The German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) invites abstracts for their 12th annual research conference, to be held at Bonn University, Dec 1st-3rd, 2017. Deadline: April 30th.
Please click here for a PDF with more details.
News Review March 2017
Americas
Mexico
Culture
Cartoonist Cintia Bolio was awarded an International Human Rights Tlaltecutli Prize. An exhibit on the 15th anniversary of the publication of Bolios’s Puras Evas opened at Museo de la Mujer in Downtown Mexico City. Her work is also currently featured in the exhibit “De ellas” at the Torre-Pacheco Public Library in Murcia (Spain). Link (FGG, Spanish)
The International La Mole Comic-con took place on the 17th to the 19th March at the Mexico City World Trade Center, featuring local artists Motzaqui, Bef, and Ric Velasco, and with the participation of Kevin Eastman, Jessica Stroup, Tom Pelphrey, Greg Capullo, Erik Larsen, Spencer Wilding, and Rickey Purdin, among many others. Link (19/03/17, FGG, Spanish)
Cartoonist Angel Boligán has been elected for the catalogue of the 21st Euro-kartoenale Kruishoutem, “The Soul.” Link (FGG, English)
The exhibit “Iconos del Humorismo Mexicano” opened on the 30th anniversary of the Museo de la Caricatura, in downtown Mexico City, with a special tribute to Jesús Martínez Rentería “Palillo” (1913-1994), and works by Pedro Sol, “Frik”, Eduardo Gómez, Paco Vaca, and other 40 artists. Cartoons by Christian Garduño, aka Rocko, are also on view at the museum through May. Link (30/03/17, FGG, Spanish)
“Los Supersabios. Plaza de la Caricatura” was inaugurated in the Historic Center of Mexico City in the midst of the 2nd edition of FILO, a meeting of comics artists open to the general public. The event included addresses by El Fisgón, Bef, and Luis Gantus, among others. The space is meant to be a celebration of comics and political cartoon in Mexico, and will be used as a site for graphic novel workshops directed by Edgar Clement, Logan Wayne, Criss Layla Dysaster, Ricardo Peláez, and others during April and May. Link (30/03/17, FGG, Spanish)
Education
The Casa Universitaria del Libro UNAM is hosting courses and workshops on Cartooning and Political Illustration, Graphic Narrative, and Comic and Gender. Link (FGG, Spanish)
Research
Bernardo Fernández (Bef) and Adrián Mora Bautista gave the keynote addresses at the interdisciplinary comics colloquium hosted by The Humanities Program at FES Acatlán on March 29th and 30th. Link (FGG, Spanish)
The Literature Department at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City will host its First graphic narratives international conference: “Memory and oblivion in Comics, Manga and Roman Graphique,” on April 5 and 6, 2017, with keynote addresses by Drs. José Manuel de Amo, Laurence Grove, and Paul Gravett, and guest artists Luis Fernando, Axur Eneas, Alejandra Gámez, Alejandra Espino, and Augusto Mora, among others. Link (FGG, Spanish)
United States
Research
Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society 1.1 is now published online. Link (English, WG)
Critical Insights: Neil Gaiman, edited by Joseph M. Sommers, has now been published through Salem Press. Link (English, WG)
The Ages of the Justice League: Essays on America’s Greatest Superheroes in Changing Times, edited by Joseph J. Darowski, has been published by McFarland. Link (English, WG)
Registration is now open for the Graphic Medicine conference, which takes place in Seattle Public Library in June. Link (English, WG)
The book, Drawing the Line: Comics Studies and INKS, 1994–1997, edited by Lucy Shelton Caswell and Jared Gardner, has been published through the Ohio State University Press. Link (English, WG)
Feminist Media Histories: An International Journal has a call for papers for a special issue on comics. The deadline for proposals is the 15th April. Link (English, WG)
Europe
Belgium
Culture
The museum of La Boverie in Liège organizes a large exhibition on French comics magazines Métal Hurlant and (A suivre), on view from the 17th March to the 11th June, 2017. Link (17/03/2017, French, BC)
Research
The program for the NNCORE conference “Comics and Memory,” which will take place at the University of Ghent from the 19th to the 21st April 2017, is now available. Link (08/03/2017, English, BC)
A call for papers for an international conference on novelizations has been released: it welcomes papers on novelizations from comics. “Les novellisations pour la jeunesse” will take place in Louvain-la-Neuve on the 10th until the 11th May, 2018. Abstracts are due by the 1st June, 2017. Link (14/03/2017, French, BC)
France
Research
Nicolas Labarre’s monograph Heavy Metal, l’autre Métal Hurlant has been published through the Presses universitaires de Bordeaux. Link (16/03/2017, BC, French)
Germany
Culture
A radio feature on Will Eisner has been broadcast on the 6th March. Link (06/03/2017, MdlI, German)
Comicfestival München is going to take place from the 25th to the 28th May; guests include Terry Moore, Denis Kitchen and Hermann. Link (MdlI, German)
A manga exhibition is going to be shown at Schloss Augustusburg from the 14th April to the 10th December. Link (29/03/2017, MdlI, German)
This year’s Animagic convention is going to take place in Mannheim from the 4th to the 6th August; guests include Lynn Okamoto. Link (29/03/2017, MdlI, German)
Research
A symposium on “Drawing Illness. Graphic Memoir and the Art of Getting Better” is going to take place in Hamburg on the 20th April. Link (23/03/2017, MdlI, German)
A conference on “Stories of Illness / Disability in Literature and Comics” is going to take place in Berlin on the 27th and 28th October; the deadline for abstracts is the 31st May. Link (25/03/2017, MdlI, English)
Portugal
Culture
Until the 29th April, the Gallery of Bedeteca da Amadora is hosting the exhibition “Banda Escrita” (written strip) by the Comic author David Soares. Entrance is free. Link (RR, Portuguese).
Spain
Culture
The Colectivo de Autoras de Cómic (Spanish Female Authors Collective) has launched a documentary (available free on-line) which focuses on the role of 52 female authors. Link (09/03/2017, EdRC, Spanish)
An exhibition with original work of Daniel Torres’s La casa can be visited at the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), Valencia, until the 4th June. Link (09/03/2017, EdRC, Spanish)
The 35th edition of the Barcelona International Comic Fair will take place from the 30th March to the 2nd April. It will host, among many international authors, Bryan Talbot, Dave Gibbons, Jill Thompson and José Muñoz. Link (01/03/2017, EdRC, Spanish)
Research
The program of the International Congress of Comic Interdisciplinary Studies, which will be celebrated at the University of Zaragoza on the 5th and 6th April 2017, is already available. Link (01/03/2017, EdRC, Spanish)
A new issue of the journal Tebeosfera has been published. It focuses on the 100th anniversary of the comics magazine TBO, which gave the name to comics in Spain (tebeos). Link (11/03/2017, EdRC, Spanish)
UK
Culture
The exhibition, Beyond Dredd & Watchmen: The Art of John Higgins, runs until October 2017 at the University of Liverpool’s Victoria Gallery. Link (English, WG)
Education
Times Higher Education interviews Professor Chris Murray from the University of Dundee about Comics Studies. Link (English, WG)
Research
There is a call for papers for the conference, Steampunk: Then, Now, and Then Again, which takes place at Bishop Grossteste University, Lincoln, between the 25th and 27th August. Proposals are due by the 14th April. Link (27/02/2017, English, WG)
Comics Grid has a called for graphic submissions for a special issue on Graphic Science. The deadline for proposals is the 31st October. Link (English, WG)
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 8.2 has now been published. Link (English, WG)
A student needs contributors for a survey for research into Graphic Medicine. Link (English, WG)
* * *
Correspondents: Enrique del Rey Cabero (EdRC, Spain), Benoit Crucifix (BC, Belgium and France), Felipe Gomez Gutierrez (FGG, Mexico), William Grady (WG, UK and United States), Martin de la Iglesia (MdlI, Germany) and Renatta Rafella (RR, Portugal).
Click here for News Review correspondent biographies.
Click here to see the News Review archive.
Queering the Western? Questions of Genre, Gender, and Normativity in Rikke Villadsen’s Et Knald Til (2014)
By Charlotte Johanne Fabricius
How can one queer a comics genre – especially one rooted in patriarchal tradition, rife with male gaze and stereotypical gender roles? I consider ‘queering’ to be not only an inclusion of nonnormative gender and/or sexual identities, but a broader strategy of ‘making strange’[i]. Furthermore, I consider the comics medium to be an especially interesting site in which to investigate such ‘strangeness.’ This idea has previously been offered by, amongst other, Ramzi Fawaz, who, in The New Mutants (2016), draws upon queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s idea of queerness as “gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances”, which manifest themselves as “formal gaps, overlaps, dissonances, and resonances of comic book visuality.”[ii] I speak of queering as not only a ‘making unfamiliar’, but also of ‘making possible’ different futures and logics than presented in traditional version of a genre. In the following, I investigate one such attempt, the comic Et Knald Til (Another Bang), which has been characterised by publishers as an ‘erotic Western’.
Et Knald Til[iii] is written and drawn by Rikke Villadsen, published in 2014 by the Danish Publishing House Aben Maler, and nominated for a Ping Prize for Best Danish Comic Book in 2014. It tells the story of a quintessential Western town, inhabited by cowboys and loose women. An outlaw with a price on his head comes to town, kills the men who try to stand in his way, solicits a prostitute – who explodes after their intercourse – and has a drink at the saloon before retiring to a room in the same establishment. Parallel to these goings-on is the story of a young woman in the town who dreams of being a man, so she can leave the town to go adventuring. When the outlaw arrives, she steals his horse and the clothes of one of his victims and sets out. When she starts menstruating, however, the horse recognises her sex and throws her off, leaving her to an uncertain fate. The story concludes with the outlaw waking up in his room only to discover that he has been transformed into a woman identical to the one whose story the reader has been following.
An Interview With Dirty Rotten Comics
One of the amazing, unique and encouraging things about comics is the sense of community that is fostered across the broad range of readers and writers. It is massively refreshing to see academic readers of comics in open and equal conversation with die-hard fans, writers, artists and even ‘casual readers’. This is a form that brings people together across backgrounds. Dirty Rotten Comics is a small press anthology that seeks to be an outlet for creators of comics who are starting out and brilliant. I spoke to Kirk Campbell and Gary Clap to learn more about Dirty Rotten Comics and Throwaway Press.
HE: Tell me a little bit about you – why comics? How did you get into the publishing world?
GC: We started writing and drawing comics together back at university, with a couple of friends. We were just writing throwaway gag strips for one another, playing around with ideas and seeing who could come up with the most outrageous punchline. We did this for a few years, and over time found that we had enough material to publish. So we threw together some cheap A5 collections and toured the small press comic fairs and conventions that were around at the time. It was all fairly basic stuff but good fun nonetheless, and it was a thrill to have our comics reach a wider audience. Read the rest of this entry »
Poetics of the Algorithm: A Report
By Leslie Goufo Zemmo, Giorgio Busi Rizzi and David Pinho Barros
In June 2016, for three days, scholars from all over the world met at the Université de Liège for a ground-breaking bilingual conference on digital media. The starting points for the discussions were several challenging questions about the way storytelling is evolving with the adoption of new technologies on the part of artists and writers. Poetics of the Algorithm was mainly concerned with the ways in which medial creations are changing, the impact these changes have on viewers and readers and how humanities scholars should deal with this paradigm shift. The ethical implications and the political consequences of the current state of digital creation were also fore preoccupations of the organisers Aarnoud Rommens, Benoît Crucifix and Björn-Olav Dozo when they set up this project.
Comics Forum 