Panel Borders: The Danger of Romance

Concluding a months of shows about genre in comics, Panel Borders Alex Fitch talks to writer and manga translator Sean Michael Wilson and lecturer and author Ian Rakoff about romance comics this Sunday.

Sean is the editor of AX Volume 1: A collection of Alternative Manga and author of The Story of Lee and Yakuza Moon, two manga novels with varying degrees of biography about the fortunes of young women encountering different cultures across Asia.

Ian is about to give his latest lecture about comics (on 30th November) at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and this month is discussing the subject of romance comics, with a focus on how they were an antidote to McCarthyism in 1950s America.

Online later this month from panel Borders are three sperate talks recorded at Laydeez do Comics - cartoonists Woodrow Phoenix, Kripa Joshi and Mawil (Markus Witzel) discussing their work. If there is a common theme between the three, it's a sense of magical realism in their art which juxtaposes the ordinary with the out of the ordinary, from Woodrow's use of road furniture in Rumble Strip, to Kripa's use of Indian mythology in her tales of domestic incidents and Mawil's blue collar stories of life in Germany through the lens of his alter-ego Sparky O'Hare.

The interviews were recorded by Nicola Streeten and Alex Fitch and are introduced by Nicola Streeten.

• Panel Borders: The Danger of Romance airs at 8.00pm, 27th November 2011, Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com / extended podcast after broadcast at www.panelborders.wordpress.com

• Laydeez do comics: Magical Realism is online from 29th November 2011 at laydeezdopodcasts.wordpress.com