Dorénavant, again Dossier de Balthazar Kaplan

With the increase of interest in Nordic comics around the world over the last few years, it seemed a good opportunity to discuss with one of the emblematic figures of the Finnish alternative edition, and question the liveliness of this exciting production. Jelle Hugaerts, co-founder with Tommi Musturi of the audacious Finnish publishing house Huuda Huuda, shares his thoughts about the situation of comics in Finland today but also about sweating it out in the sauna of a public swimming pool with a bunch of naked beerbellied guys in complete silence…

(This review can be read in any preferred order) Writing about Building Stories is somehow awe-inspiring : before typing the first sentence, the reviewer holds on for a moment, hesitating to jump in, just as he had gazed for quite a while at the box before opening it. Building Stories is intimidating on several levels. A [...]

When l’Association published the Bitterkomix anthology in early 2009, it brought to light the South-African comics magazine in all the strength of its fury and political charges. The panel at during the Angoulême Festival featuring Anton Kannemeyer and Conrad Botes, the two co-founders of the periodical, cemented (if there remained any doubt) the importance and accuracy of their vision. It is during the third edition of the artist residence PFC (Pierre Feuille Ciseaux, laboratoire de bande dessinée) that we had the chance to meet again with Joe Dog, soft-spoken as always, but still burning with the same fire.

For a long time, nobody knew if Anders Nilsen would bring the intriguing narrative of Big Questions to its conclusion, but the issues kept on coming, oh-so-slowly, year after year. Dogs and Water had provided a nice consolation, delivering an enigmatic journey through a desolate landscape. Now the magnus opus has been completed, and is available in the form of a hefty brick published by Drawn & Quarterly — the opportunity to look back on what might be the achievement of a lifetime.

The story is set in Coconino county, Arizona. Well, not quite the real Coconino county. It’s the story of a cat who declares his love to a mouse  ; in return the mouse throws bricks in his face. Krazy Kat is a monument of popular culture. Elected “Best 20th-century comic book” by the Comics Journal, the [...]

Comics as an art of memory, made of this memorialising substance which fills that gutter, that snare woven between the panels where the meaning of what is taking place is acquired through reading, through one reading. The Ninth Art as a game of absence, of suggestion, of the unsaid to be seen, of the unseen [...]

Lynd Ward is the author of six novels in woodcuts published in the United States between 1929 and 1937. Between the vast hope nurtured by potential revolutionaries and the profound angst that goes with the first totalitarian ambitions, the core of the artwork is filled with a combination of powerful and contrary affects. As rich, [...]

Reader my friend, reader my Love, Here comes the time of our now yearly installment, as du9 takes on the opportunity of the looming Angoulême Festival to try and paint the portrait of the little world of bande dessinée. (Of course, the English version somehow lacks this superb timing, but we still hope it will [...]