World Comics

January 7th, 2015 will always be a grim date in for free speech, tolerance and French cartooning. As we all know, 12 people, including 10 staffers and four cartoonists were killed in a terrorist attack on the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo yesterday morning. The attack—which some called the 9/11 for France—left grieving and reeling for those lost and for a world in which such a senseless act could occur. The four cartoonists killed—Georges Wolinski, Charb, Tignous, and Cabu—included one Angouleme Grand Prize winner, Wolinski, who won in 2005. It was a grievous toll.

In an act of unspeakable horror, three gunman are at large in France after a brief deadly attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo,...

While comics seem to be holding their own as an industry, with revenue generally up, there are a few folks on shaky ground, and 2014 saw a few casualties. One of them is Great Beast, the indie uUK graphic novel publisher run by cartoonists Adam Cadwell and Mark Ellerby. The imprint was sort of run as an "Image" like model, with Great Beast generally handling distribution for an emerging generation of UK cartoonists including , Robert M Ball, Dan Berry, Adam Cadwell, Warwick Johnson-Cadwell, Dan Cox, John Cei Douglas, Marc Ellerby, Isabel Greenberg, John Riordan and Rachael Smith. The reason for the shut down? Too much success basically. Ellerby had left running the publisher earlier in the year and Cadwell did not have the time to keep things going:

The other day I mentioned how Dover Books is bringing back a bunch of out of print graphic novels including Puma Blues and A Sailor's Story. Well, you can add one more book to that list. I'm thrilled to be able to announce that Dover is reprinting a new edition of Secret Teachings of a Comic Book Master: The Art of Alfredo Alcala by myself and Philip Yeh

The nominees in the four juried categories of the FIBD 42 have been announced, 35 "Official Selections", 12 in the "comics for young readers" category, 10 in the "best reprint" category and 5 in the "mystery novel" aka Polar category (all descriptions are my own.) "Polar" which you see so often in various listing at Angoulême, as best I can make out, tarnslates as a "light mystery" or thriller category....kind of the popular genre in Franco-Belgian comics, as opposed to say, superheroes. If I'm wrong, please someone correct me.

The Angoulême Festival International de la Bande Dessineé for 2015 has released the schedule of art exhibits, spotlights and other goodies. They attached this...

The winners of the third annual British Comics Awards were announced during the Thought Bubble fest and they are: Best Comic – The Wicked +...

Among the countries most taken by comic con fever is India. A lengthy email offering pr on this year's Mumbai Film and Comic Con 2014, taking place at the Bombay Exhibition Centre from 19th December-21st December arrived in my mail box. Among the facts revealed: Guests include Nick Spencer, Nicolas Wild and Dan Goldman. She show will offer a 50,000 sq feet show floor and 100 exhibitors, including Amar Chitra Katha, Orange Radius, Pop Culture Publishing, Holy Cow Entertainment, Crimzon Studios, Simon and Schuster India, HarperCollins Publishers, Aayumi Productions, Shamik Dasgupta, Jazyl Homavazir, Pepper Script and Raj Comics.

§ Marvel is putting out a Thor Annual and they pulled out all the stops to get the wackiest mix of creators ever. Wrestler...

Magnetic Press launched earlier this year bringing some top-notch French comics to the US market and they're not only still here, they are expanding to Chinese comics with DAOMU, which adapts the popular novel series by Chinese author Xu “Kennedy” Lei, who's knwn as China's Stephen King.  How popular is this series? The first novel, which forms the basis of the graphic novel has sold three million copies as of 2010 with an additional 20 million copies on the black market. I didn't know there was a lack market for novels but it's a thrilling world.

Earlier this year, the selection of Bill Watterson as the Grand Prix winner at the Angoulême comics festival created quite a stir. The winner is traditionally the "grand marshal" of the whole festival, helping plan exhibits and appearing at official events. (Or, as in the case of Willem, last ear's winner, hanging out at Le Chat Noir until 1 am with everyone else.) It seemed a bit of a stretch for Watterson, but was it impossible? Although the once reclusive Calvin & Hobbes creator hasn't exactly turned into Taylor Swift, he makes occasional semi public appearances and is way more accessible in interviews. (If you call once or twice a year accessible.) When the win was announced, Watterson's editor Lee Salem said he would try to tell him how wonderful Angoulême is, so maybe Watterson would make an exception for this so not a comic-con event?

Digital Manga has been successfully Kickstarting publication of several books by God of Comics Osama Tezuka for a few years now. So far they've done Barbara, Swallowing the Earth and more. But Tezuka drew some 150,000 pages of comics in his lifetime, so this is a pretty big task to bring all his comics to English. The new project has ambitious goals: to publish the following titles: