Rainbow Orchid Prequel In The Phoenix This Friday

Artist and writer Garen Ewing’s latest adventure of Julius Chancer, The Secret of the Samurai, a prequel to his three book Rainbow Orchid saga, is starting a four week run in The Phoenix beginning this weekend. The twenty page adventure will be published in five page segments over four weeks beginning in issue 75 due on Friday 7 June and concluding in issue 78 due on Friday 28 June 2013.

The Secret of the Samurai takes place several years before the events depicted in The Rainbow Orchid. Talking about it in his blog, Garen says, “My plan is that one day I will do a connected but equally stand-alone story of the same length, so there's the possibility they could be published together as a complete book. This will not derail the full-length (60-80 pages) adventure I have plotted and ready to start - hopefully this summer.”

Despite recently becoming a father for the second time, Garen continues to attend conventions. He will be attending Stripped, the comics ‘festival within a festival’ at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, where he will be taking part in three events on Sunday 25 August 2013. The full programme for the Edinburgh International Book Festival and Stripped will be announced on 20 June on the BookFest website. In addition, over the weekend of 19-20 October 2013, Garen will be selling, signing and sketching at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival’s Comic Clock Tower in Kendal in the Lake District.

• There are more details of all Garen Ewing’s work on his website and more details on The Secret of the Samurai and The Rainbow Orchid on his Adventures Of Julius Chancer website.

• The Phoenix comic is available from Waitrose supermarkets, Travelling Man and Forbidden Planet International stores, as well as a selection of other comics shops and book shops around the UK.

• There is more information about The Phoenix on the title’s website including a location guide to stores that sell it. Subscriptions and back issues are also available for those who do not have a local stockist.

New 9th Art Award: Submission Details announced

Graphic Scotland and the Edinburgh International Book Festival have announced that submissions are now open for the inaugural 9th Art Award for graphic fiction.

The 9th Art Award will choose the best work of graphic literature originally written and published in English between May 2012 and July 2013, from anywhere in the world.
Judging the prize will be:

• graphic fiction historian Paul Gravett
• acclaimed arts critic and writer Hannah McGill
• Freight Press publisher Adrian Searle
• Costa award-winning writer of Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes Mary Talbot

A casting vote will be given to Graphic Scotland chair John McShane in the event of a tie. The award will be presented during an event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August.

Graphic Scotland Co-Director Gordon Robertson believes the prize could become a fixture on the international arts scene, and as important to sequential art as the Man Booker Prize is to literary fiction. “The 9th Art Award will be a significant annual award for recognition of excellence in the field of Graphic Literature," he says. "Its introduction as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival recognises graphic literature's rightful status as an art form.”

Graphic Scotland is an independent community interest company aiming to bring together Scottish-based writers, artists and publishers in international collaborations to create diverse and innovative new graphic fiction.

Every August, Charlotte Square Gardens in the heart of historic Edinburgh, the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature, becomes the home to the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Founded in 1983, the Book Festival is the largest festival of its kind in the world and has become a platform for audiences to debate with leading thinkers from the worlds of science, politics, business, economics and journalism as well as literature.

This year, from 10 - 26 August, the Book Festival will play host to authors, playwrights, poets, politicians, journalists and thinkers from around the world. Over 200,000 visitors will come to join the debate, meet the authors, browse the bookshops or just enjoy an ice cream in the tranquil setting of the beautiful gardens. To complement the adult programme there is a full children’s programme with events, workshops and debates for every age from toddler to teenager.

Nick Barley, Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, says of the 9th Art Award: “We have featured graphic novel authors and illustrators in our programme at the Edinburgh International Book Festival for a number of years now and I believe that this new Award will give the genre the wider recognition that it deserves.”

• The deadline for entries is 31st July 2013.
More details: www.9thartfestival.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/9thartfestival
Twitter: @9thArtAward

Comics @ Edinburgh International Book Festival 2011

The Edinburgh International Book Festival is not just the largest literary festival in the UK but, it claims, in the world and it returns to the Scottish capital's Charlotte Square Gardens from 13 to 29 August. Last year, under its new director Nick Barley, BookFest shied away somewhat from the number of comics related events that had been prevalent in previous years. This year the majority of the comic events tend to be workshops in the Children's Programme, which are generally aimed at advertised age ranges, rather than talks in the general programme.

The comics highlight of the 2010 was undoubtedly writer Alan Moore being interviewed by political cartoonist Steve Bell closely followed by Bell's talk with Doonsbury creator Gary Trudeau. This year the standout comics item in the programme must be writer Grant Morrison talking about his new book Supergods. This will take place on Saturday 20 August at 9:30pm and, as Grant rarely appears at public events, we would expect the signing session afterwards to stretch into the night.

Earlier the same day as part of the Children's Programme John Fardell will be talking about the art and craft of Herge's Tintin books to a family audience advertised as 8+, while the day before, at 3:30pm on Friday 19 August, writer Tony Lee and artist Dan Boultwood will be talking about their graphic novel series The Baker Street Irregulars to an age range of 10-14.

The following week turns into something of a DFC reunion with Emma Vieceli, Sarah McIntyre and the Etherington Brothers all running workshops. Wednesday 24 August sees Emma running Drawing Vampire Academy for ages 12-15 at 6:30pm, while Robin and Lawrence Etherington will be running a Monkey Nuts workshop on Saturday 27 August for ages 9+. The Etheringtons will also be running a workshop in the School's Programme on Friday 26 August while Sarah will be running two school workshops on Tuesday 23 and Wednesday 24. Please note that School's Programme events are not open to the general public although there are often public signing sessions in the Book Tents afterwards.

Emma Vieceli will also be appearing in the main programme with academic Dr Mel Gibson on Wednesday 24 August for a talk on the role of comics in education entitled Getting To Grips With Graphic Novels, while the day before at 8pm on Tuesday 20 August, after his strand of talks last year, Steve Bell returns for a solo talk on his work. Later that week Metaphrog will be running two workshops on their graphic novel series Louis at 4pm on Friday 26 and 3:30pm on Sunday 28 August both of which are for age ranges 12-15. In between those workshops at 5pm on Saturday 27 Tracey Turner will be talking to 8-12 year olds about her Comic Strip Big Fat Book Of Knowledge while the final comics events will be on Sunday 28 August at 8:30pm when William Goldsmith of Vignettes Of Ystov and Nick Hayes of The Rime Of The Modern Mariner will appear together and who are, according to the programme, "two writers proving that the graphic novel is a true modern literary artform".

Tickets are a selection of prices running from £4.50 for the children's workshops up to £10 for the main programme talks.

There are more details of all the talks at the Edinburgh International Book Festival website where tickets can also be purchased.

Alan Moore @ Edinburgh International Book Festival

Having previously pointed out the lack of adult discussion of comics or graphic novels, as opposed to political cartoons, at the 2010 Edinburgh International Book Festival, it is good to see that BookFest has now added writer Alan Moore to their programme - even if their website lists "V for Victory" (sic) as one of "Alan Moore's legendary cartoons".

Moore will be in conversation with the Guardian's If artist Steve Bell at 3:30pm on Tuesday 24 August in an event entitled The Politics Of Cartoons: How To Avoid Hollywood. This is described as "a conversation with Steve Bell to discuss superheroes, politics and the influence of writers such as Philip K Dick, William Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon".

The following day, Wednesday 25 August, sees Moore join the final events of the Story Machines thread at 8:30pm. In Story Machines: The Last Chapter - Are Stories The Building Blocks Of All We Know, author and screenwriter Charlie Fletcher "brings together some of the day's participants including William Nicholson and Alan Moore for a debate about the power of Story, and how we can put our storytelling powers to better use."

Each of the events lasts 1 hour and tickets are £10 per person per event.

The other comics events at the BookFest are covered here and we are pleased to report that both Glenn Dakin's and Garen Ewing's comic workshops are already sold out. Indeed Garen's event has proved so popular that it sold out within 12 hours of the tickets going on sale.

More details of all the events as well as tickets are available from the Edinburgh International Book Festival website.

Thoughts On The 2010 Edinburgh BookFest Programme

"Widely recognised as being a valuable means of encouraging people to read more extensively, graphic novels have become a sought-after feature of our programme."

Reading such a statement on page 8 of the 2009 Annual Report of the Edinburgh International Book Festival seemed to bode well for the 2010 Festival maintaining the comics content of their programming at the same high levels we have become familiar with in the last couple of years. So the disappointingly small selection and type of comics related events in this year’s programme came as something of a surprise.

It would seem that the decision makers at the Festival have backtracked on the progress made on the subject of comics over the last couple of years with this year’s events falling into two distinct categories - the political cartoonists and their newspaper work for the adults and workshops by the comics people for the children, each workshop with specific age ranges to keep any adults away. This year there are no talks by comics creators aimed at the family audience, none by big name graphic novelists aimed at the teen and adult audience, and no discussions with creators or presentations by academics on the merits of the medium.

That said, what little is in the programme is of a high standard. The If... and Doonesbury combination of newspaper cartoonists Steve Bell and Gary Trudeau is a major coup for the BookFest. It is also good to see that comics creators Glen Dakin, Garen Ewing and Sarah McIntrye can show off their undoubted talents and pass on their enthusiasm to the primary and early secondary school children that their various workshops have been advertised for.

However, where are the evening talks by comics and graphic novel creators that have graced the Festival for the last couple of years? Creators of the calibre of Bryan Talbot and Posy Simmonds appeared in 2008 while Neil Gaiman and Mark Millar were there in 2009. Indeed, the same page of the 2009 Annual Report recognises the quality of last year's comics creators by stating, "Designed to appeal to teens and adults, our graphic novel events featured huge talents including Neil Gaiman, Mark Millar and Ian Rankin (making his debut into the medium)."

It wasn’t as if the comics events in previous years weren’t financially successful for the Festival. In 2009, as we reported here, of the 12 events in the programme that could be considered comics related, nine sold out before the Festival even opened. That sell-out rate of 75% put them well above the overall 2009 Festival average of 45%. As for comics related sales in the Festival bookshops, the 2009 report states, "Neil Gaiman and Ian Rankin's joint event on graphic novels produced a long and enthusiastic queue of fans, resulting in excellent sales."

After the visibility and prestige that comics and their creators have received in recent years at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, it appears that having a new team in charge has set the cause of comics and graphic novels at the festival back by years. Let us hope that things will improve in 2011.

• Edinburgh International Book Festival: http://www.edbookfest.co.uk/

Comics @ Edinburgh International Book Festival

It is the biggest literary festival in the United Kingdom and over the last few years the Edinburgh International Book Festival has taken a very active interest in comics and graphic novels. This year’s BookFest begins in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square Gardens on 14 August and it runs until 30 August.

The comics related events at this year’s Festival are as follows:

Sunday 22 August, 4pm - Comics with Glenn Dakin
This is a workshop for the 12-15 age group on how to create a comic book taken by Glen Dakin whose work has appeared in Paul Gravett’s Escape magazine as well as Marvel UK’s ClanDestine and The Real Ghostbusters and who is now better known for writing children’s books.

Monday 23 August, 5pm - Adventure Comics With Garen Ewing
This is a workshop for the 10-12 age group on how to design a classic adventure comic by Rainbow Orchid’s Garen Ewing.

Monday 23 August, 8pm - Garry Trudeau In Conversation With Steve Bell: The Political Cartoon And Its Place In Journalism
American Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury and British Steve Bell of The Guardian’s If… are two of the best known and acclaimed political cartoonists in either side of the Atlantic and this promises to be an interesting conversation between the two men.

Tuesday 24 August, 12:30pm - A Comic Book View Of Life In Britain: Cedar Lewisohn
The programme describes Cedar Lewisohn as a contributor to a major new book on the subject of how comic artists have satirised and lampooned the politicians of their day and that his talk takes a look at Britain through the eyes of its cartoonists. While it doesn’t say it, this would appear to tie in with Tate Publishing’s Rude Britannia: British Comic Art book, itself a tie in to the Tate’s Rude Britannia exhibition.

Tuesday 24 August, 16:30pm - Sarah McIntyre
This is a workshop for the 5-7 age group from the DFC’s Sarah McIntyre as a preview of her Vern and Lettuce book from The DFC Library. Children are asked to bring their own pen and “a lot of gusto”.

Tickets prices for the talks are £10 and for the workshops £4.

In addition to the public programme, Garen and Sarah will be taking part in the Festival's Schools Programme covering all primary school ages between them. Sarah will start with Monsters and Aliens Let Loose! for Primary 1 to 3 classes followed by a Comics Jam with Vern and Lettuce for Primary 3 to 5 while Garen will be doing a comics workshop for Primary 5 to 7. It should be stressed however that none of the Schools Programme events are open to the public.

The full programme of the Edinburgh International Book Festival is available to download as a PDF from their website. Tickets for the talks and workshops go on sale on Saturday 26 June 2010.

Garen Ewing's The Rainbow Orchid Volume 2

Writer/artist Garen Ewing has put up the cover of the eagerly anticipated Rainbow Orchid Volume 2 over on his blog. This shows hero Julius Chancer and his companions being menaced by a snow leopard and he advises that the book will be available for sale from 5 July 2010.

Garen also gives a list of convention appearances that he will be making this year including the Bristol International Comic Expo at the end of May and Caption at the end of July.

It is also good to see that, in addition to the comics cons, he will also be appearing at two of the major British literary festivals. While both festival's programmes have yet to be published, Garen will be appearing at the Hay Festival in the Hay-On-Wye booktown on the Welsh border on 3 June 2010, while on 23 and 24 August he will be in Scotland at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. It is good to see his bande dessinee style Rainbow Orchid getting this sort of attention from the literati.

More details of Garen's appearances are available in the events listing on The Rainbow Orchid website.

Tube Surfing: Anderson events, Dan Dare Toys and a Cartoon Classroom update

• Gerry Anderson official fan club Fanderson have announced they will be staging their first major convention for four years next year. TV21: Adventure in the 21st Century will be based at the Ramada Bristol City - the same venue as the Comics Expo - taking place on the weekend of Friday 22nd to Sunday 24th October 2010.

The event will feature special guests from the worlds of Gerry Anderson, screenings of favourite episodes and rare material on the big screen, workshops where you can develop your interest in the Anderson productions beyond reading the organisation's FAB Magazine and watching DVDs. There will be merchandise for sale and a stunning model and art exhibition, including many pieces not seen before at a Fanderson event. For more info, visit the Fanderson web site

• Talking of things Anderson, several downthetubes readers have been in touch to tell us that Sylvia Anderson, Gerry's former wife, is doing a tour of the UK next year, in conversation with musician David Courtney, to promote her new autobiographical book, My FAB Years, which has been out for a while. Prices vary between venues but are around £15 per person plus booking fees. The duration, according to one of the venues, is a remarkable two hours 20 minutes. More info here on David Courtney's web site: be patient, it seems to take a while for the page to load.

• Nick Barley has been named the new director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, which annually brings more than 700 author events and over 200,000 visitors to its tented auditoriums on Charlotte Square, and has been talking up the possibility of comics guests at the major event. Talking to The Scotsman, Mr Barley, a former executive director of the Lighthouse architecture and design centre in Glasgow which sadly went into administration earlier this year, said experts could be brought in to run parts of the festival's programming, such as Scottish writer Grant Morrison for a section on graphic novels. We have to say that we're unaware of Mr Morrison making many appearances at Scottish writing events. Perhaps John and Sandra from Metaphrog would probably be a better call, or Alan Grant?

• During his interview, Mr Barley mentions The Death of Bunny Munro by musician and author Nick Cave, launched by Edinburgh-based publishing company Canongate as the world's first novel in the form of an iPhone application. Cave has composed a soundtrack tailor-made to complement the audio book of his new novel, working with musician Warren Ellis - not to be confused with comics writer Ellis and they appeared on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Monday to examine whether audio books are an unexploited medium. You can listen here for a few more days. Today is now asking for people to suggest a soundtrack for their favourite book - you can suggest Watchmen or The Ballad of Halo Jones here, perhaps...

• Dan Dare action figures and spaceships are on their way, based on designs inspired by the original Frank Hampson character of Eagle fame. The products are the work of Day2Day Trading, who also hold licenses for characters such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon (an example of their work above, more here). Their work to date looks amazing - they kindly sent a stunning pre-production image of the Cyclops from their Sinbad range. Expect to see the new Dan Dare items in shops sometime next year.

• More events: Pádraig Ó Méalóid writes to say Friday & Saturday 28th & 29th May 2010 will see a conference in The University of Northampton called <em>Magus: Transdisciplinary approaches to the work of Alan Moore. More about it here. "I wrote to them to mention my interest in such matters and, to cut a long story short, I'll be there, giving a paper (i.e. a 20 minute talk) on Collecting Alan Moore." Also at this academic conference will be Gary Lloyd, who collaborated musically with Alan and also with Iain Banks.

• The Cartoon Classroom is now fully up and running: if you registered before on this while it was being tested, co-organiser David Lloyd advises you will have to do so again now it's totally operational. "In these early days, what we need most of all is for colleges, schools, libraries, local museums and galleries to know about the site - so any help you can give with that would be invaluable," David asks. "And give us any info you think we should have on the site that you can't see there. Is there a gallery near you showing cartoon art, which isn't listed on our site or registered with us? Tell us. Tell them about us. Is a library offering cartoon workshops near you which isn't shown on our site? Tell us." Send info to contactcartoonclassroom@yahoo.co.uk.

• Complied with thanks to Jeremy Briggs, Jay Mullins Katie Bleathman and Pádraig Ó Méalóid

Gaiman And Rankin On BBC2 On Wednesday

As the Edinburgh International Book Festival continues this week under canvas in the Scottish capital's Charlotte Square Gardens, BBC2's Edinburgh Festival Show will feature a taster of what was one of the best BookFest events of last week.

Fantasy author Neil Gaiman and crime author Ian Rankin were interviewed on stage by crime author Denise Mina about their work on comics and graphic novels and for the sold out audience of 600 last Thursday night it was a case of paying for two Constantine writers and getting a third for free. With Ian Rankin's first graphic novel, Dark Entries, soon to be available from DC Vertigo the two men talked about their comics work and how it related to their prose novels with Gaiman doing his impression of Alan Moore and Rankin displaying his impressive comics knowledge. For more details on this excellent event check out Joe Gordon's review of it over on the FPI blog.

Prior to the talk, the three authors had recorded a piece for the BBC's Edinburgh Festival Show and this is due to be broadcast on Wednesday 26 August at 7 pm on BBC2.

Comics @ Edinburgh BookFest

With only a week to go before the start of this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival it seems that the comics related events have proved to be exceedingly popular. So popular in fact that the majority of them are already sold out. Last year's EdBookFest events were featured in a downthetubes photo review here.

This year's Festival begins on Saturday 15 August with a Beano character workshop for children in which former Dandy editor, DC Thomson archivist and author of The History Of The Beano, Morris Heggie, former Beano and BeanoMAX editor Euan Kerr and Minnie The Minx artist Jim Petrie will take over the Studio Theatre to create a new Beano inspired character with the help of the children in the audience. This appears to be a repeat of their workshop at the Glasgow Aye Write book festival and, like the Glasgow one, is a sell out. Indeed most of the comics related workshops are sold out – Mio Matsumoto's manga art workshop, Gary Erskine's comic art workshop, David Bishop's adult writers workshop, Metaphrog's comic creation workshop and Chie Kutsuwada's manga art workshop are all sold out. In addition Gerald Scarf's political cartooning talk is sold out, as well as both Neil Gaiman's solo talk and his talk with Ian Rankin on their graphic novel work, plus writer Mark Millar's talk about his graphic novels.

At the moment there are still some tickets left for Mio Matsumoto's talk about her autobiographical manga book My Diary on Saturday 15 August, comics academic Dr Mel Gibson's talk entitled Visual Literacy, Learning and Graphic Novels on Thursday 20 August and Tony Lee's talk on his new Robin Hood graphic novel on Tuesday 25 August. Hopefully this ability for the Festival's comics related events to sell out will stand them in good stead with the new Festival Director due to arrive in 2010 whoever he or she may be.

Entrance to the Book Festival in Edinburgh Charlotte Square Gardens is free and there are two major book stall tents at the site. It is worth pointing out that most of the Festival's guests do a signing session immediately after their talks which are normally accessible to those without tickets for the talks themselves and will often sign additional copies of their books which are put on sale at cover price in the book stall tents. So if you are in Edinburgh, and you have missed the chance of getting tickets, it can still be worth turning up on the day for autographs.

More details of the events are on the Edinburgh International Book Festival's website.

Comics Events At the Edinburgh Book Festival

It is almost that time of the year again when the chaos of Festival hits Edinburgh. International, Film, Fringe, Television and the Tattoo as well as many other smaller festivals invade the city, but the one of most interest to comics readers is the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Last year the BookFest put on more comics related events than ever before which downthetubes reviewed here. These proved to be so successful that the Festival in 2009 has a similarly diverse selection of comic and graphic novel related events.

They begin on Saturday 15th August when former Dandy editor, DC Thomson archivist and author of The History Of The Beano, Morris Heggie, former Beano editor and current BeanoMAX editor Euan Kerr and Minnie The Minx artist Jim Petrie will take over the Studio Theatre to create a new Beano inspired character with the help of the children in the audience. Later that day My Diary writer and artist Mio Matsumoto will talk about her autobiographical graphic novel which charts her fight against cancer. Following her talk she will take a comics workshop aimed at at teenage audience.

Wednesday 19th August brings political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe to the RBS Main Theatre to talk about his his life and work. This is followed by Neil Gaiman who will talk about his books and his graphic novels.

The following day, academic Dr Mel Gibson will discuss the theme of Visual Literacy, Learning and Graphic Novels before Neil Gaiman returns in the evening this time with Scottish crime author Ian Rankine to discuss their work on graphic novels.

On Monday 24th August Dan Dare artist Gary Erskine returns to the Festival for a second year to give a workshop aimed at teenagers on creating comics, while the next day brings a Writing Workshop on Graphic Novels. The writer due to take this event remains to be announced but it is worth pointing out that Tony Lee will be talking about his new Robin Hood graphic novel later the same afternoon.

Wednesday 26th August brings Metaphrog duo, Sandra Marrs and John Chalmers, to the workshop tent for a workshop on creating a comic strip aimed at teenagers. Metaphrog have done many of these workshops in Scotland this year and last, but this is the first time that they have lead a workshop at the Book Festival.

Saturday 29th August bring Scottish writer Mark Millar to the RBS Corner Theatre to discuss his graphic novels which include Wanted and Kick-Ass, while the comics events conclude rather more sedately on Sunday 30 August with Manga Shakespeare artist Chie Kutsuwada (also known as Chi-Tan) taking a manga inspired workshop once again aimed at teenagers.

As with last year the Book Festival is once again providing a comics programme for a wide variety of tastes.

• Details of the Edinburgh Internal Book Festival as well as details of how to order tickets are available on their website. The Festival runs in Edinburgh's Charlotte Square Gardens from 15th to 31st August 2009.