SCHULZ'S "GAME" PANELS COLLECTED
Nat Gertler's "About Comics" publishing company will collect "It's Only A Game," Charles Schulz's "short-lived syndicated comics feature from the late 1950s," Gertler reveals in the newsletter for his "Aaugh.com" Peanuts website. "Cartoonist Jim Sasseville, who anonymously collaborated with Schulz on 'It's Only A Game' for most of its run (and whom some of you know for his work on the Peanuts comic book magazine stories) is providing commentary for the book." Text on "Aaugh.com" describes "It's Only A Game" as a "gag panel." The book will be edited by Derrick Bang, who recently edited a collection of Schulz's "Li'l Folks" panel cartoons. "The details about format, price, and release date are still being worked out."
LINK: AAUGH.com
LINK: About Comics
posted by Egon on Friday, March 05, 2004

RABBI'S CAT ON STAGE
A stage adaptation of Joann Sfar's "Le Chat du Rabbin" ("The Rabbi's Cat") will debut on March 8 at Paris' Théâtre Le Cercle, Univers BD reports. The production, directed by Elise McLeod and Sei Shiomi, will run through April 4, 2004. Pantheon Books has previously announced an English-language translation of "The Rabbi's Cat," tentatively due in Spring 2005. Sfar will appear at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme on March 9, and is currently at work on a novel to be published by Editions Denoël.
INFO: Univers BD
posted by Egon on Friday, March 05, 2004

PEKAR, DUMM COVER CLEVELAND
The Cleveland Plain Dealer's "Best of Cleveland" issue includes a comics insert by Harvey Pekar and Gary Dumm. The piece, in which Pekar offers his own tour of notable Cleveland locales, is available in full-color via the newspaper's website.
INFO: Cleveland Plain Dealer
posted by Egon on Friday, March 05, 2004

EICHHORN, MOORE INTERVIEWED
Newsarama interviews writer Dennis Eichhorn upon the release of "Real Stuff," a collection of his autobiographical comics recently published by Swifty Morales Press. Alan David Doane's online journal runs a lengthy interview with Alan Moore, largely on the subject of Moore's novel, "Voice of the Fire," which was recently published in a domestic edition by Top Shelf Productions.
INFO: Newsarama
INFO: ADD
posted by Egon on Friday, March 05, 2004

TINTIN AT SEA
The Guardian covers "The Adventures of Tintin at Sea," an exhibit opening at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England on March 31. "The exhibition will include the oldest known drawing of Tintin, without his distinctive tuft of hair but with a most unflattering plus-fours check suit, with some of the earliest strip cartoons which doubled circulation," the paper reports. "Andy Warhol, who adored comics, was among the fans, and the exhibition will include his unlikely portrait of George Remi." The piece includes comments from Michael Turner, who translated Hergé's Tintin stories into English, noting differences between French- and English-language editions.
INFO: Guardian
posted by Egon on Friday, March 05, 2004

LIBRARY JOURNAL: SHHH...
The Library Journal surveys wordless graphic novels, noting precedents including Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, Milt Gross and Otto Nuckel and highlighting more recent work by Eric Drooker, Jason, Peter Kuper, Thomas Ott, Masashi Tanaka, Jim Woodring and others.
INFO: Library Journal
posted by Egon on Friday, March 05, 2004

COCONINO: MORE FROM FROST
Coconino World's latest online installment features several picture stories by A. B. Frost, including full-color, semi-animated versions of shorts drawn from the recent "Stuff and Nonsense" reprint edition. "To highlight the very interesting link between Frost and Muybridge (through Thomas Eakins, the painter), we have adapted five sequential stories, emulating the Zoopraxiscope projections that Muybridge used to 'animate' some of his discoveries," Thierry Smolderen writes in an announcement posted to the Platinum Age Comics mailing list. The update also includes an 1881 picture story called "Orlando & January" and a lengthy, heavily illustrated French-language essay by Smolderen. "A much abridged version of this article introduces the Frost Anthology/Stuff and Nonsense reprint, however, this one is not only quite longer, but also lavishly illustrated, and linked to different resources. Browsing it may be of interest, even to non-French readers. I plan to finish the English version soon."
INFO: Coconino World
INFO: Yahoo Groups: Platinum Age Comics
posted by Egon on Friday, March 05, 2004

NOT MY SMALL MINI
Delaine Derry Green has published "Not My Small Diary" #11, a two-volume mini-comic featuring autobiographical shorts by Dave Kiersh, John Porcellino, Jesse Reklaw, and several others. The set is available for purchase online and costs $4.
INFO: Not My Small Diary
posted by Egon on Friday, March 05, 2004

ECO, OTHERS EXAMINE LINES ON PAPER
On May 8 and 9, 2004, Bologna, Italy will host a conference called "La linea inquieta. Emozione e ironia nel fumetto" ("The troubled line. Emotion and irony in comics"), Fumetti.org reports. The two day symposium will examine ways that line can effect reader response in comics: "Comics narrate emotions and arouse emotions in their readers. These narrated and/or produced emotions can be pure and passionate, but can also be tempered by the use of irony, forcing the reader to be more detached. With or without irony, the narrative line interacts with the visual appearance of comics, i.e. with the way lines have been traced on paper, in order to obtain the emotional effect." Tentative program information on the conference website includes presentations by Thierry Groensteen, Umberto Eco and Pascal Lefèvre, among others.
INFO: Fumetti.org
INFO: La Linea Inquieta
posted by Egon on Tuesday, March 02, 2004

THE LAST DAYS OF EDGAR P. JACOBS
Fumetti.org runs an English-language translation of "Edgar Pierre Jacobs — The Sphynx's Last Days," an essay by Didier Pasamonik describing the final years of the Belgian cartoonist's life. Jacobs, who worked as one of Hergé's assistants on "Tintin," created his own popular series of "Blake & Mortimer" adventure comics. Pasamonik's piece describes the beginnings of Jacobs' brief, late material success, beginning in 1981 when rights to his "Blake & Mortimer" stories began to revert back to the author, then age 78. Jacobs founded "Editions Blake et Mortimer" with a partner to independently publish his work: "in the first year of republication of his [first story, 'The Secret of the Swordfish,'] he earns more money for a single title than he had earned with [publisher Editions] Le Lombard for the whole series of his works." Following the deaths of close friends, Jacobs died, depressed and increasingly isolated, in 1986. Since then new "Blake & Mortimer" stories by other authors have been popularly received, and Jacobs' characters have been adapted into animation (with a live-action film to come).
INFO: Fumetti.org
INFO: Lambiek.net: Jacobs
posted by Egon on Tuesday, March 02, 2004

RTL RADIO'S ANGOULÊME PRIZE
France's RTL Radio and the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée have instituted the "Grand Prix RTL de la BD," BDNews.net reports. RTL and a group of six independent booksellers will each month select a slate of graphic albums, one of which will be named comic of the month. In mid-November, a "Grand Prix" winner will be chosen by RTL and the FIBD from among the final monthly selections. The first comic of the month, named in late February, was "Où le regard ne porte pas" by Georges Abolin and Olivier Pont. The list of February's selected albums includes work by Christian De Metter & Catel, Christophe Gaultier & Sylvain Ricard, vanyda savatier, Yoshiharu Tsuge, and Van Hamme & Vance.
INFO: BDNews.net
INFO: RTL
posted by Egon on Monday, March 01, 2004

CFP: THEORY IN TONGUES
The University of Hamburg's Michael Hein solicits papers for "an English collection of classical non-English (French, German, Dutch, etc.) essays on the theory and criticism of comics and graphic novels." Proposals can be submitted to Hein via e-mail: hein@uni-hamburg.de.
INFO: Image and Narrative
posted by Egon on Monday, March 01, 2004

SOUTH KOREAN CONQUISTADORES
The Korea Times covers "Manhwa Sekye Jungbok" ("Comics World Conquest"), a new anthology of South Korean comics organized by the "Dugoboza" comics collective and overseen by artist Kim Nakho. Kim, who curated an exhibit of South Korean comics at the 2003 Angoulême comics festival, discusses the book's goals and the current state of South Korean comics publishing. "Personally, I think the publishers are the ones to blame first and foremost," Kim says. "They were just busy printing popular imported works, as many as possible, rather than caring about quality or fostering Korean authors, and they didn't realize what this might lead to. Their way, as a result, backfired and got many comic book lovers to turn their back on Korean comics." The anthology will be published by the "Pathfinding" company, managed by a member of the Dugoboza group.
INFO: Korea Times
posted by Egon on Monday, March 01, 2004

CHINA'S DARKLY COMIC TIMES
The People's Daily reports on sluggish sales so far for "The Comic Times," an adult-oriented comics magazine now releasing its third issue in a youth-dominated Chinese comics marketplace. "Adult comics do not always imply more sex and violence," chief editor Li Yuping told the paper. "They are about the lives of grown-ups, such as jobs, relations and marriage which are seldom covered by comic books for teenagers." Li described other problems: "The biggest difficulty we meet is to find good cartoonists... Most cartoonists on the mainland are skilled at drawing but unable to write an attractive script."
INFO: The People's Daily
posted by Egon on Monday, March 01, 2004

PHILIP NEL: SEUSSIST
Canada's National Post talks with Philip Nel about Theodore "Dr. Seuss" Giesel in light of Nel's upcoming book, "Dr. Seuss: American Icon." Nel suggests that Seuss's work was heavily informed by the surrealism of the day. Nel points to the invented vocabularies in Seuss's children's books, "going beyond portmanteau words to give us portmanteau letters." Nel further argues that Seuss's "moralist" position offers an alternative to a post-modernism divorced from an engaged avant garde. "Seuss was left wing, but a liberal democrat, not a communist. He was out to change the existing order for the better, rather than to overthrow it."
INFO: National Post
posted by Egon on Monday, March 01, 2004

BAGGE ON HORSEY
Peter Bagge writes an appreciation of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist David Horsey for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "His sense of composition is uncanny, and his use of pen and ink is impressive," writes Bagge. "He also is a very good caricaturist -- a good skill to have in his line of work if you want to avoid all those labels signifying who's who!" Horsey is the subject of an exhibit running at the Frye Art Museum through May 23.
INFO: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
posted by Egon on Monday, March 01, 2004

THE BUZZ ON HOSLER
The SciScoop website runs an interview with cartoonist and biologist Jay Hosler, who describes his next comics project: "My next project will focus on the life of Santiago Ramon y Cajal. Cajal was Spain's greatest scientist and the father of modern neurobiology. He won the Nobel prize for his work as a histologist.... Cajal's research provided some of the first concrete evidence that the nervous system was composed of individual cells (that we now know as neurons) and not a network of phyically linked cells acting as a sort of nerve net. Now, to me that is pretty interesting, but what makes Cajal's story particularly compelling (I think) is that as a small child he wanted desperately to be an artist."
INFO: SciScoop
posted by Egon on Monday, March 01, 2004