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I hope you will join me and enjoy exploring the worlds of comics, graphic novels and manga at the annual Comica Festival and other special Comica events held throughout the year.Paul Gravett, Comica Director
COMICA NEWS
Joe Sacco’s Comica Interview Online
Posted: January 10, 2010
On 29 September 2009, Comica welcomed Joe Sacco to London at the ICA. Joe was in town to discuss his new book Footnotes In Gaza with comics historian Roger Sabin. The full transcript of this talk is now available online at the Eye Magazine Blog:
RS: If you’re going to write about a massacre, you’re going to attract a certain amount of flak about whether this is Israel-bashing. How do you respond to that?
JS: What I tried to do was get as many eyewitnesses as possible. And I felt like I needed to be convinced by it. I think in the book I talk about the problems of the story, or certain people’s stories.
RS: Did you make an effort to talk to Israelis, to get their side of the story?
JS: I got two Israeli researchers to go through the archives to see what they could find. Which turned out to be almost close to zero about the Khan Younis incident: the second incident, there is something about that. There was one Israeli soldier who actually wrote about this in the early 1980s. And he wrote about coming across, as he put it, a human slaughterhouse. He had died, but I managed to call his widow. And she gave me the number of a guy he mentions in the story, and I managed to track that guy down. He really evaded the issue - he said he saw nothing himself. He finally told me that this guy was actually kind of a newspaper man. But he meant that in a pejorative sense. ‘Ah, he’s a newspaper man. He’s going to tell you lies anyway.’ So I include that in the book. It’s always harder to get stories from people who might have committed atrocities or seen them from the side that committed them. It’s always going to be more difficult. I think at some point Israeli historians have to step in.
RS: There are a couple: there’s Benny Morris.
JS: There are definitely great Israeli historians who have been detailing this sort of thing. I sat with Benny Morris and we talked about it. I called up every Israeli historian that I could get hold of. Some of them knew about the incidents, but none had examined it themselves. Benny Morris knew about it - he called it a massacre. And Benny Morris himself is actually quite right wing, but he’s a very good historian.
RS: So when you’re dealing with something as atrocious as this, is there a psychological effect on you? Does it take a toll?
JS: I got tired of drawing bodies. [Long Silence]...
ComiXmas Panel: How A Comic Is Made
Posted: December 7, 2009
On Thursday, 21 January 2010, discover the secrets behind writing and drawing comics, graphic novels and manga, revealed by creators featured in the ComiXmas Exhibition at a free event held at the LondonPrintStudio Gallery. Join Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal (Master & Margarita), Nana Li (Twelfth Night), Pat Mills (Nemesis, Slaine, Requiem) and Woodrow Phoenix (Rumble Strip), chaired by Paul Gravett, Director of Comica. More details…
Reinhard Kleist: The Man In Black & White
Posted: December 7, 2009
If you missed Reinhard Kleist‘s appearance at Comica ‘09, in the video above you can hear him discuss his book Johnny Cash: I See A Darkness with Alex Fitch of Panel Borders.
ComiXmas: When Worlds Collide
Posted: December 2, 2009
ComiXmas Exhibition: When Worlds Collide is an exhibition of fantastic images from contemporary comic books and graphic novels, featuring work by the best contemporary comic book artists, along with images from past great masters of the genre. Included in the exhibition is work by Osamu Tezuka, one of the fathers of Japanese manga and anime; Hergé, the Belgian creator of Tintin; Woodrow Phoenix, creator of the award winning Rumble Strip; Andrzej Klimowski, illustrator of The Master & Margarita; Reinhard Kleist, illustrator of Johnny Cash: I See A Darkness; From Hell creators Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, and many other artists.
This free exhibition runs from 11 December 2009 to 6 February 2010 at the London Print Studio Gallery, 425 Harrow Road, London. More details…
David Lloyd Art Auction - Part 2
Posted: December 1, 2009
David Lloyd is selling four more V For Vendetta sketches from the Comica ‘09 Heavy Pencil event on the 5 November. David has kindly donated this art to help raise funding and awareness for Cartoon Classroom - a non-profit organisation whose aim is to provide a means of centralising all information available on the study of cartoon and sequential art in the UK and Southern Ireland. You can bid for these four signed sketches on ebay until Sunday 6 December.
Comica ‘09: It’s Not Over Yet…
Posted: November 24, 2009
The final ICA Comica ‘09 event, a screening of anime visionary Mamoru Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers, takes place on Thursday 26 November at the ICA from 8.30pm. More film details here.
Comica guest Ben Templesmith will be signing at Orbital Comics on Thursday between 5pm and 7pm.
The Comica ‘09 exhibitions continue showing across the capital:
30 Years of Viz (ends 24 Jan 2010)
Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption (ends 30 Nov)
Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure (ends 3 Jan 2010)
John Miers: Babel (ends 13 Dec)
Philip Marsden: True Stories (ends 28 Nov)
R. Crumb Uncovered (ends 12 Dec)
Stories for Humans: Contemporary Comics (ends 26 Nov)
War: The Human Cost (ends 30 Nov)
...and the Busted Jesus Comix play continues its run until 28 November.
David Lloyd Art Auction
Posted: November 24, 2009
On 5 November at the Comica ‘09 Heavy Pencil event, artist David Lloyd drew four water-colour sketches inspired by V For Vendetta in front of a live audience to the soundtrack from the V For Vendetta film and songs that inspired it. David has kindly donated this art to help raise funding and awareness for Cartoon Classroom - a non-profit organisation whose aim is to provide a means of centralising all information available on the study of cartoon and sequential art in the UK and Southern Ireland. You can bid for these four signed sketches on ebay until Sunday 29 November.
Comica ‘09: Final ICA Events
Posted: November 20, 2009
The Comica ‘09 season of events ends on a high with a trio of conversations at the ICA in London:
On Sunday 22 November, Reinhard Kleist joins us from Germany to celebrate the translation from SelfMadeHero of his award-winning graphic biography of the most famous country singer of all time, the legendary Johnny Cash. Entitled I See A Darkness, it covers Cash’s life from his early sessions with Elvis, through the Folsom Prison recordings to his spectacular comeback, and features lyrics from 23 of his famous songs. Join us for a special celebration of ‘The Man in Black’ when Reinhard will be talking with Charles Shaar Murray. More event details here.
On Monday 23 November, we’re thrilled to welcome one of the finest and funniest Flemish cartoonists, Willy Linthout, whose autobio-graphic novel Years Of The Elephant, coming in English from Fanfare, has won him huge acclaim for the poignant and surreal account of his grief after the suicide of his young son. Willy will be in conversation with former Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen, who wrote so touchingly about his own son’s death in The Sad Book illustrated by Quentin Blake. Expect an evening of insights into these tender, life-affirming first-person testimonies. More event details here.
On Tuesday 24 November, we welcome Ben Templesmith. Hailed for his arresting graphics and gripping narratives, Templesmith is justly famed for his visualisations of Alaskan vampire horror 30 Days of Night with Steve Niles. He has also made his mark with Brit scribe Warren Ellis on the quirky noir Fell and on his own solo projects such as Wormwood and Welcome to Hoxford. Ben will discuss his whole oeuvre with acclaimed writer and film director Philip Ridley as well as the possibilities of their future collaboration. More event details here.
After the conversation with Ben, Philip Ridley will introduce a preview screening of Heartless, his dark, horror-tinged urban fantasy starring Jim Sturgess as a young photographer who feels as if his life has been blighted by the birthmark that covers half of his face. There will be a Q&A session with Ridley after the movie. More event details here.
Comica ‘09: Online Interviews
Posted: November 20, 2009
Eddie Campbell sat down with Simon Hacking at this year’s Comica Festival at the ICA in London to discuss his new book Alec: The Years Have Pants and the significance of autobiography in comics. You can read the full interview at The Wall Street Journal.
Comica Director Paul Gravett also spoke with Simon about his ambitions for the Comica Festival. You can read the full interview at Simon’s blog Cartoons Are For Children.
Lightspeed Champion (aka Dev Hynes) and Savage Messiah (aka Laura Oldfield Ford) talk to Alex Fitch about the charity comics anthology Ctrl.ALt Shift Unmasks Corruption, which launched at Comica ‘09. You can hear the full podcast at Panel Borders.
On yesterday’s BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, Kirsty Lang is joined by Dave McKean, Apostolos Doxiadis, Ian Rankin and Joe Sacco to discuss the power of the comic book and the relationship between image and text. Listen to the programme on the BBC IPlayer (starts 13m 12s in).
Comica: Dazed & Confused
Posted: November 18, 2009
Comica Director Paul Gravett talks comics with Dazed Digital in an online interview about the Comica Festival and his future plans for Escape Books, as well as featuring the comics anthology launched at Comica ‘09, Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption. Also online at Dazed Digital, manga expert Helen McCarthy explores the work of the Japanese Walt Disney, Osamu Tezuka.
...and over at the Ctrl.Alt.Shift Blog, Dave McKean discusses his contribution to Unmasks Corruption.
