I’m in Venice at the moment and have no steady internet connection, and am thus not able to do much here on the blog. But I’d like to take the time out to advertise this: the 10-year anniversary of Zven Balslev’s quality art zine/publication, and now art publisher and record label, Smittekilde! Congrats!
If you happen […]

This essay was originally published in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition Comix — on the contemporary intersections between comics and the fine arts — at Brandts klædefabrik, Odense (Sep. 22 2007 — Jan 6 2008). Now that the exhibition is over, it is presented here in a slightly edited version. The catalogue is available in […]

Roald Bergman has dug up images of the Disney cartoons recently “found” in Norway, which the “discoverer” claims were drawn by Hitler. And if you believe that, I have this nice bridge to sell you.

More good stuff going down the weekend of the 8. This is in New York and looks like a must. Do go.
Want to know more about Töpffer? Read the Bunker’s introduction here, and the review of David Kunzle’s recent monograph on the cartoonist here.

We MUST make this work. We MUST have a kind of integration where we can be both Christian and Muslim and live next door to each other.
But we need unequivocal support for democracy. For our basic rights. For the equality of the sexes. And this applies to everyone in this country.
– Villy Søvndal, political leader, […]

Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure, out this week, reconstructs the last FF story by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, never published in its original form, but chopped up and combined with artwork by Johns Buscema and Romita in FF #108, which went on sale the same month as Jack Kirby debuted for his new publisher, […]

The great folks from Hamelin and Canicola are, once again, organising a quality comics festival in Bologna la grassa! It looks great; If my travel planner for Italy that weekend wasn’t already booked in another city, I’d be very tempted!

[PICTURE REMOVED]
As a person living in Nørrebro, the Copenhagen neighbourhood where Ungdomshuset used to be, I’ve witnessed quite a lot in recent years. During the battle over “Ungdomshuset”, when anarchists and other pale kids dressed in black defended their base against the radical Christian community, “Faderhuset” (”Father’s House”), by fighting the police, lots of cars […]

Already some ways into 2008, I figured I’d still write a little something about the hip hop albums I enjoyed the most in the past year. The genre is clearly going through changes, seeing not only a substantial generational shift and a geographical displacement of its creative locus to the South, but also what seems […]

The danger arises not only when there is an assumption on the religious side that membership of the community (belonging to the umma or the Church or whatever) is the only significant category, so that participation in other kinds of socio-political arrangement is a kind of betrayal. It also occurs when secular government […]

Today, major Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende prints Kurt Westergaard’s notorious Mohammed-cartoon for the very first time, alongside an editorial entitled: “No Discussion Should End in a Funeral“. Since the Cartoon Crisis began in September 2005, Berlingske Tidende has played its part in a very careful manner, similar to that of most American papers. But the […]

This morning, three people with Muslim background were arrested by Danish Police, suspected of conspiring to kill Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, one of the 12 cartoonists that portrayed the prophet Mohammed in Danish paper Jyllands-Posten in 2005.
Among the suspects are both Danish as well as non-Danish citizens. The group has been under surveillance by […]

Mainstream comics auteur Steve Gerber, creator of Howard the Duck and Omega the Unknown, passed away Sunday night. Tom Spurgeon has as fine an obituary as you’re going to find up, providing an appreciation of key works and a career overview. Mark Evanier delivers the more personal perspective and friends and fans congregate at Gerber’s […]

The Arrival, by Shaun Tan, is the most overrated comic of the past year. Published more or less simultaneously in several languages, it seems to have received unanimously positive, bordering on rave criticism since it came out — from the mainstream press as well as the comics cognoscenti. Top cap things off, it was awarded […]