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Comics Forum 2013 Keynote and Book Launch

Paul Gravett (Image © Peter Stanbury)

Paul Gravett (Image © Peter Stanbury)

Comics Forum is proud to announce that the keynote event for our 2013 conference ‘Small Press and Undergrounds: A Conference on Comics’ will be Paul Gravett in conversation with Roger Sabin. A key figure in British comics, Paul’s career started in 1981 when he launched the Fast Fiction stall at Westminster Comics Mart. The stall was one of the major intersections between the British small press and the European bande dessinée scene. Paul later went on to work for Pssst!, and subsequently launched with Peter Stanbury the important anthology Escape, which again marked up the importance of bande dessinée in its artistic style and approach to comics, as well as including early comics work by noted creators such as Eddie Campbell, Neil Gaiman, Myra Hancock, Rian Hughes, Dave McKean and Carol Swain. Paul has played a major role in the British comic scene ever since, promoting creators and talents, and finding spaces for comics in locations and communities where they might not otherwise have been seen. Paul’s latest book Comics Art is published in November 2013 by Tate. Roger Sabin is a journalist and academic who has written for The Guardian, The Independent and New Statesman. He is now Reader in Popular Culture at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design. He is the author of Adult Comics: An Introduction, a significant cultural history of comics, and Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art, which takes an international look at the medium of comics. Paul Gravett in conversation with Roger Sabin will take place on Friday afternoon and bring Comics Forum 2013 to a close.

Roger Sabin; photo by Alberto García Marcos - used with permission.

Roger Sabin; photo by Alberto García Marcos – used with permission.

But wait! There’s more!

On the evening of the 21st of November (Comics Forum 2013 day 1), Comics Forum will be partnering with Travelling Man Leeds to present a book launch for Paul Gravett’s Comics Art. The launch will take place at Travelling Man from 1700-1830 and Paul Gravett will give a short introduction to the book. All welcome; see you there!

Comics Art Cover

To find out more about Comics Forum 2013’s full line-up of speakers, and to register for a place at the conference, see https://comicsforum.org/comics-forum-2013/.

Travelling Man Logo

Comics Forum 2013 is supported by: Thought Bubble, the University of Chichester, Routledge, Travelling ManDr Mel Gibson and Molakoe.

 
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Posted by on 2013/11/01 in Comics Forum 2013, News

 

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NNCORE Documentation Now Available

Documentation relating to the 2013 Nordic Network for Comics Research (NNCORE) Conference at the University of Helsinki has today been added to the Affiliated Conferences section of the Scholarly Resources archive on the Comics Forum website. The conference abstracts and program are available now, along with issue 7 of the NNCORE newsletter, which includes extensive discussion of the conference. All resources are free to download. The NNCORE website can be found here. Many thanks to Anne Magnussen and the NNCORE team for making these materials available.

To see the other conferences featured in the Affiliated Conferences archive, click here.

If you are a conference director and you would like to archive your material on the Comics Forum website, email us at comicsforum@hotmail.co.uk for details.

IH

 

Comics Forum Online: Year Two Review and Comics Forum 2013 Call for Papers

The Comics Forum website is two years old today! Following on from last year’s round up of articles, in this post I’ll be providing a review of all the pieces we’ve published this year, and launching the Comics Forum 2013 call for papers.

Read the rest of this entry »

 

Death and the Superhero: Strikeforce: Morituri

Jose Alaniz (2013) - Poster

To download a PDF of this poster click here.

Comics Forum is pleased to announce the second event in the ‘Comics Forum presents…’ series. José Alaniz, author of Komiks: Comic Art in Russia, guest author for the Comics Forum website and the current chair of the executive committee of the International Comic Art Forum, will appear at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds (UK) on the 25th of March.

Death and the Superhero: ‘Strikeforce: Morituri’

Proceeding in part from the writings of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, the talk examines the late 1980s Marvel Comics series Strikeforce: Morituri (originally written by Peter Gillis with art by Brent Anderson), which took as its premise the inescapable mortality of its superteam’s members, for a consideration of the ways “real” death warps and complicates the routinely death-denying superhero genre.

José Alaniz, associate professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Department of Comparative Literature (adjunct) at the University of Washington – Seattle, published his first book, Komiks: Comic Art in Russia (University Press of Mississippi) in 2010. His articles have appeared in the International Journal of Comic Art, the Comics Journal, Ulbandus, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema and Kinokultura, as well as the anthologies The Ages of Superman: Essays on the Man of Steel in Changing Times (McFarland, 2012), The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov (I.B. Tauris, 2011) and Russian Children’s Literature and Culture (Routledge, 2007). In 2009 he edited a symposium on Czech comics for IJOCA. He is currently the Chair of the Executive Committee of the International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF), the leading comics studies conference in the US. His research interests include Death and Dying, Disability Studies, Film Studies, Eco-criticism and Comics Studies. His current projects include Death, Disability and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond and a history of Czech comics.

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Entry to this event is free, but places are limited so registration is required. Places will be given on a first come first served basis, and early booking is strongly recommended. To register, send your name and the number of tickets you would like to comicsforum@hotmail.co.uk.

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Laydeez do Comics Leeds

Following Death and the Superhero, Wharf Chambers (23-25 Wharf Street, Leeds LS2 7EQ) plays host to the third instalment of Laydeez do Comics Leeds (6:30-9:30pm). Entry costs £1.50. The event features a top line up guests:

Adam Cadwell: Artist, web comic The Everyday, co-founder of Great Beast books.

Dr Mel Gibson: Academic, Northumbria University.

Melanie Maddison: Artist of zine Colouring Outside The Lines.

 

Comics Forum Articles Nominated for 2012 Hooded Utilitarian Awards

Five articles from the Comics Forum website have been nominated for Hooded Utilitarian’s Best Online Comics Criticism 2012 award. The nominated pieces are:

Third Quarter Nominations:

A Note on the Woman who Gave Birth to Rabbits One Hundred Years Before Töpffer by Laurence Grove

Alan Moore’s Lost Treasures: ‘The Hasty Smear of My Smile…’ by Marc Sobel

Image [&] Narrative #5: Graphic Poetry: An (im)possible form? by Steven Surdiacourt

Fourth Quarter Nominations:

A fragmentary past: Karasik and Mazzucchelli’s City of Glass by Nicolas Labarre

Visual authentication strategies in autobiographical comics by Elisabeth El Refaie

Congratulations to all our writers for being nominated, and many thanks to the team at Hooded Utilitarian for the mentions!

IH

 
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Posted by on 2013/01/07 in News