David Maybury | Blog

Kevin Myers got the letter of the week - from a librarian responding to this:

Does not a state-subsidised library in a small town undermine the chances of an economically viable bookshop surviving nearby, especially during a recession? For then, people will choose to borrow books for free, rather than buy them.

My new favourite librarian (Aine Beausang, Roscrea, Co Tipperary) hit back with a well thought-out response - go have a read. (Library closures in the UK get a mention in The Independent UK)

And sticking with the Irish Independent comes news that the Irish Book Awards are running a competition with PJ Lynch - and the chance to win the shortlisted books from the awards. Details are here.

The Times UK has Oxford Literature Festival fever - with more big interviews. Nicolette Jones talks to Clara Vulliamy (Illustrator, children’s writer and Shirley Hughes’ daughter). And John Carey talks to George Orwell’s son, Richard Blair.

Daisy Goodwin previews the Off by Heart verse-reciting competition finals (similar to the Poetry Aloud competition)

In the Guardian Julia Eccleshare reviews Petr Horacek’s Elephant, Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monk’s What the Ladybird Heard and Emily Gravett’s Dogs. Siobhan Dowd’s Solace of the Road is reviewed by Frank Cotrell Boyce -

Stories are chains of consequence, one thing leads to another. But some of the most sublime stories end when an act of grace or love that means “it ain’t necessarily so”. Abraham doesn’t have to sacrifice Isaac. The Green Knight has the right to decapitate Gawain but barely nicks him with his sword. The prodigal son thinks he has spent all his father’s love but discovers that it is endless.

Dowd’s glittering career fits more or less into the fearful gap between diagnosis and death. Here’s a story about a journey which is equally fearful but which turns out to be worth it, thanks, as Holly says, to people who “did something to help me and asked for nothing back”.

And last but by no means least (one I missed from last week) Owen Vaughan talks to Tim Sale (the man behind Heroes, and much much more).

Two things. I can’t think of another show where art drives the plot. Other shows might have featured art in an episode but the art wouldn’t be part of the storytelling of the entire show. Second, I only have at most two seconds of screen time for any particular image so what I do has to have an immediate impact. My comic book background is invaluable for that because a comic book artist is trained to make an immediate impact with their work. Their primary job is to make the reader want to know what’s going on and that’s my primary job on Heroes. I hope the series survives. - Tim Sale

Time to close some tabs and share a few links that never made it onto the blog this week -

First out of the cage is Spiderman - superheroes ARE in vogue don’t ye know. The friendly neighbourhood web-slinger is being hit where it hurts most, his pocket. Peter Parker is going to feel the onslaught of financial armageddon when he loses his job at the Daily Bugle and starts working in McDonalds.

“The economy is going to hit people like Peter Parker the hardest,” writer Brian Michael Bendis told the New York News. “Web fluid doesn’t grow on trees, you know.”

And Spider-Man isn’t the only superhero to be taking a hit. Iron Man’s billionaire alter ego Tony Stark has had his assets frozen and is on the run after taking the blame for failing to stop an alien invasion. - Plenty more to read in the guardian.

And sticking with the Guardian, Chas Newkey-Burden investigates stomach sickening stories, paragraphs to puke by and vomitus vocabulary. Apparently it all started when he read The Twits…

It started with The Twits. My mum must have thought Roald Dahl’s classic was the ideal birthday present for her giggling, bookworm eight-year-old son. And it was, right until the scene when Mrs Twit mixes worms into spaghetti and serves it to her husband.

It haunted me for years, especially at mealtimes. I would ungratefully push my bowl of spaghetti back across the table to my mum. “I just can’t get those worms out of my mind,” I would shrug. A squeamish reader was born. - Read on, if you can stomach it!

Update: And in other comic related news - Samuel L Jackson is beating the recession with only one eye. He’s just agreed a deal to play Nick Fury (head of S.H.I.E.L.D) in Iron Man 2 - and potentially a further 8 movies, including Thor, Captain America and The Avengers. More over here.

Hergé’s famous investigative journalist, Tintin is in the limelight again (previous revelations last year). This time he is being brought out of the closet - dragged kicking and screaming - by Matthew Parris in the Times UK. The vicious rumour is being denied by officianados of the Tintin realm but Parris presents a convincing argument:

The only unambiguously heterosexual male mammal in Tintin’s entire universe. We know that because of Snowy’s tendency to be distracted by lady dogs: a tendency in which he is consistently foiled by his master and by Hergé’s plot. Pity this dog, wretchedly straight and trapped in a ghastly web of gay human males. - Matthew Parris.

Tintin features elsewhere on the interweb today - this time on the Forbidden Planet Blog. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are to appear in the movie adaptation as Tintin’s mustached and bowler hatted friends Thompson and Thomson. Matthew Parris had this to say:

Tintin first meets the flamboyantly moustachioed couple on a cruise in 1932 (Cigars of the Pharaoh), learning to distinguish between them by their different moustaches. The Thomson and Thompson life is a fancy-dress party: the pair love dressing up in exotic costumes and are once mobbed in the street for their Chinese opera costumes (The Blue Lotus). On other occasions they are seen (often with their signature bowlers still on) in striped swimming costumes, and a variety of folkloric garbs, always absurdly over-the-top. There is no evidence that either has ever had an eye for women, let alone a girlfriend.

Head over to dublincitycomiccon.com for more info on the weekend of fun, pictures and well… comics.

I haven’t disappeared, just been plenty busy with all of the happenings around Dublin over the last few days - including Octocon over the weekend. I got to meet some of the who-be-whats-its and writers of fantasy and science fiction, including the loverly Sarah Rees Brennan (who’s Demon Lexicon is coming out next year) and to hear some interesting characters talk about things I barely understood.

Saturday was Free Comic Book Day too and was run alongside 24 Hour Comic Book Day in the Central Dublin Hotel. I met the loverly Clíodhna Lyons who filled me in on all things comic booky - and if you haven’t already, get yourself out and pick up Clíodhna’s comic anthology “Sorry I can’t take your call right now but I’m off saving the world”.

Cathy Hopkins and Jenny Valentine (chaired by Patricia Kennon) are in town today to talk about writing for teenagers - details are here - and the UCD Creative Writing anthology Anything But Simple is being launched - details are over on you-know-who’s blog.

And finally - tomorrow will see yours truly and some very talented people take to the stage to read as part of Flip Flop, the Children’s Theatre Festival, in Dún Laoghaire. Hope to see you there!

Remember Rice Boy (pictured), linked here?

Well he’s back. Sort of. It’s Evan Dahm, the man behind the boy, who is back. This time with a webcomic based 100 years before the Rice Boy comic - Order of Tales.

I’ve just started and have been sucked in all over again.
Enjoy!

I’m getting to this one a bit late - Scamp, Comic Cast and the Forbidden Planet Blog all nodded to it yesterday - but the comic anthology in aid of GOAL is definitely worth a mention or two.

30 artists were given the the phrase I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now but I’m off saving the world and the 96 page anthology is the end product.

There’s a launch for the book at 9pm on Saturday (13 September) in Thurles, Co Tipperary but if you can’t make that don’t panic - the book’ll be available to buy for €7 online from 20 September. (Plans are already afoot for a Dublin release party) All of the proceeds from the anthology are being donated to GOAL and the book is dedicated to Conor Lyons, who died in Sri Lanka working for the charity.

Have a look at the GOAL anthology website for more on the contributors, the idea and a link to Cliodhna’s blog (the mastermind behind it all).

Update: The Comic Cast guys have Cliodhna on the show for an interview and the details for the Dublin launch are confirmed as Sunday September 21 at 9pm in the Stag’s Head.

A year already? The plans for this years 24 Hour Comic Day have been not-so-spuriously leaked onto the interweb. From the 18 until the 19 October readers, artists and the clinically curious will come together at the Central Hotel in Dublin for… well, for 24 hours of comics.

Saturday 18 will also be the first Irish Free Comics Day - with, hopefully, free comics by Irish writers/artists and small presses available around Ireland.

Details are at irish24hourcomics.com and on boards.ie.

Looking forward to it.

One week after this post. Camera pans across Dublin, the same route through the city as the week before. It is another overcast morning, a Thursday this time. Zoom in on the window of an apartment building - there is the same silhouette of a man. You can hear him wailing in agony now, his entire body shaking as he sobs. Finally he stops, his shoulders sag forward and he hangs his head. He is sitting at a desk using a computer. The camera enters through the window and you can see he is using a laptop. More books, pages and empty bottles of lucozade, maybe now a vodka too, clutter up the work space.

Move the camera over the man’s shoulder and focus on the laptop screen:

Couple that news with Diane Duane’s theory on why Harry Potter was moved and it could read as though Warner Brothers are preparing for a delay on Watchmen (court case dependent). More on the Guardian, the Guardian Film Blog and BBC.

Other news in the world of superheroes on the silver screen:
> Who are the next superheroes to appear on the silver screen? Independent UK has a look.
> DC’s Sleeper will be head up by Tom Cruise and produced by Spiderman’s Sam Raimi. RTE.ie had the good/bad news.

And we’re back. Plenty to catch up on so expect a few link posts to follow for a few days. Managed to read Eoin Colfer’s new Artemis Fowl over the weekend - brilliant, paradoxically confusing and delivered with the usual one line humor that you have come to expect.

On to some links:

> Writers’ behaving badly? Not any more.
> The Irish Times Comic Con review.
> More Comic Con fun on the Guardian.
> Yet More Comic Con revelations. And even more here.
> Was the Dark Knight too old for its viewers? The Irish Independent thinks so.
> RTE’s The Buzz has a ‘How To Draw’ page. Something to do at lunch…
> Richard Kidd’s obituary from the Independent.
> Observer Round Up last week - Kate Thompson, Patricia McCormick, Valérie Zenatti and EL Konigsburg.
> Guillermo Del Toro gets his Hobbit hat on. Times UK.

And in case you missed it, like I did, Stephanie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn was launched last week too. Huzzah!

Fancy a chance to win a snappy special edition by Kyle Baker? The Guardian is running a competition to mark the launch of Danny Finderoth’s The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels (pretty much what it says on the tin). To win one of the prints (or the runner-up prize of Fingeroth’s Rough Guide) all you have to do is answer one quick and easy question…

In Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel about the Holocaust, Maus, the characters are all presented as various types of anthropomorphic animals, according to nationality or race. What animal are the Germans? (Hint)

As a bonus - Fingeroth has a feature choosing his top 10 graphic novels (more books added to the list). Enjoy.

Couldn’t make it to San Diego last week? (No me neither - the jet was in for repair) But there is a lot of noise about it around the web - here’s a few quick links -

• The Times UK has a piece on it - here.
• Time Magazine have a decent run through
• The LA Times has pics and a huge archive of bits and pieces
• Comics Reporter has the Eisner Award Winners
• Neil Gaiman couldn’t make it - but the Coraline figurines did! (ps - Mr Gaiman is in Dublin on 27 October, have I mentioned that already?)
• And of course there is the comic-con website for more.

The most notable absence was Star Trek - no previews, no panels… nothing? But the big winner was Hugh Jackman (X-Men/Wolverine) who wowed the crowds when he went streaming after Marvel Comics’ Stan Lee (funnily enough, Wolverine is one of the only X-Men that Lee didn’t create). Here’s a clip -

Nick Park (the man behind Wallace and Gromit) is heading to the rank and file of the Beano for it’s 70th birthday issue. Well, he won’t quite be rank and file, more editor in chief…

My dream was to draw for The Beano. When I was 10 years old, I started drawing cartoon strips with The Beano in mind. - Nick Park

Time for a trip down memory lane - remember The Bashstreet Kids, The Numskulls and Billy Whizz ? Or the mad looking Gnasher badge that you got when you joined the club?

The new issue is out on Wednesday. Ah, go on.

A couple (literally just two) of comic/illustration/art-work/visually-pleasant launches out and about in Dublin.

First is the joint launch of The Comic Cast (the new place for all things podcast and comicbook) and Gazebo (a new indy comic, this time from Philip Barrett and Liam Geraghty - who just happens to be one half of the The Comic Cast). All the who-be-whats-its of comics will be there, as well as some musicians (Mary Bellos and Schmackey and the Salads) and other people. The madness kicks off tonight at half seven downstairs in Thomas Reads on Dame Street.

And secondly Mr Alan Clarke, that kinda/sorta/maybe/really talented art guy, is opening an exhibition in the Winding Stair Bookshop next week - where, no doubt, all the who-be-whats-its of art, comics, books, publishing, newspapers and meeja will be clambering to get themselves a glass of sparkling rosé and a look/see/ogle at the walls. (The floodgates open at half six on July 17 and will be on display in the bookshop ever after)

>> Also worth a mention: the second best blog name in existence, Liz Maybury.

Alan Moore was on RTE last thursday (the Dave Fanning drivetime show - presented by Eoin Sweeney)

Discussing Lost Girls, his other graphic work, magic and his new novel. Genius (and the only person I know, or well, don’t know really but have seen pictures of, with more beard than Eli Mordino)

Click to listen.

From the pages of Scamp comes the news that Patrick Lynch’s comic Last Bus is being launched tonight at half seven in the Stags Head. According to Senor Lynch himself it deals with ’such weighty themes as public transport, street violence, dream logic and absent friends.’

I’m kicking myself that I can’t make it.

Although, rumour has it that the Stags Head is downright creepy these days anyway. Looking forward to seeing the comic though.

More on comics and their literacy uses elsewhere on the interweb this morning:

Chicken Spaghetti has a great post on new comics for younger readers - and mentions A year of Reading, a blog from two teachers in the US, devoting a week to graphic novels.

And Bookwitch has a sceptical look through at the DFC - I can’t wait to see the first issue.

Have you heard about the 2D Comics Festival yet?*

The what festival?
It’s a two day (Friday - Saturday) comic festival hosted by the Verbal Arts Centre in Derry.

Uh-huh. Comics.
Yeah, seriously. Comics. Who doesn’t love superheroes at some stage? And it is proving a great way to get younger male readers interested in books. In fact, Verbal Arts are running a special day of workshops as part of the festival just for schools.

Okay. So when is it again?
It runs from Friday June 6th till Saturday 7th. In the Verbal Arts Centre.

And is there anyone famous lined up?
Well. Now that you mention it. Alan Martin is going to be there. I think Rufus Dayglo, David Hine, Simon Furman and Mark Stafford are all going to be there too.

Right. I don’t recognize any of these names. Should I?
Too right you should. Head over to the 2D website and have a read. Then book your train ticket.

I think I will.
Good. You do that.

Fine.
Fine.

More about the 2D Comics Festival here. And in issue 14 of Verbal Magazine.

*Conversation may never have happened.

Following this recommendation:

Have you read Rice Boy? Well, WHY NOT!?

I’m reading Rice Boy at the minute. You should too.

I’m sorry I never got to meet Rory Root. He sounds amazing - and judging by all of the notes appearing around the web he worked hard to push comic and graphic novels, in both sales and recognition.

The personal encounters from those who had met him are testament to how important he was: PII, Tom, Warren Ellis, Brian Hibbs, Neil Gaiman, Mark Evanier and dozens more on the Comic Relief dedicated pages.

Comic Relief is open and looks like it will keep going under the same ideals that RR instilled.