The picks of the week from around the web.
Frank Rich: “The Billary Road to Republican Victory”. The New York Times‘ great op-ed columnist looks ahead at what a Hillary Clinton ticket for the presidency might mean for the presidential elections. An interesting corrective to the otherwise commonplace view that Hillary is the stronger candidate for […]

Comics writer and historian Alfredo Castelli has a late Christmas present for us all — the entirety (704 pages!) of his annotated bibliography on the early American newspaper strip, Eccoci ancora qui (”Here We Are Again”) is now available online in PDF format! Meticulously researched and chock-full of rarely-seen images, this is a must for […]

Warren Craghead is one of the most interesting and innovative younger cartoonists working the margins of the comics medium these days. He has just posted his latest book, Lisboa, Lisbon on his new site, where it is available for reading and free downloading in PDF. What are you waiting for?

Fra Louisiana’s hjemmeside:
Manga
8. oktober 2008 - 8. februar 2009
Det var den berømte japanske maler Hokusai, der kaldte sine tegnede portrætskitser for manga, som bragte navnet til Vesten. Manga er et særlig japansk tegneserie-fænomen, der historisk rækker 200 år tilbage, og som i dag har international kultstatus med millioner af hæfter solgt hver måned, talløse filmatiseringer […]

Hardly surprising, here it is: Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian are the winners of the 2008 Grand Prix at Angoulême. An understandable, if somewhat dull choice, Dupuy and Berberian have played central role in the development of the French album-format comic for adults in the 1990s, first and foremost with their Monsieur Jean series (1991-2005), […]

This just in: Australian Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, published last year in several languages, amongst them in French as Là où vont nos pères, was awarded the Book of the Year award at Angoulême. Here’s the full list of the Essential Selection, along with other selected awards:
Essentials
Rutu Modan — Exit wounds
Pascal Rabaté & David Prudhomme […]

As always when Angoulême rolls around, discontents in the French comics community rise to the surface. A perennial issue is the relationship between artists and critics. In an ill-informed and ill-advised article in this week’s issue of French weekly Le Point, the journalist Romain Brethes sets up Joann Sfar, Marjane Satrapi and the other usual […]

The actor Heath Ledger was found dead in New York earlier today, possibly by his own hand. Sad news. In addition to being too young to go, he was a great talent. His performance as a passionate man lost the closet in Brokeback Mountain (pictured) was what made that film great rather than good. And […]

The Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men is finally out here in the UK. Although I enjoyed it, and would rate it amongst the best of their films, I still have something of a hard time understanding the insane hype it’s been getting from critics everywhere. It’s nothing new in their oeuvre, and hardly […]

We here at the Bunker are rather depressed that none of us will be going to Angoulême (Jan. 24-27) this year. In addition to always being worth the visit, we’re going to miss all of our Angoulême friends — the great people we unfortunately only meet there, once a year. Please be assured that we […]

There Will Be Blood directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!, and out now, is a great piece of baroque cinema. Sharing more than a passing semblance with Erich von Stroheim’s monumental Greed (1924), this is high Hollywood classicism brought through the wringer of idiosyncratic, but grand ambition. As […]

Frem til starten af februar vil man kunne se sort/hvide sider fra Blodbryllup og et kort bidrag til Johan Krarups Son Of A Horse-antologi på kunstcaféen “DIN NYE VEN”, lige en spytklat oppe af gaden fra Fantask, i Sct. Peders Stræde 34.
Hvis ikke man er i nærheden af København, men alligevel gerne vil se nærmere […]

For our readers in Paris, or those traveling to Angoulême at the end of the month, I just want to call attention to an exhibition of unpublished drawings by the great David B., La Guerre sainte, at the Galerie Anne Barrault, 22 rue Saint-Claude, 75003. The opening’s Saturday January 12 from 16.00-21.00, and the show’s […]

Chris Mautner’s New Year’s roundtable as usual brings together commentary from a panoply of comics critics, including yours truly. This time, the subject is the year in comics criticism.
Here’s my contribution:
Comics criticism seems to me to have received an almost unprecedented attention over the last few years. To me, it seems evident that this […]