The great fantasy artist Frank Frazetta (1928-2010) died yesterday at the age of 82. Surely the most influential artists within his genre and a significant comics illustrator and cartoonist too, his legacy is apparent everywhere. Basically, fantasy illustration as we know it would be much different if it weren’t for him. His pen and ink…
So, I spent the weekend at the Fumetto festival in Switzerland. Check out my report over at The Comics Journal.
Med bogen Natasja har Karen Mukupa og Rasmus Poulsen ristet en mindesten til dansk reggaes største talent og en af landets fineste sangere gennem de sidste tyve år, Natasja Saad, der i 2007 tragisk omkom i en bilulykke på Jamaica i en alder af 32 år. Det er på sin plads, for Natasja havde længe…
Ovre på Dansk Tegneserieråds hjemmeside, kan man nu læse en opgørelse over Kunstrådets uddeling af støtte til tegneserier og tegneserieskabere i 2009. Uden at medregne de seks 100.000-kroners legater, der er blevet uddelt til tegneserietegnere til støtte for illustrationsprojekter, der sandsynligvis ikke er tegneserier, er det samlede beløb på 478.815, hvoraf 390.000 gik til tegneserieprojekter…
Right. Sunday at the Angoulême festival is always a bit of a wash when one lives abroad and hasn’t booked another night in France, but now it’s Monday and here are some thoughts on the festival as a whole. The policy of announcing the festival awards and the Grand Prix winner on Sunday afternoon, instated…
Reporting live from the Angoulême festival: Saturday is here and its been a busy day. Crowded as usual, negotiating the often tight exhibition spaces and lecture theaters can be trying, but is certainly worth it. We started the day at the new comics center, which I must say is amazing. Under new directorship and with…
Reporting live from the Angoulême festival: The rain didn’t keep people away. Friday has been fairly busy, with the exhibition areas and tents filled as usual with a broad, heterogenous audience. I spent the day taking in various exhibitions and browsing the exhibitors’ tables in the alternative tent, ending my day of programming by attending…
One of the grand old men of Franco-Belgian comics, Jacques Martin just died at age 88. One of Hergé’s most important assistants through the 1950s and 60s (notably on the South Sea Sharks and Tintin in Tibet) and one of the pillars of Tintin Magazine, he acrimoniously struck out on his own in 1972 to…
As the more assiduous comics internauts will already have noticed, I took part in the recent selection of the year’s best comics criticism hosted at The Hooded Utilitarian. Run by Ng Suat Tong, it was put together by a panel that also included head utilitarian Noah Berlatsky, cartoonist and commentator Frank Santoro, and the critic…
Just like Yale University Press’ disgraceful censorship of Jytte Klausen’s book on the Muhammed cartoons, it seems the august Metropolitan Museum in New York is set to muddy the waters of history by pulling from their display ancient images of the prophet, made by Muslims and considering not putting them back on display once the…
For this year’s wrap-up season, Paul Gravett repeats last year’s great idea of asking comics connoisseurs and professionals all over the world to write a few words on the year’s most notable comics from their respective country. He graciously asked me to talk about the best in Danish comics, so my selections appear in part…
I just briefly wanted to pay homage to the recently passed master cartoonist. Possibly the most recognisable caricaturist of the past 40 years, Levine has come almost to incarnate the discipline, especially with his withering cartoons of the main players in the Nixon administration and of other unsavoury world leaders of that era. Contrary to…
I didn’t take long for the New Year’s first piece of crap news to arrive here. Some idiot broke into the home of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard wielding an axe, evidently in “retaliation” for the latter’s cartoon of the prophet Muhammed. The cartoonist saved himself by fleeing to the house’s panic room. His grandchild was…
A short note on the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man. It seems to me that this incisive fable about one man’s search for answers is the equivalent of the filmmakers handing us the keys to their art. Only now, after 25 years of making movies, have they created an overtly Jewish film. Characters such as…
Things remain busy here — still working on that diss. Have just finished the introduction, so I’m getting there. But now it’s Christmas, with all that entails, so the blogging here will remain rather perfunctory, but I wanted to at least get something up here and since I was just in Paris for a day…