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Comics Forum Opportunities

28 Aug

Comics Forum is seeking to appoint three or more individuals to the roles of Articles Editor(s), News Editor(s), and Reviews Editor(s) on the Comics Forum website (www.comicsforum.org). Each of the roles is outlined below:

Articles Editor

The articles editor will:

  • Actively source articles for the Comics Forum website (by attending conferences, staying up to date with developments in comics scholarship, approaching possible contributors)
  • Edit guest articles (with a keen eye for textual organisation, argument, and structure)
  • Be engaged in ongoing communication with guest contributors
  • Format and publish articles on our website (WordPress), liaising with the other website & social media editors

News Editor

The Comics Forum News Review is a monthly roundup of articles relevant to comics scholarship from around the internet, sourced by an established body of international comics scholars from across the continents of Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania (see https://comicsforum.org/category/news-review/ for reference).

The responsibilities of a News Editor include the collating of news reports from a range of international correspondents (these arrive on the last day of a given month), editing these reports into a News Review post, and publishing it on the Comics Forum website on the 4th day of the following month. Secondary to this, the News Editor is responsible for the development of the News Review as and when possible, including sourcing and expanding its pre-existing body of correspondents that feed into the News Review.

Reviews Editor

The reviews editor will:

  • Actively source texts to review and reviewers for the Comics Forum website (by staying up to date with developments in comics scholarship, approaching possible contributors, developing and maintaining good relationships with publishers)
  • Edit reviews (with a keen eye for textual organisation, argument, and structure)
  • Be engaged in ongoing communication with reviewers
  • Format and publish articles on our website (WordPress), liaising with the other website & social media editors

All three roles require:

  • Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
  • A strong knowledge of English
  • Meticulous proofreading
  • Academic writing skills
  • Deadline driven
  • Knowledge of comics scholarship (and willingness to stay up-to-date)
  • Reasonably tech-savvy (You’ll be working with Word, WordPress, and social media)
  • Strong organisational skills
  • Previous editorial experience is desirable but not essential

All roles are voluntary positions.

To apply for one of these roles, please email your CV (including publications if possible) and a cover letter to comicsforum@hotmail.co.uk. The deadline for applications is the 25th of September.

 
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Posted by on 2015/08/28 in General, News, Reviews

 

The Bi-Monthly ComFor Update for August 2015 by Lukas R. A. Wilde

25 Aug

It feels a bit like cheating for me to write this column, taking turns for our bi-monthly ComFor updates on German comics scholarship. July and August have been comparably quiet, due to what must be a holiday breeze, but a regular storm of conferences, festivals and events appears to be looming on the horizon. So consider this more of a teaser trailer for September and October – and most of all for the ComFor’s own annual conference on History in Comics – History of Comics in Frankfurt/M. from September 4–6 (more about that later).

First, as a quick follow-up to Laura Oehme’s last column, and the news about the successful funding of a research cooperation between the University of Paderborn and the University of Potsdam on the subject of Hybrid Narrativity: the research group, combining approaches from the cognitive sciences, digital humanities and narratology, remains prominent in the German spotlight. One of the founders, Alexander Dunst, recently gave a lecture on the topic of Reading Comics – Contributions of Empirical Humanities at the University of Göttingen to present some preliminary results already. There have been some discussions of the project from outside academia as well (notably within regular newspaper columns and in online discussion groups), asking for more information about the aims and methods of the project than can be found on the public website of the group. An extensive and very informative (albeit German-language) interview with Dr. Dunst was published on Christian Meiwald’s comics-newsblog Dreimalalles, while Hybrid Narrativity-member Oliver Moisich of Paderborn University composed a short (Geman-language) project introduction for the ComFor. Since it is sometimes compared to (or contrasted with) Bart Beaty, Benjamin Woo and Nick Sousanis’ What Were Comics? by the University of Calgary and Carleton University, the ComFor editorial board followed up with a short interview with Bart Beaty (in English), in which he explains more about the backgrounds of, and possible connections between, both approaches. On a further note, the Hybrid Narrativity group will be organizing a Master Class with renowned media scholar Lev Manovich in Potsdam on September 23, doubtless deepening these discussions.

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Posted by on 2015/08/25 in ComFor Updates

 

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Reading Correspondences through the Virtual Feminist Museum by Dan Smith

12 Aug

In the folded concertina pages of their book Correspondences (2013), artist Bernice Eisenstein and writer Anne Michaels have collaborated to adapt and put to use a multifaceted temporal dimension inherent in the medium of comics. Michaels and Eisenstein explore the potential that comics have to interrupt processes of consumption through phenomenal engagements with image, text, narrative and temporality. (Smith 2013) Correspondences changes through reading, offering new connections and configurations, made possible by the choice of directions in which the book can be read, and the page arrangements chosen by the reader upon any particular visit. The book opens as an accordion, the edge of each page attached to another. Read it this way, it is a poem. Read it a different way to look at Eisenstein’s portraits. When arranged conventionally, they are accompanied by a text on the facing page. As voices in a gallery of conversations, situated in the shadow of the Holocaust, Eisenstein’s portraits show us the faces of connected figures, from Paul Celan to Nelly Sachs, while the fragmented text of the poem sets up associations and relationships across time. There are echoes of the image/text combinations of Eisenstein’s previous graphic novel I was a Child of Holocaust Survivors (2006), which prodded the boundaries of the medium, resisting a more conventional approach to graphic memoir. Miriam Harris describes how Eisenstein illuminated “a vanished world of family members, shtetl culture, and Jewish intellectual inquiry and art, to identify what had been lost.” (2008: 132) Harris points out that “the union of words and images” (2008: 141) enables a reanimating of the dead through yoking together past and present in the corporeal form of the graphic novel. Correspondences performs similarly, but with an even greater sense of corporeal engagement, and moves even further away from standard image/text relations as found in comics.

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Posted by on 2015/08/12 in Gender, Guest Writers, Women

 

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News Review: July 2015

04 Aug

Americas

Canada

Culture

The “What Were Comics?” research project is a four-year study of the evolution of comic book stylistics over an eighty-year period. Housed at the University of Calgary under the direction of Bart Beaty, Nick Sousanis, and Benjamin Woo; the project organisers are hoping to reach interested undergraduate students from the following countries: Australia, Brazil, China, France, India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Vietnam. Students who would like to participate in this project for a period of between twelve and twenty-four weeks during the summer of 2016 can find more details via the link. Link (English, WG)

United States

Research

Santiago García’s, On The Graphic Novel, has been translated by Bruce Campbell and published through University Press of Mississippi. Link (English, WG)

Gustave Doré: Twelve Comic Strips, by David Kunzel, has been published through University Press of Mississippi. Link (English, WG)

The International Journal of Comic Art 17:1 (Spring 2015) has been published. Link (17/07/2015, English, WG)

In connection with the Children’s Literature Association Conference that is being hosted by The Ohio State University in 2016, the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum will mount an exhibit on children’s comics, (running from the 4th June to the 30th October 2016). In conjunction with this exhibition, there is a call for papers for a peer-reviewed digital exhibit catalogue of critical essays about children’s comics, past and present. 500 word proposals are due by the 15th October. Link (English, WG)

Asia

Japan

Culture

Kyoto International Manga Museum‘s exhibition: “Ghost tales at the Museum, an Exhibition by Iris de Moüy”, opened on the 27th July and runs until the 31st August. Link (English, JBS)

On the 21st September there will be a talk event with gag manga artist Kei’ichi Tanaka, celebrating the anniversary of legendary gag manga artists Akatsuka Fujio. Link (Japanese, JBS)

The summer edition of this year’s comiket, Comic Market 88, the largest fan convention held in Japan, will be held from the 14th to the 16th August at Tokyo Big Sight. Link (English, JBS)

Two live action films based on hit manga “Attack On Titan” will be released in theaters around Japan on the 1st August and the 19th September. Link (Japanese, JBS)

The exhibition, “MANGA AND WAR”, which opened on the 6th June, is open until the 6th September, held at Kyoto International Manga Museum. Link (English, JBS)

Europe

Belgium

Culture

A museum dedicated to Philippe Geluck’s character, Le Chat, will open in central Brussels by 2019, it has been announced. Link (French, LTa)

France

Business

Publisher Delcourt-Soleil has partnered with digital platform Comixology and plans to released several of its titles in English translation. Link (07/07/2015, French, LTa)

Culture

Albert Uderzo has revealed the title of the next Astérix album along with some other details. The series’ 36th edition, Le Papyrus de César, will be released on the 22nd October and inspired by Julius Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum. Link (25/07/2015, French, LTa)

Germany

Culture

Comic Con Germany is going to take place in Stuttgart on the 25th and 26th June 2016. Link (02/07/2015, German, MdlI)

The Erika-Fuchs-Haus comic museum in Schwarzenbach an der Saale opened on the 1st August. Link (02/07/2015, German, MdlI)

A comic festival named “German Comic Con” (not to be confused with “Comic Con Germany” in Stuttgart) is going to take place in Dortmund on the 5th and 6th December. Link (10/07/2015, German, MdlI)

A reading by Christina Plaka and Barbara Yelin took place in Cologne. Link (13/07/2015, German, MdlI)

“Graphic Novel Day” is going to take place as part of “15. internationales literaturfestival berlin” on the 12th and 13th September; guests include Joann Sfar and Paco Roca. Link (German, MdlI)

A Flix exhibition is shown in Leipzig until the 28th August. Link (30/07/2015, German, MdlI)

Research

The programme of this year’s ComFor conference (Frankfurt, 4th-6th September) has been published. Link (23/07/2015, German, MdlI)

A comics panel is going to take place at the annual GfM Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft conference in Bayreuth on the 3rd October. Link (20/07/2015, German, MdlI)

Portugal

Culture

From the 25th July until the 7th August, the El Pep store & Gallery in LX factory (Lisbon), will be hosting an exhibition of original vignettes of António Gamito. Link (22/07/2015, Portuguese, RR)

From the 24th July until the 26th September, the main gallery of the library, Fernando Piteira Santos, in Amadora, will be hosting an exhibition titled, “Quarto Interior” (Interior Bedroom), by the Portuguese author Francisco Sousa Lobo. Entrance to the exhibition is free. Link (23/07/2015, Portuguese, RR)

On the 18th July was published a comic book titled “Shock-Tributo a Estrompa”. The book is a tribute to the publisher Estrompa (1942-2014) and the fanzine “Shock”. Link (10/07/2015, Portuguese, RR)

Romania

Culture

The Museum of the City of Bucharest is hosting the exhibition, Stories from Bucharest in Comics, which includes representations of the city by 60 artists from 1890 to 2015. The exhibition runs until the 31st August. Link (Romanian, MP)

Spain

Culture

Humoristán, a digital museum of Spanish graphic humor (http://humoristan.org/), has been opened. Link (02/07/2015, Spanish, EdRC)

The comics festival, Viñetas desde o Atlántico, will take place from the 10th to the 11th August in A Coruña. There will be conferences, exhibitions, professional meetings and invited authors such as Ana Miralles, Alfonso Zapico o Chloé Cruchaudet. Link (30/07/2015, Spanish/Galician, EdRC)

Research

Diccionario terminológico de la historieta (Terminological Dictionary of Comics), by Manuel Barrero, has been published by Asociación Cultural Tebeosfera. Link (07/07/2015, Spanish, EdRC)

UK

Job

There is a job listing for the role of Lecturer in Comics, Graphic Novels & Sequential Arts, in the School of Arts & Media at Teesside University. The application closing date is the 9th August. Link (English, WG)

Research

Remembered Reading: Memory, Comics and Post-War Constructions of British Girlhood, by Mel Gibson, has been published through Leuven University Press. Link (English, WG)

Global Manga: “Japanese” Comics without Japan?, edited by Casey Brienza, has been published by Ashgate. Link (English, WG)

The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship has posted a call for papers for a special collection entitled, Brilliant Corners: Approaches to Jazz and Comics. The submission deadline is the 16th January 2016. Link (30/07/2015, English, WG)

Oceania

Australia

Business

Twelve Panels Press, a new publisher of literary comics, announced their first book, The Salty River by Jan Bauer. Book launch on the 27th August at 6:30 PM at Readings Bookstore, Carlton. Link (English, AH)

Culture

Copier Jam! , an exhibition of independent zines and comics curated by Jeremy Staples opened on the 26th July at the Childers Art Space, QLD. Link (English, AH)

Matt Godden’s gallery wall-size graphic novel was displayed between the 3rd and 25th July at the Carton Project Space, Sydney. Link (English, AH)

Women in Comics: a panel conversation with Queenie Chan, Sarah Boxall, Lesley Vamos, Meri Amber and Alex Hammond about how female creators are shaping the comics world, will be held at Kinokuniya Sydney, on the 8th August at 3:30 PM. RSVP in store, by phone: 02 9262 7996 or email: ebd1-sydney@kinokuniya.co.jp

An exhibition of work from the underground comics art anthology Phatsville Comics, which began in Brisbane in 2002, will be on display at West End’s Junky Comics in Brisbane, QLD, starting on the 16th August. Link (English, AH)

Anthony Castle discussed Fly the Colour Fantastica, an anthology of comics by Australian women, on Radio Adelaide on the 11th July. Link (English, AH)

The Sugar City Comic Con will be held in Mackay, QLD on the 29th and 30th August. Link (English, AH)

Comics and culture will be celebrated at the Kathleen Syme Library Comics Fair, between 1 PM and 5:30 PM, on the 8th August 8 in Carlton, VIC. Workshops and performances from Bruce Mutard, Squishface Studios, Silent Army and AdviceComics. Events are free, registration is required. Link (English, AH)

The Zines and Independent Comics Symposium will be held in Brisbane, QLD, on the 22nd and 23rd August. Link (English, AH)

Preliminary voting has opened for The Golden Stapler Awards, Australia’s annual awards for zines and minicomics. Link (English, AH)

*                    *                    *

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

Correspondents: Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto (JBS, Japan), Enrique del Rey Cabero (EdRC, Spain), William Grady (WG, UK), Aaron Humphrey (AH, Australia) Martin de la Iglesia (MdlI, Germany), Mihaela Precup (MP, Romania), Renatta Rafaella (RR, Portugal), Lise Tannahill (LTa, Belgium & France).

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 2015/08/04 in News Review

 

Palimpsestic Tales: The drawings of ‘Light Horse Tales of an Afghan War’. How and why these comics came into being by Al Henderson

22 Jul

I am an outsider in the world of comic books. I don’t follow graphic novels, although like most people I have several on my bookshelves. My work as an artist has been with sculpture, not drawing. One of the joys in art are all of the unexpected paths it can open up. I couldn’t have known, for instance, that drawing and storytelling would become a central part of my first solo exhibition. These graphic stories differ in a number of ways from what may typically be thought of as graphic narratives or comics. In addition, I chose a graphic narrative form; it wasn’t a given. This, I think, makes my experience helpful in understanding how we communicate through pictures.

As early as 2006 I began to hear stories of the Canadians who were serving in Afghanistan. Over the next few years this became a big deal in my community. I was out of the army by then but these were my friends, people I had served with before becoming an artist more or less full time. Because of the war in Afghanistan they returned and departed on this new work schedule like slow motion commuters. Ours was a militia regiment, so in addition to being soldiers they were also postal workers, engineers, carpenters and the like.[1] They were deployed singularly or in small groups within larger regular army units resulting in a wide variety of encounters. Some of my friends experienced combat in ditches and alleys while others viewed Afghanistan from hundreds of feet in the air, amid the wreckage of a suicide bomb, or through the glow of a monitor’s screen. My conversations with them resulted in approximately twenty sculptures and drawings exhibited as Light Horse Tales of an Afghan War.[2]

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Posted by on 2015/07/22 in Guest Writers

 
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