The Comics Bureau

With Com­ica loom­ing large on the hori­zon, head over to For­bid­den Planet, which has a series of Q&As with com­ics sorts by Matt Badham. This art­icle fea­tures Paul Gravett, in which amongst other things, he dis­cusses Comica’s aims, which include;

To treat com­ics as a totally valid con­tem­por­ary art­form, to show where the medium is head­ing right now loc­ally and inter­na­tion­ally, and how com­ics can inter­con­nect with every other art­form. In many ways, the aims, the mis­sion, of Com­ica are in sync with what Peter Stan­bury and I envis­aged when we used to co-publish Escape Magazine back in the 1980s – to escape, to break out from nar­row defin­i­tions and for­mu­las, to lib­er­ate com­ics to be any­thing they want and everything they can be.  That’s why we’ve put Spiegel­man together with Philip Pull­man, Posy Sim­monds with Ian McE­wan, Moore and Gebbie with Stew­art Lee  – or this year Logi­co­mix author Aposto­los Dox­i­adis with Mar­cus de Sautoy and Ben Temple­smith with Philip Rid­ley.  And Com­ica hosts the best, from whatever field of com­ics, from Japan­ese com­ics, with Junko Mizuno, to Amer­ican super­her­oes, like Alex Maleev last year and Cameron Stew­art this year – qual­ity is there in every sec­tor of this medium.

Head over to the Com­ica web­site, and get in touch with Paul if you can volun­teer in any way to help the smooth run­ning of the festival.