STATION DELTA ACHIEVES ORBIT
Following delays, Thierry Smolderen's "Station Delta" launches its first edition today with more than 500 screen pages of comics, animation and editorial content, including the first comics work by designer Genevieve Gauckler. A subsequent edition of the web publication with all-new content is expected to debut in time for the 2003 Angoulême comics festival.
INFO: Station Delta
posted by Egon on Friday, December 13, 2002

BACK IN METROPOLIS
Dark Horse will publish an English-language edition of Osamu Tezuka's 1949 graphic novel, "Metropolis," the ICv2 retail industry website reports. Tezuka's book, itself inspired by Fritz Lang's eponymous 1927 silent film (based on a novel by Thea von Harbou), was taken as source material for a recent animated film. Tezuka's book tells the story "of a beautiful, artificially created girl seeking her non-existent parents in a near-future world populated by humans and the slave-driven robots that serve them," as summarized by ICv2.
INFO: ICv2
posted by Egon on Friday, December 13, 2002

JAIME'S HYMN
Hot on the heels of a chat with brother Beto, the latest in the Comics Journal's series of online audio archives features an hour of excerpts from a 1989 interview with Jaime Hernandez, conducted by Gary Groth and R. Fiore. "The interview," according to the Journal's website, "... finds Jaime holding forth on his characters, his working methods, his influences, and how he learned to draw like that." The audio files will be online and available for download until January 17.
INFO: The Comics Journal
posted by Egon on Friday, December 13, 2002

COOKE TOASTS COVARRUBIAS FOR BBC
In his dated but nevertheless interesting March 12 "Letters from America" column for the BBC, Alistair Cooke took former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani's honorary knighthood as an opportunity to write an appreciation of cartoonist Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957). Cooke described Covarrubias as "a fine caricaturist" whose regular feature in Vanity Fair was "a monthly, full-page colour cartoon [which] brought two people together for a social meeting, an interview - two famous people whose appearance in life together anywhere, at any time, would have been inconceivable, preposterously unlikely." Adds Cooke, "I thought with affection back to Covarrubias, and not a little yearning, because he drew at a time when there was an abundance of fine cartoonists on both sides of the Atlantic." According to text written to accompany the Library of Congress' 1998 "Stagestruck" exhibit of performing arts caricatures, Covarrubias travelled to New York on scholarship in 1923 "and quickly gained a reputation as an accomplished caricaturist. His skilled and critical eye, often attributed to New York influences, was developed in Mexico, where, by the age of 18, he had contributed illustrations to popular Latin American newspapers." A Covarrubias caricature of Mae West reproduced on the Library's website offers evidence of the artist's "profound influence on Al Hirschfeld."
INFO: BBC News
INFO: Library of Congress: "Stagestruck"
posted by Egon on Friday, December 13, 2002

MATT, DARCY: TWO PROFILES OR A VASE?
Toronto literary magazine "Tattle Creek" includes in its latest issue a lengthy feature on cartoonist Joe Matt. The piece, reprinted in its entirety on the magazine's website, functions as interview, appreciation and analysis, focusing largely on Matt's loyal fanbase in light of both his revelatory autobiographical style and the infrequent, sporadic schedule of his "Peepshow" comic book. Meanwhile, in the antipodes, Australian cinema webzine "Senses of Cinema" examines Dame Darcy's oeuvre in its November - December 2002 edition. Beginning with her films and expanding focus to cover music, comics and other projects, the piece critically examines Darcy's contradictory "lipstick luddite" aesthetic as expressed through contemporary media.
INFO: Taddle Creek Magazine
INFO: Senses of Cinema
posted by Egon on Friday, December 13, 2002

2003 ALPH-ART NOMINEES
French comics site labd.com announces the Sélection des Prix d'Angoulême 2003, nominees for the Alph-Art Award to be given at this year's Festival international de la BD d'Angoulême. This year's list is markedly international, with seven American nominations, "two Japanese, one Norwegian, two Italian, three Belgian and twenty-four French" nominations. The American nods include Chris Ware's "Jimmy Corrigan" and Dan Clowes' "David Boring" which have, in their French editions, been nominated for "Best Album." Also nominated for overseas editions are Brian Bendis and Michael Oeming for "Best Dialogue" in "Powers;" Bendis and Marc Andreyko for "Best Story" in "Torso;" and Mike Mignola for "Best Art" in "Hellboy: Conqueror Worm." The complete list follows:

Meilleur album (Best Album)
- Le Chat du rabbin tome 1 par Joann Sfar (Dargaud)
- 5 est le numéro parfait par Igort (Casterman)
- David Boring par Daniel Clowes (Cornélius)
- 676 apparitions de Killoffer par Killoffer (L’Association)
- Jimmy Corrigan par Chris Ware (Delcourt)
- McCay tome 2 par Smolderen et Bramanti (Delcourt)

Meilleur premier album (Best First Album)
- Supermurgeman joue et gagne par Mathpas (Les requins marteaux)
- Banquise par Ricard et Gaultier (Soleil)
- Chhhht par Jason (Atrabile)
- Phenomenum par Kaminka et Vedrines (Glénat)
- L’âge de raison par Matthieu Bonhomme (Carabas)
- Sainte famille par Mussat (Ego comme X)

Meilleur scénario (Best Story)
- Quartiers lointains par Taniguchi (Casterman)
- Torso par Bendis et Andreyko (Semic)
- Max Fridman tome 4 par Giardino (Glénat)
- Le Pouvoir des innocents tome 5 par Hirn et Brunschwig (Delcourt)
- Garduno par Squarzoni (les requins marteaux)
- Monster par Urasawa (Kana)

Meilleur dialogue (Best Dialogue)
- Quelques mois à l’Amélie par Jean-Claude Denis (Aire libre/Dupuis)
- De capes et de crocs par Ayroles et Masbou (Delcourt)
- La Nurse aux mains sanglantes par Sokal (Casterman)
- Les Losers sont des perdants par Pichelin et Herse (Fluide glacial)
- Lincoln : Grain de sable par Jouvray (Paquet)
- Powers par Bendis et Oeming (Semic)

Meilleur dessin (Best Art)
- Vitesse moderne par Blutch (Aire libre/Dupuis)
- Le Dérisoire par Supiot et Omond (Glénat)
- Hellboy : le ver conquérant par Mignola (Delcourt)
- Oscar et Monsieur O. par Moynot (Glénat)
- Manhattan beach 1957 par Hermann et Yves H. (Le Lombard)
- Docteur Jekyll et Monsieur Hyde par Mattotti et Kramsky (Casterman)
INFO: labd.com
posted by Egon on Wednesday, December 11, 2002

TCAF RULES THE NORTH
The Toronto Comic Arts Festival has announced a preliminary guest list featuring an impressive roster of cartoonists including Jason Lutes, Marc Bell, Chester Brown, Tom Devlin, Megan Kelso, Jason Little, Brian Ralph and Seth. The show, to be held at Trinity St. Paul's Centre on Saturday, March 29th 2003 and chaired by the Beguiling's Peter Birkemoe, aims "to present the quality and prestige of the local and international artists in a package that's respected and recognized," according to the TCAF website. The guest list as announced is subject to change and "will increase dramatically in size as we get further confirmation from invited guests. There will be, in all likelihood, nearly 50 guests attending the festival." Lutes and "Kabuki" creator David Mack will be in attendance as the Festival's "Guests of Honour."
INFO: Toronto Comic Arts Festival
posted by Egon on Tuesday, December 10, 2002

MAX BEERBOHM'S CARTOON LEGACY
"As a witer, Beerbohm was a great cartoonist," announces in headline the New York Times' December 10 book review of N. John Hall's biography, "Max Beerbohm: A Kind of Life." Beerbohm succeeded George Bernard Shaw as The Saturday Review's drama critic. "A friend and admirer of Oscar Wilde and in some respects an imitator," Beerbohm paled in comparison to Shaw as critic and as writer. However, the Times offers, "[m]ore alive, in their gracefully weird way, are [Beerbohm's] caricatures of contemporary and other literary figures. Mr. Hall has edited a book of them and includes a pleasing selection here. He remarks, with perhaps only a little exaggeration, that there is hardly a recent biography of a 19th-century British writer that lacks a Beerbohm drawing." Beerbohm gave up cartooning in 1930 at the age of 58: "I began to remember people more or less exactly as they were, and was obliged to put in the exaggerations consciously," he explained.
INFO: The New York Times
posted by Egon on Tuesday, December 10, 2002

TRIUMPH MEETS SNOOPY
The December 14 episode of Saturday Night Live will feature a new animated short by writer Robert Smigel satirizing "A Charlie Brown Christmas," the New York Post's "Page Six" reports. The ABC television network showed the classic animated Peanuts special on Sunday, December 8 and will rebroadcast the program on Friday, December 13, followed on both occasions by "'Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales,' a collection of new animated vignettes based on the comic strips of the late Charles M. Schulz," according to the L. A. Times' "Calendar Live" website. "Although Schulz died in 2000, two key players behind the 1965 show were involved with this special: executive producer Lee Mendelson and producer Bill Melendez."
INFO: The New York Post: Page Six
INFO: L.A. Times: Calendar Live
posted by Egon on Tuesday, December 10, 2002

THE TIME OF THE IMP
Time magazine's Andrew Arnold celebrates the most recent issue of Dan Raeburn's "Imp" in the December 5 edition of his online "Time.comix" column. Arnold heaps praise upon Raeburn and his in-depth coverage of the seedy side of Mexican historietas: "A true cultural critic, Raeburn folds interviews, deep research and travel into an essay form that uses the little comix as a lens to examine everything from Latin-American history to the different uses of irony across cultures." Arnold himself was motivated to indulge in some of the digest-sized comics, "[f]or strictly 'journalistic' purposes," concluding finally, "[i]f comix criticism ever becomes sexy it will be Dan Raeburn and his 'Imp' series that make it so."
INFO: Time
posted by Egon on Monday, December 09, 2002