By no means breaking news, but still a curious and interesting cartoon-related Danish incident: A few weeks ago, Director General of DR (Denmark’s Radio, the state-sponsored public service radio and TV network), Kenneth Plummer, was offended by a cartoon by Roald Als, published in the daily newspaper Politiken. The cartoon depicts Plummer as a lazy…
More reactions to my article on French nigh-mainstream comics (read the first batch here): Hi Matthias- I really enjoyed your article on the French authors. After writing and erasing a zillion responses, I have decided to just think about it some more. In the meantime, I’d like to chime in and also recommend that you…
Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist behind the infamous bomb in the turban from Jyllands-Posten, revisited the controversy a few days ago when he illustrated the printed version of Norwegian writer Hege Storhaug’s speech to the editor responsible for the original printing of the 12 Muhammed cartoons, Flemming Rose when he was awarded the newly-instated, so-called Sappho…
There was some nice news waiting for me as I arrived here in Boston today: Rackham’s big Danish comics anthology BLÆK, published almost exactly a year ago, has been selected amongst the books of the year 2006 by the Association of Danish Bookbinders! Every year, the Association singles out a number of books published in…
It is sad to learn that somebody who brought you joy in your childhood has gone before his time. I dug Rogers’ work on Batman, and later Silver Surfer, a whole lot when I was a kid. On Batman he had a lot of the same appeal that Todd McFarlane would later have on Spider-Man:…
Comics critic Xavier Guilbert (of the excellent du9) responds to my recent critique of aspects of contemporary French cartooning, I answer him, and we have a conversation. Read on! Hello Matthias, I’ve read with much interest your latest note on the Metabunker blog, and while you make an interesting point, I beg to differ. As…
Just read Christophe Blain’s latest comic, the western romance Gus. Beautifully drawn, well-told, cool 70s-style colouring, nice poetic mood, utterly unambitious. Blain is one of the most naturally graceful draughtsmen of current French-language comics and amongst the prime movers in what has been regarded as the revitalisation of the traditional album format over the last…
This just in: Philippe Val, editor-in-chief of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, who published the notorious Muhammed cartoons from Danish daily Jyllands-Posten – along with a number of others, produced for the occasion – in February of last year, has just been acquitted of any wrongdoing by the Parisian Correctional Court. The court stated that…
I hope you are reading Lewis Trondheim’s comics blog “Les Petits riens” – while at first sight perhaps seeming slight, it marks an exhilarating departure for his drawing and, by extension, his taking in of the world around him. As always laconic, he says he started the daily strip journal to teach himself watercolour, and…
Because I think at least bits of it are worth a second look, this is just to follow up on the discussion about modernism, high and low in art, and how all of this pertains to comics that Comics Journal critic Noah Berlatsky and I, amongst others, have conducted here and on the Comics Journal…
One of the great originals of the American Silver Age, Arnold Drake, has passed away. Mark Evanier provides a both informative and touching obituary. To me, Drake is significant for the creation of a number of characters and stories that showed the obverse of the four-color universes of other superhero comics of his time. “The…
The premier French site of comics criticism has now launched an English-language version, containing selected content in translation. This means, for example, that you can now read Xavier Guilbert’s review of Shigeru Mizuki’s masterly NonNonBâ (which I also reviewed a couple of days ago), as well as interviews with Edmond Baudoin and Lorenzo Mattotti, amongst…
Over on the TCJ message board, Noah Berlatsky replies to my criticism: “Hi Matthias. You raised some interesting points in your review. For myself, though, when I was six or seven I thought Peanuts was hysterically, fall-down-on-the-floor funny. Still do, for that matter. I didn’t talk more about Chris Ware in the Schulz essay in…
My first exposure to the work of Mizuki Shigeru was indirect, in the form of Miike Takashi’s wonderful 2005 film Yôkai daisensô (eng. The Great Yôkai War), which I saw last year. Amongst the most impressive aspects of that thoroughly enjoyable movie was the often iconically simple and inventive character designs given to the host…
The most consistently readable, if also frustrating, new writer at the Comics Journal the last couple of years, Noah Berlatsky, has just put his first and best piece for the magazine, on the reception of Peanuts by today’s alt-cartoonists, online at the blog he contributes to. I often find myself disagreeing with Berlatsky, as will…