It’s the only cartoon festival in Ireland, and is now in its eighth year.
Our guests this year include Martin Rowson of the Guardian, Cristina Sampaio of SpamCartoons, Jean-Michel Renault, and Ed Steckley of MAD magazine and more.
Some of that “more” will include Americans Dave Coverly and Will McPhaill.
Plus The Guardian’s Ben Jennings.
In particular we’d like people to know that submissions are now open for our exhibitions. We have four this year, including one simply titled “Beasts” for cartoons about animals (and people behaving like animals), and one on the tribulations of Women in Technology.
Snowflake’s Progress is the first solo exhibition from multi-award winning cartoonist and illustrator Ben Jennings. The project is a contemporary adaptation of William Hogarth’s famous 18th-century work, A Rake’s Progress, and follows a recurring character over a series of 8 artworks that offer snapshots of British life set over the past 14 years of Tory rule.
Unlike Hogarth’s protagonist, who inherits great wealth and squanders it all on an extravagant lifestyle that ultimately leads to his downfall, our millennial character – ‘Snowflake’ – attempts more modest pursuits after inheriting the chaos and insecurity of the past decade-or-so.
Also on display will be a selection of Ben’s editorial work from over this same time period, comprising of cartoons from his day job as political cartoonist for The Guardian and The i Newspaper.
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Miss Cellany picked up the July 6, 2024 edition of The Daily Express:
[P]rior to the first ever big-screen adaptation of Ian Fleming’s series of novels – Dr No in 1962 – nobody really had much of an idea what 007 actually looked like… apart from readers of the Daily Express. Because four years before Dr No, the Express was running the first ever adaptation of the James Bond novels in its pages, in a comic strip drawn by artist John McLusky. Between July 7, 1958, and 1966, Glasgowborn McLusky would bring Fleming’s creation to life for the first time outside the pages of the novels… and the artist’s view of Bond bore an uncanny resemblance to the man eventually picked to portray him on-screen – fellow Scot Sean Connery.
A double-page report appeared in the July 6, 2024 edition of the Daily Express which allowed the newspaper to recycle their erroneous story that it was the James Bond cartoon [sic] that inspired Sean Connery’s casting as 007 in 1961. One would think that the newspaper that ran the strip from 1958-1962, and then from 1964 to 1977 would get the facts correct… but as with most newspaper reports relating to James Bond, this is rarely the case.
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Miss Cellany will check out British publishers and comic artists.
VIP Brands has gathered all the publishers and titles they will be presenting at the first British International Comic Rights Market at this year’s Lakes International Comic Art Festival in September in Bowness-on-Windermere into an online resource, available for anyone to access. You can visit it here: licaf-rights-market.com
At the annual Lakes International Comic Art Festival, the main aim of its Comics Marketplace has always been to create an environment which encourages networking and opportunities to discover more about the global comics scene alongside selling to our audiences and guests. Ultimately, the Festival has always wanted to find ways to get British comics seen more widely, and to provide a platform for the developments of creators’ careers.
In the pursuit of the goal to promote British Comics on the international stage the Festival secured the funding from the Arts Council and The Adlard Foundation to present the UK’s first International Rights Market for Comics, at LICAF 2024.
Back to the Local, by Maurice Gorham, was first published in 1938 and was a celebration of the habit of going to your local London pub. The illustrations were by the great Edward Ardizzone.
What with a lot of Ardizzone’s published work going out of print, it was such happy news to hear of this new reprint edition returning to bookstores.
Mike presents a fine selection of drawings from the book.
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Miss Cellany missed the first printing, but is hoping to get the tribute issue.
“The Glasgow Looking Glass (later The Northern Looking Glass) was published in 1825 and is considered by many the first ‘comic’, Colin explains. “It used speech bubbles and is believed to be the first publication to use ‘to be continued’.
“Similar to the more famous Punch, the Looking Glass contained satirical cartoons commenting on politics and society of the day. This tribute comic will be a satirical look at modern day Scotland.”
Commando writer Colin Maxwell is looking for artists and writers to produce short satirical strips for a comic to launch Summer 2025 – a 200th anniversary tribute to The Glasgow Looking Glass.
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Miss Cellany did pick up Every Body’s Album as a child.
Caricature magazines first appeared in Britain during the mid-1820s and were firmly embedded within popular print culture by the end of the decade. The magazine of the Georgian era was not the substantial glossy publications that modern readers are familiar with, but rather single sheets of printed paper covered with small caricature vignettes.
The caricaturist C.J. Grant founded his own caricature magazine in 1834. Every Body’s Album & Caricature Magazine was published fortnightly and ran for a total of 39 editions before finally folding in 1835. The first 24 sheets were published by John Kendrick and printed by Dean & Munday of Threadneedle Street, after which Thomas Dawson seems to have assumed responsibility for financing the project. Each edition sold for a six pence, or a shilling if the customer wished to have colouring added. Dawson claimed the magazine achieved a circulation of 39,000 copies…
