The last Monday in the month (give or take a bit of manoeuvring) is always reserved for Cartoon County – the monthly meetings of the Sussex Association of Cartoonists and Comic Strip Artists. And it’s been going since 1993…If you measure out those Mondays, that’s 884 meetings, or two and a half years worth of my evenings taken up with Cartoon County, or buying 884 pints of Guinness for my co-coordinator, David Lloyd. Well, perhaps I’m not that generous all the time, but that works out as a pretty big black lake, however you measure it. Commitment or madness, or just a dogged devotion to the cause of promoting comics and cartoons in Sussex, because the fact is that Brighton, at the epicentre of cartoon creativity on the south coast, is just buzzing with a new input of creators every week. A constantly rejuvenating stream of cartoonists finds their way into (currently) The Cricketers on Black Lion Street in Brighton’s Lanes, and while a certain leverage to London takes its toll, there are always new faces who join our informal gatherings from 6 till late…
Category Archives: Guest Writers
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.
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.
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.
Genocide in Comics by Laurike in ‘t Veld
The first time I encountered Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1986 & 1992) was, as for many, a revelatory experience. During my studies I had mainly focused on the representation of genocide in moving images; films, documentaries, television programs. I prided myself of having gained something of a distance to my studied objects. I could look at a film about the genocide in Rwanda or Bosnia and maintain my academic analytical composure, not letting the images get to me too much. But then I opened Maus, which broke right through my academic filters, as did Jean-Philippe Stassen’s Deogratias, Jeroen Janssen’s Muzungu, Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde, Paolo Cossi’s Medz Yeghern and many other comics.
The impact of the medium made me exchange the realm of moving images for that of the static image, which is moving nonetheless. It is my firm belief that the medium of comics employs unique strategies in representing something as sensitive as a genocide and in trying to establish a connection with the reader. Every comic book that deals with genocide reinforces the idea that these strategies need to be analyzed systematically. My research project, titled Genocide in Comics, analyzes how genocides are imagined and represented in comics and connects theories from genocide studies and comics/media theory in a critical analysis.
Comics Forum 