The Lakes International Comic Art Festival has just announced Bryan and Mary Talbot, along with three representatives from LDComics, the largest women-led comics forum in the UK, and more acclaimed international comic creators, as part of the line-up for this year’s annual Festival (29th September – 1st October 2023) in Bowness-on-Windermere.
Joining founding Festival patrons Bryan and Mary at this year’s Festival are Dr Nicola Streeten, Nancy ArtMusic and Wallis Eates of LDComics; Flemish comic strip creator Pieter De Poortere and publisher Peter Rogiers; Gay News and Capital Gay cartoonist David Shenton; and Egyptian comic creator Shennawy.
The all-star line-up announced for the Festival so far includes Mehdi Annassi, aka Machima, Charlie Adlard, Gigi Cavenago, Gustavo Duarte, Hunt Emerson, Gerhard, Lina Ghaibeh, Peter Hogan, Jad (George Khoury), Comics Laureate Stephen L. Holland, Mai Koraiem, Michael Lark, Lucie Lomová, Dave McKean, Fouad Mezher, Bill Morrison, Seif Eddine Nechi, Steve and Annie Parkhouse, Sean Phillips, Tom Richmond, Marek Rubec, Festival poster designer Mohamed Salah, Václav Šlajch, Rachael Smith and “Awkward Yeti” creator Nick Seluk.
More creators from across the globe will be revealed soon, part of a weekend-long event that will open with a never-to-be repeated opening night of comedy with comedians Josie Long and Frankie Boyle (the latter also acomics creator) on Friday 29th September.
At this year’s Festival, LDComics Dr Nicola Streeten, Nancy ArtMusic and Wallis Eates will present a special panel discussion, “Revealing Hard Stories”. Among the topics to be discussed at this special event, LDC director Dr Nicola Streeten will introduce, with visuals, how The LDC British Council International Collaboration project REVEAL! Women’s Comics East Africa – UK platformed women’s comics to story the interaction of Climate Change with Gender.
The event will also see the announcement of a new Comics Laureate, chosen following the recently-announced “Open Call” for applications for the honorary, unpaid, position.
“Bryan and Mary have been stalwart supporters of our Festival since it began back in 2013” says Festival Director Julie Tait.
“Their new graphic novel, Armed with Madness, isn’t just a fantastic addition to their joint catalogue, just like Bryan’s The Tale of One Bad Rat, its subject, surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, has Northern connections. I’m sure there are plenty of fans of their work who will be interested to hear more about it.
“We’re also delighted at the huge interest from early ticket bookers in Gigi Cavenago and Gustavo Duarte,” Julie adds.
“We knew Gigi would be a popular pick with comic creators for his outstanding work on Dylan Dog, and Gustavo for his standout work for DC and Marvel, but it’s clear they are popular choices with fans, too!”
FESTIVAL DATES: The Lakes International Comic Art Festival returns to Bowness-on-Windermere 29th September to 1st October 2023
• Buy your 2023 Festival tickets here
• The Lakes International Comic Art Festival is online at: www.comicartfestival.com | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube | Little LICAF on Facebook | Little LICAF on Instagram
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Lakes International Comic Art Festival – Latest Guests
Pieter De Poortere is a Flemish comic strip creator, largely known to the general public mainly for the comic strips and the animation series, Boerke (“Dickie”).
De Poortere started his career in 2000 as a freelance illustrator and published first in Humo and, later, in Focus Knack. He made his debut in 2001 with the album Boerke, which immediately won the prize for the best Dutch-language album of the year. The cynical humour and the innocent graphic style are De Poortere’s clear signature.
Since then, several Boerke albums have appeared, the series has been translated into seven languages and the animation series, based on the books and produced by De Hofleveranciers, can be seen in more than ten countries. The success of this first series led to a quick decision on a second season, to be aired in 2023.
The wordless comics of De Poortere have an international potential, as shown by the success of the permanent exhibition of his work in the Brussels Comic Book Museum. But there is also a lot of interest abroad in Boerke, where the amiable loser stumbles through life as Dickie. In 2011, for instance, a wall of Boerke designed by De Poortere was inaugurated in Paris and in 2019 he published the album Super Mickey, in the Mickey Mouse homage series, published by Glénat.
De Poortere has also created several children’s books over the past 20 years. For the Van Eyck Year, he made the book Lam, for the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, in which he depicts the figures of the “The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” in his native city of Ghent.
Recently, Pieter De Poortere joined the board of directors of the Belgian Comic Strip museum in Brussels, as chairman.
Peter Rogiers started as a theatre producer and artist manager in 2002. Over the years, he developed a 360° approach around the artists the company supervises and started capturing comedy shows for VRT that he produced as a theatre producer, which resulted in the launch of The Court Suppliers in 2008.
Many years later, De Hofleveranciers has grown into a company that always puts the total approach first. You can’t put the company in one category.
Besides theatre productions, De Hofleveranciers (Peter Rogiers, together with his partner and creative director Renaat Van Ginderachter) produces TV shows, animation series, exhibitions, podcasts and more.
When Pieter De Poortere joined the company, a publishing house was also set up that initially only published his books, but has since expanded its activities from comics to include educational publications, board games, and non-fiction.
Boerke, Pieter De Poortere’s comic strip character, is a strong example of how to take a comic strip to the next level through a 360° approach with already thirteen books, two animation series seasons, a film in development, its own beer, a clothing line, and all within the company’s values and with care for the identity of the character of the comic strip.
They’re now working with various organisations, looking at how to use the comic strip for multiple applications, including festivals, cities, tourism and more.
British cartoonist David Shenton has been creating LGBT+ cartoons and comics since the 1970s when his work started appearing in publications such as Gay News, Him and Capital Gay.
Along with cartoonists such as Alison Bechdel and Kate Charlesworth, David has been at the forefront of exploring LGBT+ life and issues through cartoon and comic art in the late twentieth century. His latest book, Forty Lies: A Work of IPSEDIXITISM, will be released in September 2023.
David’s other books include Get Her! (2008), Phobia Phobia (1988), Salomé (text by Oscar Wilde, 1986), Bananas Are Not the Only Fruit (1993) and, with Kate Charlesworth, Drawn Out & Painted Pink (2009). His book Stanley and the Mask of Mystery, published in 1983, was one of the world’s first LGBT+ graphic novels.
David’s strips have also featured in anthologies including AARGH! Magazine (1988), No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics edited by Justin Hall (2013) and Strip AIDS, edited by Don Melia (1987).
David studied printed textiles at Loughborough College of Art and received his teaching certificate at Leeds University in 1971. Alongside his career as an artist, he has also taught literacy at Norwich Prison, Hackney College, and the Education Department of the London Zoo.
Born in Cairo 1978, Shennawy studied applied arts and has worked in the advertising for 15 years. He also published a few comics for children’s magazines between 2001-2009. In 2009, along with 20 other artists, he was selected for the exhibition of “Jeunes Talents” (Young Talents) in Angouleme.
He co-founded TokTok magazine in January 2011, and has been its editor and producer, going on to found The 9th Art Editions in 2012. which became the official publisher of TokTok. The 9th Art aims to promote comics culture in Egypt and the region, and also to connect the artists with their peers around the world.
He then co-founded CairoComix Festival in Cairo in 2015 and is now working as the Festival’s Manager and Art director.
Currently he lives in Brussels, Belgium where he works as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer, his most recent book, Fich w Tashbih, published by The 9th Art last year.
Multiple award-winning artist Bryan Talbot has been working in comics for over forty years. He’s produced underground, fantasy and superhero stories such as Batman and (with Neil Gaiman) Sandman, and graphic novels including The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, The Tale of One Bad Rat, Alice in Sunderland, the Grandville series, as well as illustrating the books written by Mary Talbot, including the recently-published Armed with Madness, a biography of surrealist artist Leonora Carrington (SelfMadeHero, 2023).
They are both founding patrons of The Lakes International Comic Art Festival.
Bryan was awarded a Doctorate in Arts and another in Letters and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Mary M. Talbot is an academic turned graphic novelist. Her first graphic novel, Dotter of her Father’s Eyes (with Bryan Talbot), won the 2012 Costa Biography Award. Her most recent, also working with Bryan, are Armed with Madness, a biography of surrealist artist Leonora Carrington (SelfMadeHero, 2023), and Rain (2019), is a rallying cry to protect the planet.
Her previous graphic novels are Sally Heathcote, Suffragette (2014, with Kate Charlesworth and Bryan Talbot) and The Red Virgin (2016, with Bryan Talbot). Her most recent academic book is Language and Gender (3rd ed, 2019).
She is currently Visiting Professor of Graphic Narrative at Lancaster University.
Born in 1977 in the Alsace region of France, Nicolas Wild, a former student of the famous illustration workshop at the Strasbourg School of Applied Arts, created and co-wrote Le vœu de Marc (“Marc’s Wish”), together with fellow French illustrators Boulet and Lucie Albon. In this all-ages graphic novel, he showed a hint of the dark comedic tone that had already been revealed in a series of comic strips published in 2000 under the title Le Bourreau (“The Executioner”).
In 2005, Nicolas accepted a job offer in Afghanistan where he was given the task of drawing an adaptation of the Afghan constitution. In 2007, he launched a series of books titled Kabul Disco, in which he recounted his experiences as an expat there.
The discovery of the Persian world then led him to Iran, an adventure he subsequently catalogued in the series So Mute was Zarathustra, an eye-opening journey through current events in Iran.
He is currently at work on Kabul Disco Book 3.
LDComics is the largest women-led comics forum in the UK, open to all, who believe in the transformative potential of the comics form to offer wellbeing through making and reading. The accessibility of the form as a storytelling medium has created fertile ground for a wealth of casual creators and minority voices.
Led by a committee of five UK-based women creators, Rachael Ball, Emma Burleigh, Lou Crosby, Wallis Eates and Nicola Streeten, LDC value comics as a tool to question and challenge injustices and inequalities in society on a global scale.
They organise and host comic-related events in the UK and beyond and delivery is assisted by a group of volunteers.
LDC plan to unleash the power of comics by providing a platform and opportunities for comic creators to share their work.
At this year’s Festival, LDComics Dr Nicola Streeten, Nancy ArtMusic and Wallis Eates will present a special panel discussion, “Revealing Hard Stories”.
LDC director Dr Nicola Streeten will introduce, with visuals, how The LDC British Council International Collaboration project REVEAL! Women’s comics East Africa – UK platformed women’s comics to story the interaction of Climate Change with Gender. Identifying FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) and living with HIV as issues prevalent in Kenya and the UK this informed the 2023 development of REVEAL!
LDC commissioned artist NancyArtMusic will talk about the delivery and reception of this activity. LDC member Wallis Eates will speak about the REVEAL! project in relation to the LDC strand she launched in 2022, Safe Space for Hard Stories, launched in 2023.
Dr Nicola Streeten is a UK-based multi-award-winning graphic novelist and comics scholar. Her graphic memoir Billy, Me & You (Myriad Editions, 2011) was followed by The Inking Woman (Myriad Editions, 2018) a 250-year illustrated history of British women’s cartoonists. This was complemented by theoretical publication UK Feminist Cartoons and Comics: A Critical Survey (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). She is currently working on Yield, her second graphic novel.
Nicola is founding director of LDComics – a women-led forum championing graphic novel works, particularly by women.
Nancy ArtMusic is a London based comics artist. In 2022, she was selected to work on the British Council International Collaboration project REVEAL! Women’s comics East Africa – UK, collaboration between LDComics, UK and Kymsnet Media Network, Kenya.
LDComics received a British Council extension award and commissioned Nancy to work with Red Ribbon Living Well CIC, producing a zine for dissemination at the Women of the World Festival, London, 2023.
Wallis Eates was shortlisted for the Myriad Editions First Graphic Novel Award in 2014, and has produced a number of zines and self-published comics and contributed to various anthologies.
In 2020, her collaboration with Dr. Victoria Anderson and prisoners at HMP Wandsworth, Wings, was released. She is currently working on Like an Orange, that came about after being an artist-in-residence at the charity, Headway, which is due to be published this year.
Wallis regularly runs fun and experimental online drawing workshops, “Draw to Explore.”
FESTIVAL DATES: The Lakes International Comic Art Festival returns to Bowness-on-Windermere 29th September to 1st October 2023
• Buy your 2023 Festival tickets here
• Buy your “Frankie Boyle and Josie Long Talk Comics” Festival Opening Night tickets here
• The Lakes International Comic Art Festival is online at: www.comicartfestival.com | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube | Little LICAF on Facebook | Little LICAF on Instagram
• Sign up for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival Newsletter
The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: British Comics, Comic Art, Comics, Creating Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News, Events
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