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Post by tundra on May 2, 2014 9:31:08 GMT -5
Probably mainly one for the UK forum members, this one, but since there are a few of us I thought it might be interesting to draw a little attention to the "Comics Unmasked" exhibition of British comics taking place at the British Library from today until 19th August www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/comics-unmasked/For those who don't know, the British Library is the national library of the UK and also a legal deposit library, meaning that it holds a copy of every book and periodical published in the UK - so there are likely to be some very rare and interesting items on show. Including, apparently, example's of Bob Monkhouse's brief career as a comics creator. I'll certainly be going at some point! |
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Post by thephantomwelshman on May 3, 2014 3:07:44 GMT -5
I'll definitely be making a trip to see this within the next month. Looks really good.
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jons
Fearless Defender
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Post by jons on Jun 17, 2014 14:35:36 GMT -5
They’re having some related events with the likes of Neil Gaiman, Robert Crumb etc and last night was Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis on superheroes. It was a really good general discussion. Warren said superheroes are the modern myths that help us with the processing of large-scale challenges, aspirational but not in the obvious sense. Scale is an important theme, even with the street level characters who have to face the evils of the whole city. Grant too was talking about the existential, cosmic issues that we face as human beings- love, death, cruelty, compassion- and this explains the genres popularity. He hates the titles that are trying to be realistic. Really great, deep stuff.
There was some talk about the limitations of the licensed properties of the Big 2, but Warren mentioned Moon Knight no. 4 as an example of how you can do crazier things with them- and even with the A list at times. But they both said the reason the introduction of new characters has slowed down in the Big 2 is because people are saving their best for the creator-owned stuff now. Also comics will always beat film for the extended plot. There was also discussion of why British writers have been successful in recent decades.
Afterwards I chatted with Grant about We3 and hadn’t realised that he drew out all those innovative panel sequences for Frank Quitely himself. I praised Warren for his interpretation of MK and said what a shame it was only 6 issues- but he said "nothing lasts forever" and was in no mood to chat about it! He did sign my Planetary omnibus.
The exhibition was nicely designed by Dave McKean- the curated collection itself was OK- it would have been nice to see more process pieces but the whole point is to get people to come and use the library’s collection, which is pretty comprehensive apparently.
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