BERSERKOTRON page 36 at WEBCOMICS NATION
















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COMICS STAMPEDE 3

Well, here he is...

A nice Hulk sheet from Madagascar in 1999.

Artists include Sal Buscema, Steve Ditko, Gary Frank, Ron Garney, Dale Keown, Jack Kirby, Adam Kubert, Marie Severin and Herb Trimpe.

BERSERKOTRON pg35 at WEBCOMICS NATION














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GUEST BLOG: ANNA ZANFEI

I met Anna Zanfei in 2007 at a comics conference, where she gave a talk on webcomics. She had interesting and new things to say about the medium. We got chatting after the event, had a good laugh and argued about Eddie Campbell - I said he was great, she said he was brilliant.

We’ve kept in touch since then, and she’s been kind enough to say nice things about my comics. She’s done it again here. Modesty should dictate that I don’t publish it, but my ego is too pleased – if slightly embarrassed.

As with my previous guest, I asked Anna to write anything she wanted as long as it was comics based. She hasn’t previously made any comics as far as I’m aware, so what she sent me was a bit of a surprise...

Hi . My name is Anna and I'm Italian. I live in the North of Italy not too far from Austria. In my area people love skiing and hiking and in the summer they usually like swimming in one of the hundreds of natural lakes of the surroundings. Trento is a nice, clean and very old city. I basically teach English as a foreign language to students of literature, printing, arts and linguistics. To find a common ground for students in my courses I use comics and editorial cartoons as well as graphic novel dedicated to Shakespeare. Let me explain: when I talk about comics I can talk about the power of a graphic interpretation of Shakespearian original texts; I can also speak about typography as an evocative and iconographic tool and how web comics work; I can speak about the way editorial cartoons can use language, colours and caricatures and compress a whole story and a critique in a single panel; and finally I can look at the dialogue and the titles and speak about language creativity. In this way all my students can be interested and because I'm using the tools of their professions to explain how English works. Out of the classroom I have the chance of presenting at conferences and I publish articles on web comics and also regular comic books.

I love autobiographical comics and comics that look at how young people, and of course women of all ages, communicate. I'm a fan of Jessica Abel for her dialogues, of Posy Simmonds for her multimodal graphic novels and of course I love the work of David Robertson because of his elegant, almost abstract way of drawing and his impressive creativity.

This comic strip is representing myself when I began studying linguistic creativity and I was wondering if comics could be of any use to understand how language creativity works.

(Click on comic strip for larger image)

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TURDSWORTH

My boss is well aware that I read comics.

I was on holiday, came back to work, and he'd left this William Wordsworth poem out for me...


















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BERSERKOTRON page 33 at WEBCOMICS NATION













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MEDIA SCANS: APRIL 2010

Here’s my round-up for the month:

First, a review of the Kick-Ass movie from the April edition of The Scene. Worth keeping, due to the ignorance of the reviewer betrayed in the opening sentence: “Most comic book stories follow the same premise”...

People often write about "comic books" when they should write "superhero comics". It shows their lack of knowledge of the variety of work in comics.

Cartoons are quickly being killed off at The Observer according to Private Eye 2^nd April 2010...

The Daily Record 14^th April reports on a copy of Beano Annual 1939 found in a pile of items donated to a charity shop...

The Independent 16^th April on rapper Scroobius Pip’s graphic novel...

More musicians getting involved in comics in the Financial Times from 17^th April...

Rosemary Goring in The Herald 17^th April on “graphic artist” Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass...

Could the comics in your loft be worth a fortune? The Guardian 20^th April...

Jeff Oaks’ book on Wonder Woman reviewed by Sarah Vine in The Times 23^rd April...

Peanuts is sold for $175 million. No word on how this will affect Fantagraphics’ book collections. Hopefully not at all. The comics themselves are probably beneath the notice of the new owners...

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Check it out here. If you don't like sweary words, you'd best cover your ears.