnetic Booth)
8:00pm – 9:00pm: MAGNETIC PRESS PANEL “2015 AND BEYOND PREVIEW” (Room 28DE) more info here
SUNDAY:
11:30am – 1:30pm: BENGAL (Naja, Meka, Luminae, Cassyno) SIGNING (Magnetic booth)
1:00pm – 3:00pm: TONY SANDOVAL (Doomboy) SIGNING (Magnetic booth)
3:00pm – 4:00pm: DAVE DORMAN (Wasted Lands) SIGNING (Magnetic booth)
THE MAGNETIC PRESS PANEL:
Saturday, July 11 • 8:00pm – 9:00pm
ROOM 28DC
Join us for this year’s ridiculously star studded Magnetic Press panel and hear all about what we have lined up for YEAR TWO. Join Magnetic Press Publisher MIKE KENNEDY and a murderers row of talent, including POET ANDERSON creator and multi-platinum recording artist TOM DELONGE (Blink-182, Angels & Airwaves), along with co-writer BEN KULL and NY Times best-selling author SUZANNE YOUNG, talking about the Poet universe and its many upcoming facets! We also welcome superstar illustrator BENGAL (Batgirl, Naja, Cassyno) to SDCC for the first time, along with 2015 Eisner Nominees TONY SANDOVAL (Doomboy) and DAVE DORMAN (Wasted Lands Omnibus). Also appearing will be FRANCISCO HERRERA (Bitten) and Euro-comics magnate and author PIERRE PAQUET (A Glance Backward)!
Here’s a little tease of YEAR TWO titles get you in the mood:

CONVENTION EXCLUSIVES & DEBUTS:
THE WORLD OF CASSYNO PLAYING CARDS and GAME BOX with WORLD BOOK OF LORE

Beyond the plains of Collier Bluff and the glistening towers of Goldstaxx lies the land of Cassyno, a world of dark fantasy, magic, and games of chance created by French comic illustrator and concept artist Bengal. Far from just another deck of playing cards, this set is as much a gallery of original character art as it is the fantastic setting for numerous stories of deep mythology, magical intrigue, and medieval espionage, between four unique kingdoms. Alice in Wonderland meets Game of Thrones.

Featuring 54 original illustrations unique to each card in the deck (including 2 Jokers). The 64 page World Book includes character lore, world history, and rules for seven unique games you can play with this original deck of cards!
ONLY 30 GAME BOXES and 48 SINGLE DECKS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT SDCC!
Also available in limited quantities:CASSYNO ROYALS 8-plate lithograph portfolio! Only 15 will be available at SDCC!!

BENGAL’S COSPLAY GIRLS PLAYING CARDS
A complete deck of 56 cards featuring a selection of never-before published works from Bengal’s Griseline sketch collection. Each card features a different girl in a different costume design, some of them familiar, others wholly original.
THIS ITEM IS LIMITED TO ONLY A SINGLE PRINT RUN of 500! WE WILL ONLY HAVE 50 AT SDCC!
Stay Tuned to learn about our SDCC COSPLAY COMPETITION to win an exclusive deck signed by BENGAL!
Also available in limited quantities:BENGAL’S COSPLAY GIRLS 6-plate lithograph portfolio! Only 30 will be available at SDCC!!

BITTEN: THE FULL MOON BOOK
EXTRA-LIMITED Signed Book and Animation Cel
This is an EXTRA-LIMITED, unique B/W cover edition of the BITTEN: FULL MOON ART BOOK, which includes an EXCLUSIVE ANIMATION CEL and BACKGROUND PRINT byFRANCISCO HERRERA! ONLY 250 PRINTED!

THE SHADOW GAMBIT : A Basil & Moebius Adventure vol.2
SPECIAL ADVANCE BUNDLE
The second volume in the Basil & Moebius graphic novel series makes an advance debut at SDCC, a month ahead of stores! This time, the thieving duo chase down ninjas, sunken uBoats, and Nazi UFOs! We will only have limited quantities of volumes 1 and 2 at our booth at a special bundled price!
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 7/1/2015
I have not written anything for The Beat in a fairly long time, but I recently traveled most of the Turkic World (Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan). With the exception of returning to Istanbul by plane and crossing the Caspian Sea by boat, it was me hitchhiking, taking cabs, trains, and buses everywhere.
One of reasons I took this trip was because I hadn’t seen my father’s side of my family in over 18 years. Another reason was because I was an artist in crisis. Not sure if I was cut out for being a cartoonist or not, creatively lost and confused, wavering convictions, etc… I was seeking inspiration. A side quest I also engaged in was looking for comics in each country, seeing if they had a comics scene of sorts and what it was comprised of. If there was not much of a comics industry, I tried to at least look for other artists. Out of all the countries I went to only two had any semblance of a comics scene or tradition: Turkey and Kazakhstan.
I do apologize in advance. My mastery of Turkish and Russian is basic and there were times where I forgot to take photos of something or my camera battery died; a running gag on this trip along with my other gadgets dying or breaking.
Turkey:
The Turkish Comics (Çizgi Roman. pronounced Chiz-gi Ro-mon) scene is a sizable one and a surprisingly unknown one on top of that. They have a breadth of iconic characters and comics like Kotu Kedi Serafettin, Robin Crusoe, and Jamal along with an industry that has a weekly amateur day where aspiring cartoonists can come to the major comics magazines to meet the artists for pointers and stuff, but the most baffling thing is the lack of exposure beyond Turkey despite the pool of talent and prevalence of comics in the country.
The first shop I visited was Arkabaçhe in Beşiktaş, Istanbul. It’s in a mall and is a familiar sight, a modern comics shop: white, slick, clean, and organized, sprinkled with some action figures, apparel, and memorabilia. I got the good feeling it’s all about comics here; I love that. The owner Sinan also knew good English, no need for the pre-written-as-simply-as-possible questions on Google translate!
arkabahce(turkish for backyard)
He told me his shop also does the Turkish translations for Marvel and DC comics and has begun to publish original works like Istanbul Odyssey, among others. In terms of what’s popular, it’s all about Marvel, DC, and to a lesser extent at his store, manga. When I asked about comics conventions, Sinan was blunt and explained few to none in Turkey would go to a comic convention and there’s not much economic incentive for the few shops to pack up some books and go where they won’t make much money. When I asked him if people in Europe, Japan, and America know about the Turkish comics scene, he bluntly said no. He suggested if someone big from the US came or if Midtown Comics had a booth, that could bring in more people. He also mentioned that some people in Turkey would need to have explained to them the concept of paying for artists drawings/signatures at cons.
Sinan, the owner of the shop
Speaking with translator Burc Uner, he told me that they don’t have a lot of contact with Marvel and DC because there’s a middle man between them and they have contact with the big two very minimally for design related issues. He also mentioned that it’s difficult to publish some books they would love to translate. For example, he would love to translate David Mazzuchelli’s Asterios Polyp but the given the printing requirements Pantheon has for the book and the already low interest in indie comics, it’s not affordable for them.
When I asked him about the self-publishing/indie scene he explained how it has a touch and go quality to it, where a group of artists get together publish an anthology then over time one person becomes more popular and then the group disbands. He showed one group of high schoolers who published a heavily manga-influenced and nicely printed(a glossy soft cover trade with recycled paper interiors) anthology and for their age it was an impressive feat. Not the best work in the world; vacuous backgrounds, unintentionally wonky drawing, and heavy amounts of emulation than originality, but a C for effort given their age. They managed to publish 3 issues but the dip in quality in each issue is very apparent.
Another self-published work (also black and white interiors) I was shown was Çizgi Fanzin, put together by a group of art school students and was a glossy covered book with recycled paper interiors. It has a familiar vibe of friends all hanging out, drawing, and grinding away making comics; hunched over their desks with a cigarette in their mouth and smile on their face, all having a good time. The work inside reminds me of people I went to school with at SVA; it’s all very promising and definitely the best self published work I came across for what little I’ve seen so far. By sheer luck, the group who put it together was just stopping by the shop and I got to ask them a few questions. They are more or less no different than any other young and budding cartoonists in North America and Europe. nothing really stood out other than the language barrier. When I asked them about how much it cost to print their work, they said it was not much because they all pitched in. Where their work is placed online varies. Some post on Behance and a Turkish equivalent, others Deviant Art, and some on Instagram.
The second shop I visited was Gerekli Seyler in Beyoglu which was more heavy on the toy and memorabilia than Arkabache but they had more manga and a sizable collection of erotic comics and hentai too. They also translate books for Marvel and DC but this owner’s English was not as good.
The folks at Gerekli Seyler
He did give me a ballpark estimate of the number of comics readers in Istanbul though, around 5000 and said that out of all those comics fans probably only 300 at most would show up to my hypothetical Turkish comics convention. I ended up leaving after about 15 minutes and headed off to my final shop.
Gon is for me the most beautiful shop of the three and is also the smallest. It’s named after the character of the Japanese Manga series of the same name by Masashi Tanaka via a contest. Gon was originally just a place being used as storage for a bookstore called Robinson Crusoe. It began its life as a comics shop 8 years ago, originally selling English language comics but shifting towards Turkish language comics over time due to low demand for English fare.
Gon
I spoke to Nedim Okan further about the Indie scene and he continued where Sinan left off about the clashing egos and unrealistic expectations of cartoonists and literary journalists. The mentality of Turkish writers and cartoonists who publish their work is not far from that of a rock band. They get together for the music, but then the fame gets to their heads and once it dries up or one member goes solo they ditch the magazine. Nedim told me one story of a literary magazine that had printed 8 issues (a whole lot by Turkish standards) and the members came by the store to tell the owner they were no longer going to print the magazine because they said that “Honestly, we’re not making any money or getting any pussy out of this, so what’s the point?”
Orkan is one of the folks who works at Gon
I laughed pretty hard and it was glorious. Nedim’s hope/advice was that if cartoonists actually stuck through with it and did not unrealistically expect to be make tons of money and get laid a lot, comics would get bigger in Turkey. Unfortunately, peoples’ egos hold everyone back.
Peter Kuper was here and he made a contribution to Gon’s sketchbook.
Kazakhstan
The Kazakh comics (Komisky) scene is as sparse as the country itself. I found absolutely nothing starting from Aktau in the west to Shymkent in the south near Uzbekistan. However, I met some Otaku and it was pretty funny to see how similar they are to the otaku students I teach in middle and high school. It was not until I reached Almaty where I struck gold. Almaty is where the art is at. You can find artists selling their paintings of Kazakh epics and the pastoral life of the steppes. I even came across a few print shops, though they were unfamiliar with self publishing comics.
I searched the city and the interwebz for Kazakh comics and lo and behold I finally found them! Khan Comics published an anthology in 2011 called KZ Comics and they were putting on a show at a national art school. I used my limited Russian vocabulary to tell them about my background as an American comic artist and to talk to them about their comic. My credentials perked their ears up, so they scrambled to find the one English speaker, Timur from external relations.
He brought me to the head of the animation department who then explained that the comic only had a print run of 500 copies and there were no more, but would get me a black and white prints of the comics in side (I never got them because I forgot to pick them up like a dumbass). He also showed me a lot of comics done by the animation majors.
The Head of the animation dept showing me the comics made by animation students.
The talent was just as promising as the Turkish work I saw. For the Kazakh, comics and animation are one and the same. However, while Turkey has a large cartoonist scene and therefore many opportunities to prove yourself as a professional cartoonist, Kazakhstan did not. Timur explained that their school is not affiliated with any western school, only CIS ones (Commonwealth of Independent States aka the former Soviet bloc).
A student named Nursultan working on his Diploma Project
Logistically things are also very difficult. For example, if you were to host a comics convention or festival in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, people in Almaty, Aktobe, and Shymkent would be a day or more away if they traveled by train or bus, the cheapest ways for the average Kazakh to get around. Traveling so far for a small one day festival when it takes two or three days to commute to and from it is a hard sell. It’s hard to build a scene of comics readers when people are so scattered.
“John”
The handful of students I met in Almaty they expressed this sentiment. Nursultan, Mansur, and John (I forgot his real name but he said John was ok) all expressed this feeling of isolation and want to go to Europe or America because there isn’t much opportunity in their home nation. They can probably get jobs doing animation for commercials or graphic design work in Kazakhstan or Russia, but anything beyond that is unlikely. They asked me questions about opportunities in the States and I tried to help them with what little I knew about the film and animation industry and we traded contacts. They asked me to stay in Almaty a little longer but I was leaving for Bishkek by the end of the week and could not stay longer. I plan to return to Almaty someday.
Mansur also working on….something
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 6/8/2015
In a shocking court reveal over the fate of one of the world’s most beloved and influential comics characters, a Dutch court has ruled that Moulinsart, the company that runs the publishing and licensing business of Tintin, does not own all the rights.
The stunning result came about during a court case in which Moulinsart sued a Dutch Tintin fanclub over using images of George “Hergé” Remi’s beloved boy reporter. Moulinsart is known for pursuing any and all outside uses of the character, even benign ones such as fanzines.
During the case, a legal document from 1942 was produced showing that Hergé had assigned the rights to the character to his publisher, Casterman.
The Hergé estate is currently run by the man who married Hergé’s widow, and he’s quite unpopular with fans and industry watchers, for running the estate with an iron fist, including such things as suing fanclubs over use. That this stunning document showed up in just such a case is a twist that you’d find incredulous in a film. But it really happened.
It’s kind of hard to give context to this, but it’s like, let’s say sometime in the future Prince George is about to ascend to the throne of England, and someone suddenly produces a paper saying Queen Elizabeth was actually from New Jersey and was never queen.
“It appears from a 1942 document… that Herge gave publishing rights for the books of the adventures of Tintin to publisher Casterman so Moulinsart is not the one to decide who can use material from the books,” said the Hague court’s ruling, seen by AFP on Monday.
The document came from a Herge expert who wishes to remain anonymous and its validity has not been contested by Moulinsart or the author’s family.
“The big question is to know whether they (other fanclubs) have to continue paying Moulinsart,” said Herge Society secretary Stijn Verbeek.
Tom Spurgeon has a lot more background on this including comments from euro-comics expert Bart Beaty:
“Reaction in my social media has been a mixture of pure shock — my own first reaction — and a good deal of joy. It is important to bear in mind that Nick Rodwell, who runs Moulinsart, is one of the most disliked people in European comics amongst fans. The husband of Hergé’s second wife, he has taken hold of the Tintin empire and consistently reined over it in a way that antagonizes fans and scholars (Moulinsart is relentless in the protection of the Tintin copyrights even to the point of discouraging academic study of the Tintin books). More than a few people feel that Casterman would be better stewards of the Hergé legacy than the man who married his widow.
Hergé himself had given little thought to the business of merchandising. “He was involved only in his creation, in his works,” Vlamynck told a French television interviewer last year. He had all but forgone any oversight of Tintin merchandising as part of a deal to restore his reputation in 1945. Hergé had produced comic strips for Le Soir newspaper throughout the war, even after it came under the control of the occupying Germans. His perceived collaboration barred him from newspaper work at the end of the war. Raymond Leblanc, a prominent Belgian resistance figure, offered him a solution: Leblanc lent Hergé some of his anti-Nazi credentials by going into partnership with him; in exchange, Hergé licensed his hero’s image for use as a marketing tool. Forever conscious of the favour, he never broke off the deal; the Tintin-branded mustard pots and more were the result.
Under Rodwell, this began to change. Moulinsart terminated all but a few of its long-running licensing contracts. It was not that the group wanted to curb Tintin’s appearances totally but Rodwell hoped to control the brand more effectively and apply more consistent standards by developing products in-house. What emerged over time was a centralised merchandising policy that pushed the brand relentlessly upmarket. The number of retailers authorised to sell the goods was reduced, creating a scarcity that had not existed before. It reflected the new ambitions: Rodwell began speaking of Tintin as the “Rolls-Royce” of comics, unworthy of being associated with cheap trinkets and give-aways.
This stunning result will doubtless have major implications for the Tintin books going forward—a publishing series that has already been published in more than 70 languages and sold more than 200 million copies. Back royalties? Refunded rights? Oh boy…developing.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 6/2/2015
You all loved it when I tweeted stats, and now you can watch the ENTIRE panel section of last week’s French Comics Conference, held at the French Embassy and organized by Bureau International de l’Édition Française, or BIEF, along with Ivanka Hahnenberger. There’s a brief write-up on the event at the French Culture website. The panels consisted of dual reports on the US and French comcis markets with tons of exclusive statistics with Sophie Castille (Mediatoon) and Étienne Bonnin (Glénat) delivering numbers on France and Paul Levitz (former DC Comics publisher) and Karen Green (Columbia university’s graphic novel librarian), a roundtable on French comics in the US with PW’s Calvin Reid, Mark Siegel (First Second), Adam Lerner (Lerner Publishing Group/Graphics Universe) and Terry Nantier (NBM Publishing), retailer Terence Irvins (Kinokuniya Bookshops) and Consortium Distribution president Julie Schapner; and a report on Digital comics in France with David Steinberger (ComiXology), Claude de Saint-Vincent (Média Participations, Izneo).
This was a very high level event with great information so if you have any interest in world comics culture please check this out. If you can’t see the above video the direct ink is here.
For French speakers with a password, here’s Livres Hebdo’s write up on the event.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 5/28/2015
The gorgeous Albertine bookstore at the French Embassy.
—- The event is part of a renewed effort by BIEF to attract more attention to French comics in a growing U.S. market that is changing to be more accepting of content beyond the superhero genre that has dominated it for decades. More such efforts are planned. Castille announced that in the fall of 2015, a coalition of 13 comics publishers from eight countries is launching Europecomics.com, an EU-cofunded online venture aimed at the North American market that will provide information and highlight events around European graphic novels. Comics—or “bande desinée” as they are known in France—make up a much larger portion of the French publishing market than they do the U.S., about 12.5% of all the books published, compared to about 3% in the U.S. According to statistics from Livres Hebdo (the PW of France) 349 French comic publishers put out 5000 graphic novels in 2014, compared to 1500 graphic novels distributed in the U.S. through Diamond. Sales in France were led by the latest volume of the long-running humor comics series Asterix with 1.634 million copies sold.
I’m in the middle of Book Expo/Book Con hubbub but I wanted to draw beat readers attention to the conference on French-language comics held this past Tuesday as a kickoff for BEA. The invite-only event was organized by BIEF, a French books organization, but agent/translator Ivanka Hahnenberger , and included representatives of 35 US publishers and many French ones as well. There were lots and lots and lots of stats thrown out, and maybe the decks will be made public at some time, but I summed up some of them for the piece:
Other numbersL currently digital comics make up only 1% of the French market, a fact that Izdeo and Comixology are trying to change…give them time, I’m sure it will happen.
The day was part of an effort to bring more Francophone comics to the US. Given the success of things like Beautiful Darkness, Lulu Anew, Exquisite Corpse, Sardine in Space, Robert Moses and Blue is the Warmest Color — all books from a spectrum of US publishers—it seems this is starting to happen. We may never get the total range of French GNs but we’re getting more of them and the variety is definitely adding to the general golden age of comics we’re now experiencing.
Schmoozing over wine and cheese.
This fall europecomics.com will launch, a portal for all things Euro.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 5/18/2015
Storied French publisher Humanoids—publisher of many classics by Moebus, Jodorowsky and Bilal—has gotten into the graphic novel to movie race with a three picture deal with Full House announced at the Cannes Film Festival currently under way. The above link is a little hard to follow with all the pacts and dealmaking but here are the three projects—all English language—in development:
LEGION, based on the graphic novel I Am Legion by fan favorite comic book creator John Cassaday (Marvel’s Star Wars) and French writer Fabien Nury, with a script by Richard Stanley (Hardware) and to be directed by Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned) is now casting.
BOUNCER is an action western movie with a script based on the cult graphic novel series by Alejandro Jodorowsky and François Boucq. The film is next on the slate of David Bowie music video helmer Floria Sigismondi (The Runaways) .
THE ZOMBIES THAT ATE THE WORLD is slated to be written and directed by RKSS (Anouk Whissell, YoannKarl Whissell, François Simard), a collective of young Canadian filmmakers whose latest film, Turbo Kid, premiered at Sundance and then went on to win the Midnight Section Audience Award at SxSW. The original comic book series by Jerry Frissen, Guy Davis, and Jorge Miguel was referred to as “hilarious” and “totally politically incorrect” by Tobe Hooper, and described as “a terrific series” by George A. Romero.
Anytime there is more Jodorowsky in the world it’s a good thing, and Legion is another strong property. It’s hard not to think of Snowpiercer, the multi-national production based on the French-language Le Transperceneige, published by Casterman. Although the film wasn’t a box office behemoth it was well reviewed and was something of a cult hit. If there’s a company that has potential cult hits coming out their ears, it’s Humanoids.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 5/12/2015
Although I live tweeted the ceremony with its grandeur and tradition, I neglected to list the WINNERS of the 2015 Doug Wright Awards which honor the finest in Canadian cartooning. The awards were presented Saturday night during TCAF in a ceremony enlivened by beloved antics from Seth, David Collier and author Don McKeller. The winners were:
Best Book
Fatherland by Nina Bunjevac (Jonathan Cape/Random House)
Doug Wright Spotlight Award:
Meags Fitzgerald, for Photobooth: A Biography (Conundrum Press)
Pigskin Peters Award:
“Swinespritzen” by Connor Willumsen
The Giants of the North Hall of Fame prize went to 93-year-old Merle “Ting” Tingley.
While there really would have been no combination of winners that would have been bad, I was especially pleased to see this line-up. Willmsen was a FOUR TIME nominee in this “experimental comic” category and rather than turn him into the Roger Deakins of comics, it was high time to recognize his growing body of bold and groundbreaking work. “Swinespritzen” is a particularly fitting breakthrough since he apparently drew most of it overnight while sitting on a park bench prior to last year’s Comic Arts Brooklyn festival.
Bunjevic’s Fatherland won out over the better known This One Summer, and while that book has won a ton of much deserved awards, Fatherland didn’t really get any attention her ein the US and it should. It’s a tense, dark memoir about a family torn apart by passions and politics, as a mother has to make a bold move to save her family from a danger coming from inside the family. Bunjevid’s dense, crosshatched art style is perfect for the story. I’m told it got some attention in Canada, but hopefully this award gets it more in general.
Fitzgerald’s Photobooth is another daring, innovative book mixing a history of the humble photobooth with the obsession that Fitzgerald and a small band of fans have for the vanishing technology, and once again, for a debut graphic novel it’s an amazingly accomplished piece.
US comics fans are probably not familiar with Ting’s work, but Seth’s speech about him made it clear why he was deserving of the award, and a video of the cartoonist—both mentally and physically incapacited— receiving an award from Seth inspired genuine emotion in the audience…so much so that as the next preseter Lynda Barry came up she had to wipe away tears.
The DWA ceremony is the one awards that you can’t miss, and this is part of the reason. The entire ceremony was lovely and wonderful, as are the winners.
The winners were decided by a jury that included Fiona Smyth, Zach Worton, and Conan Tobias.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/27/2015
Planning to visit a con, or set up? You can map your world tour with this resource. Biserka Stringer-Horne has just created a massive interactive map of more than 200 comics conventions in 50 countries as part of her site Comics Explorer.
Because comic conventions are such an important part of any creator’s calendar, I wanted to collect together as much information as I could to help you find the perfect convention near you. As you can see there are gazillions, and you have no excuse not to go to at least one. So, pick one, go meet some people and spread the word of your comics awesome. Happy con-going, wherever you are in the world!
If nothing else, this map shows how comics culture has become ingrained in world culture, from the Chile Comic Con in Santiago to TwinCon in Islamabad, Pakistan.
And as a reminder, The Beat is always looking for “On The Scene” reports from comics events anywhere in the world, including original reports and links to your reports. This is a thriving worldwide phenomenon and reflecting that is one of our missions here. Email us here.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/10/2015
Last event, but the one that I am moderating!
BK: European (Comics) Invasion with Darryl Cunningham, Penelope Bagieu, Sergio Garcia Sanchez & Nadja Spiegelman | WORD:
This event takes place at our Brooklyn location.
The artists are coming! WORD is proud to present a panel discussion with UK and European artists Darryl Cunningham (The Age of Selfishness: Ayn Rand, Morality, and the Financial Crisis), Penelope Bagieu(Exquisite Corpse), and Sergio Garcia Sanchez and Nadja Spiegelman (Lost in NYC: A Subway Adventure), moderated by Heidi MacDonald.
I’ll be asking them about their own work, evolving comics traditions, storytelling, panel breakdowns, the economic crisis of 2008, the US-Euro comics cross fertilization and whatever else I can think of.Last event, but the one that I am moderating!
BK: European (Comics) Invasion with Darryl Cunningham, Penelope Bagieu, Sergio Garcia Sanchez & Nadja Spiegelman | WORD:
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/10/2015
When I was a younger sprout in comics I often wondered if there had been any more women cartoonists than Marie Severin and Ramonda Fradon? What about in France where they loved cartoonistss? The ver very great Claire Bretecher was often mentioned but was that it?
Well, it turns out that all along there were other great French woman cartoonists, including Annie Goetzinger, whose amazing Girl in Dior is out now. Tonight she signs at the Kinokuniya Bookstore before apeparing MoCCA all weekend and going on tour on the below dates:
One of France’s grand dames of comic art, Annie Goetzinger, will be on hand for the premiere of Girl in Dior at MoCCA Arts Festival, one of her many appearances while visiting the United States. Other appearances include a panel at the French Embassy co-sponsored by Christian Dior Couture US and moderated by Dior House illustrator, Bil Donovan and a signing/art display at New York’s Kinokuniya Bookstore.
Below please find Annie Goetzinger’s appearance schedule.
April 10, 2015 6:00 PM
Kinokuniya Bookstore, 6th Ave. Between 40th and 41st Street. New York
Signing and Exhibit of Original Art from the Book (The art will be up early April through the middle of the month)April 11 and 12, 2015
MoCCA Fest, Center 548, W. 22nd Street. New York
Premiere of Girl in Dior and signing at NBM Booth (401, 402) throughout the weekend. Original art will also be on display.Annie will appear on the panel, Biography: The Lives of Artists on Sunday at 12:30 alongside James Romberger, Marguerite Van Cook and Barbara Stok.
April 13, 2015 7:00PM
French Embassy, 972 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 79th), New York
Dior House artist Bil Donovan will moderate a discussion with Annie, followed by a signing at the new “Albertine” bookstore. Event co-sponsored by Dior.April 14, 6:30PM
Cambridge Public Library
Talk and signing. Organized by Million Year Picnic, BostonApril 15, 4:00PM
Conference at Smith College
“Girl in Dior: A Conversation With Annie Goetzinger About Fashion, Art, and Her Latest Graphic Novel”.April 16, 4:00 PM
Dartmouth College
Annie Goetzinger Discusses Girl in Dior.April 19, 2:00PM
University of Florida
Annie Goetzinger Discusses Girl in Dior.April 21, 8:00PM
Books & Books, 65 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables
Inauguration of the French Corner, signing.April 22, 6:30PM
Books & Books, Bal Harbour Shops, 9700 Collins Ave., Bal Harbour
Presentation and Signing. Cocktail hour
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/10/2015
And another event, this one a screening of a documentary about one of Charlie Hebdo’s earlier controversies followed by a talk with Art Spigelman and Francoise Mouly:
With TOUGH BEING LOVED BY JERKS, director Daniel Leconte (Fidel Castro: L’enfance d’un chef) offers a real-time account of one of the most important trials in the 21st century and dives deep into the political, ideological and media-related stakes of the trial with all key participants. The film features lawyers, witnesses, the media, editorial conferences, demonstrations of support, as well as the reactions of the prosecutors and of Muslim countries. Given new relevance after the January 7, 2015, attacks at the Charlie Hebdo offices, which left 12 dead and 11 wounded, TOUGH BEING LOVED BY JERKS also features candid interviews (and rarely seen behind-the-scenes moments) with acclaimed Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, such as Cabu, Charb, Tignous and Wolinski, who died on January 7. (C) Kino Lorber
Followed by a conversation with Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman, moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos.
Location:
SVA Theater
333 West 23rd Street between 8th and 9th Ave.
Click here for directions
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/10/2015
There are a lot of comics events going on around town tonight but here’s a pretty cool one, especially if you’d also like to check out the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
Dutch cartoonist Barbara Stok will speak on her work and her recent portrait of of Vincent van Gogh’s brief and intense period of creativity during his time in the south of France.
The event is free with a museum admission, but you need to RSVP in the link. The museum is also open until 9 pm.
\
Stok is known for her candid autobiographical comic strips. In 2009 she won the Stripschapprijs, one of the most prestigious comic awards in the Netherlands, for her entire oeuvre. In addition to her work for newspapers and magazines, she has created nine books. Her book Vincent, a joint initiative by the Van Gogh Museum, the Mondriaan Fund, and Nijgh & Van Ditmar publishers, is the first in SelfMadeHero’s Art Masters series and has been published around the world.
Vincent will be available for purchase in the Uris Center Met Store. Stok will be signing books after the presentation.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/6/2015
In case you missed it, we had a celebration of comics around the world on Friday with Beat staffers posting their thoughts on all kinds of comics, from manga to webcomics to British comics creators. Because it was a busy holiday, here’s a list of all of the posts.
Run Freak Run (Berlin, Germany) by Victor Van Scoit, with an interview with the creators.
Fabien Vehlmann, the Alan Moore of France by Heidi MacDonald
A survey of the German comics scene by Torsten Adair
Britain and Sandman Overture by Nick Eskey
The Bangalore Comic Con is underway by Heidi MacDonald
The New Asterix Album Is Announced! by Torsten Adair
Japan and Solanin by Lindsey Morris
Meet Boulet, Master of Visualizing Emotion (France) by Alexander Lu
Pablo Makes an Icon Human (France) by Matthew Jent
Kaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story by Zachary Clemente
A lot of great comics to explore here, so enjoy! And big thanks to the Beat writers for making it happen!
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/3/2015
[When visiting the German-language sites below, I suggest using Google Chrome, or another web browser which allows for easy translation of German. And if you read only one thing from this post, it should be this.]
Guten Tag!
Germany… it’s a bit of a conundrum in Continental comics.
Smack dab in the middle of Europe, it gets a lot of comics imported from other countries, mostly from neighboring Belgium and France. It has a bit of a comics tradition, especially with “Sarkasmus”. Satirical and social commentary, usually featuring tricksters, has been a literary tradition of Germany since at least Til Eulenspiegel, and even the official comics museum in Hannover, Deutsches Museum für Karikatur und Zeichenkunst Wilhelm Busch, features as much emphasis on caricature and editorial cartoons as it does on comics.
Yet, with numerous outlets for comics for both children and adults (Micky Maus Magazin sold over a million copies weekly at its peak, and there are numerous comics aimed at adults), there haven’t been many notable comics produced until recently. However, with the rise of the Internet and the worldwide popularity of manga, coupled with American publishers acquiring titles which are then licensed worldwide, there is a vibrant comics scene in Germany, and many titles worthy of export.An interesting ripple… A lot of Germans speak and read English, as the two languages are closely related linguistically, and many students learn it early in school. It is not uncommon to walk into a German comics shop and see a wall full of the latest Wednesday comics imported from the U.S. (actually Diamond UK). Fans, regardless of nationality, hate to wait for the translation, and will read the comics in the original American. Does this impact the circulation of the licensed translations? Probably not… as with America, there seems to be two markets: comics shops aimed at collectors, newsstands aimed at the general reader. Generally, with the superhero soap opera comics, the German publisher will collect multiple issues into an omnibus-style magazine, either as a thick digest, or a slimmer square-bound magazine. (Click the Panini link below for examples.)
So, here’s a brief introduction, with a few suggestions for further exploration if you’re curious.
The Goethe Institute has a great introductory website for German comics! (It also includes links to various sites and publishers.)
[Anyone have a list of German comics translated into English?]
Rupolphe Töpffer, from Geneva, Switzerland, is one of the forefathers of comics, creative during the first half of the Nineteenth Century. Writing originally in French, his influence spread to Germany and the United States. (The University Press of Mississippi has published two massive volumes on his work.)
Wilhelm Busch is the godfather of German comics. An illustrator and writer, he is best known for “Max und Moritz”, a cautionary tale of two scamps. (You can read an old English translation here.) His satirical poetry caused many an uproar, and he was censored for satirizing the hypocrisy of the Catholic church.
Dr. Erika Fuchs is the second-most influential person in German comics. From 1951 until retiring in 1988, she was the chief editor and translator of Disney comics in Germany. Her high standards and references to classical German texts gained her renown among Disney fans. Her use of verbs as onomatopoeia and soundless events (such as “shiver” or “gulp”) has influenced Internet chat dialogue in Germany, where the use of such terms (such as *runs away*) is known as Erikativ. (A detailed explanation for grammaticists, linguists, and Donaldists can be found here, with animated comparisons between the original English comics and German translations. Please note that Disney comics no longer use machine lettering.)
Here’s a “Comics Messe” list of conventions in German-speaking Europe.
The biggest comics show in Germany is held in northern Bavaria: the International Comics Salon Erlangen. A biennial comics art festival, it is the German equivalent of Angoulême, although not yet as crowded. (2014 attendance: 25,000) They award the Max und Moritz Preis via a jury, with one audience-voted prize. The titles are international in scope, honoring both local cartoonists as well as translated works. (Read my recap of the 2012 show.)
Those are BUILDINGS. There are 11 total. And, no, it’s not the biggest in Germany.
The other big show? The Frankurt Book Fair. A massive publishing trade show, they allow the public in on the weekend. Since comics have always been popular, publishers and organizers know to schedule events to entice fans. They even host the German Cosplay championship! Of course, there’s also an award: the annual Deutsche Cartoonpreis.
Since 2006, the Frankfurt Book Fair and Carlsen Verlag have awarded the “German Cartoon Prize for new talent”. Since 2012 the “German Cartoon Prize” in categories A and B have been awarded.
“A” stands for cartoonists who have not yet published a book. “B” is for cartoonists who have already published at least one book.
You can buy the anthology book here. Here are the winners from last year:
Cartoonprize Category A: Hannes Richert (far left), Category B: Rattelschneck, first prize (far right); Oli Hilbring, second prize (second from right). Third prize: Dorthe Landschulz.
Wilhelm Busch – Deutsches Museum für Karikatur und Zeichenkunst
In addition to the greater part of Wilhelm Busch’s complete artistic oeuvre, the German Museum for Caricature and Graphic Art in the George Garden in Hannover is home to a collection of more than 35.000 works by internationally celebrated representatives of the art of pictorial satire.
Among those represented are such great names from the past as Hogarth, Daumier, Grandville and Goya, as well as popular “modern classics” of the world of humour such as Ungerer, Sempé and Loriot. And of course, Wilhelm Busch simply can’t be left out.
(Yeah, Amazon also has a German branch…)
34 titles! (Wow! That French “Beauty and the Beast” comic looks amazing!)
MyComics.de, a very robust comics site! (Their blog!)
Carlsen Verlag, strong in German manga, but also strong in licensed and original work
Ehapa, owned by powerhouse Egmont. As with other Egmont houses throughout Europe, they publish, almost exclusively, licensed titles aimed at kids. That means Disney, Asterix, Lucky Luke, as well as other imports. (Jaw dropping fact: Micky Maus Magazin has a weekly circulation of 125,000, and a weekly readership of 623,000! 10.7% of kids ages 6-13! Of course, adults read it too! To put that into perspective… there are some 54 million kids age 5-17 in the U.S.! Imagine five million kids reading a comic book each week….)
Panini Comics Deutschland Once owned by Marvel in the 1990s, Panini is best known in the U.S. for their sticker albums. In Germany, they license just about every American comics title available.
Reprodukt is a publisher of liter
ary graphic novels. If you flip through their catalogs, you’ll see the usual suspects. A very good list!
Avant Verlag is a general publisher, but has a very strong catalog of original German graphic novels, as well as imports.
Tokyopop [No! Really!] Apparently, Kodansha and Viz haven’t figured out the German market yet, so Tokyopop has the German licenses for Deathnote, Bleach, Hetalia… as well as publishing local talent.
“Fritz Haarmann, one of the most brutal serial killer in Europe, worked as an informant for the Hanover police. Night after night he roamed the waiting rooms of the station looking for young, unaccompanied men. With the help of his police identification card he could gain the trust of his victims. He led them to his apartment, raped them and with a sexual frenzy, bit them in the throat.” (One of the inspiration for “M”, and the subject of Fassbinder’s “The Tenderness of Wolves”.)
Readily available in the United States. English translation of Busch’s work.
Comics in German have now made it into the mainstream of society. For this reason, more and more publishers are now showing an interest in the new forms of storytelling that are unique to this illustrated genre. Our selection demonstrates this with a wealth of new names, who represent a broad spectrum of both subject matter and graphical techniques. It was the term “graphic novel” that first broke the ice. Booksellers and readers alike expect that the comics listed under this heading will offer meaningful content as well as a wide diversity of styles. For instance, it is now just as common to see journalism in comic form as it is to find experimental design work in terms of page architecture or picture structure.
At the same time, an intriguing development can be seen with the rapid growth in the number of literary adaptations. This means comics are tapping into entirely new strata of readership.
They are now gaining some cachet among the sort of booklovers who would, until now, have been sceptical of the quality of their subject matter.
From fairy tales to novellas and novels, every literary genre now seems to provide a suitable challenge for the comics illustrator. Publishers such as Suhrkamp and Edition Büchergilde have even launched their own special comics series for adaptations of famous works.
German-language comics have therefore broken into a field that was hitherto covered only by foreign language publications. And new opportunities are emerging for illustrators, who for years have complained about the dearth of good stories. The enthusiastic reactions of readers and critics alike to the new works make it clear that the comic has now arrived in the German book market[Heilig Bimbam! Emil and the Detectives!?!]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/3/2015
I’m sorry to use a cheapo comparison like “Alan Moore of France” but time is short and I had to get my point across quickly! In France Fabien Vehlmann is actually known as the “Goscinny of the 21st Century”—a reference to Rene Goscinny, the writer of Asterix—so either way, he’s had some very flattering comparisons.
In the US the “writer/artist” system is accepted at the Big Two, giving rise to many very well known and even beloved authors such as, yes, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and even a few Americans such as Kelly Sue DeConnick, Brian Bendis and so on. It’s relatively rare for a comics writer from another country to get much attention here in the US market, perhaps because translated comics by single artists have a stronger, more easily recognized esthetic. Indeed, the only manga writer with a reputation in the US who springs immediately to mind is Kazuo Koike, co-creator of Lone Wolf and Cub, Samurai Executioner, and Crying Freeman, a body of work that would place him pretty highly among any list of comics writers.
While there are tons of writers/scenarists in the Franco-Belgian comics industry, it’s safe to say that few of them have a following here. The one exception may be Fabien Vehlmann, a prolific writer who is known as one of the most successful BD writers in France. Vehlmann’s name became much better known in the US last year as the writer on the sensation Beautiful Darkness, which landed on bestseller lists and best of lists with equal frequency in 2014. Ironically, this book—a Lord of the Flies like social satire involving cute fairies who do horrible things to survive—may be one of the books where Vehlmann’s imprimatur is least felt: the story is by Marie Pommepuy, one half of the Kerascoët art duo that gave the book its unforgettable images. But as he explained in this interview, Vehlmann co-wrote the story, and developed many of its themes of nihilism and survival.
In France, Vehlmann’s best known gig is as writer of Spirou and Fantasio, which is sort of like taking over writing Calvin and Hobbes here if that strip had run since 1938 and Bill Watterson was just the guy who turned in the greatest stories ever on a long running character. Spirou is a bumbling bellhop, best known in the version by the great Franquin, but he eventually developed into a globetrotting, adventurous reporter (ala Brenda Starr) along with his buddy Fantasio. The strip remains very popular in France, and has been published here by Cinebook, but in the Franquin version.
Cinebook has also published “Alone” (Seuls) with art by Bruno Gazotti, a YA book about five kids who find themselves in an empty city and must find each other to survive. Sadly I haven’t read any of the Cinebooks editions of Vehlmann’s work, but they’re on my must find list.
Prior to Beautiful Darkness, Vehlmann’s best known English language book was probably Isle of 100,000 Graves, drawn by the great Norwegian cartoonist Jason. It’s the story of a girl named Gemmy who is determined to follow a map to the dreadful island where her father died—and maybe find a legendary treasure. After she teams up with a gang of disreputable pirates, adventure and mayhem ensue. While the book has the drollery and fatalism of Jason’s other work, Vehlmann contributes what might be considered a more rollicking note to the proceedings, as the island turns out to be a training ground for young assassins. Recommended!
The book that really put Vehlmann on my radar was Last Days of an Immortal
Two other Vehlmann series are available in English, Green Manor
For further reading, you MUST READ this introduction to Vehlmann by Zainab Akhtar who has actually read all of his English language books and does a much better job of describing his work than I could ever do:
I’ve chosen to start with French comics writer Fabien Vehlmann. Vehlmann, who got his big break in comics when he was hired as a writer for Spirou magazine in 1997- and hasn’t really looked back since, is an author whose work I think about quite often; I find him similar to Naoki Urasawa in that he’s able to write very different stories that jump from genre to genre and beyond, in an eminently engaging manner. Unlike Urasawa who illustrates his own work, Vehlmann either stands out or flies under the radar -depending on your perspective- because he collaborates with a variety of exceptionally good illustrators; there are no distinct running themes in his work, and because it looks so different each time, with a lot of the tone and feel provided by the artists, it can be easy to overlook who it’s written by. I admire that he wants to tell a range of diverse stories: sci-fi, Victorian murder mysteries, pirate tales, apocalyptic children’s bildungsromans- even as perhaps the comics scene in France facilitates that to a greater degree, and he appears to be someone who truly thrives on collaboration. There are writers who stick to what they’re good at, and those who write the same book over and over, but Vehlmann seems committed to simply writing strong and interesting stories.
There’s also his infrequently updated blog, with links to his numerous works in French (and the sad news that a second collaboration with Kerascoet didn’t even get a second volume published because it sold poorly.). And along with Gwen de Bonneval, Brüno, Cyril Pedrosa and Hervé Tanquerelle, Vehlmann puts out Professeur Cyclope, a digital comics magazine that plays with storytelling possibilities.
I don’t suppose you need me to tell you again how great Beautiful Darkness is, but just in case, here’s John Seven’s review and Zainab Akhtar’s in-depth analysis of the book.
As Zainab suggests, the thing that attracts me to Vehlmann’s work is similar to what I like in Urasawa’s work: genre elements of suspense and mystery but coupled with great intelligence and relentless storytelling drive. Vehlmann is a great storyteller, first and foremost, with themes that are fully realized right to their devastating conclusions.
I’ll leave you with some preview pages from Last Days of an Immortal. Enjoy!
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/2/2015
Usually when you find a web comic it doesn’t have the vision and scope of Run Freak Run. I can’t recall when I found it – only that I did. Run Freak Run’s visuals were what initially drew me in with its great use of ink. Even more incredible was that in this digital age Run Freak Run’s pages are all made with paper and ink. After admiring the art, then like most web comic discoveries, you click on that link that says “New Readers Start Here!” That’s when I became hooked on the story and even it’s interesting use of lettering and type placement.
Run Freak Run is a dark fantasy set in 17th century Spain where supernatural beings live amongst the land. By orders of the Queen all of these freaks are to be hunted down by inquisitors to be judged,and punished by the Holy Inquisition. One such Inquisitor, Two, is a young woman that was raised in the monastery and has superhuman strength, a crazy chain whip and a mission to hunt these freaks. Two begins to have issues with this as not only is she a tool of the Holy Inquisition – she’s a freak.
If looking at some of the pages doesn’t turn you on to checking out Run Freak Run, then maybe reading about the creators’ passion for the project will. Creators Silver Saaremaeel and Kaija Rudkiewicz work in the video game industry and are based in Berlin, Germany. Writer Silver answered a few questions to help fill in what drives the team.
Victor: I don’t remember when I started following RFR. I simply know it’s one of only five web comics I actively read. And it’s the only one with such a large vision. Where does the passion come from?
Silver: Our first inspiration, the real reason to start RFR was because we had a day job. We both work in the games industry, and while it’s great fun and challenging, it’s also very rigid because you can have up to 200 people in your team, and everything you do is a dependency to others. Everything’s under fairly tight deadlines with the sole intention of getting the game out, and hence creative expression is a risk for production, and very frustrating to manage with that many people. :)
But nevertheless, we still had that creative spark inside us and a will to tell our stories, exactly the way wanted, without compromises, and to be as experimental as we wanted.
Victor: There’s definitely some strong work being put in yet how do you balance that with your day job?
Silver: Well, the most useful skill we’ve learned from games industry is production skills: we can plan, schedule and keep to the deadlines. We split the work so Kaija only draws and inks, while Silver writes the script, edits, does the advertising, and website adminstration. We split blogging as evenly as we can! But if there’s any secret sauces to all of this, it’s that we have practically zero social life – it’s cruel, but if we want to create stuff, then we really need to just sit down and work on it. :)
Victor: Initially I was drawn in by Kaija’s work. There’s just something about clean lines and dark ink. Then there was imagery. That’s when I started to slowly make my way through the story and the pacing of it all. Where does that come from?
Silver: The reason Kaija decided to illustrate the comic in inks was because she too was painting digitally 8 hours a day already at work, and needed a little creative change. It’s pretty much every digital artists dream to learn a traditional tool, but you can rarely justify the act in the industry financially, since especially concept art industry is all about speed and flexibility – exactly the opposite of inks. :)
Victor: I feel like it’s the comic equivalent of that indie import fantasy movie one discovers on Netflix. Luckily there were a lot of issues for me to read in one nice chunk. What’s next for you?
Silver: Since the script for Run Freak Run was finished months ago, most of my (Silver here, halou!) focus has been on our next work – Daughters of the Witch Queen. Kaija has found a nice balance of doing 2-3 mornings a week (we do our projects in the morning, before the dayjob) of Run Freak Run, and rest of the week she’ll commit to Daughters of the Witch Queen too.We both write and illustrate it equally.
We noticed that we really liked creating deep, long stories with RFR, but since we can only keep up with 1 page a week, it’s a little frustrating – not just for us but to our readers too. And in our newest project we’re shifting things around a little. We’re making the text the focus, and also illustrate and concept as many characters, monsters, locations and magic as we can on the side. This way, we should be able to provide about 5-7 hours of content with a bunch of art work every year, compared to 2 hours of Run Freak Run during three years. Hopefully this will be a win-win to both us and our readers. :)
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 3/23/2015
Diversity is taking over the world! The UN Women, a department aimed at gender quality around the world, the European Commission, the Belgian Development Cooperation, and UNRIC (United Nations Regional Information Centre) is organizing a Comic and Cartoon Competition on Gender Equality. The competition is only open to European cartoonists between the ages of 18-28 (sorry US) but the winners gets a 1000EUR prize! Deadline is 20 April.
Somehow, I think they may just get a lot of entries.
Show us what comes to your mind when you reflect on women’s rights and empowerment and on the relationship between women and men. Get familiar with the Beijing Conference and its outcome document, the Beijing Declaration and its Platform for Action. Seek inspiration for your drawings in the 12 Critical Areas of Concern of the Beijing Platform!
The Competition is open to comic and cartoon artists and art students, from 18 to 28 years old, who are residents of an EU member state.
Please note that your comic or cartoon must be without words.
Prizes:
One First Prize: 1000 EUR
One Second Prize: 500 EUR
Three Third Prizes: 200 EUR each
The five finalists will be invited to Brussels to the Competition awards ceremony in summer 2015. The costs for travel and stay will be borne by the Organising Entities. In addition, the finalists’ and semi-finalists’ drawings will be published in a booklet and may be considered for exhibition as well as for further publication.Finalists will be selected by a jury composed of professional comic artists, gender equality experts and communication experts:
Pierre Kroll, Belgian Comic Artist, Member of Cartooning for Peace
Marlène Pohle, Comic Artist, Vice-President of Federation of Cartoonists Organisations
Salla Saastamoinen, Director for Equality, European Commission
Alexander de Croo, Minister of Development Cooperation of Belgium
Sylvie Braibant, Editor-in-Chief TV5MONDE
Nanette Braun, Chief of Communications and Advocacy, UN Women
The submission deadline is 20 April 2015.
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By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 3/12/2015
Yesterday we learned that New Jersey is getting a comic-con…and so is China! ReedPOP is launching the Shanghai Comic Convention which will be held in just two months, May 16 and 17th at the Shanghai Convention & Exhibition Center of International Sourcing.
“China is a massive frontier for ReedPOP, a huge market and boundless community of fans that we are eager and enthusiastic to build events for,” said Reedpop’s Lance Fensterman, in an announcement. “This is a huge opportunity for the millions of fans in the country who haven’t experienced a ReedPOP event and we can’t wait to see how they respond. Geekdom is a universal language and we’re sure that the Chinese people will celebrate fan culture in their own unique and amazing ways.”
ReedPOP already runs events in London, Paris, Germany, India, Singapore and Australia—as well as putting on NYCC, C2E2 the PAX shows and much more.
China DOES already have a bunch of comics-related events, including Anu-Com in Hong Kong and some huge shows in Taiwan, including the Taipei Comic Exhibition which drew more than half a million people. Additionally according to this piece, Wizard World has teamed up for something called Fantang for a show later this May.
The Shanghai Comic Con’s website is here but it is in Chinese so it’s hard to see any details about the show. I tried turning on Google translate and got this fairly epic description on the guest page:
Great God level cartoonist
Familiar with the fiction writer
International range of children’s film stars
Enjoy a high reputation in the professional master Cosplay
……
Your guest list there is always the unexpected emergence wonderful!
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 3/9/2015
Makes sense, right? Ebay user hugelyimpressive is auctioning off some rare Golden Age comics he came across is order to fund his wife’s boob job. Although enough has been raised for a modest enhancement, they are seeking DD size additions so keep bidding. The post includes a FAQ:
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is this for real? A: Yes. She honestly has asked me to fund implants. I didn’t put up too much of a fight to be honest :)Q: Can I see your wife’s current boobs? A: She’s a bit shy about this and so far has refused permission, but I will do my best to talk her round.
Q: How much is the operation costing? A: Around $7.5K. I did try to encourage medical arbitrage, sending her to Brazil, but she’s nervous, so it has to be Montreal.
Q: Will you send me a pic of the results? A: ALL WINNING BIDDERS WILL GET A CANDID PHOTO OF THE OUTCOME — this is optional…
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 3/9/2015
§ Deb Aoki is the Charles Dickens of Storify, You may know her from that other one we mentioned recently, but she also put together an epic compilation on manga translation based on her being a judge at the Manga Translation Battle in Tokyo. ONce again, if you are interested in manga at all this is all a must read, but here’s themost interesting graphs for you sale chart freaks:
JP manga magazine sales -50% in 15 yrs. tankobon sales look steady, but factor in that 2x as many were published… pic.twitter.com/CaVfgUEWQp
— Deb Aoki (@debaoki) February 26, 2015
meanwhile, here's the graph showing US comics sales. the orange is overall mkt, red = US manga sales, 1996-2014 pic.twitter.com/KwqfFkMreH
— Deb Aoki (@debaoki) February 26, 2015
As you can see, manga magazine sales are down, while tankobon (collection) sales are pretty steady. But it’s a huge decline for serialized manga. Meanwhile, the US market is growing. But don’t get too cocky.
one other thing i should mention about those graphs i showed comparing US/JP comics sales. JP sales still out perform US by a factor of 10:1
— Deb Aoki (@debaoki) February 26, 2015
§ As for the Mahou Shounen Breakfast Club kerfuffle, a few more posts of interest have been made. Matt Thorn, a well known manga professor who lives in Japan, planted a flag with Why it bugs me that you call your comics “manga”, whihch discusses the high standards for being considered a “mangaka” and why he feels it should mostly be applies to actual Japanese cartoonists. The competition is fierce:
When our program began, the entrance exams for the “story manga” program were so competitive that we sometimes accepted less than one in twenty applicants. The students who get into the story manga program are good. They are quite good. They draw well. They have a good sense for page layout and pacing. Their characters “pop.” Do you know how many of these excellent students ever get published in a commercial manga magazine? Probably about one in twenty. And do you how many of those will go on to become true pros, getting their own serials and making a living doing only manga? Maybe one in twenty. Do the math.
§ There’s also a super tumblr storify rounding up all the discussion about MSBC here.
§ Shockingly, Missouri Sentaor Claire McCaskill showed her support for MSBC:
MSBC now.
— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) March 7, 2015
§ Finally, here’s a piece on a US artist who went to Japan to work in the Japanese animation industry and ended up being paid $25 a week, and that’s not even the toughest part of the experience:
Thurlow, whose credits at Japanese studios include Nakamura-Productions and Pierrot Studios, has ended up in the hospital three times due to exhaustion and illness. Amazingly, he still thinks the experience has been worth it because the anime projects he’s worked on in Japan have been more creatively satisfying than American productions.
§ It was International Woman’s day yesterday which sent us a feast of linkage and comics. The irreplaceable Zainab Akhtar presented 10 great cartoonists you need to know and presents 10 names as fresh as they are talented, including Seo Kim, Tiffany Ford, Hwei Lim and Bianca Barnarelli, above.
§ The Nib Celebrated with a bunch of cool comics under the banner Whatever We Please including
“We Are Entitled To Wear Cowboy Boots To Our Own Revolution” by Ellen T. Crenshaw
and Sophie Goldstein’s fascinating Girl Talk which uses audio embed in word balloons to describe “vocal fry.” “Future comics alert! (Also didn’t Bette David pretty much fry long before it was fashionable and/or hated?)
§ The New Indian Express suggests Five Feminist Webcomics You Need to Follow ncluding Lucy KNisley and Girls with Slingshots, but I was most intrigued by Aarthi Parthasarathy‘s Royal Existentials which is sort of a Dinosaur Comics for India that takes classic art and adds contemporary balloons.
§ Finally, the excellent cartoonist once known as Ross Campbell is now Sophie Campbell. Congrats!
deep breath okay here goes. time to stop hiding, now's the time. i'm transgender and have been transitioning for the past year.
— Sophie Campbell (@mooncalfe1) March 6, 2015
§ While all this was going on, men in comics also managed to stay busy. The NY Times has a great profile of retailer Socko Jones of Comic Book Jones on Staten Island. Soko is a pal and the store is one of the best laid out we’ve ever been to.
“We encourage loitering,” Mr. Jones, 41, said, heading inside and sitting next to a rack of vintage Jimmy Olsen comics. “We let customers read our comics cover to cover.” He added, “I never understood that boys-only, dark-basement approach to running a comic store where if you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s like you don’t belong.” Mr. Jones was born Michael Rivas, but everyone in his life calls him Socko, including his wife and even his mother, who works in the shop, basically keeping her son in line.
§ Dark Horse is promoting Fight Club 2 with a contest for people to do cleve things under the Project Mayhem banner. Hopefully this will not include peeing in people’s soup?
§ And You can stream the new Lightning Bolt album ‘Fantasy Empire’ featuring sometimes cartoonist Brian Chippendale.
§ Many people know of the Rose City Comic Con in Portland, but there’s also a Rose City Comic Con in Tyler, Texas? WTF??!?
§ And Martha and Alan Giroux of Phoenix, Az have successfully Kickstarted moving their store All About Comics to a new location.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 3/5/2015
There’s no question but that in American culture the predominant view is one that is rich, white, male, straight and Christian. And while “The male gaze” is pretty well known, we’re getting to learn about the “white gaze” as well. Have you ever wondered what it looks like? Now we know. Except it’s from New Zealand AND America.
Shocking isn’t it? Here is some more of that toxic white gaze:
The gaze in question is Mahou Shounen Breakfast Club a newish webcomic by New Zealander Katie O’Neill and American Toril Orlesky. Or rather it WAS, because despite praise and anticipation, the duo pulled the plug on the comic after a mere 13 pages after it was accused of cultural appropriation because it was a comic set in Japan with Japanese story lines that was by two white kids from across the globe. And also because one of them responded to a troll on Tumblr in a way that the Tumblr police deemed inappropriate. Here’s that crime again.
Deb Aoki has heroically (and I mean it HEROICALLY) compiled the entire saga, which played out on Twitter, in one epic epic Storify. Normally I would embed it, but it’s so huge and epic it would crash your browser. Anyway I cannot recommend enough that you read the whole thing because the wise Aoki takes this molehill and tackles an entire mountain of the question “Do You Have to Be Japanese to Make Manga?” which is a huge one that this Storify doesn’t answer…but it does raise more and more questions.
For the digest version, shortly after MSBC began running, an ANONYMOUS questioner on Tumblr asked on O’Neill’s tumblr:
Anonymous asked: God damn this is why I hate it when ignorant white people like you try to make stuff about Japan just because it’s trendy. Learn how to write kanji that isn’t so awkward before you even think about making a story set in the place the language is from. 嫌なら自分の文化を使え それとも世界で他の文化が色々があるんだろう。
Hey! I actually have a BA in Japanese and speak it with some fluency (though it’s been a few years since I graduated), and the kanji in the logo is based off a font I got from a Japanese website! Thanks for your concern, but if you’re basically saying that white people should only write about white people that’s kind of messed up. We’re always going to be open to criticism and concerns, so if we get something wrong let us know!
O’Neill’s answer was deemed to be flippant and somehow racist (even when other people pointed out that ANONYMOUS wasn’t that great with Kanji either.)
Things intensified on the twitter and tumblr of cartoonist Iasmin Omar Ata, theirself the author of a well-received webcomic Mis(H)adra:
Anonymous asked: oh my god thank you for calling out msbc i’ve been side-eying that project since forever….
hey! i’m glad you’ve noticed the issue, too. honestly, i’m shocked at how people haven’t really called out the creators for a) their blatant cultural appropriation, and b) the awful “it’s fine” response to that ask. the whole thing is garbage and unfortunately is just another reminder of how toxic the ever-present white gaze is. i hope that soon we can do away with this kind of thing in comics because i for one am up tohere with it.
Orlesky and Ata also hashed it out on twitter:
@shoujoshitlord this is so god damn transparent and shitty I can’t even believe you’re serious right about now
— ☆IASMIN OMAR ATA☆ (@DELTAHEAD_) March 3, 2015
And even if they had a point, Ata was definitely being a jerk about it. The response did not fit the crime.
While some people—even Japanese people—said they saw nothing wrong with MSBC, unfortunately, O’Neill and Orlesky decided to pull the plug on the comic even though it is not clear from anyone anywhere aside from anonymous trolls what they did wrong:
Note on Mahou Shounen Breakfast Club
As I’m sure you’ll know, last month we launched our webcomic, Mahou Shounen Breakfast Club! We were very excited about it, however we absolutely do not want to hurt anyone with it and we are concerned that this is unavoidable. From the outset we tried to be aware of issues such as cultural appropriation, fetishization and stereotyping and did our best to avoid them and write in a nuanced manner. We hoped that extensive research and experience living and working in Japan would be enough to make a portrayal that wasn’t hurtful. We can see now this was incorrect and not possible, and we don’t wish to create a comic that will hurt people, so it seems the solution is to simply stop. We sincerely apologise to anyone who was upset by it.
Thank you everyone who had faith in our comic skills before we even started, and who has given us kind feedback about the art especially! It means a lot to us that people feel this strongly about us as creators, and we will absolutely be working together again in future! Feel free to keep following the strangestarcomics blog if you’re interested in our other projects!
Now I’m willing to write part of this off as young, insecure cartoonists who are still figuring things out and not really being able to take possibly faulty criticism well. There are lots of tweets around that subject on the Storify above. I know we live in a time of identify politics where cultural appropriation is a terrible crime. Of course that didn’t stop Osamu Tezuka from culturally appropriating Walt Disney and Robert Louis Stevenson to invent manga in the first place, or Naoki Urasawa from drawing a manga about half English half Japanese insurance inspector, or any of a thousand other example of the cross pollination that makes cultural exchange a wonderful thing. Culture isn’t a bag of potato chips —you don’t chomp it up and then it’s gone. It’s an ocean that flows and ebbs and freezes and evaporates and becomes different things everywhere.
Which isn’t to say that, YEAH, people from one culture can misunderstand and fetishize people from other cultures. And it’s good to point that out.
But did Mahou Shounen Breakfast Club ACTUALLY DO THAT???? Japanese-New Zealand Cartoonist Jem Yoshioka wrote about this and this is possibly the most well meaning and infuriating document I’ve read this month.
Yoshioka runs down a FAQ of why she agrees with O’Neill and Orlesky shutting down the strip, but fails to explain any reason why the critics were correct. For instance.
In the case of MSBC too much hinged on the Japanese setting, so they have decided it’s best to stop making it.
WHAT NOW? Because a story is set in Japan and that setting effects the story it is bad? God forbid she ever watch Lost in Translation.
Also, here’s a great straw man:
Isn’t this exactly the same as when Japanese people write about western countries or white people?
No. Western countries and white people occupy a significant place of power within our global world, economically and culturally. To put it simply, the whole world is drowning in white culture, so it’s not culturally appropriative to write a story about white people or set in a western country. There’s a strong power imbalance in favour of western countries and white culture(s).
If anything I find this attitude MORE dismissive of Japanese culture than a wee tribute. Hundreds of millions if not billions of people are influenced by Japanese culture, billions more by other Asian cultures which are strong and thriving and, yeah, ignored by Westerners who think that US culture is the be all and end all of world culture. That just isn’t true. Posing Japanese culture as a timid weak hothouse flower before American aggression is just an insult to Japan, as American children clutch their Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers cereal spoons while playing with their Transformers.
But then we get to the meat of the matter:
What are the issues with MSBC specifically? It seemed fine to me. I’ve seen way worse stuff get made.
MSBC doesn’t necessarily look like cultural appropriation. The kanji is correct, the landscapes are representative of real Tokyo landscapes, and while there were a couple of inaccuracies around the reality of the voice acting industry, that’s an acceptable leap to make for the sake of storytelling purposes (see all movies ever that feature computers, science, engineering or hacking as plot points).
OK so aside from being an actually awkward story, nothing wrong here.
However, even though it was respectfully well-researched and executed, MSBC did personally make me feel a bit weird. MSBC intentionally draws on anime and manga tropes, which can be problematic and reductive in their representation of women, gay men and often focus on specific elements of Japanese culture. There is also a lot of white western readers of this material who are still early on their journey of understanding the difference between respect and appropriation, often with a heavy side of racial fetishisation and overly romanticised ideas of Japan.
Now what tropes would those be that were revealed in the 13 pages of Masou Shounen Breakfast Club? The TROPES that CAN BE problematic and reductive.
Not were. It isn’t shown that MSBC used these tropes in any problematic and reductive way. Just that they COULD HAVE BEEN.
It’s fine to use these tropes, but it’s important to take the overall environment into account when writing them as a white westerner. While Katie and Toril were obviously aware of this when working on MSBC and worked hard to make sure they didn’t fetishise or stereotype, the genre itself and the wider effect it has within the community makes it difficult to achieve that.
Get that now? Because other people fucked it up, Katie and Toril probably would too, so they had to shut things down after just 13 pages before they did it. Once again, no actual crime, we’re talking total pre-cog here.
For a lot of people MSBC won’t be considered anywhere near appropriative or fetishistic, and that’s just where you are on your own journey. For me personally it does approach a line that makes me uncomfortable. I would have kept reading anyway because I enjoy the storytelling and illustrative style, but I think that feeling would have stayed with me the whole way through. The weird thing is that if they had kept going I likely would never have said anything about how I felt, because I would have been too scared of being instantly shot down about it, feared I was being silly and felt I’d never be able to properly articulate my issues. I am overjoyed to know that Katie and Toril are the kind of creators who are respectful and listen to this kind of feedback this seriously.
Yoshioka seems like a very nice, reasonable person, and I totally dig her art, but…what exactly is the crime here? The comic made Yoshioka feel uncomfortable because…feelings.
Got that? She was sure that someday she would get upset by the way that these two were sure to fuck things up. Two non-Japanese people—even with knowledge of Japan—doing a comic set in Japan was fetishistic no matter what the context or content. Just the concept was enough to ensure that lines would be crossed.
If O’Neill and Orlesky decided to pull their comic because they didn’t want to hurt even one person’s feelings, well then, okay. I get it. Hurting feelings is bad. I also suggest that they get out of any creative endeavor in the future because all great art hurts feelings, causes feelings and in general shakes things up. It isn’t safe and it isn’t afraid. Under these rules that Yoshioka lays out, no great comic would ever have been completed because some element of its creation MIGHT have been used incorrectly in the past.
If you have been reading my writings for any amount of time, you know that I’m a fan of multicultural diversity, and of multiple viewpoints and creators of every sex, religion, creed, race and sexual orientation getting a chance to tell their stories.
I’m also a huge fan of cultural context for stories that examine how the preconceptions of a work of art are reflected in the execution. But I never want to see these criticisms used to PROACTIVELY SILENCE ART.
The problem with a lot of the sociological criticism that we’re seeing now is that it sets up a Zeno’s Paradox race against some kind of Platonic ideal that has never been proved to exist. Nearly all art has a cultural context that insults SOMEONE. If I take all the anti-MSBC arguments above and reduce them to a fine gravy, it DOES come out that no one should ever write or draw a story about a culture or place other than their own because they might get it wrong. White people should stick to white people (aka the status quo), black people should stick to black people and Japan should never write a story that takes place in another culture (because I’ve read plenty of manga that fetishized some bizarre element of American culture.)
Fetishishing is wrong, orientalism is wrong, appropriation for cool points (Hey Iggy) is wrong. But absorbing the rich cultural stew of the entire world and trying to express it in your own art and comics is not wrong. And as far as I can tell, that’s the crime that O’Neill and Orlesky were convicted of in tumblr court, and that’s a shame.
Concept art for Mahou Shounen Breakfast Club.
[The first version of this post misidentified Toril Orlesky as being from NZ rather than from the US, and Iasmin Omar Ata as male. I regret the errors but it doesn’t change a thing I think because I judge people on their behavior not their identity.]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 2/24/2015
Finnish cartoonist JP Ahonen made a splash last year with his energetic graphic novel Sing No Evil (co-written by KP Alare), about a rock band that has to struggle not only with rival musicians but a supernatural invasion of their home town. Originally published in Finland, Abrams brought out the English edition. Here he talks about making the book, sequel plans and what comics are like in his native land.
I know you from your work in the “Flight” anthologies and I know you make weekly comics in Finland. Have you been interested in making longform comics?
When I first started doing comics, they were all longer stories. At the time I was interested in Jeff Smith’s “Bone” and so Sing No Evil
Those weekly strips of yours have a more traditional layout and in “See No Evil,” right from the beginning, you throw that out of the window.
I like to make good use of the medium. When it’s down to Earth–just people chatting or whatever–I feel the conversation should be easy to read and easy on the eye. For contrast when there’s a gig or an action scene, you’re free to go completely nuts. For me it’s something that feels natural and I hope it translates to the reader as well.
If the dialogue is the focus, you just use a grid.
The dialogue is one thing but I also want the reader to be able to focus on how the characters behave. Acting and directing and all that stuff is really important. One of my favorite scenes in the book is where Aksel sees a glimpse of Lily and his toes go like this. His body language shifts and I feel that keeping the same point of view so you can actually compare them side by side works the best, instead of spinning the camera all around, having closeups and have everything jumping around. That’s confusing and unnecessary.
Is the idea of making good use of the medium one reason you have a character like Bear, because there’s no real reason he’s an animal.
The other bands have animals as drummers as well.
True, but it’s not like there are a lot of animals in the book.
No. Bear is there firstly just for the sake of it. [laughs]
You like drawing bears?
Actually, no. [laughs] It was pretty difficult at the beginning, but I’ve gotten a lot better, I think. It also sets a baseline through the whole story that from the beginning the reader knows this is not really serious stuff and something unexpected might happen. I hope it works in that sense. Plus KP–my co-writer–and I are both guitarists and admire drummers. To us, they’re like animals. How can you use all your limbs and that choreography of knowing where everything is and keep up the tempo? There’s a symbolic value as well.
As you say, it’s a cue for when the story takes turns and becomes more fantastic, it’s not completely out of the blue.
There are other elements backing that up along the way. We were actually discussing it a lot with my Finnish editor but we all agreed that it works. On a second reading you can enjoy all the different clues and hints that you might have missed the first time. It also emphasizes the idea that the rival band’s leader notices that the pieces have been there all the time, but he hasn’t seen it. It depends, of course, on the reader whether you like it or not.
The two of you spent a lot of time working out the structure?
Yes we’ve been really meticulous and anal about it. Especially me since, like I said, I really like to make good use of everything.
The more fantastic elements are something that wouldn’t fit in your weekly strips. If it was just a drummer and his girlfriend and the band, it could have fit there.
I missed doing action scenes, huge spreads and splash pages and really going crazy with the pacing and composition and trying out different techniques with the storytelling. Longer storylines might work in daily strips, but in the weeklies it’s difficult for the readers to keep track of what’s happening, what occurred last week and so forth. It just breaks up the pacing.
You mentioned before that you were working on a sequel. Had you always planned to do more than one book?
KP and I both felt there was more to this, so we kept some parts of the story back–but designed the first book as a standalone so it would work if only 15 people picked up the book and said, meh. [laughs] But I’m glad we get to do a sequel and hopefully other books as well.
How many books do you envision?
It’s either four or five books depending on how we’ll structure the material, but at this hour we have a synopsis for five books.
Do you want to say anything about the next book you’re working on?
What I can say is the band goes on tour and we venture more into Lily’s past. What we’d like to do is shed more light on each of the band members with each book. That’s why I want to keep it as five books.
There’s that scene where Lily had a very interesting response when Aksel asked her about her parents.
Yes. [laughs] That’s the direction we’re heading in.
Was it a challenge for you to draw the concert scenes and draw music?
I think the main challenge was making up my mind and trying to figure out which sort of approach would fit the best for each of the concert scenes. That’s what I gave a lot of thought to. The hardest part was trying to make up my mind in how to approach the concert scenes. When I had those locked down it was fairly easy–and super fun–to do the graphics and just go nuts with the layouts and energy.
Did you and KP actually write songs?
Yes. There are some lyrics that are borrowed from actual bands just to give the readers the opportunity to venture into what has inspired us and what the band’s sound might be like, but all Perkeros’s lyrics are mine.
You also translated the book from Finnish into English.
I hope it works. I got a lot of help from the Abrams staff and I think we found a way to rework all the Finnish puns. The Finnish version has a lot of wordplay with the terminology and the slang of music, brain chemistry and spells that’s been worked into the dialogue. I noticed that some of those just don’t translate. I got a lot of help and I hope we managed to get a text that is almost as rich as the original.
What is the Finnish market like? I know a lot of comics are published in Finnish.
Yes, it’s a small market. We’re only about six million people. There’s not the same kind of comics reading culture as in France, for example. The people who are making a living out of comics in Finland are the ones who have a daily strip which are then collected and then they have merchandize. Then there are guys like me who are somewhere in between. I hope I can continue making these so I don’t have to find other work.
It will be interesting to see what the reception is in, for example, Italy and Spain and Germany, where this has just come out. I feel like what I heard from my French publisher was that the feedback and the reviews have been good, but I think it’ll take a few more volumes to get our names out there. Let’s face it, we’re nobodies. [laughs] I understand we’re not your first choice in picking something up.
In Finland, is the model more Franco-Belgian albums or is it like Germany or Italy and places where it varies more.
It varies a lot. The majority is small press artsy stuff, I think. And then there’s a huge manga fanbase. I’m interested to see how that transposes later on and how that talent will transform into their own styles. Right now they’re copying their heroes, but some of it is mind-blowing. I’m really looking forward to that.
Who are the big artists in Finland that we should be reading?
The current best-seller is Pertti Jarla (http://fingerpori.org), who’s currently the biggest name in Finland, I guess. He works on “Fingerpori”, a daily strip that’s published almost in every newspaper of the country.
Tommi Musturi (http://boingbeing.wordpress.com) is versatile and very active in running his own publishing company Huuda Huuda (http://huudahuuda.com). He’s focused more on indie and small press stuff. There’s Ville Tietäväinen (http://linjamiehet.fi/villetietavainen/omatteoksetauthor/) whose insanely gorgeous graphic novel “Näkymättömät kädet” (Invisible Hands) tells about a Moroccan illegal immigrant that leaps over to Spain in search for work and money for his family. The story runs almost like a documentary, shedding light on the gruesome life of illegal aliens.
There are a lot of authors I expect big things from, including Tuuli Hypén, (http://www.tuulihypen.com) who’s been working on “Nanna”, a daily comic strip for years, and has now made her first children’s book. Her art is beautiful and I’m looking forward to what she has in store. Emmi Nieminen (http://mobile-emmi.tumblr.com) is super good, and her artwork is on par with all the pros I look up to. So far she’s been working on short stories, but I’m really expecting something big from her. Tea Tauriainen (http://madteaparty.sarjakuvablogit.com) is known for her trippy semi-autobiographical webcomics, which she’s collected in two volumes so far. I guess her random stories, quirky humor and crazy attitude just appeals to me.
So the comic books that are big tend to be collections of comic strips and not as many graphic novels?
It’s really a tough climate to do graphic novels. I feel that it’s also partly why there aren’t more Finnish books translated.
Yeah I’m not sure how well comic strip collections do well here, but we get almost none from abroad.
Yeah I’ve understood that there’s not a place for strips in France–and not much anymore here, either. I had to work double shifts in 2011 and take all the freelance gigs I could, just to get enough of a financial buffer–and by the time I got to “Sing No Evil” I was burned out. [laughs] It also ended up taking way more time than I had budgeted. It’s hard, but I hope that other Finnish artists get to do longer stories because I think their work is on par with the foreign market. It’s just a shame that only 800 people end up reading it.
You went to school at the University of Lapland, which is where you met KP, is that right?
Yeah, we both went to university there. I had something completely different in mind when I finished high school, though.
Is that up in the far North of the country?
You’d be surprised. It’s maybe halfway-ish. The Arctic Circle lies maybe ten kilometers from the city center. Even I was surprised when I was living there to look at the map and see, wow, the country goes on and on from here. I think it was a good thing that I ended up there instead of Helsinki. Pretty much all the other students came to that city from elsewhere as well so we ended up making a really tight bunch. We were really active in organizing events, parties, doing an anthology and so forth. It was like we were all in the same boat that floated somewhere in the tundra stuck in the ice. [laughs] I remember my first day meeting my fellow classmates and ending up in a bar together on a Monday. We hit it off. That was partly where the inspiration for my weekly comic strip came from. A lot of that was worked into that strip. It was a fun place.
Been loving almost everything from Magnetic Press. Looking forward to these releases.