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Tuesday, July 01 2008

Strip Extravaganza

Friends,
Cluing you in to a fantastic feast of movies currently available to see on the big screen this summer courtesy of the British Film Institute in London. A season of feature film adaptations from comic strips old and new stretching from Joseph Losey's Modesty Blaise to the latest Batman - The Dark Knight, and including James McTeigue's V For Vendetta, Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy, and Mario Bava's Danger:Diabolik. A must for a visit.
Full details of all showings, lectures, etc at www.bfi.org.uk/comics.

Posted by David Lloyd at 10:30 AM | Permalink

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Tuesday, June 17 2008

Okay, Buddy - Talk!

Friends,
I'm giving a talk at Highgate Library in London on the 25th of this month. As you'll see by the info below, you'll need to pipe up before appearing if you want to benefit from my words of wisdom. Space, I hear, is limited. I'll be signing afterwards, too.
See you.

Posted by David Lloyd at 10:54 AM | Permalink

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Thursday, June 05 2008

Back To The Boot

Friends,
Many apologies for this late alert owing to server problems with my site.
I'm heading East to that kicking country Italy again this weekend. Then
jumping West to it's neighbour Sardinia for a signing in the South, then a
signing in the North. Here's the detail for all those who can make it along to
say hi :

Thursday 05 June 08
21.30 at a book festival in Piazza Luni, Sarzana, Liguria : ' I Libri per
Strada, le Strade per il Libro '.
Friday 06 June 08
18:30 signature session at "Loriga Fumetti",Cagliari, Sardinia.
Saturday 07 June 0818:30 signature session at " Libreria Azuni", Sassari, Sardinia.

Just in case you think my existence is just one dazzling blur of
globe-trotting, I should let you know I've actually done
some work at the drawing board over the last month. Tell you about it next posting.
Hope you're all having a great Spring/Summer!

Posted by David Lloyd at 02:18 PM | Permalink

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Monday, May 05 2008

Bye-Bye, Blanc de Blanc, Hello, Bristol

Friends,
Well, I regret I can't tell you much about the festival in Hautvillers, simply because I'm short of time - the thing that always hampers my communications with you here, I'm sorry to say - but it was home to an astonishing exhibition of Francois Bucq, which made me appreciate what an absolutely extraordinary cartoonist he is, and wish that his work was seen by more people in it's original art form, where it glows. If you're unfamiliar with his work, please get to see some when you can. Magicians Wife, Pioneers of Human Adventure, are two. Met a lot of great fellow artists and festival folk and drank some fine Champagne - one time at an early morning sampling overlooking the very vineyards that produced it... Ahh...
Nice place for a holiday weekend, you guys. The Eurostar to Paris Nord, from Paris Est to Epernay. That's the whole journey. Then a taste of the French countryside and some of it's finest creations...
Next stop for me is the very British Bristol ComicExpo from 9th-11th. Please come and say hi, if you're around. I'm at a table next to Incognito comics most of the time I'm there, but at Frontier Entertainment's table from 2-3 on Sat, and at the Titan table from 2-3 on Sunday.

Posted by David Lloyd at 05:18 PM | Permalink

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Friday, April 25 2008

French Toast

Friends,
Next stop in my travels is Hautvillers in France for their second comics festival, BD-Bulles. I'll be there this weekend from Friday to Sunday - as will the amazing and extraordinary Vendetta touring exhibition detailed in a previous entry on this site - so if you're in the area, please come along. This festival is held in the Champagne region, so there couldn't really be a much better place to pop along to for a sketch from some great artists from the Continent and one from little old England.
Among other guests at this ideal meeting point for aficionados of the medium are Bruno BELLAMY - DAV - Elvire DE COCK - Juliette DERENNE - Bruno DI SANO - Jean-Louis DRESS - ESTEBAN - Thib GORDON - Antonio LAPONE - Olivier MARIN - Pascal MILLET - Pascal REGNAULD - Jean-Marc STALNER - Edmond TOURRIOL- Luc TURLAN - Virginie VERTONGHEN - Marc WASTERLAIN - WYLLOW.

Posted by David Lloyd at 09:26 AM | Permalink

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Wednesday, April 02 2008

Greece Is The Word... Then Oranges, Then Apples

Friends,
This weekend I'll be in Athens at Comicdom Con Athens from 4th-6th, April.
It's the first time I've been in Athens for 18 years, when I visited on a day trip from Pireas, where I was staying at the time on a two-week attempt to cure incipient workaholism. I'd just headed there for the sun, really, and Greece - and Crete before it - had it in spades. I really hope it'll be shining there again. From 4.30-6.30 on Sunday I'll be in an interview/QnA/signing session with Mark Buckingham, and no doubt be around at other places during the event. If you're around, come and say hi, and pick up a copy of the Greek edition of Kickback, which will be launched at this event.
Then the week after next, I'll be at the one-day con at Tampa, Florida, on Sunday, April 13th, at the Doubletree Hotel, 4500, West Cypress St for the whole day, which might be closer to home for many of you!
After that, I'm right on to the New York Comic Con from Friday, 18th -20th, April. Signing times are 4-5 on Friday, and 3-4 on Saturday at the DC booth, and 11am for early birds on Sunday at the Dark Horse stand.
Look forward to seeing any of you who can make it out to see me :)
As a supplement to my last entry, I'm signing off with a nod of the head to another of my great influences - the great comics artist/illustrator Ronald Embleton, whose work in a story called Wrath Of The Gods made more impact on me than anything else. Here's a bit of it.

Posted by David Lloyd at 02:16 PM | Permalink

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Friday, March 28 2008

Security Check

Arthur C Clarke died recently, and though I wasn't a dedicated fan of all his work, I amired the short stories of a collection called The Other Side Of The Sky, which was one of dozens of paperbacks I was buying in the Sixties that fed my hunger for sf and fantasy. This strip is an adaptation of one his stories Security Check. It's the first real strip story I ever did. There was no stopping me from then on. I was addicted. As you can tell, at the time I was massively influenced by Steve Ditko. Of course, I still am. But then I was literally fascinated by his work and wanted to somehow emulate what he did. The way he drew creases and folds in clothes was astounding and beautiful to me - art in itself - and I tried to copy it, not knowing what the hell I was doing, of course. My drawings were a hymn of praise to him.
The original story is a clever one and almost about Arthur C Clarke himself, because he is famously supposed to have come up with the idea of the Early Bird communication satellites before the space scientists did. Like the sinister agents in this story, some US intelligence people may well have thought Clarke's pre-empting was the result of a security leak...

Posted by David Lloyd at 06:56 PM | Permalink

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Tuesday, March 18 2008

The New And The Old

Friends,
When I was training to be an artist in the centre of London, a stones throw from St Paul's Cathedral, I would spend some of my lunch hours visiting two areas of market stalls. One was in Leather Lane - a famous market street in the town - where a stall sold old copies of what were colloquially called ' monster magazines '. I'm talking things like Famous Monsters of Filmland, Monster World, and the classiest of them all, Castle of Frankenstein, here. For those of you unaware of what these things were, please do a search on them. They were a source of inspiration for many of my tainted generation.
The other area of stalls was in Farringdon Road, a block away from Leather Lane. Here they sold old books. I never discovered exactly how far back they went in years, but they went much, much further back than the stall in Leather Lane, which sold brand new books in comparison. On these stalls you could find things that looked like the Gutenberg Bible. My interest revolved around old compendium collections of Victorian and Edwardian magazines. It was like time-travelling to touch them. I bought a book of the Strand magazine, with the many adventures of Sherlock Holmes in it, featuring the illustrations of Sidney Paget. I bought an omnibus of a family magazine called Sunday At Home that was choc full of great illustrations - etchings, engravings, the sort of thing no-one did anymore, or really knew how to do properly again. These books were cheap but were treasures for a guy like me.
In a flea market in Brighton at the weekend, I felt like I was back at those stalls for a moment. I found a compendium of The Windsor Magazine from 1910. Still cheap. In it, as expected, were some excellent illustrations to the stories, and a surprise as well. A signature on one of the pictures said Cyrus Cuneo. It's an unusual name to find for an illustrator of an English magazine at the time, and the only other place I'd seen such a signature was at the bottom of the many great paintings I'd seen in the past from the famous British artist, Terence Cuneo, who, though generally noted for his skill at portraying railway engines, was a painter of enormous talent who'd been honoured by the Queen. Could this artist Cyrus be related to him, I thought. I did a search and found that indeed he was. He was the father of Terence Cuneo. You can find out more about these two great artists if you go to www.terencecuneo.co.uk.
Below is one of the b/w illustrations Cyrus Cuneo drew for The Windsor Magazine. Steerage on a ocean-going vessel of the time. An illustration for a serial called Hawtrey's Deputy. Good, eh?

Posted by David Lloyd at 06:36 PM | Permalink

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More Money Than Sense?

From the Daily Mirror, Monday, March 17th.

Posted by David Lloyd at 04:56 PM | Permalink

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Wednesday, February 27 2008

Kickback Italia

Friends,
Yes, KB's in Italy, now. That classic boot-shape could not be more appropriate in such circumstances! I'll be doing a list of stores from next week, starting on Tuesday in Milan. Ad and details below.

Posted by David Lloyd at 07:31 PM | Permalink

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