The Black Panel

The Black Panel sells a collection of over thirty independent comics by artists from the North and South of Ireland. For the last year and a while, Paddy and I (Andy) have been at The Black Box Market in The Cathedral Quarter on the first Sunday of every month, between 12-5pm. Entry is free.

Well, now the stall branching out.

Thursday 14th April - 5th May - ¿@#!*$ Exhibition at Catalyst Arts, 5 College Court,Belfast (ask the office)
Friday 15th April - FanSciCon, UCD Students Centre, Belfield Campus, Dublin 9am-10pm
Saturday 16th April - The Red Barn Gallery, 43b Rosemary Street, Belfast BT1 1 QBy, 11am-5pm and further selected Saturdays
Thursday 21st April - Absence Launch Party, Catalyst
Sunday 1st May - The Black Market, Black Box, Hill Street, Belfast

As always, entrance is free.
Check out the blogspot for more details

Bob Curran's Bog Standard Comix

Back in the 80s there was a comic published in Belfast called Ximoc. Among strips by the likes of Will Simpson, Davy Francis, Ray McEvoy and Ivor Lavery, it included a science fiction adventure strip called "The Scavenger", by writer Bob Curran and artist Desi Hughes.

Haven't been able to track down Desi, but Bob got himself a doctorate and has written a slew of books on werewolves, fairies and other folkloric subjects, and worked in community relations and on cross-border initiatives at Stormont. And he's getting back in the comics game. He's set up Bog Standard Comix and is working on three forthcoming series with artists Adrian Lutton and David Dale (who worked together on a promo comic for the W5 Discovery Centre a couple of years ago). Bob and Adrian have put up a seven page preview of their alternate-history sci-fi series Space 1949 (pages 1-3, pages 4-8), which looks marvellous.

The other two titles in the pipeline are time travel adventurer Doc Lazarus, by Bob and Adrian, and 17th century witch-hunter Joachim Darke, by Bob and David.

Don't forget, tomorrow (Thursday 7 April) is the Belfast Comics Creators Pub Meet (Facebook link) at the Cloth Ear on Waring Street. We'll be there from about 9pm.

Stephen Downey on Jennifer Wilde

Stephen Downey blogs about his new comic, Jennifer Wilde, a 1920s supernatural espionage mystery in three issues written by Rob Curley and Maura McHugh. The three of them will be at FanSciCon at University College Dublin on Friday 15 April to promote it.

Catalyst Arts presents ¿@#!*$

¿@#!*$

This unpronounceable series of symbols stands for an exhibition and series of events incorporating the artistic mediums of Comics, Illustration and Zine making, held at Catalyst Arts Gallery, 5 College Court, from 15 April to 7 May, with a preview on 14 April. Exhibiting artists include:

• Malcy Duff
• Travis Millard
• Tom Gauld
• Simone Lia
• Chris Ware 
• Fionnuala Doran 
• Phil Barrett 

As well as the work of the exhibiting artists, Catalyst is also playing host to a library of zines and comics from all over, and there'll also be a series of events held over the course of the exhibition, including:

• The launch party for Absence, a comic about epilepsy written by Andy Luke and drawn by Stephen Downey, on Thursday 21 April from 7.30 to 9pm. There's a Facebook page - invite your friends.

• Secret Cinema, unknown date, unknown location. Follow Sweet or Salted on Facebook to find out more...

• a Comic/Zine Fair, Saturday 23 April from 12 to 5pm, when the Gallery space will be handed over to creators of comics, zines and all things illustrative. Stalls will be set up pedlling wares ranging from cakes to comics, posters to bags, zines to doodles on pieces of paper. Stalls are FREE but spaces are limited, so if you are interested in reserving one then please contact catalystarts@gmail.com

• Live Music & Live Drawing, presented by the collective Pretty Circus on Sunday 1 May from 7pm to 1am. A night of live performance with music and illustration combining for a unique take on the collaboration of the two art-forms.

• The Simpsons, a live comic performance by Malcy Duff, Thursday 5 May, 8pm

• The Dog Walking Technique, a FREE workshop by Malcy Duff, exploring non-traditional approaches to drawing and comic storytelling. Malcy shows us how he uses sensory drawing to create ideas and characters, and the techniques he has developed to turn these into comics. Held Saturday 7 May from 11am to 3pm. Lunch is provided, but spaces are limited, so email catalystarts@gmail.com to book your place.

Nick Roche

Sunday 20 March 2011 - 20 March 2011. 2.00 - 4.00pm at the W5, Belfast



And don't forget, there's a Comic Book Design Workshop at Coleraine Library on Wednesday 23rd March. Pre-Booking essential. Here's the link for that.

John Kindness: a Big Fish who started in our small pond

These days John Kindness is an internationally renowned artist, working in all kinds of media. He paints on car parts, remakes classic works of art as cereal boxes, paints modern cityscapes in the style of ancient Greek vases, and, of course, makes public sculptures out of mosaics of found objects. He's best known in his home town for the Big Fish on the Waterfront, a symbol of the city which this blog has appropriated as its logo.

But back in the 70s, he drew small press comics in Belfast, and those of us who do the same today can regard him as our founder.

In about 1976 he self-published The Hand: A Tale of Old Belfast, a 12-page story of a young lad from north Belfast whose short life causing minor trouble on street corners was cut short in a drive-by shooting:

The following year, he was one of the artists involved in the Belfast People's Comic, a local anthology that also featured work by Ian Knox, Cormac and a very young Davy Francis. Here's a complete 2-page strip from the first issue:

The Shankill Bulletin, a local community paper in the Shankill area, was launched in 1978, and the early issues featured another Kindness creation, "Screw the Bap and Head the Ball", a full page comic strip about a pair of ne'er-do-wells who got into all kinds of satirical scrapes. After a couple of years he handed it over to Davy Francis, but here's one he did in the second issue:

John became a full-time artist in 1986, and left comics behind. Or did he? In 1994 he was invited to propose an artwork to be included in Heathrow Airport's new Belfast Lounge, and devised Belfast Frescoes, an autobiographical tale of his childhood in Belfast in the 1950s, told in a sequence of 20 lime frescoes on slate. Heathrow didn't commission it in the end, but the originals are now in the Ulster Museum, and the whole sequence was published as a book in 1995.

Coleraine: Comic Book Design Workshop

"To mark Creativity Month, Coleraine Library will be hosting a workshop on comic book design with local illustrator and author Trisha Deery, taking place on Wednesday 23rd March at 2.00pm"

The workshop is free; places are available through booking only. More details at the NI Libraries website.