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The Bi-Monthly ComFor Update for December 2015

04 Feb

by Laura Oehme

Following up on Nina’s update from October, I am providing the sixth and last ComFor update on current developments in German comics studies for 2015. However, before I concentrate on the last two months of 2015 in Germany, I would like to point out that the first academic position for “Graphic Fiction and Comic Art” (connected to a PhD program) at Lancaster University also attracted much interest with the German press. The professorship marks a milestone in comics studies worldwide and, hopefully, the beginning of a trend, as the Scottish University of Dundee also uploaded a job advertisment for a lecturer in comics studies. It is still a long way to an interdisciplinary department solely dedicated to comics studies, but every little step counts. Congratulations to French graphic novelist Benoît Peeters for his appointment are in order!

Conferences, Workshops, Symposiums

Since the fall season for conferences has already passed, the last two months of 2015 brought only a few academic events focusing on comics to light. On November 24, ComFor member Daniel Stein organized a workshop with Björn Hammel titled “Mediamorphose: Die mediale Transformation der Graphic Novel TearTalesTrust” (“Mediamorphosis: The Medial Transformation of the Graphic Novel TearTalesTrust”) at the University of Siegen. A few days later, on November 27–28, an interdisciplinary student conference on “The Rise of Sequential History: Historische Comics in Theorie und Praxis” (Historical Comics in Theory and in the Field) took place at the LMU in Munich. On December 4, the University of Kiel hosted a study day on “Comic & Kunstgeschichte” (Comics & Art History). I would also like to mention the new PhD program “Die Arbeit und ihre Subjekte” (Work and its Subjects) at the University of Duisburg-Essen that explicitly touted for comics projects, for which applicants were able to get funding for three years beginning in 2016.

Publications

In November, the second issue of the very first German-language e-journal for comics studies Closure was released. It focuses on “the dark side” of comics, introduces the new category “ComicKontext,” and includes articles and reviews by numerous ComFor members. Additionally, as every December, two classical yearbooks went into print: Deutsche Comicforschung 2016, edited by Eckart Sackmann, and the Comic-Jahrbuch 2016 of ICOM, edited by Burkhard Ihme. Furthermore, Julia Abel and Christian Klein edited one of the first German-language introductions to comics and graphic novels with J.B. Metzler (Comics und Graphic Novels: Eine Einführung). It covers a wide area of disciplinary perspectives and features contributions by eight ComFor members.

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Posted by on 2016/02/04 in ComFor Updates

 

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News Review December 2015

04 Jan

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.

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Posted by on 2016/01/04 in News Review

 

Introducing Russian Comic Artists by Maria Evdokimova

30 Dec

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

17 Dec

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

09 Dec

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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Posted by on 2015/12/09 in Guest Writers, Interviews

 

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