23/11/2013
Patient man, good with children, kind to animals, relaxed while waiting for the lights to change. With my daughter as witness I cannot claim I never throw a wobbly, but it is usually short lived. When at Heathrow airport with my son and daughter awaiting a flight to the USA and at emigration it was discovered my daughters passport was date expired did I go to pieces? Yes. But briefly, briefly.

16/11/2013
High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson
The Queen's Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse

16/11/2013
Friday, 22 November 2013 to Sunday, 2 March 2014
Thomas Rowlandson was one of the leading caricaturists of Georgian England, mocking fashion, politics and royalty at a time when English satirical prints were admired and collected across Europe.

06/11/2013

30/10/2013
DreamWorks has decided not to go ahead with the Button Man film, seeing "such an inherently violent movie . ." unsuitable for the DreamWorks brand " . . in the wake of . . public shootings which have become a far too common occurrence."
Disappointed of course and a little puzzled since this is the company that asked Nicholas Refn to direct. (Nicholas left some time ago. My understanding is that having said yes Nicholas changed his mind, preferring to work on his own projects.)

28/10/2013

22/10/2013
An occasional series
The first graphic novel to receive a major literary prize was 'Jimmy Corrigan; The Smartest Kid on Earth' by Chris Ware in 2001 when it was awarded both The Guardians First Book Award and the American Book Award

16/10/2013
The EY Exhibition - Paul Klee: Making visible. Tate Modern
16th October 2013 - 9th March 2014
"Klee has an irreducible centre, and though he changed his style and approach many times over in . . his career there is something there that makes you say 'Klee' without hesitation."

08/10/2013

23/09/2013
In the dream I was with some comic book artists discussing climate change. In the way of dreams it turned out the answer was a drawing pin or, as the US call it, thumb tack.( Both have possibilities for a surrealist take but you know what I mean.)
Having a long time attachment to Carl Jung's writings, dreams do sometimes prompt real life engagement on my part and on this occasion it led me to trawling the internet under the banner of 'comic-books - global warming'.

16/09/2013
By Benedict Quilter. When I was around 7 my mother came home from the comic shop with a bag full of New Zealand made comics. I’d seen comics before, but it had never occurred to me that there might be comics made in New Zealand. The only comic I cared about in that pile was one with a bright green cover called Fetus Boy (number four). It stood out to me, the cover was bold and full of black lines. I fell in love. I read that comic again and again until the back cover came off.

07/09/2013
'Art in the Asylum: Creativity and the Evolution of Psychiatry'
The Djanogly Art Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park, Nottingham 7 September - 3 November.
The exhibition curated by psychiatrists Esra Plomer and Victoria Tischler looks at the evolution of artistic activity in British asylums from the early 1800s to 1970 with work selected from national and international exhibitions.

01/09/2013

23/08/2013
Comic Collecting In South Africa - My Experience by Bheki Latha
There really aren't that many South African comics.With the exception of a few talented cartoonists . .

17/08/2013
Here's a wheeze.
Curious about other people's comics I have put up blogs about, or relating to, comics in Indonesia, India, Japan, Russia and Serbia. Now it seems a better idea (duh!) if such pieces were written by those with local knowledge and personal involvement.
So I, ever the optimist, am inviting comic readers from wherever to send me an account of their experience. What is available where you are, what if anything is produced there? Interested in what you read, what you see that others may not, what is comics culture like in your part of the world?

11/08/2013

16/08/2013

05/08/2013

28/07/2013
Witchcraft and Magic in art. July 27th - November 3rd
Modern Two (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art)
Drawings, paintings, film stills and prints. Including 16th and 17th century prints, Albrecht Durer, William Blake, Francisco de Goya, 20th century artists such as Paula Rego and Kiki Smith, and Wizard of Oz.

21/07/2013
The Beano comic from D.C. Thomson made it's first appearance seventy-five years ago July 2oth 1938.
The Beano was an institution, an essential part of childhood - comics once as integral to being young as was tree climbing. ( Talking for myself there aren't I? I have met folk who never read comics. Always think of that as a deprived childhood, a situation where out of respect for their disadvantages one tries to hide ones natural sense of pity.)

14/07/2013
That time of year again when nerves are stretched and fingernails shortened (mine anyway, it's not a universal requirement for some religious festival) while awaiting news of the future of a Button Man film and my financial hopes. The option DreamWorks held on Button Man is hanging on the possibilities of cancellation, renewal, or becoming a real working bit of movie making.

12/06/2013

30/06/2013
A demonstration of the march of comic-books to the high pastures of intellectual respectability is manifested in their appearance in the programmes of the cultural event and book love-in that is presenting its shiny well-read face to the world at the Edinburgh International Book Festival August 10th - 28th.

24/06/2013

18/05/2013

10/06/2013
Iain Banks. February 16th 1954 -June 9th 2013.
Iain Banks was a Scottish author writing mainstream fiction under the name Iain Banks, and science fiction as Iain M. Banks. His death comes after his website announcement on April 3rd of his inoperable cancer.
His SF books created the thoughtful and intriguing 'The Culture', a far future society of intelligent machines with what Banks called ' a well armed liberal niceness'.