Back in the Summer of 1994, I was visiting my relatives in Germany.
I had heard of the Erlangen Comics Salon, a comics festival being held in the Bavarian city of Erlangen. So I rented a room in a student apartment building and spent the weekend at what was my first comics convention. Fortunately for me, an American fan with rudimentary German language skills, the German publishers had flown in British and American superstars from their backlist, and while attendance was busy, only Don Rosa required a ticket. Otherwise the lines were orderly and moved quickly, and to my surprise and naiveté, discovered that artists were producing free sketches! I quickly bought a sketch pad from the local bookshop, and began to collect self portraits from the cartoonists.
I excavated these drawings last Christmas, and posted them to my website. I’ll be posting them one-by-one here during the holiday season, and hope you enjoy them!
I continue to collect self-portraits from comics creators at shows, and if interest is sufficient, I’ll post more here.
The duck drawing of the artist who’s name escapes you (posted on your Blog) is Benoit Sokal. I believe he’s French and he did a great comic (European “albums”, actually)series starring Inspector Canardo, of whose drawing you posted. There’s at least one american version of one of the issues, that I know of, translated by Leia Jacobowitz and Kim Thompson.
looked it up: He’s Belgian…of course…Belgium has got to be the biggest concentration of great comic book artists ever:)
Germany? That’s a quite a ways from Lincoln, Nebraska, Torsten.
Did you take a wrong turn at a desolate cornfield somewhere?
~
Coat
Nice sketches.
@Oliver: you might be right in that!
:)
Actually, I’m from Omaha. I had just graduated from UNO, and was flying around the world. I would have stayed in New Zealand, but the immigration criteria was against a young graduate from the USA (not a refugee, no money to transfer, no experience). However, I did discover Footrot Flats and Pickle, so it wasn’t a total loss.
Thanks for solving the mystery I posted (and thanks for visiting my blog!) After Erlangen, I took an overnight train to Brussels, spending a strange four hours in Aachen waiting for the connecting train. My only reason for going to Brussels was because of the excellent comics museum.
My mother’s hometown is Hanover, Germany, home to Wilhelm Busch, creator of Max und Moritz, Fipps der Affe, and Hans Huckebein. The Herrenhausen Gardens contains a comics museum in his name.
Germany? That’s a quite a ways from Lincoln, Nebraska, Torsten. Did you take a wrong turn at a desolate cornfield somewhere? ~ Coat