Image Heavy

First up is the very surreal self contained comic, YB427, by Rowan Clair.

I've always enjoyed Rowan's unique art and good eye for composition, so it was great to see this all put into a comic. Her characters are engaging right from the onset beacuse of the way they look.

I really enjoyed the story of this comic, possibly the most unusual thing I've read in small press, and very refreshing and thoughtful.

The other small press comic read this week was the first issue of Arthur and Posy, written by Ella Risbridger and drawn by Graham Johnson.

I love this kind of straight forward, to the point art work!

 

 

Again, the story was refreshing, different in the way it was written, and tackling a subject that I havent seen much about in comic form (that of gender identity). I look forwar to the next issue!

 

The last comic I read this week wasn''t a small press comic. It s a reprint of an old CLAMP comic, X/1999.

 

Unusually for me, the thing that mostly draws me to CLAMP comics are their fous on beautiful detailed visuals. I LOVE the way Viz made the most of this aspect in their new printing of this comic. It has been beautifully bound with full colour spreads such as this throughout the whole 300+ page comic. The pages are also a little larger then usual, showing more detail in the beautiful page layouts!

 

My favourite thing about X/1999 is the 'baroque' approach to the whole comic!

 

The story premise is simple but emotional, and very over the top!

 

I love how in every single page, the characters, story, and emotions are continously emphasised with presentation and composition.

In part, another annual tradition of celebrating my favourite composer's birthday, I have been reading a wonderful illustrated book, Faithfully Mozart, by Donathan Bixley.

The book was released back in 2006, in the year of Mozart's 250th celebration. This also happened to be the year when I became obsessed with Mozart (it probably didnt help that he was being celebrated everywhere!). So my 16 year old self begged and begged for this book to be ordered all the way from New Zealand for my 17th birthday. I stil treasure the book to this day!

It is a wonderful book, in which Bixley follows Mozart's life through his letters. So, the book is compiled of various written letters from Mozart, and beautiful illustrations to accompany.

 This isn't exactly a comic, but it certainly is sequential, and I've included I nice piece of silent comic which took up one page of the book.

And if you can ever get ahold of the book, I highly reccomend it, even to non-Mozart fans. In the end it's just a wonderful illustrated biograpghy about an artist trying to make it big in the world!

Some of you will have heard already of the new and very exciting weekly comic magazine, The Phoenix, which although launched only two weeks ago, has had a huge fan base for many months, based purely on what the comic is promoting.

This is what I've been catching up on over the past week! I haven't had time until last week to sit down and read the three weekly issues I've already received through the post (with a subscription I got as a Christmas present!). But I finally got around to it, and WOW what a wonderful magazine its already turning out to be! There is such a fantastic range of artists and stories in Phoenix, and just as I was expecting there is a really good balance between beautiful artwork and very good, entertaining story telling.

For me that's the main thing about The Phoenix (and what I loved about the DFC)-- its taking the comic medium seriously as a great format for telling decent stories, and it isn't aiming these stories towards a select niche market, but creating a magazine that can be enjoyed by both children and adults (I guess like Disney) and that will reach out to all kinds of tastes.

I guess really, Phoenix is a nice embodiment of what I'm seeing develop in the recent UK comic industry, and its taking that step closer to what we all want to see happen to our comic world. :)  

...basically, we want a UK comic industry along the lines of what France/Belgium/Japan has!!

Today I'm going a bit against my blog theme of having lots of images and little text, and will simply link to the Phoenix website so that anyone who hasn't already can be encouraged to subscribe or seek out some copies...Is it available to people abroad at all, I wonder?

Check it out!

Over Christmas I received a present I am very thankful for, the final volume (10) of my most beloved and favourite comic, Emma.

From the moment I picked up the first volume back in 2007, I have been in love with everything about it, and have collected every volume as soon as it was released!

Unfortunately, CMX, the company who translated the comic into English, went out of business a few years ago, making Emma suddenly limited in number and expensive to get a hold of. Hence Volume 10 becoming a Christmas present. I hope some other company picks it up at some point and redistributes it <3

I could write so much about why I love this comic, but instead I'll just show some choice pages which show off some of the most the intimate, gentle, detailed and beautifully paced story telling, which make this comic a must-read.

I won't deny it, the ending made me tear up a bit (only one other comic has done this to me before). It wasn't just because I had finally completed my favourite comic, but also the reflective nature of the last few pages, pretty much summing up what the whole story was about :)

I haven't actually had time to read any comics this week, but today I'm going to highlight two small press comics I read a few weeks ago :) I'm trying to restrict myself from writing too much, and just show some favourite images from the comics!

Both Fruit Machine and Totem Chronicles can be read online!

This is Fruit Machine, a beautiful comic by Mimi. I've always enjoyed her style of drawing, a unique flowing focus on line art and composition. (This is fantastically a comic page!)

Totem Chronicles, by Arcadia Ronin. I was reading the second issue, having bought the first about two years ago! I love the rich colours in TC. Although done digitally, the art has a simplicity which gives the images alot of movement and sponateusity. It made the comic very clear and easy to read.