Continental Comics

While I was in Paris I took the opportunity of browsing in some bookstores and bouquinistes (the rare and second hand booksellers with the lockups by the Seine) for some bandes dessinée (French comics, basically). Unlike the English language book world comics and graphic novels are taken more seriously as culture and art; we cover a tiny bit of the European scene on the FPI blog but what gets translated into English and republished for the UK and US markets is pretty limited compared to what actually gets published in Europe so I decided I would have a look at some BD while I was there, my basic and rusty French not withstanding and ended up writing an article out of it for the FPI blog last weekend, which I'm repeating below:

Apologies to Wim for appropriating his usual title for this post (normal continental correspondent service from Belgium will be resumed shortly), but I’m just back from a terrific break in Paris where, as well as the usual tourist pastimes of marvelling at the motoring madness that is the Circus Maximus around the Arc de Triomphe (the greatest free show in the City of Light) or wondering if it was permissible to push very loud and irritating backpackers off the Eiffel Tower, I managed to have a couple of little browses through some bandes dessinée. Sadly the first dedicated comics shop - Super Hero Libraire - was closed when we passed it (unlike the UK French shops don’t always stick to the regular 9 to 6 sort of hours every day, but many are open into the evening, so its worth checking hours if there is a specific store you want to catch) and it was too far from our hotel to make a return visit feasible.

(French one volume edition of V For Vendetta and a big dollop of Wolverine - did you know Logan spoke French?)

But this is France and unlike Britain you can find BD pretty much wherever books are sold - even the famous bouquinistes with their distinctive green lock-ups along the banks of the Seine often feature both BD albums and old comics issues, although since some of these may be rare rather than simply second hand you have to watch the prices. I came across a multi-volume series collecting V for Vendetta en Français and was quite tempted to pick them up, but at just shy of 20 Euros per volume it was just too pricey.

(one of the windows of the Super Hero Librairie; in the bottom left shelf you can see Chroniques Birmanes which Wim reviewed here last week)

Still, the bouquinistes are something any book lover will want to enjoy, whether you are looking for BD, paperback novels or any other literature; actually on a spring day simply browsing among them as the barges move along the Seine, the simple pleasure of rummaging through used books combined with being outdoors and sightseeing. One stand in particular had an interesting mix of French BD and English language titles, so you’d see second-hand Bilal albums next to a rack of old Daredevil issues. As with second hand and antiquarian bookstore here though, the bouquinistes choose their opening hours according to arcane signs among the stars and from a formula calculated using an ancient equation worked out by Diderot, so it is pure luck which ones will be open or closed when you go past at any time of day or evening, but hey, if you’re there its as good as an excuse as any for a walk long the banks of the Seine without feeling like a total tourist.

(some of the bouquinistes by the Seine, near Notre Dame)

In the bouquiniste stands, the comics stores and the mainstream bookshops it is also common to come across English language titles translated into French - the aforementioned V Pour Vendetta, of course, but quite a diverse selection, even in mainstream bookstores (some of which had graphic novel sections almost half as big as you’d find in specialist comics stores here, and that’s just adult BD, not counting the younger reader’s material). Even in the land where comics are considered the Ninth Art you’re still going to find the ‘underwear perverts’ as Boing Boing refers to superheroes, translated and nestling among the slimmer, hardback BD albums - as with any comics store its hard not to spot some X-Men titles.

Kirkman and Adlard’s excellent, Romero-influenced zombie series The Walking Dead seemed popular too and I spotted several large paperback translated collections cropping up in a number of places. There’s something fascinating about leafing through the pages of something you’ve read but now in another language (and this seems universal - plenty of the many tourists who come to Edinburgh like to pick up Tolkien in bookstores here, for example, to read in English having read it in French, German etc). In one of the many bookstores between the Saint Michel and Latin Quarter areas I also came across a very handsome, thick collection of Eddie Campbell’s early work. You’ll appreciate the irony that if I want to track down most of that work by an acclaimed British artist at home I’d have to go second hand because it’s currently out of print, yet in France I can find a very fine-looking collection in an ordinary bookstore. Then again the French probably appreciate it more; “Monsieur Campbell, sacre bleu, ‘e is a true artiste de BD.” (and of course, they are right). And I noticed quite a few artists familiar to me via their translated works which have come out from Top Shelf, Drawn & Quarterly, NBM, First Second and Fantagraphics over the years, from Trondheim to Zograf.

(just some of the BD on offer in Gibert Jeune in the Saint Michel area of Paris)

Of course while you’re there you want to have a look at some European titles. Now my French is pretty basic and those school lessons seem a long time ago, but one of the advantages the comics form offers is (usually) less actual text to comprehend (or not!) and the visual aide of sequential pictures, so even when your command of French is less than stellar there’s a lot of extra context to give you a hand. It doesn’t make the medium completely accessible and bypass the linguistic barriers (unless it is a ‘silent’ strip), but if you have even a small grasp of the language a comic is going to be a much easier way to try and interact a bit more with another tongue.

That shouldn’t be surprising to us; after all we first encourage the comprehension of written language and structure in children using picture books. And living as I do in Edinburgh, as awash with visitors as Paris, I’ve seen a number of adult tourists deliberately picking up Asterix and Tintin in English to take home because it is a great way to try and get more into another language, so I thought I’d take a similar tact and ended up coming home with some Jodorowsky - Les Technopères, with fabulous science fiction art from Zoran Janjetov which made it worth picking up just to admire - and on spotting a recent collection (just published by Air Libre/Dupuis in January) by this year’s Grand Prix winners at Angoulême, Dupuy and Berberain, Un Peau Avant la Fortune, I thought that would be worth a bash too.

(cover to Dupuy and Berberian’s recently published Un Peau Avant la Fortune, published Air Libre/Dupuis and (c) Dupuy and Berberian)

To be honest I could easily have blown more money picking up several more, but since I don’t know how well I will cope with them it seemed prudent to limit myself (and spend the remaining money on wine). But language aside it is hard to resist when you are faced with shelf upon shelf of BD, everything from the funny books to tales of daring Resistance heroines in wartime Paris (one book I randomly picked up had a scene with the Resistance heroine set on one of the Seine bridges I had just passed over to get to that very bookstore, sadly I can’t remember the title now), science fiction, biographical… Even if you aren’t going to buy yourself some, if you find yourself visiting France its still enjoyable for any comics fan to have a good browse through the BD section; its always good to try something different in your reading, as we’ve said here on more than one occasion (and will doubtless say again, because its true and there is so much out there just waiting to be read).

There is another way for those of us with only a limited grasp of the language to buy into the French BD experience a little more though, and it is much cheaper than buying new hardback albums - the journals. Paris is awash with newsstands and as in any city the railway and metro stations and the airports also have plenty of stores where among the newspapers, movie mags and copies of Elle (I was vaguely disappointed the French version of Elle wasn’t called ‘her’) you are likely to find several magazines and journals dedicated to BD and some specialising in manga. Of course the language barrier is still there, but if you are interested but wary because of the language a mag is a lot cheaper to buy and try than books - it’s also a good way of introducing yourself to different comics creators.

I settled on BoDoï - “explorateur de bandes dessinées” - which has a special edition celebrating 35 years of the Grands Prix at Angoulême. For 7.50 Euros (about five pounds, slightly pricey for a mag, but it does have a lot of colour art) I got a special edition which offered up some 40 artists, with two or three pages each of art and a short bio/interview (in French, naturellement). And just check some of the artists covered here - Robert Crumb, Enki Bilal, Morris, José Muñoz, François Schuiten, Trondheim, Hugo Pratt, Moebius, Will Eisner, Jaques Tardi, Jean-Claude Forest, Jaques Lob, Neal Adams, Max Cabanes, Uderzo… That has to be worth a fiver of any comics fan’s money, surely?

(an excerpt from Mister I, (c) Lewis Trondheim)

The art and themes on offer are as varied as the artists - Philippe Vuillemin riffs nicely on the old joke - old jokes seem to be universal, I’m pleased to note - about the young polar bear (I won’t ruin the punchline in case you’ve never heard it), Georges Wolinski offers up a take on psychotherapy which would work in almost any Western culture (especially if you’re a Woody Allen fan), Lewis Trondheim’s Mister I makes a welcome appearance with a wordless tale (so it was only the bio/interview I had to struggle to read!) and we get a quick visit to Eisner’s Dropsie Avenue.

(Rendezvous a Paris by the one and only Enki Bilal)

Personal standouts for me came from Bilal, who I’ve always admired for his beautiful, imaginative science-fiction artwork. In this case it is just a couple of wordless pages, including one spectacular full page splash set above the Eiffel Tower. Jaques Tardi has four pages first created for the magazine L’Aisne set during the carnage of the Great War which are highly effective and moving. Even if you don’t speak word one of French I think you would still grasp the scenes of French infantrymen suffering and the word “boucherie!” repeated, larger and bolder each time until it is screaming “BOUCHERIE!” at the reader while below a smug General Nivelle stands in front of a charnel house of bones of fallen soldiers. Actually looking at a couple of the frames in Tardi’s piece I’m moved to wonder if they influenced the trench scenes in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s A Very Long Engagement.

(two pages from Jaques Tardi’s segment, these are from “la BD du Avril 16? and although very different in style seem to me to be every bit as powerful and moving as the superb art Joe Colquhoun created for Charley’s War; originally published in L’Aisne magazine and (c) Jacque Tardi)

Max Cabanes’ Francis Cabrel, les Beaux Dessins, inspired by a song by Francis Cabrel, showcases some beautiful artwork; again, if you can’t read the language you can just admire the luscious art of two lovers amid the trees. François Schuiten (with Benoît Peeters) has two utterly gorgeous pages, Hommage à Winsor McCay (I think you can translate the meaning of that yourselves!), paying tribute to the immortal Little Nemo (I just keep turning back to those pages and looking at the, superb), while back in the world of black and white there’s a great extract from Superdupont by Jacques Lob with artwork by the great Neal Adams; you just have to love the Superman clone meeting his French counterpart Superdupont in his vest, paunch and beret, a Reagan-esque president and something spooky going on at a vineyard (hence the need for the French hero).

So, if you are lucky enough to be going to France on holiday, keep your eyes open - even if you only have basic French there are still comics delights to be had; as a wise comics character once declared, “there’s treasure everywhere!” There are a number of comics jewels in this special issue and I will try to share some more scans from it over the coming days because they are too good to keep to myself.

Eagle Awards - a shameless plea for votes!

The first ballot form for voting in the annual Eagle Awards, the UK's major comics and graphic novel awards, opened the other week online - anyone can cast their votes and eventually the nominees will be narrowed down to a final shortlist with the winners revealed at the Bristol International Comics Expo in May. There are a number of categories - writers, artists, newcomers, series, best original graphic novel (that basically means one which first came out as a graphic novel rather than a book collecting a story previously issued in weekly or monthly comics form) and also favourite comics related website in which you can (if you so wish) vote for the Forbidden Planet Blog which I set up just under three years ago and work on alongside my duties on the main FPI webstore, posting comics and SF news, reviews and interviews and generally trying to draw attention to some good writers and artists. Yes, this is a shameless plea for votes!

Primeval

The penultimate episode of ITV's Primeval comes up this Saturday and its penned by the very fine novelist, screenwriter and comics scribe Paul Cornell, who was also responsible for some of the finest episodes of the new Doctor Who - "Father's Day" and "Human Nature". We were lacking time for a full-length interview but I couldn't let it go past without marking it and Paul kindly took some time out to answer a few questions for the Forbidden Planet blog, should you fancy a read before the episode airs on Saturday evening.

New Dan Dare

This weekend I sat down with a mixture of excitement and trepidation to read the latest attempt to resurrect one of the most famous characters in British comics history (and also a lifelong favourite of both me and my dad, incidentally), Dan Dare. Garth Ennis and Gary Erskine's first issue of the new Dan Dare from Virgin Comics just came out and I had to read it. Then I had to write a bit about it and ended up doing a review for the Forbidden Planet International blog, which I am also going to reproduce below:

Dan Dare #1
Written by Garth Ennis, art by Gary Erskine

As regular readers will know I’m a huge fan of the original Dan Dare; back in 1977 it was the then-new kid on the block, 2000 AD, which introduced me to the character (along with Massimo Belardinelli’s stunning artwork). My dad, reading my progs after me, mentioned reading the original Dan Dare when he was a boy and how much better it had been (he was right, it was). Original Dan Dare? What was this Eagle comic he spoke of to my young ears? What was this radio series of the Pilot of the Future he used to listen to? I didn’t know it then, but I was slowly becoming aware of a piece of British comics history and a character that would go on to be one of my favourites of all time, Colonel Daniel McGregor Dare (and getting to share it with my dad makes it more special). I remember buying the over-sized Hawk Books reprints in the 90s for my dad and I’ve got a shelf full of the handsome Titan Classic Dan Dare volumes myself (a great range, which I always recommend).

So you can imagine I’ve been suffering a mixture of excitement for the latest attempt to resurrect Dan Dare along with a nagging worry that it will fall flat on its face. Much as I want to see Dan brought back with new adventures there are always two main problems to be faced: if you make it too similar to the original then you are being faithful to the characters but you run the risk of offering reheated leftovers with nothing new. On the other hand if you offer something new and different then fans (like me) will ask why you put Dan’s name on it since it has very little to do with him. So with these ambivalent feelings I picked up the first issue of Virgin’s Dan Dare - naturally the fine Bryan Talbot cover version which uses elements of the classic, including Dan’s helmet (Greg Horn is an artist I like but his style is totally unsuited to Dan; my advice, avoid the variant cover). And here’s the thing: I liked it.

In fact I really, really liked it. I enjoyed it; I liked Ennis’ take on him, I like the way he has set it years after Dan and Digby’s ‘glory days’ as the prime minister refers to them so we can maintain links to the original but still have something new, I like the space opera set-up of old-fashioned space battle cruisers, the promise of a threat from the past and a call to an old Hero which comes right out of Joseph Campbell. And no matter how sophisticated and postmodern we like to think our tastes have become, at the end of the day pretty much everyone of us at some point just wants a Hero; we want someone who will stand up and do the Right Thing, not for personal gain, not for political gain, not for glory, but because it is the Right Thing. The more troubled our times, the more we yearn for such a Hero and Ennis handles this especially well in my opinion.

(opening page of Garth Ennis new Dan Dare issue 1, art by Gary Erskine, published Virgin Comics)

We have the British prime minister visiting Dan in his retirement; prior to this the chaps’ old sidekick and their scientific advisor Professor Jocelyn Peabody is seen meeting a retired Digby in orbit at Space Fleet’s Gibraltar station, where we pick up a few details of the way the world has changed from the classic era and find that Britain is the leading power following a Chinese-American conflict (the panel showing modern America from orbit was simple but highly effective). We’re also clued in to the fact that the prime minister may not be the best man in the world; not actually malignant or evil, but a man who can make decisions he thinks are for the Greater Good regardless of actual morality. Something that sounds awfully familiar to anyone who follows contemporary British politics, as does references to him having been in power too long and never resigning despite often saying he plans to (gee, who could Garth be referring to?).

So by the time the meeting of the prime minister and Dan arrives we’ve already had some insights into his character and recent history (and in well-handled small bursts, no huge ‘info dump’ to bring us up to speed). And if we’re in any doubt then his interaction with Dan reinforces the earlier impressions - the prime minister admires the pictures on Dan’s wall and remarks on a particularly pretty aircraft.

(the present meets the past; the prime minister calls on a retired Dan Dare)

“A Spitfire,” replies Dan, “my grandfather flew one in the Battle of Britain.”

“I wasn’t aware there’d been a battle of…”

“Small matter of saving the country and Western civilisation along with it. Why don’t you have a seat?”

Its one of those exchanges which conveys simply but effectively contempt for much of political ‘leadership’ and the way in which our leaders are happy to associate themselves with our Great History and our Heroic Armed Forces for media-friendly appearances, yet they often have a complete ignorance of our actual history and they end up committing similar mistakes to the past because of it. They represent spin and image, all surface, while Dan, for all his quietness, represents that which they pretend to. It isn’t as biting as Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes’ Thatcher-era Dan Dare (reproduced recently in the splendid Yesterday’s Tomorrows) and yet it clearly tips its hat to that tale while also serving to establish the current set-up of Dan’s world in this new version.

It isn’t all just a slightly melancholic, wistful longing for the Good Old Days when things were simpler and men were Real Men though, we’re treated to big space cruisers, gloriously old-fashioned, right down to gun turrets like an old naval warship and a crew who use terms like ‘fish in the water’ when they detect incoming fire. Cue a sudden attack and we’re treated to dirty, big spaceships blasting away at each other; it is wonderfully old-fashioned, pure space opera stuff and gods but its great! Older Digby, Jocelyn and Dan re-introduced, small but sufficient glimpses of the way the world has changed since Dan’s original day with the promise of more to come, a threat hinted at - could it be the Mekon, back again? - then sudden, awful confirmation with a spectacular space battle (Gary’s art is clear and unfussy throughout, quite suitable to Dan I thought) and Dan’s call back to action and that’s just the first issue. Will I be picking up the second issue now? Oh, hell, yes!

(it isn’t just juxtaposing old values against the modern, we also get some cracking, old-fashioned space battles)

You can enjoy the allusions to our contemporary world, the parallels and comments on politics and national leaders, the seeming lack of a moral compass in modern society, the rose-tinted view of the Good Old Days and references to the original Frank Hampson work (who I am glad to see name-checked inside) and the Morrison-Hughes Dare, or you can laugh at the back page advert for Virgin Galactic. But mostly you can also just simply allow yourself to indulge in a really enjoyable read and look forward to the promise of good, old-fashioned, square-jawed British heroics, and god knows with all that’s going on in our troubled world it feels good to have that kind of real Hero again, even if he is fictional. it’s a form of heroism the prime minister clearly doesn’t get, even as he appeals to it, but the readers get it and they love Dan for it:

“There’s one thing that puzzles me, Mister Dare.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, not to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but you obviously want no part of what Britain is today or you wouldn’t be living all the way out here, would you? So I simply don’t understand why you’re still willing to fight for it…”

“No, prime minister, I don’t imagine you do.”

There’s the proper Dan Dare in a nutshell and that’s what I want; I’m looking forward to Ennis and Erskine building on this first issue.

Who watches?



Rorschach walking the mean streets of New York (actually a backlot in Vancouver) on the set of the Watchmen movie. I'm still not too sure how the graphic novel will translate to the big screen and am trying not to get excited about it, but then I see a pic like this from the film's blog and I think, hmmm, maybe, just maybe it will be okay - after all I was worried about V for Vendetta and the film version turned out to be excellent.

Heroes

If like me you've been following Heroes and thinking it is one of the best things on TV right now (whether you are a comics fan or not) you've probably been wondering when they might start creating some tie-in material to go with it. Well, DC has a graphic novel collection coming up soon which collects the comics material created online to go along with the series, available in two different cover editions, one by Jim Lee and one by Alex Ross, so if you're trying to think on something for a Heroes fan for a present, here's a big, fat, superpowered hint!

Comics Britannia

Next Monday (the tenth) sees the start of a season of programmes on BBC4 about comics, with the centrepiece being three one-hour programmes on British comics, from the launch of the Dandy and Beano in the late 1930s through to the present day, with a nice array of contributors from Leo Baxendale (creator of Minnie the Minx and the Bash Street Kids among others) to Bryan Talbot and Alan Moore, with the three programmes comprising The Fun Factory (which looks at the kid's comics), Boy and Girls (which looks at - well, comics for boys and girls like the Eagle, Bunty etc) and Anarchy in the UK where comics get nastier and grittier (and often ruder!) with 2000AD, Deadline, V For Vendetta and Viz.


(a panel of Leo Baxendale's Bash Street Kids, (c) DC Thomson)

I first heard about this last year when they were looking for suggestions for comics, characters and creators to try and include and in a stoke of luck I was offered preview discs of the series by the Beeb (and obviously I wasn't going to say no!). I've been looking forward to this for a fair while and was delighted to see that it was indeed excellent - and before you think oh, I'm not really a comics fan, you might want to take a look because it has been made to be accessible and enjoyable to anyone, not just comics geeks like me and there is also a nice wave of nostalgic pleasure to be had from it; after all just about everyone over the age of 30 in the UK would have read comics at some point growing up. I've posted a review (or preview, I suppose) up on the Forbidden Planet blog, along with a Q&A with Alastair Laurence, the series producer and director about the making of the series (Alastair also worked on the brilliant Animation Nation a couple of years back).

Pottermania

No, I'm not talking about dear old Colonel Sherman T Potter from M*A*S*H* but the boy wizard. This morning on the way to work there were already some fans in glasses, lightning bolt and Hogwarts scarves queuing on the pavement outside The Bookstore That Shall Not Be Named (indeed the very branch Evil Boss moved to later on and made the staff there very happy too - not). Man, that is one thing I do not miss, having to do the midnight opening for Harry bloody Potter... To be fair the kids were okay - they were so excited and many were in costume, so that was kind of fun, but some of the older fans, notably the semi-drunk students were a pain in the bloody arse. As was being there to 1 or 2am and still expected to be back in at 8am next morning for the Saturday Potter onslaught. I also laughed out loud at the news that Childline ( a fine charity) needs extra counsellors on duty to deal with young fans if they are traumatised by the widely expected death of a major character. No, I'm not joking. Jeez, kid, get a fecking grip and clear the line for some kid who has a real problem and needs help!

Still, I was thinking, if Harry Potter was killed off it doesn't have to be the end of the series - in the worlds of fantasy and science fiction death is rarely final, after all. So I was thinking we team up a deceased Harry Potter with the recently murdered Captain America to fight evil in the Afterlife. Harry Potter also starts dating X-Statix's Dead Girl and when he and the Cap have saved the Afterlife they earn the right to be returned to the land of the living, where Captain America then adopts Harry as his son so at last he has a dad, while Doctor Strange completes Harry's magical training and shows him how to grow a moustache. They might turn Iron Man into a frog while they're at it. (sorry, that last bit will be meaningless to folks not up on current comics news)

Postcards from Palestine

I mentioned Katie who runs the Moomin13 LiveJournal a while back here and who posts on life as a peace activist in Gaza and also her art and cartoons which draw on her experiences in and around Ramallah. She's been doing more cartoons and also beginning an actual comic strip based on her experiences, some of which have been published in magazines and papers in the region. I had a very brief chat with her over on the FPI blog this week (with links to a lot more of her work, including the titular Postcards, which show art and when the cursor runs over them flip over to show the context on the 'back' of the postcard), which I hope some folks find interesting.

"Feed your head"

Interesting post on Alterati (via Boing Boing) comparing the late consciousness and drug guru Timothy Leary's little-known foray into comics with Neurocomics from 1979, exploring his 8-circuit model of the brain (best understood after a generous spliff, methinks) and comparing it to the Promethea series by the great, transcendental, bearded god of comics, Alan Moore, along with a link to a torrent of a scanned version of the comic:

"Promethea is a survey and summation of western occultism through a very self-conscious and post-modern lens, and the techniques that Alan Moore and the artists he works with throughout the Promethea run appear in somewhat abbreviated form in Neurocomics, but they are there. I would not be surprised if Mr. Moore was at least aware of this particular work, as the delivery of highly symbolic and succinct chunks of information in Promethea and the delivery of psychological models through astrological contexts are remarkably similar. But where the 8 stages of evolution and the astrological model of personality types are condensed into a few short pages in Neurocomics, Alan Moore tackles the whole foundation of the occult tradition of the West."

New Jonas Moore mash-up

Upcoming multimedia webcomic The Many Worlds of Jonas Moore has had another musician take up the offer to remix material from the site - this time top producer Phil Nicholas, who has worked with Fat Boy Slim among others, has remixed Make It Through (sung by Steve Hart) to video and art material from the Jonas site. Very cool. I like the fact that Howard and his Jonas team are inviting people to remix material into new forms and the fact that quite a few musicians have taken up the offer so far means, hopefully, that it will mean the series will have appeal beyond the normal comics community too.

Jonas Moore mashups

There's an upcoming new multimedia webcomic coming up which I have been blogging about on the Forbidden Planet blog recently called the Many Worlds of Jonas Moore. Unlike most webcomics (some of which are very, very good) Jonas Moore is taking advantage of the fact it is online to used mixed media, so we we have comics panels, animation, video, music and even archive footage as we follow the actor Colin Salmon (from the Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies and Resident Evil) as Jonas Moore, a character in an online game who has become sentient in a world where the British Empire never fell and the world population is kept quiet by being addicted to many online games, some of which seem very similar to our real history. Marked as defective and to be deleted JOnas goes on the run across the different games worlds. A bit Matrix, a bit Moorcock and a dash of Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwright.



One of the things I really like about the concept isn't just the mixed-media format but the fact that Howard Webster is encouraging readers to take the material and remix it into their own mashups - so far some indy bands have remixed some of the viral videos they have created to go with their own music (such as the one above). With so many big studio comics-based movies using the bands on their soundtrack as a marketing gimmick to get folks to go I like the fact that Howard is doing this remake-your-own approach; they're also hoping if people remix material later on to create sidebar stories that the best may be incorporated into the ongoing story. Apparently this sort of approach is really pissing off the professional marketing folks and ad agencies, which, in my book, makes it even better. And doesn't Colin Salmon look bloody cool on that bike (Lili, stop drooling over him!)?

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe"

Adam Savage of top geek show MythBusters (one of my favourite bits of factual viewing and not just because I look a bit like Adam, especially when I have my hat on) has written a piece in Popular Mechanics in praise of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner as it celebrates its 25th anniversary (link via Boing Boing). I'm totally with Adam on this one - like him I have to re-watch the film every year or so; its one of the most visually ravishing films of all time and easily up there with Lang's Metropolis for stunning images of a future city. The opening scene of LA in 2019, towering buildings with video walls mounted on them, flames shooting into the night from industrial towers and hover cars flying between them all set to Vangelis' music ranks as one of the most stunning visuals in movie history. It still sends shivers down my spine no matter how often I see it, the impact made all the more sudden by being prefaced by a very quiet moment as an explanation of Replicants and Blade Runners is scrolled across the scene before suddenly boom! Future LA.



Adam argues that despite massive advances in effects and digital manipulation which can now create almost anything a director imagines the film's effects remain astonishing: "I worked on Star Wars Episodes I and II, on the Matrix films, on AI and Terminator 3; yet 25 years later there are ways in which Blade Runner surpasses anything that's been done since." He's right, it still looks amazing, which is a tribute to the legendary Doug Trumbull and his effects colleagues but also to Ridley Scott too, a director who has a real flair for visuals. The film, like another now-classic, Citizen Kane, wasn't a commercial success when first released, but (again like Citizen Kane) has gone on to gather a cult audience, critical plaudits and inspire generations of later artists.

For visualising a future cityscape it has to be up there with Lang's Metropolis; both also owe much to photographs and film of New York in the early 20th century (imaginary cities and the real meeting, but then all 'real' cities are also partially imaginary, made up as much of our memories and dreams as they are what our eyes take in). The themes (very Philip K Dick, appropriately) of alienation, individuality, identity and what it is to be human and what is real and what is dream add to the lush imagery. No wonder it is still one of my personal top ten movies of all time.



Some great visualisations or descriptions of imaginary urban spaces: Blade Runner, Metropolis, Carlos Ezquerra's concepts for Mega City one in the original Judge Dredd back in '77, Otomo's Akira, Bill Gibson's Sprawl (see Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive), Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris (see City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: an Afterword), Alex Proyas Dark City, Kafka's work, Borges, Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan... I'm sure you can all suggest other good examples from books, movies and comics or any other artforms. A final bit of movie-comics trivia, Ridley cites the legendary comics artist Moebius' Long Tomorrow graphic novel from the mid 70s as a key reference for Blade Runner's visual look. The graphic novel was written by a young Dan O'Bannon, who would later write Alien, which Ridley would direct (one of his first big successes); Dan would later adapt another Philip K Dick tale, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale for the film Total Recall. I'm sure I could add more here, but it's time for Heroes :-)

Going down the rabbit hole

We had one of the top talents in Brit comics in the Edinburgh FPI yesterday in the form of Bryan Talbot, creator of Luther Arkwright. Bryan has spent several years researching and working on his new work Alice In Sunderland, a large, hardback graphic novel with Lewis Carroll's Alice books at its core, but going off onto all sorts of related tangents which influenced Carroll and his work, from local history in and around Sunderland, folklore, the family history of Carroll and of Alice Liddell's family and some of Bryan's own personal life. There can't be many creators who can work in Lewis Carroll, the Venerable Bede, smugglers, naval heroes, the Jabberwock, mass murder, cholera, the Civil War, white rabbits and the ghost of Sid James and make it all work.



I've been dying to read Alice in Sunderland since I interviewed Bryan last summer and I haven't been disappointed. Sure I am biased since Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are two of my all-time favourite books and have been since I was a boy; as an adult I still adore the sheer dreamlike imagination of them but also came to admire the incredible intellect behind them, Carroll's astonishing use of immensely clever word play (and number play too, for that matter - check the Annotated Alice to see what I mean). No wonder Alice has been such an incredibly influential work, re-interpreted endlessly in more books, films, animations (despite liberties with the books I do like the old Disney version because of the richness of the animation, but my favourite animated version is by Jan Svankmajer - the Prague Alchemist of Film and one of my favourite animators), songs, games and, of course, comics.



With such a mixture of local history and literature and folklore I think Alice in Sunderland is one of those graphic novels which can easily crossover into the mainstream - if you don't normally read anything in comics form and assume it is pretty much all capes and tights, ignore your preconceptions and have a look at Alice; there are many different and wandering routes through the rabbit hole and this is one of the more scenic ways. I posted some pictures from the signing on the FPI Flickr stream and also tried shooting a couple of very brief video clips as an experiment to see how it came out:

Animated Calvin and Hobbes

I came across this today, a short, unofficial animated Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. We're unlikely to see a full length Calvin and Hobbes cartoon in the near future and of course Bill Watterson finished the comics a while back, but this short little gem by Italian film student Donato Di Carlo (in Italian with English subtitles) captures the spirit of Calvin and Hobbes very well and really made me smile.

Web-slinging

After all the hype and PR frenzy around the world Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 finally hit the cinemas this weekend, and off we went to a packed theatre to catch it. Two major villains this time (three if you count some bits with Harry Osborn's son of the Green Goblin), more personal and romantic trouble for Peter Parker (including a rather awful Emo look which makes him appear like a reject from My Chemical Romance) and the introduction of Gwen and Captain Stacey - if you aren't familiar with the comics that might not mean much to you, but they are (especially Gwen), very important characters from the comics. Shame then, that they were barely used, making me wonder why all the hype to excited fanboys about her appearance...

The film itself was very disappointing - far too 'busy' as my mate remarked, like they were thinking, must outdo the first two movies, pack more in regardless of the effect on the story. Don't get me wrong, it isn't a bad film; if it were the first Spidey movie you had seen you'd probably enjoy it more, but it lacks some solid direction, has too much squeezed into it for no reason other than trying to make it look 'wow' (which rarely works if it makes the story suffer) while the emotional arc was just a tiny bit tedious this time, unlike the previous movies. It is still worth seeing though - there are some great scenes there, the Sandman is well done, Venom looks just like he should from the comics (but as with Gwen, not used properly) and I liked the humanised version of Flint Marko, a petty hoodlum, but one driven to crime because he is desperate to find money for treatment for his ill daughter.



And the usual brace of cameos from Ted Raimi, Bruce Campbell (as a brilliant French maitre'd from the Clueso school) and, of course, Stan the Man Lee. Enjoyable Saturday night movie, not brilliant but not bad, suffering mostly by comparison with the first two since we know they can do better than this. Here's hoping Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is better (what is it with 'part 3's in movies this year?) - the second one was rather by the numbers and lacking heart, made me think of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom compared to Raiders of the Lost Ark; bigger budget, the right set pieces and cast (apart from the female lead) but it lacked heart and felt like blockbuster by the numbers. Here's hoping Pirates 3 is more Last Crusade then, so I can enjoy some damned fine swashbuckling.

The Eisner Awards 2007

Jeff VanderMeer let me know that the Eisner Awards shortlist was going up this week (Jeff was a judge on the awards this year); I've posted the full list of nominees and the press release up on the FPI blog (if you aren't familiar with it, the Eisners are one of the major comics awards, mostly to the North American published material but with some other works from other countries too). I have that warm feeling booksellers get inside when they see several good books they have been recommending for the last few months turning up on awards shortlists, including the excellent Shooting War for the online comics (hopefully the forthcoming print version will turn up on next year's awards when it comes out this autumn). If you are looking for some decent graphic novels to read you could do much worse than have a browse through some of the nominees.

300 previewed

I was approached by some of the folks who were organising previews of the upcoming film adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel 300, which tells as historically rather loose but nonetheless brilliant tale of the 300 Spartan warriors who held off the entire army of the Persian Empire for several days while the other Greek city states rallied their forces (Athens would later repeat this victory at sea, crushing a huge Persian fleet). It is one of history's great turning points; had the Greeks been ground under the Persian heel our modern world would be very different, without that Classical flowering of philosophy, scientific enquiry, writing and democracy (how ironic a bunch of military zealots who ran their brutal society by enslaving an entire people to do their work while they trained would be so instrumental in this).



Unfortunately for me the preview was at the BFI's Imax screen in London, so I couldn't really make it, but a couple of my colleagues at FPI based in London were only too happy to go along and have now posted a preview up on the FPI blog. I can't wait to see it myself - historical inaccuracies aside it looks quite amazing, being shot in a manner very similar to Sin City (another Frank Miller comics adaptation), matching the comics original almost panel for panel, shot against green screens with very few actual sets to give it an incredibly stylised look. And I'm sure the girls (and some of the boys) are going to enjoy 300 incredibly fit men who spend a lot of screen time almost naked and oiled :-)

French comic art auction to help the homeless

Mark Ajdarc of the Brazilian comics site Neorama dos Quadrinhos sent us a good item to put up on the FPI blog and since it involves A) good European comics art and B) raising money for a good cause I thought I'd repeat it on here too. 95 press cartoonists and comics artist are contributing their work to auction to raise money for the homeless charity Droit au Logement in France. Some of the top bandes dessinées artist are involved, with names like Bilal and Jacque Tardi (who did the poster for it).

I found it interesting that this came at a similar time to the 'red tent' happening in Paris, where les Enfants de Don Quichotte (how could I resist a story with a name like that?) distributed red tents to the homeless so a tent village sprang up, rapidly covered by the European media and shaming Parisian authorities into acknowledging the problem. You can look through the art on offer in the auction here.

Who's in the Beano?

The first edition of the new BeanoMax comic goes on sale on the 15th and will also be a special edition to raise money for this year's Comic Relief (for non UK readers that's a bi-annual charity event where money for good works is raised by comedians and thousands of ordinary people doing very silly thing and wearing comedy red noses all day, in finest traditions of British eccentricity). And along with some other celebs the comic will also have the Daleks forcing the Bash Street Kids to study, but luckily the Doctor will be on hand to help. Jamie Oliver will apparently be in the school dining hall; many a school child will cheer should he be exterminated.

Charlie Huston interview

I've just posted up an interview with Charlie Huston on the FPI blog, already an established author in the US for his Henry Thompson crime novels and now moving into a new vampire-noir-crime series featuring a character called Joe Pitt. The second book has just come out in the last few weeks in the States while my friends at Orbit are set to release the first one, Already Dead, in the UK in February - if you like vampire novels and want something a bit different I highly recommend it.



Charlie also made his comics debut in 2006 with the revamped Moon Knight for Marvel, with the first arc recently issued in a hardback collection, winning his quite a few plaudits. And I loved his answer when I asked him how he saw his interpretation of Marc Spector:

"He was always a visceral character to me, and I wanted to try and share that feeling with other readers. Violence, drug abuse, mental illness, moon copters, these are all visceral elements. I wanted Marc Spector to be a shambling mess of a human being who only comes alive, who only understands the world when he puts on a cowl and a cape and jumps out of a helicopter and lands knuckles first in someone’s fucking face."

Ah, superheroes, they are so noble...

Eagle awards online

The leading British comics awards, the Eagles, are now online - unlike most other awards though readers get to vote for the various categories in the online nominations, including (should you wish to) best comics related website where you could pick out a number of sites and blogs who support UK (and other) comics and artists like Bugpowder, Down the Tubes or perhaps even a certain bandana-clad Forbidden Planet International Blog :-) Not that I am trying to put ideas in anyone's head...

Lily joins Herman

Sad this week to hear about Yvonne De Carlo passing away; she was an extremely attractive starlet in 40s and 50s Hollywood, perfectly matched to the high glamour of that period with her stunning hourglass figure and sultry looks (do a Google image search on her and see what I mean. This was the era of curvy women, no stick figure actresses here!). She played a number of roles as femme fatales and even appeared in Cecil B DeMille's Ten Commandments epic as Mrs Moses. But it is a Lily Munster, the loving vampiric wife and mother of the Munsters that most of us will know her; Fred Gwynne who played the loveable goof Herman Munster, her screen husband died a number of years back, ironically just as his career was reviving, so in a way I supposed Lily has gone to join Herman.


I love the Munsters; along with the Addams Family they really showed that you could have humour out of traditional horror types without resorting to the frankly cheap and laughable (in the bad, non comedic way) that had been tried by Abbot and Costello, while also satirising bigotry about the way even 'good' people react to those different to them and pastiching the traditional family while also championing it. From the Addams and Munsters I picked up Edward Gorey's Gothic wonders; they prepped me for the comedy horror of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead and the delights of a number of humorous Gothic comics like Richard Moore's Boneyard and the works of Tim Burton.

Would we have these works without the Munsters and Addams? I don't know, but it seems less likely, or at least not the way we did have them. Mostly though I just found them wonderfully funny and indeed I still do; I still watch both shows when they are repeated and never really get tired of them. And Lily Munster and Morticia Addams are still up there with Neil Gaiman's Death as my favourite Gothic ladies.

Leah and John

I've posted my first author interview of 2007 over on the FPI blog, chatting again with Leah Moore and John Reppion, principally about their upcoming work but the subjects also range across using zombies to do your Christmas shopping and comics writers as guest on reality shows like Strictly Come Dancing (we aim for a diverse approach, you know). John and Leah's recent handiwork (alongside Shane Oakley and Leah's dad, a certain Alan Moore) can be enjoyed in Albion, which just hit the shelves a couple of weeks ago (and ended up being a present to myself). Albion is a very clever reworking of classic British comics characters from yesteryear, such as the Steel Claw and the Spider.

You don't need to be too familiar with the characters - most of them are well before my time and the little of them I have read was in old reprints in the back of modern comics annual as a kid - to get into this; it takes a basic premise that all of these old characters, largely forgotten today (as they are in real life) turn out to have actually existed but have all been kidnapped by a nervous government who has locked them all up (the superheroes and the villains both) in a remote, secret prison in a Scottish castle. As an overbearing American officer visits and criticises the Brit approach for not being like the American one (just as UK comics characters were quite different from American - far odder and weirder) events are coming to a head.

The book is damned clever, one of those works you will need to go back and re-read several times, spotting more characters as you do so. It also creates some interesting analogies to current political events, not least holding people without evidence or trials simply because they are different and you are scared of them. And it has Robot Archie in it! Highly recommended, this is a graphic novel that you will come back to again and again.