Home Comics Preview: Baltic Comics Magazine s!13 Life is Live

Preview: Baltic Comics Magazine s!13 Life is Live

04/17/2013 1:30 pm

sh-cover-13 — Cover illustration by Ana Albero

You can tell we’re getting into the comics spring/summer stride as highly desirable books begin hitting the shelves in rapid tandem. Last week saw my postman deliver Nobrow 8, the end of the month sees the launch of the inaugural and very promising looking Tiny Pencil, and in a fortnight ‘s time we get the release of another excellent anthology, the 13th volume of the always interesting and varied Baltic Comics Magazine s! from Latvian comics publishers, Kus! Komiksi.

Featuring a combination of Latvian and international talents, this volume’s theme is ‘Life is Live’ focusing on autobiographical narratives. It’s by no means a rigid structure though, with artists producing semi autobiographical and even ‘autobiografictional’ stories of ‘very colorful, weird and surprising stories about life, like getting your leg prosthesis stolen, forgetting your pin-code because of Modern Talking or drinking beer with temple knights…’

There’s quite a few familiar (and favourite) names dotted amongst the raft of 26 contributors: Ian Andersen, Ines Estrada, Jonny Negron, Julia Gfrorer, Simon Hanselman and Thomas Wellman (check out his page below- it looks fantastic). A full list of contributors can be found below the preview pictures. I’m always looking to discover comic artists from all over the world and Kus! fulfil that remit perfectly: not only producing beautiful comics with high production values, but unearthing the best and lesser known artists and giving them page space. That, and the incredibly reasonable $13 inclusive of shipping to anywhere in the world price-point, make this a must buy.

s!13 clocks in at 164 full colour pages, is printed in a A6 format in English and on environmentally friendly paper. It will be released on the 29th April: you can pre-order your copy here.