Off-Panel: October 20, 2014
Some Monday morning links to warm your weary bones.
“Bestselling graphic novelist Dave Gibbons is to become the first Comics Laureate. The announcement was made by internationally acclaimed comics authority and graphic novelist Scott McCloud at the launch of new charity Comics Literacy Awareness (CLAw) at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival on 17th October.
The role of Comics Laureate is to be appointed biannually to a distinguished comics writer or artist in recognition of their outstanding achievement in the field. Their role is to champion children’s literacy through school visits, training events for school staff and education conferences.”
Dave Gibbons has been named the first UK comics laureate.
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“To put it simply, there’s never really been one Wolverine. He’s an idea, and you can’t kill ideas. Wolverine has always been what we needed him to be and, right now, I guess we need him dead.”
Wolverine is dead. Long rot Wolverine?
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“Superheroes…just the word hero bothers me. What the fuck does that mean? It’s a false, misleading conception, the superhero. Then, the way they apply violence to it, it’s absolutely right wing. If you observe the mentality of most of those films, it’s really about people who are rich, who have power, who will do the good, who will kill the bad. Philosophically, I just don’t like them.”
Birdman director Alejandro González Iñárritu is not wild about superhero movies.
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Readers at an outdoor rental, Hong Kong, 1947. Source: Hong Wrong.
“We usually don’t think of China as having a rich tradition of making comics, and discussions of Chinese comics focus on manhua, the Chinese comics that were inspired by Japanese manga. While it’s true that most of the comics being produced now are manhua, this was not the case for much of the 20th century. From their beginnings in the 1920s until their popularity bottomed out in the 1990s, lianhuanhua were some of the most widely read literature in the country.”
A fascinating read on China’s lianhuanhua, or pulp comics scene, courtesy of the Comics Journal.
