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Author Archives: Comics Forum

Snapshots by Dan Berry

Interviews

At the end of 2010, I took it upon myself to interview as many comic artists, publishers, retailers and writers working in the UK as possible. There was a sense at the time that something was changing in comics. This change, however, was difficult to define. I asked a relatively standard set of questions that explored working process, influences and ambitions. I also asked the question ‘What do you think of the health of the UK comics scene at the moment, and what do you think it can do better?’

However hard it is to define change or progression, it is made all the harder to define without a benchmark against which to measure it. What I hoped for with these interviews was the beginnings of a record of popular opinion amongst the comics industry.

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Posted by on 2012/03/12 in Guest Writers, Interviews

 

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Comics and Philosophy: From Maus to She-Hulk

To register for this event, email comicsforum@hotmail.co.uk.

For a PDF of this poster click here.

 

Scholar Directory

Today sees the launch of a new resource on the Comics Forum website. The scholar directory provides information on the biographies, research interests, conference papers and publications of scholars from around the world. The hope is this will be useful in helping scholars to make connections, see where people are studying and what they’re interested in, and increase the accessibility of comics scholarship for everyone.

Until today the directory has been running in a limited pilot phase, with invited parties submitting their data for inclusion so we could work out how to build the pages and structure the system. Many thanks to all those who agreed to take part in this trial run.  Now, I’m delighted to invite all comics scholars to fill in our data form and submit it to comicsforum@hotmail.co.uk for inclusion in the listings. Any queries about getting listed can also be directed to this email address.

Click here to be taken to the scholar directory.

Click here to download the data form.

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Digital Comics: New Mutations & Innovations by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey

We are pleased to be able to offer Daniel Merlin Goodbrey’s presentation ‘Digital Comics: New Mutations & Innovations’ for download in PDF format. This paper was presented on the 18th of November 2011 as part of Comics Forum 2011. Many thanks to Daniel for making this available!

Click here to download the presentation.

Abstract: The medium of comics sits on the cusp of the digital future promised to comic creators at the turn of the century. Explorations of the infinite canvas and the many strange mutations of the hypercomic have been given a new relevance and audience by the recent advances in portable display and mobile media. Now, with a decade of experimental digital work behind us, the wider world is at last beginning to catch up to these odd outliers of the form.

As the comics industry moves to catch up with the frontier, newer and stranger ideas must be entertained. The hunt for weirder, more wonderful mutations must be renewed with new vigour and new purpose. This talk considers the different directions potential explorers of the medium might next pursue. It examines the possibilities of new forms such as locative, sonic, game, spatial and AR comics. In doing so it aims to map some of the many trails leading out into the new decade of experimental comics that lies before us.

Daniel Merlin Goodbrey is a senior lecturer in Interaction Design at The University of Hertfordshire in England. A prolific and innovative comic creator, Goodbrey has gained international recognition as a leading expert in the field of experimental digital comics. His hypercomic work received the International Clickburg Webcomic Award in Holland in 2006 while his work in print was awarded with the Isotope Award for Excellence In Comics in San Francisco in 2005. An archive of his work can be found here.

Comics Forum 2011 was supported by Thought Bubble, the University of Chichester, the Henry Moore Institute, Dr Mel Gibson, Routledge, Arts Council England, Intellect and Molakoe Graphic Design.

 

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The Body as a Canvas in Comics: Karrie Fransman Explores the Influence of Corporal Studies in the Creation of her graphic novel The House That Groaned

This video is titled ‘The Body as a Canvas in Comics: Karrie Fransman Explores the Influence of Corporal Studies in the Creation of her graphic novel The House That Groaned‘. This is a hybrid of two papers given at Graphic Medicine in Leeds Art Gallery and Comica Symposium in Birkbeck University of London in November 2011 and contains original art work drawn for the paper.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Karrie Fransman’s autobiographical comic strips were published in The Guardian. Her comic serial ‘The Night I Lost My Love’ ran in The Times. Her graphic novel, The House That Groaned, is published by Random House’s Square Peg and has received praise from film director Nicolas Roeg. She has talked about her work at Saint Martins, London College of Communication, The University of Birkbeck, the Institute of Contemporary Arts and for The British Council and exhibited her work last year in London, Belgium and Moscow. Karrie was born in Edinburgh and lives in London in a house not so dissimilar to the one in her book. You can see more of her work at www.karriefransman.com and more about her book at www.thehousethatgroaned.com. She can be found on Twitter here.

Comics Forum 2011 was supported by Thought Bubble, the University of Chichester, the Henry Moore Institute, Dr Mel Gibson, Routledge, Arts Council England, Intellect and Molakoe Graphic Design.

 

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