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News Review December 2015

Americas

United States

Education

The Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon, administered by the Library of Congress, is accepting applications for its graduate fellowship for the 2016-2017 academic year. The deadline for applications is the 15th February 2016. Link (English, WG)

Research

The Comics Arts Conference welcomes proposals for its 2016 conference at the San Diego Comic-Con. The submission deadline is the 1st February 2016. Link (English, WG)

There is a call for papers for a special issue of Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, entitled “Freaked and Othered Bodies in Comics”. Abstracts of 150 words, with a 50-word biography, should be submitted by the 15th March 2016. Link (08/12/2015, English, WG)

There is a call for papers for the panel ‘Comics and/as Rhetoric: (Anti)Static Narratives’, which will be part of the Pennsylvania College English Association’s 2016 conference, taking place at Indiana University of Pennsylvania on the 21st and 22nd October 2016. Abstracts are due by the 1st March  2016. Link (15/12/2015, English, WG)

Europe

Belgium

Research

The ACME Comics Research Group announced the calendar for its speaker series 2015-2016. Link (09/12/2015, French, BC)

The CRISP (Centre de recherche et d’informations socio-politiques), an independent organisation researching political decision-making in Belgium, has published a report on the economic sector of Belgian Francophone comics. Link (17/12/2015, French, BC)

France

Culture

The comics criticism website du9, l’autre bande dessinée is republishing online essays by Balthazar Kaplan and Barthélémy Schwartz from Controverse and Dorénavant, accompanied by retrospective interviews with the authors. Link (04/12/2015, French, BC)

The Angoulême comics festival announced the program for its 2016 edition. Link (01/12/2015, French, BC)

Research

The CLIMAS research lab issued a call for papers for their conference “Translators of Comics”, to take place on the 13th and 14th October 2016. Abstracts are due by the 31st March 2016. Link (French, BC)

Germany

Culture

An exhibition on Héctor Germán Oesterheld’s El Eternauta is going to be shown in Stuttgart from the 18th January until the 15th April. Link (14/12/2015, German, Mdll)

Research

Comics und Graphic Novels – Eine Einführung, edited by Julia Abel and Christian Klein, has been published. Link (07/12/2015, German, Mdll)

New issues of the yearbooks Deutsche Comicforschung and Comic-Jahrbuch have been published. Link (17/12/2015, German, Mdll)

Portugal

Culture

On 27th November the first issue of the Portuguese Comics Newsletter was published. The newsletter, titled “Jankenpon”, consists of a compilation of comics strips created by various Portuguese authors. Link (15/12/2015, Portuguese, RR)

Portuguese author André Morgado and Brazilian illustrator Alexandre Leoni have published their comic book titled The hidden life of Fernando Pessoa. The book is about the life of well-known Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa and was launched during Comic Con in Matosinhos on the 4th December. Link (18/11/2015, Portuguese, RR)

On the 26th November the comic book As Aventuras de Fernando Pessoa, Escritor Universal… [The adventures of Fernando Pessoa, universal writer…] by Miguel Moreira and Catarina Verder was published. The book launch took place at Almedina Book Store in Saldanha, Lisbon. Link (14/11/2015, Portuguese, RR)

On the 18th December the author Patrícia Guimarães published the book Stabat Mater at the Irreal Bar in Lisbon. The book’s artwork is displayed until the 7th January in the same place. Link (Portuguese, RR)

Spain

Culture

Isabel Bas Amat has been awarded the 2015 Premio de Honor del Colectivo de Autoras de Cómic (Honorary Prize of the Comics Female Authors Association). Link (18/12/2015, Spanish, EdRC)

“Ilustrar la libertad”, an exhibition with works by various authors who have collaborated with Amnesty International to send illustrated postcards to prisoners of conscience, can be visited at Centro Centro Cibeles in Madrid from the 10th December until the 10th January. Link (10/12/2015, Spanish, EdRC)

“An Ape’s Progress (y otros cuentos)”, an exhibition with works by Dave McKean, can be visited at Galería Artizar in Tenerife from the 12th December until the 22nd January. Link (03/12/2015, Spanish, EdRC)

Obituaries

Spanish illustrator and author Luis Bermejo has passed away. Link (12/12/2015, Spanish, EdRC)

Switzerland

Culture

The winners of the annual Töpffer awards are Alex Baladi for Autoportrait and Patrice Killoffer for Killoffer tel qu’en lui-même. Link (05/12/2015, French, BC)

UK

Job

There is a job advertisement for a part-time Research Assistant on the project Misty Visual and Lexical Analysis Project. A brief CV and covering letter are required by the 1st February. Link (07/12/2015, English, WG)

The School of Humanities at the University of Dundee seeks to appoint a lecturer in Comics Studies. The closing date for applications is the 31st January. Link (English, WG)

Research

The Graphic Medicine 2016 conference will take place at the University of Dundee between the 7th and 9th July 2016. The theme of the conference is “Stages and Pages”, and abstracts should be submitted by the 12th February. Link (04/12/15, English, WG)

Reading Art Spiegelman, by Philip Smith, has been published by Routledge. Link (English, WG)

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Correspondents: Enrique del Rey Cabero (EdRC, Spain), Benoît Crucifix (BC, Belgium, France, and Switzerland), William Grady (WG, United States and UK), Martin de la Iglesia (MdlI, Germany) and Renatta Rafaella (RR, Portugal).

Click here for News Review correspondent biographies.

Click here to see the News Review archive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

Introducing Russian Comic Artists by Maria Evdokimova

This is the final instalment of a three-part series on Russian comics by Maria Evdokimova. See here for part 1, “The History of Russian Comics: An Interview with Misha Zaslavskiy” and here for part 2 “What comics are published and read in Russia?”

From “pictured stories” to comics

Plenty of contemporary Russian comic authors – particularly those who are in their mid-30s and whose childhood was spent in the USSR – consider Soviet illustrators and authors of “pictured stories” (the Soviet term for comics) their teachers. Soviet artists like Egeniy Migunov, Gennadiy Kalinovskiy, Genrich Valk, and Gennadiy Novozhilov created caricatures, illustrations, and animated cartoons that have become classics. The new generation of artists has grown up under the influence of their works.

At the same time, the influence of foreign artists was considerable. The French comic magazine Pif was very popular in the USSR. This magazine used to be sold in foreign literature aisles of book stores, and certain stories were issued in the magazine Nauka I zhizn (Science and Life). Another source of inspiration was Hergé’s Tintin. As a child, artist Roman Surzhenko used to be fond of the popular stories about Petya the Red-Head by Ivan Semyonov, and he assumes that those stories were influenced by the Tintin comics.

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Posted by on 2015/12/30 in Guest Writers

 

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What Comics are Published and Read in Russia? by Maria Evdokimova

This is part 2 of a three-part series on Russian comics by Maria Evdokimova. See here for part 1, “The History of Russian Comics: An Interview with Misha Zaslavskiy”. Part 3, “Introducing Russian Comic Artists”, will follow soon.

Five participants in the contemporary Russian comics scene,

Ivan Chernyavskiy, the co-owner of the comic book store “Chuk I Geek”,

Vitaliy Terletskiy, the creative director of Komilfo Publishing House;

Vladimir Morozov, the art-director of Zangavar Publishing House;

Anatoly Dunaev, the director of Alt Graph Publishing House;

Ilya Obukhov, the co-owner of the creative association “Live Bubbles”,

have told us about how matters stand today.

“Russian reader is stuck in 2008”

There are several dozen comics publishing houses in Russia. Comic shops’ bestsellers are the comics by American publishing companies Marvel, DC, Image, and others. The top 10 of bestselling comic books of 2014 in one of Russia’s largest comic books store, “Chuk I Geek”, mostly includes works from three American publishers: DC, Image, and Dark Horse. Ivan Chernyavskiy, the co-owner of Chuk I Geek, comments on these ratings: “The Russian audience is a model of the world’s audience and superheroes are very popular all over the world. However, the truth is that here in Russia the circulation of comic books is 100-200 times lower, and “the freshest” issues come out two or three years behind schedule – but on the whole the situation corresponds to the one in the world. My partner, Vasily Shevchenko, has suggested a theory that the Russian reader is stuck in 2008. It’s seldom that our readers ask us to order anything that appeared later. I have an explanation for this; at roughly the same time the popular website SpiderMedia.ru worked out the rating of “the 100 Most Recommended Comics”.[1] There’s a joke that Russian publishers still use this list when buying the rights to foreign comics. Of course, many publishers release both alternative and underground comics, but to afford this, they also publish some blockbuster comics, which serve as “a commercial locomotive”.

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Posted by on 2015/12/17 in Guest Writers

 

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The History of Russian Comics: An Interview with Misha Zaslavskiy by Maria Evdokimova

This is part 1 of a three-part series on Russian comics by Maria Evdokimova. Part 2, “What comics are published and read in Russia?” and part 3, “Introducing Russian comic artists”, will follow soon.

This is an interview about comics in Russia with Misha Zaslavskiy: a script writer, editor, and the head of a comics studio. Misha is also interested in the history and theory of comics. Some of his main projects are the children’s magazine Nu Pogodi! (“Just You Wait!” – here and elsewhere – translator’s note), that ran from 2003-2010, and a comic series inspired by the animation film Masha I Medved (Masha and the Bear), which is created in collaboration with the comic author Askold Akishin.

Misha can be contacted at plak@inbox.ru

His studio works can be found here.

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News Review: November 2015

Americas

Canada

Education

Candida Rifkind, in the Department of English at the University of Winnipeg, is seeking one MA student enrolled in the Cultural Studies program to work on projects related to graphic biography (biographies in the form of comic books). The deadline for applicants is the 1st February 2016. Link (English, WG)

Research

The annual conference of the Canadian Society for the Study of Comics invites proposals for papers for its conference which takes place on the 12th and 13th May 2016, at the Toronto Reference Library. Abstracts are due by the 18th December. Link (English, WG)

CRAS (Colloque de recherche en arts séquentiels) issued its call for papers for the fourth conference, Par la bande : la marge dans la bande dessinée, focusing on the margins in and of comics. Link (04/11/2015, French, BC)

United States

Culture

Creative submissions are being accepted for Abstract Comics, volume 2. Link (06/11/2015, English, WG)

Research

Proposals for 2016’s Michigan State University Comics Forum are due by the 20th December. The conference will take place on the 26th and 27th February. Link (English, WG)

There is a call for papers for the 13th Annual UF Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels: “Transnational Comics: Crossing Gutters, Transcending Boundaries.” The conference will be held in Gainesville, Florida between the 8th and 10th April 2016. Abstracts are due by the 10th January. Link (English, WG)

The University of Iowa Press has published, On the Origin of Superheroes: From the Big Bang to Action Comics No. 1, by Chris Gavaler.  Link (English, WG)

The Superhero Costume: Identity and Disguise in Fact and Fiction, co-authored by Danny Graydon and Barbara Brownie, has been published through Bloomsbury Academic. Link (English, WG)

South Central Review has published a special issue of the journal entitled “Graphic Representation: Contemporary Graphic Narrative.” Link (English, WG)

There is a call for papers for Comics and Visual Culture: A Conference for Student Research, which takes place at California State University, Northridge on the 27th February 2016. Submissions are due by the 4th December. Link (19/09/2015, English, WG)

Asia

Japan

Culture

The exhibition “The World of Manga for Men” opened on the 21st November and runs until the 9th February 2016. It features high quality reproductions (Genga’ [dash]) of works by Hiroshi Hirata, Takumi Nagayasu, Motoka Murakami, and Keiko Takemiya. Link (English, JBS)

On the 19th December, Yonezawa Yoshihiro Memorial Library (Meiji University), will hold a talk show where the winners of the 2015 Gaiman (foreign manga) will be announced. The speakers are Masato Hara (BD translator) and Yukari Shiina (Comics translator). Link (Japanese, JBS)

The Japan Media Arts Festival (Art, Entertainment, Media and Manga) announced its winners on the 27th November. The winning works will be exhibited from the 3rd until the 14th February 2016 at the National Art Center in Tokyo. Among the laureates is “bara manga” artist Gengoroh Tagame for his work My Brother’s Husband. Link (26/11/2015, English, JBS)

Education

There will be a mini symposium, “The Hidden Layer* Video Games as Indebted to Comics” at Kyoto International Manga Museum on the 13th December. Organised by Kyoto Seika University Graduate School of Manga Studies and the IMRC, chaired by Jaqueline Berndt, the invited speakers are Ben Whaley and Marco Pelliteri, with Sharalyn Orbaugh and Selen Çalik as commentators. Link (English, JBS)

Obituaries

Actress Setsuko Hara, muse of director Yasujiro Ozu, passed away in September; her death was made public in late November. The animated film Millennium Actress (2001) by the late Satoshi Kon was inspired by her life. Link (25/11/2015, English, JBS)

Manga artist, Mizuki Shigeru, passed away on the 30th November at the age of 93. During his lifetime, Mizuki authored many works that are now considered classics in the “youkai” manga genre. Link (30/11/2015, Japanese, JBS)

Research

Mechademia has an open call for submissions for panels and individual presentations for the Mechademia Conference held in Tokyo from the 18th until the 20th March, the deadline is the 1st March 2016. Link (English, JBS)

Europe

Belgium

Culture

A conference and exhibition on the Congo in comics, with works by Barly Baruti and Nicolas Pitz, was held at the Point Culture in Louvain-la-Neuve, organised in collaboration with Pierre Luc Plasman, Véronique Bragard and UCL Culture. Link (12/11/2015, French, BC)

Research

The ACME Comics Research Group issued a CFP for their upcoming conference, Poetics of the Algorithm. Abstracts are due by the 20th December. Link (09/11/2015, French, BC)

France

Business

Mediatoon Licensing has launched Europe Comics, the previously announced effort to export BD to anglophone markets. For the previous announcement see Link 1, and for the launch see Link 2. Link 1 (English, LTa), Link 2 (13/11/2015, French, LTa)

Obituaries

French cartoonist Pierre Ouin passed away on the 9th November. He was a staple of the punk comics scene with his fanzine Krapö baveux, and contributed to major underground magazines as Viper, Lynx, Métal Hurlant and Psikopat. Link (11/11/2015, French, BC)

Research

On the 23rd November in Strasbourg, the research lab De Traits et d’esprit (HEAR) organised a study day on fanzines and comics with, among others, guest speakers Maël Rannou, Jean Charles Andrieu de Levis and Gert Meesters. Another session will be held on the 14th December, with authors Florent Ruppert, Dominique Goblet and Léon Maret. Link 1 (French, BC), Link 2 (15/11/2015, French, BC)

The CIBDI released the program of the conference Les êtres contrefaits: corps difformes et corps grotesques dans la bande dessinée, organised by Frédéric Chauvaud and Denis Mellier. It will take place in Angoulême from the 2nd to the 4th December. Link (16/11/2015, French, BC)

Neuvième art 2.0. published a new dossier, devoted to Italian cartoonist Guido Crepax. Link (16/11/2015, French, BC)

Germany

Business

Satoon, a new cartoon/comic/satire/television magazine was launched on the 7th November. Link (German, MdlI)

Culture

The comics exhibition, “Redrawing Stories from the Past”, is shown in Berlin until the 10th January. Link (German, MdlI)

Tagesspiegel names its top 11 comics of the year; This One Summer by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki takes the top spot. Link (German, MdlI)

An exhibition of comic artists associated with the neurotitan gallery, including Mawil and Ulli Lust, is going to be shown in Berlin from the 5th December until the 9th January 2016. Link (German, MdlI)

Research

A symposium on comics and art history is going to take place in Kiel on the 4th December. Link (German, MdlI)

“Graphic Medicine and Literary Pathographies: The Aesthetics and Politics of Illness Narratives in Contemporary Comics and Literature” is a research project headed by Dr. Irmela Marei Krüger-Fürhoff, of Freie Universität Berlin, and Einstein Visiting Fellow Prof. Susan Merrill Squier, from Penn State University. Link (English, WG)

A roundtable discussion on Argentinian comics took place in Berlin on the 11th November. Link (German, MdlI)

A workshop on the comic, TearTalesTrust, by Harald Lieske and Björn Hammel took place in Siegen on the 24th November. Link (German, MdlI)

Hungary

Culture

Hungarocomix 2015, a one-day festival of Hungarian comics and their creators took place with great success on the 28th November in Budapest. (ES)

Graphifest, the biggest festival for graphic design in Hungary, which took place between the 5th and 12th November, devoted special attention to comics this year: they had an exhibition “Comic.Book.Hero,” an improvisation with Hungarian comics artists, and a roundtable with comics artists and illustrators. Link (Hungarian, ES)

Brody Art Yard, in collaboration with BP! Comics, opens its call for submissions for an anthology of Indie comics. The project welcomes new wave and alternative comic stories focusing on Central and Eastern Europe. The best 10-20 graphic novels will be published in a publication printed in Risograph. The compilation will be launched during the first Sztriptíz – Indie Comic Fair, dedicated to the art of alternative comic design. The deadline of the call is the 4th January 2016. Link (English, ES)

Portugal

Culture

From the 4th December until the 6th December the city of Matosinhos will be the hosting Comic Con Portugal. The fair will take place in Exponor. The program includes a range of national and international artists in different areas, coming from diverse career backgrounds. Link (Portuguese & English, RR)

On the 20th November a space in the Library of São Domingos de Rana (Cascais) was opened which is dedicated exclusively to comics. Link (18/11/2015, Portuguese, RR)

Until January 2016, the gallery Mundo Fantasma is hosting the exhibition “Olá, o meu nome é O. Shauwen” (Hello, my name is O.Shauwen) by Olivier Schrauwen. On the 14th November, the author also published his book Cinzas (Ashes). Link (14/11/2015, Portuguese, RR)

Spain

Culture

The 18th edition of Expocomic will be take place in Madrid from the 11th to the 13th December. It will host an array of national and international authors, as well as professional events, workshops, and talks. Link (Spanish, EdRC)

Romania

Culture

Craiova hosted Craiova Comic Con 2015 between the 20th and 22nd November. The convention showcased the work of independent Romanian cartoonists. Link (Romanian, MP)

UK

Culture

The manga exhibition, “Manga Now: Three Generations”, will run at the British Museum until the 15th November. Link (English, WG)

Education

Lancaster University has appointed BD creator, critic and Tintin expert, Benoit Peeters, as its Visiting Professor in Graphic Fiction and Comic Art. Link 1 (25/11/2015, English, LTa), Link 2 (26/11/2015, French, LTa)

Jobs

Editors of the journal, Studies in Comics, are seeking an editorial assistant. The deadline for applicants is the 15th December. Link (English, WG)

Research

The symposium, From Hogarth to Hellboy: The Transformation of the Visual Reader, will take place at Senate House Library, London, on the 16th December. Link (English, WG)

There is a call for papers for the Seventh International Conference of Graphic Novels and Comics, which will take place at Manchester Metropolitan University from the 11th July 2016. The theme for the conference is Graphic Gothic, and despite the listed deadline, abstracts are being accepted until the end of this year. Link (English, WG)

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News Editor: Will Grady (comicsforumnews@hotmail.co.uk)

Correspondents: Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto (JBS, Japan), Enrique del Rey Cabero (EdRC, Spain), Benoît Crucifix (BC, Belgium, France, and Canada), William Grady (WG, UK), Martin de la Iglesia (MdlI, Germany), Mihaela Precup (MP, Romania), Renatta Rafaella (RR, Portugal), Eszter Szép (ES, Hungary), Lise Tannahill (LTa, France & UK).

Click here for News Review correspondent biographies.

Click here to see the News Review archive.

Suggestions for articles to be included in the News Review can be sent to Will Grady at the email address above.

 

 
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Posted by on 2015/12/04 in News Review