Sorry about the string of no updates lately. We’re in Madrid where it’s raining cats and dogs. Doesn’t matter too much though - the city’s always great, and at this time we’re treated to a big Tintoretto show at the Prado - the first retrospective since 1937. It’s unfortunately slightly underwhelming, especially since in the […]

No, I’m not continuing my diatribe against all those talented, boring French cartoonists here. Just wanted to note that the inimitable Bart Beaty touches upon the issue in his review of Christophe Blain’s Gus over at Comics Reporter. Go, read.
Tangentially related: the press kit strip by Joann Sfar Thomas mentions in his Persepolis-at-Cannes post […]

Marjane Satrapi’s animated feature film Persepolis (based on her comic of the same title, as everyone should know) has been selected for the Official Competition at the 60th Festival de Cannes. Persepolis (co-directed by Vincent Paronnaud) will be facing hard competition though, since the Palme d’Or-line-up features new films by Wong Kar-Wai, Joel & Ethan […]

Last week, I finally got the time to check the Hogarth show at the Tate. A very egalitarian and attractive retrospective of his career and oeuvre with equal attention paid to the bourgeois and the burlesque, the benevolent and the biting. Almost all of his most important work is assembled there, and it is a […]

Lest we forget, tragedy is nigh universal, and today a bomb exploded in Sadriya, Baghdad, killing at least 140 people, while other bombs around the city brought the day’s total up to over 170. A nasty reminder that our thoughts tend to stray from there.

The weekend of May 4-5 will see inaugural edition of Oslo Comics Expo in, well, Oslo. In contrast to its older, distinguished cousin, the Raptus festival, which has been held yearly in Bergen for a good number of years now and this year unfortunately presents what may be its most anachronistic programme, OCX will focus […]

Shock, outrage, sympathy and sorrow. Those are the feelings of the moment.
 
Our thoughts are in Virginia.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Picture by David Mazzucchelli.

As you may be aware, French cartoonist Placid was fined €500 on January 18 for having insulted the French police with his cover (pictured) to a self-help book, Vos Papiers! Que faire face à la police? - on the, in France, ubiquitous control of identity carried out by the police - published back in 2001. […]

If you’re in Copenhagen on Monday, stop by the opening of the latest gallery show by Rytz & Ehlers, or, as they call their individual projects, Inkforest and Duudle. The opening is, at the same time, the grand opening of Gallery Doodletown.
Rytz was, by the way, featured in our grand anthology BLÆK last year […]

The Metabunker now has a logo! It’s taken a while, but there it is. Hope you like it. It was designed by Loka?, the best kept secret of Danish design, and it was conjured unto the page by our long-suffering techhead, Tue (good lookin’ out pal!).

The discussion on French nigh-mainstream comics continues! (scroll to the bottom for full linkage). Alex Holden, who chimed in earlier, returns with more comments:
Hi Again Matthias-
I have still been thinking about this discussion a bit.
I can’t agree with your statements that Blutch (in particular) is not interested in exploration, since he has been pretty restless […]

Just read Joe Sacco’s “Down! Up!” from the latest Harper’s. A new strip from Sacco is a relatively rare thing, and 16 new pages is certainly a welcome event, especially when they’re this good. Reporting from Iraq, Sacco has sat in on a couple of American officers training a group of Iraqis to be soldiers […]

Jeg har før reklameret for Bennis website - www.benniboedker - her i Bunkeren, men nu har han lagt en række af sine artikler om børnelitteratur og tegneserier op i PDF. Blandt artiklerne om tegneserier, skrevet til Information, finder man hans kritik af en række af de nye tegneserier, Rackham har slået på tromme for de […]

Whoa, I just discovered some more pictures taken at this year’s Angoulême festival that I’d forgotten all about. Amongst them are pictures of such luminaries as Alison Bechdel, Thierry Cappezzone, Sergio Toppi and Dan Zettwoch - check ‘em out in our Angoulême album.