World Comics

The 2012 Toronto Comic Arts Festival has just unveiled it's first guests and it's as eclectic lineup of stellar creators from around the world, including Alison Bechdel, Jeff Smith Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon, Guy Delisle, Kate Beaton, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Jason, and others from around the world. The festival also unveiled its to die for poster, by Bá and Moon. Held May 5-6 in Toronto, this free comics festival is shaping up to be one of the shows of the year. Although considered part of the"indie" circuit, TCAF's guest line-up, as in past years, spotlights creators from all levels of the medium. Webcomics, kids comics and cartoonists from 15 nations will be mingling in what many creators consider the best show of the year.

Although you'd think he was busy enough drawing THE WALKING DEAD every month, artist Charlie Adlard occasionally has time to toss off something like CURSE OF THE WENDIGO (reviewed here) a horror comic written by French screenwriter Mathieu Missoffe and released in France in 2009. The story is set in World War I and finds French and GErman soldier teaming up to fight a greater horror. An American edition is out today from Dynamite, and here's a preview:

The Romanian webcomic Fredo and Pid'jin, has been a big success for its creators Eugen Erhan and Tudor Muscalu, this piece at Next Web tells us, if by success you mean lots of links on Reddit and Digg. What emerges is the story of two guy with a dream and a webcomic about two evil pigeons out to conquer the world. Things looked low, but then a guy who works on the Simpsons came and told them they were on the right track, energizing them to carry on. But...questions remain:

South African cartoonist Zapiro is famous for his sharply observant cartooning and also for standing up to constant and onerous political pressures because of his observations. Most famously he was sued by the Prime Minister of South Africa for defamation—but as this profile at PEN.org shows, he's always been at the center of controversy reserved for those who tell the truth.

New at Cartoon Movement today, Josh Neufeld's Bahrain: Lines in Ink, Lines in the Sand Josh Neufeld, a true story set during Bahrain's short lived Pearl Revolution about two two young Bahraini editorial cartoonists named Mohammed and Sara who see the events from opposite sides. This is an excellent, accessible piece that really helps make a smaller eddy of the complex, swirling events of the Arab Spring clear.

When you think of Scandinavia you think of cliches like austere and laconic and fatalism -- all words which apply to the work of Norwegian cartoonist Jason. The cliches happen to be true but in the happiest, freshest way. As you can tell by reading his blog, Jason is a big fan of classic films and their pacing, and his work mashes up funny animals, ligne claire, noir thrillers, introspective indie movies where people talk in diners for hours and horror icons into his own marvelous style -- tightly plotted stories where tall rangy birds and dogs talk without smiling of life, love and death, the very essentials of human existence. Jason characters are unsmiling because they know how deadly serious are the machinations of human heart; love is a matter of life and death (sometimes undeath) in every Jason story.

An article in The Gauntlet, the University of Calgary's student magazine, boldly proclaimsThe beginning of a new comic era -- and Calgary's Maad Sheep Productions are just the guys to do it. What the article does not mention is that in order to flourish, comics creators must dress like a NASCAR pit crew.

The long on-again, off-again life action Akira movie is decidedly on again at Warners, with Jaume Collet-Serra to direct the Steve Kloves script. Given that AKIRA is a worldwide classic of anime and Japanese film in general that hugely influenced both animation and the cyberpunk movement, it seems ripe for reinvention in that Hollywood way. And of course, also in that Hollywood way, despite the story being set in and infused with Japanese culture, because American moviegoers are all white and cannot be persuaded to pay money to watch Asian people on the screen, the film is being moved from New Tokyo to "New Manhattan " (essentially New New York) and replacing all the Asian characters with white people if casting rumors are true.

Comics and related cartoons continue to cause problems in the Middle East. Tunisia, the country widely credited with setting off the "Arab Spring" in a relatively peaceful fashion earlier this year, is in an uproar after Marjane Satrapi's animated film was shown last month and immediately set off a huge controversy for a scene which shows God -- which, as you may have realized by now, is forbidden by some branches of Islam. Nessma, the station which ran the film, is being sued for showing it -- and the trial erupted in angry confrontations yesterday:

This weekend is Portfolio Day at The Center for Cartoon Studies. Prospective students cram into the Colodny for a day of tours, faculty talks and portfolio reviews. Their age range is all over the place, fourteen years of age to fifty. Some don't want to come to the school but know that they are on the right track with comics.

Isabel Greenberg's "Love in a Very Cold Climate" -- the story of lovers repelled by polar magnetism -- has won the 2011 Graphic Short Story prize given out by the Observer/Comica/Vintage Books. London-Based Greenberg has contributed previously to Nobrow and Solipsistic Pop. The story is part of a larger work called The Encyclopaedia of Early Earth.

Imagine a cartoonist-centric comic convention, held in a city that is equal parts Kiki’s Delivery Service and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and you get a small taste of what it’s like to attend Quai des Bulles. You would have to consume many delicious butter-filled pastries to get the full taste!