Watchmen Resources — Updated!
Your picks of the week this week will be all Watchmen. Just in case you’re not already fed up. (Sorry!)
Hype: Future Shorts at Gloria
For our Danish readers. This coming Tuesday and Wednesday will see a number of shortfilm screenings under the Future Shorts umbrella at Gloria, City Hall Square, Copenhagen. The programme includes works by such greats as Kaige Chen and Abbas Kiarostami, acting as locomotives for a bunch of films by emerging directors, one of which is Bunker friend Ada Bligaard Søbye whose remarkable “Black Heart” will be shown.
Likeness of Leonardo?
Last weekend, the discovery of what is claimed to be a new Leonardo drawing was announced on Italian TV. With the help of digital imaging, it has emerged from behind the text of the “Codex on the Flight of Birds”, held at Turin. The proud discoverers suggest that it is actually a partial self-portrait, citing its likeness with the famous so-called Self-Portrait of Leonardo (we actually do not know who it depicts), also at Turin. The likeness is striking and its appearance on an original a manuscript sure makes it sound bona fide.
There is every reason to be sceptical, however.
Hype: Impera et Divide
Once again, it’s time to hype Charlottesville here at the Bunker. Wish I could be there for this one — Impera et Divide at the Second Street Gallery, featuring Frédéric Coché, Ae-Rim Lee, André Lemos, Ilan Manouach, Andrei Molotiu and Fabio Zimbres. Opening reception of Friday at 6 and it runs till April 25.
Hype: Continental Drift
Allow me briefly to toot my own horn: This month’s issue of The Comics Journal (#296) sees the debut of my regular column on European comics, “Continental Drift.” (More importantly, it also has interviews with Lynda Barry, Dash Shaw, Frank Quitely, Mike Luckovich and David Hajdu!).
I guess it’s inevitably my attempt at filling the big shoes left by Bart Beaty, whose “Eurocomics for Beginners” ran in the magazine for years and as a whole must be counted as one of the seminal early texts on the New Wave of European comics of the 90s (which led to his fine book on the subject). Wish me luck…
The picture above is one of the colour pages from the comic of the year, Emmanuel Guibert’s La Guerre d’Alan volume 3, which was also published in English by First Second, but unfortunately in drab grey tones.
Danske Tegneserieskaberes fonds første uddeling
Foreningen Danske Tegneserieskabere har netop for første gang uddelt af de midler, foreningen gennem årene har modtaget i form af CopyDan-penge fra danske tegneserieudgivelser efter fondsmodel i stedet for den tidligere benyttede “beløbet-divideret-med-antallet-af-medlemmer-og-uddelt-til-selv-samme.”
Tremandsudvalget, der bestod af Peter Kielland, Lars Horneman og Jan Kjær uddelte i alt kr. 345.000 i denne omgang — efter sigende et særligt højt beløb, da der ikke har været uddelinger af nogen art i flere år. Modtagerne kan ses på Foreningens hjemmeside.
Bunkeren ønsker dem alle tillykke og held og lykke med arbejdet!
Picks of the Week
The picks of the week from around the web.
Rindal RIP
Rindalismens fader er død. Hvil i fred. Lad os mindes det sunde i hans skepticisme ved at læse denne topgrinern artikel af Camilla Stockmann.
Her er et af stridens æbler fra dengang, og et interview med kunstneren:
Portrætfoto: Carsten Ingemann, nappet fra nekrologen, linket ovenfor.
On the Siné Acquittal
It was a relief to see French cartoonist Maurice Sinet — pen name Siné — acquitted of charges of “inciting racial hatred,” brought by The International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, at the court in Lyon earlier this week. Siné was fired from his long-time employer, the venerable French weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, last year, after having provocatively insinuated that President Sarkozy’s son was going to opportunistically convert to Judaism to marry the Jewish heiress of the hardware chain Darty.
To the spectator, not privy to what went on behind the scenes, this and the subsequent charges of anti-semitism on the part of several colleagues as well as a number of prominent intellectuals seemed patently absurd. The short piece Siné wrote was provocative, sure, but that’s his freaking job as a satirist, and it could definitely be described as both dumb and in bad taste, but anti-Semitic? Please.
Scans Daily No More?
The fabulous online comics community Scans Daily has been shut down, one assumes by its host LiveJournal. The reason, apparently, was copyright infringement — ie. posting scans whole issues or close to whole issues of new comics on the site. Seeing some of his work there got comics writer Peter David riled, and he informed his employer Marvel Comics, but he won’t assume any responsibility, saying that the plug was pulled before anyone could have acted on his complaints. Presumably, LiveJournal have been receiving similar complaints for a while and decided that this couldn’t go on. But really, I have no idea.
Whatever the reason, this is a real pity. Scans Daily was a great resource, both for getting people stopping by excited about comics, keeping them entertained, and providing amazing new discoveries, especially of older, hard-to-find stuff. I’ve greatly enjoyed lurking there, and have linked to their posts more than once here from the Bunker. Like this poster, I hope LiveJournal or whoever is responsible will reconsider this decision.