CFP: The Comics of Hergé / essay collection (Jan. 1, 2014)

As posted on the Comics Scholars' list...

 

Call for Papers

The Comics of Hergé

The Comics of Hergé is a proposed volume in a new book series, Critical Approaches to Comics Artists, at the University Press of Mississippi. This volume will contain 12-16 new critical essays on Hergé, ranging from his work in advertising, illustrations for others' writings, and comics to film and television adaptations of his work. Essays from many disciplinary perspectives are welcome, including critical approaches from comics studies, art history, cultural studies, religious and ethical studies, literary studies, linguistics, history, political science, gender theory, postcolonial studies, and adaptation theory.

Essays (in English) might address the following questions:

• What important connections can be made between Hergé's non-comics work—for example, his illustrations for Léon Degrelle and his work in advertising—and the work for which he became famous?
• Although analysis of Hergé's work has focused almost exclusively on Tintin, how would our understanding of his masterpiece benefit from better attention to his lesser-known comics? How has the previous focus on Tintin denied important insights on these works?
• How did Hergé's growing interest in modern art change the work he did in comics?
• How has Hergé's ligne claire influenced or been challenged by subsequent artists, including those with whom he worked over his long career?
• How do Hergé's ideas of eastern religions come through in his interviews and/or art? To what extent were these ideas accurate, and how do those ideas illuminate other aspects of his life and art?
• To what extent does Tintin's nationality, increasingly obscured over the course of the series, matter? To what extent does his status as a citizen of Brussels signify in the ongoing internal tensions of Belgium?
• Some important comics creators—such as Edgar Jacobs and Jacques Van Melkebeke—benefitted from and have been overshadowed by Hergé. What new research can shed light on Hergé’s relationship with these creators and how that relationship affected comics?
• How does Hergé obscure sexual desire in his works, and where does it appear despite his efforts? Is there a difference between his treatment of desire in his works for different audiences?
• What other absences does Hergé enforce in his comics, and to what effect?
• Numa Sadoul’s book of interviews with Hergé—interviews Hergé edited before they saw print—remains pivotal to the study of Hergé long after its publication. What arguments, revisions, insights, expansions, or even corrections are now necessary?
• Other topics are also very welcome.

Please send a 500-word abstract along with CV and contact information to Joe Sutliff Sanders at joess@k-state.edu by January 1, 2014.

CFP: The Adventures of Tintin (essay collection) (Aug. 30)

Call For Papers:The Adventures of Tintin
(essay collection)

Abstracts are now being accepted for inclusion in an anthology on “The Adventures of Tintin.” Proposed essay topics should creatively engage with the critical, philosophical, and social issues explored in the Tintin universe.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

•       Tintin and Hergé
•       Tintin and comic book history
•       Tintin and detective fiction
•       Tintin and the adventure story
•       Tintin in translation
•       Censorship of Tintin
•       Tintin’s spinoffs
•       Tintin in adaptations
•       Tintin in films
•       Tintin clubs
•       Tintin and geography
•       Tintin and travel
•       Travel and colonialism
•       Treatment of race in Tintin
•       Snowy as sidekick
•       Animal welfare
•       EcoTintin
•       Tintin and gender
•       Tintin and masculinity; homosocial relations
•       Tintin in criticism


Submission Guidelines:

1.      Submission deadline for abstracts (100-500 words) and (one-page) CVs: 30 August, 2012
2.      Submission deadline for first drafts of accepted papers: 15 December 2012.
3.      Submission deadline for final papers: 1 February 2013

Kindly submit abstracts (as Word Document attachment) to BOTH Tyler Shores (tyler.shores@gmail.com) and Tom Ue (ue_tom@hotmail.com).

Talking Tintin: Gene on the Radio This Thursday

This Thursday, I'll be a guest (possibly the guest along with Alex Buchet) on the Wisconsin Public Radio show Here on Earth, for an episode entitled "The Adventures of Tintin." That's right, the world-famous Belgian boy reporter gets his own hour-long radio show here in the States. Tune in from 3:00-4:00pm Central Time to get the low-down on the stories, the controversies, and more, in anticipation of next year's Steven Spielberg-directed adaptation. The show will also be available on-line as an MP3 podcast after the broadcast.

Papercraft Tintin

Here's a cute, super-deformed-style papercraft version of Tintin to build and display. I haven't found a Milou/Snowy yet; but with Steven Spielberg's new Tintin film scheduled for 2010 (or 2011 - I've seen both years mentioned), I predict we'll be seeing more and more Tintin-related fan productions like this as the film's release approaches.

Here's what the finished model looks like:
Link & image credit: Paper Toy Tintin (via The Tintin Blog via Super Punch). Be sure to download the large version.
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Also: There are lots of other comics-related paper projects out there, especially at Christopher Beaumont's Cubecraft, which features characters like Wolverine, The Tick, Scott Pilgrim & company, Hellboy, and even Spider Jerusalem(!). Anime and videogames - even literature - often inspire more complicated designs.
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Note: Tintin is Copyright © Hergé / Moulinsart 2009. The Tintin papercraft model was released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Tintin in a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these figures on the walls;
Bas-reliefs on long, white surfaces.

I've been to Brussels several times, but I don't believe I ever rode the metro. Which means that I missed the opportunity to see the giant Tintin murals in the Stockel metro station! Sob. (Surely, finding out this information was an omen: I must get back to Brussels soon, one way or another.)

But the next best thing might be to visit the station virtually, thanks to BrusselsPictures.com. Check out their exhaustive photo set of the 140 characters from Hergé's Tintin books appearing in the murals. As Captain Haddock might exclaim, "Ten thousand thundering typhoons!"

(Tip o' th' pin to The Ephemerist!)

Early Comics Published in Belgium: A New Blog by Pascal Lefèvre

Internationally regarded comics scholar/historian (and friend) Pascal Lefèvre has announced his new blog. I'll let him describe it, from his initial posting:

This is my research blog on Early Comics published in Belgium before Hergé's Tintin (1929). I've been browsing through Belgian periodicals and popular prints for the last five years and found already scores of examples, but most of them are reprints and translations from abroad. So, this blog will be mainly about early comics from an international perspective. I'm hoping to share parts of my research and foster some dialogue with other researchers. I've lots of plans, various articles are waiting to be published (see [the complete blog post] for former and projected publications). By the end of this year I'll put up also a website about my research.

I became a fan of Pascal's work even before I had the pleasure of meeting him, upon discovering his book (with Jan Baetens) Pour une lecture moderne de la Bande Dessinée in the bookstore of the Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée [Belgian Comic Strip Center] in Brussels. I await his next post with great anticipation!

Image Credit: Dr. Lefèvre's Academia.edu page.