Mainstream comics auteur Steve Gerber, creator of Howard the Duck and Omega the Unknown, passed away Sunday night. Tom Spurgeon has as fine an obituary as you’re going to find up, providing an appreciation of key works and a career overview. Mark Evanier delivers the more personal perspective and friends and fans congregate at Gerber’s…
The Arrival by Shaun Tan is the most overrated comic of the past year. Published more or less simultaneously in several languages, it seems to have received unanimously positive, bordering on rave, criticism since it came out — from the mainstream press as well as the comics cognoscenti. To cap things off, it was awarded…
The picks of the week from around the web. The Crumbling paper index. This site is a treasure trove of old comics. Go there and loose yourself. Rap explained. Dropping science, hilariously. HuckChuckFacts. Just in case you haven’t seen this. You must, to believe.
An interesting comics festival coming up this weekend in Gothenburg, Sweden. Peep their site here.
Comics writer and historian Alfredo Castelli has a late Christmas present for us all — the entirety (704 pages!) of his annotated bibliography on the early American newspaper strip, Eccoci ancora qui (“Here We Are Again”) is now available online in PDF format! Meticulously researched and chock-full of rarely-seen images, this is a must for…
Warren Craghead is one of the most interesting and innovative younger cartoonists working the margins of the comics medium these days. He has just posted his latest book, Lisboa, Lisbon on his new site, where it is available for reading and free downloading in PDF. What are you waiting for?
Fra Louisiana’s hjemmeside: Manga 8. oktober 2008 – 8. februar 2009 Det var den berømte japanske maler Hokusai, der kaldte sine tegnede portrætskitser for manga, som bragte navnet til Vesten. Manga er et særlig japansk tegneserie-fænomen, der historisk rækker 200 år tilbage, og som i dag har international kultstatus med millioner af hæfter solgt hver…
Hardly surprising, here it is: Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian are the winners of the 2008 Grand Prix at Angoulême. An understandable, if somewhat dull choice, Dupuy and Berberian have played central role in the development of the French album-format comic for adults in the 1990s, first and foremost with their Monsieur Jean series (1991-2005),…
This just in: Australian Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, published last year in several languages, amongst them in French as Là où vont nos pères, was awarded the Book of the Year award at Angoulême. Here’s the full list of the Essential Selection, along with other selected awards: Essentials Rutu Modan — Exit wounds Pascal Rabaté…
As always when Angoulême rolls around, discontents in the French comics community rise to the surface. A perennial issue is the relationship between artists and critics. In an ill-informed and ill-advised article in this week’s issue of French weekly Le Point, the journalist Romain Brethes sets up Joann Sfar, Marjane Satrapi and the other usual…
We here at the Bunker are rather depressed that none of us will be going to Angoulême (Jan. 24-27) this year. In addition to always being worth the visit, we’re going to miss all of our Angoulême friends — the great people we unfortunately only meet there, once a year. Please be assured that we…
Frem til starten af februar vil man kunne se sort/hvide sider fra Blodbryllup og et kort bidrag til Johan Krarups Son Of A Horse-antologi på kunstcaféen “DIN NYE VEN”, lige en spytklat oppe af gaden fra Fantask, i Sct. Peders Stræde 34. Hvis ikke man er i nærheden af København, men alligevel gerne vil se…
For our readers in Paris, or those traveling to Angoulême at the end of the month, I just want to call attention to an exhibition of unpublished drawings by the great David B., La Guerre sainte, at the Galerie Anne Barrault, 22 rue Saint-Claude, 75003. The opening’s Saturday January 12 from 16.00-21.00, and the show’s…
Chris Mautner’s New Year’s roundtable as usual brings together commentary from a panoply of comics critics, including yours truly. This time, the subject is the year in comics criticism.
Finally got to see Persepolis. It is better, even, than it had to be. Very faithful to the comic — I was amazed at how well it manages to encompass pretty much the whole story as told in the comic without seeming rushed, all the while adding its own accents to the proceedings. While close…