Released last year, Playing Out by Jim Medway is a 48-page story about Connor, Kieran and Jamal mooching around Manchester City Centre – but these youths are cats portrayed as humans. downthetubes contributor Matt Badham has just re-plugged the title,… Read More ›
Designing comics: In a coda to a trio of shows about the use of fine art in comics, Alex Fitch looks at graphic design in comics, in a panel discussion with Rian Hughes (2000AD), Karen Rubins (V and A artist… Read More ›
Neill Cameron is a cartoonist and (occasional) educationalist whose comic strips have appeared in The DFC and The Phoenix. Recently, he was commissioned to create a gigantic comic strip that could be mounted on the side of the Story Museum… Read More ›
The Department of English at the Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland, has just issues s Call for Papers for its Fifth English Literary Meeting. Word and Image Crossovers, an international and interdisciplinary conference, will take place 29th – 30th… Read More ›
Two top critics have made Paul Gravett‘s Comics Art their top choices of 2013, leaving the acclaimed comic author “really chuffed”. In The Observer, Rachel Cooke has picked Comics Art as one of her Graphic Books of The Year: “Those… Read More ›
After successful conferences in Bournemouth, Glasgow and Dundee, the 2014 Fifth International Graphic Novel and Comics Studies conference, to be held 23rd – 25th June next year in Manchester, has announced its theme – production, institution and sedition – and… Read More ›
In addition to the Comics Forum conference which forms part of this weekend’s Thought Bubble in Leeds this week, the academically-focused organisation also be running a table at the Thought Bubble convention this coming weekend where team members will be talking… Read More ›
Award nominated graphic novelists John Chalmers and Sandra Marrs – better known as Metaphrog – have been commissioned to produce a graphic novel by Creative Scotland, as part of the Scottish Government’s Time To Shine arts strategy for young people… Read More ›
The Dundee Comics Day, organised by and held at the University of Dundee, has been running annually under one name or another since 2008 with the academic conference with the non-academic name of Biff! Bam!! Crikey!!! preceding it in 2007,… Read More ›
Supermen and Wonder Women are living amongst us, not only in comics, films, games and television, but as cosplay escapism, alternative personas, communities and lifestyles. As part of this year’s Comica Festival in London, Alex Fitch will be discussing with… Read More ›
Papers are invited for the first academic collection dedicated to the work of comics writer, novelist, and pop culture commentator Warren Ellis. Ellis’ renowned comics career stretches back to anthology comic Deadline, but he has also published two novels and… Read More ›
“Comics are not funny any more. Well most of them are not,” says Peter Stanbury in a plug on his web site for Comics Art from Tate Publishing, by Paul Gravett and him — as designer. Officially due for release on 7th… Read More ›
Registration is now open for Comics Forum 2013: Small Press and Undergrounds, which will be running at Leeds Central Library on the 21st and 22nd of November. This year features a fantastic lineup of speakers and papers, including a talk… Read More ›
The past 30 years have offered a growing and changing body of scholarship on images of fantastic women in American popular culture. Collections from Marleen Barr’s Future Females (1981) and Future Females: The Next Generation (2000) to Elyce Rae Helford’s… Read More ›
Children who read for pleasure are likely to do significantly better at school than their peers, according to new research from the London-based Institute of Education. All the more reason to give them a comic, then – an ethos adopted… Read More ›
The Sequart Research & Literacy Organization (sequart.org) has just released its newest book of comics analysis, Shot in the Face: A Savage Journey to the Heart of Transmetropolitan, edited by Chad Nevett. Published in 1997-2002, Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson’s… Read More ›
“All artistic work, like all human activity, involves the joint activity of a number, often a large number, of people. Through their cooperation, the art work we eventually see or hear comes to be and continues to be. The work… Read More ›
Transitions 4 is a one-day symposium in October promoting new research and multi-disciplinary academic study of comics/ comix/ manga/ bande dessinée and other forms of sequential art, now in its fourth year at Birkbeck. Transitions is part of Comica, the… Read More ›
This year’s Comics Forum in Leeds this November (21-22nd – tying in with Thought Bubble) is titled Small Press and Undergrounds: A Conference on Comics, and a Call for Papers has just gone out. Although comics tend to be understood… Read More ›
ComicOut, an Italian organisation committed to the development of comic art, is to hold a virtual international workshop about storytelling in comics, with David Lloyd as host. David Lloyd is the creator of V for Vendetta, which mask is today… Read More ›