NEWS ITEM
PAUL GRAVETT ON THE BEAT
Posted: January 10, 2010
Paul Gravett contributes to The Beat’s 2009 Year End Survey:
2010 Projects?
Curating exhibitions on the Moomins, Jack Kirby and Hypercomics. Preparing some major new books about comics. Planning the next evolution of the Comica Festival. And above all, relaunching Escape Books, the seminal publishing company I ran with Peter Stanbury between 1983 and 1989. It’s the perfect time to bring this back. We’ll be putting out graphic novels, new books of our own about comics, and reviving Escape as an anthology showcase for the internet age. Because we all need an Escape.
What was the biggest story in comics in 2009?
I guess either Disney buying Marvel or Crumb illustrating Genesis, but to me the biggest under-reported story was the banning by an Egyptian court of the country’s first adult graphic novel by Magdy El Shafee entitled Metro.
What will be the biggest story in comics in 2010?
The impact of the Apple e-reader.
What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2010?
Indulging my lifelong love of Jack Kirby and luxuriating in original art for this exhibition, co-curated with Dan ‘Picture Box’ Nadel, for the Fumetto Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland.
When I think of comics in the 00s I think of:
The medium coming into its own more and more internationally, resulting in utterly unexpected, wonderful comics I’d never dreamt I’d see - I have to keep pinching myself.
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