• News

    Attending Valencia’s comics convention

    A Spanish edition of Armed with Madness – Armada de Locura: Leonora Carrington, la Última Surrealista –  was published last month by Ediciones la Cúpola. In early March we were in Spain to promote it, along with all our other books in print there, as guests at the Salón del Cómic de Valéncia. We were signing at the La Cúpola stand on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd. Some of Bryan’s other work is published by Astiberri, so we spent some time at their stand on the Sunday.

     

    A lot of Spanish comics fans – and a lot of cosplay!

     

  • News

    Grandville goes to Angoulême!

    The French edition of Grandville Noël (volume 4 of Bryan’s series of anthropomorphic detective fiction) launched at the 51st Festival de la Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême. We were in attendance at the Delirium stand – and so were the fans.

    It was our first time since 2019. As huge and as crammed with people as ever, it was hard to move around at all on the Saturday.

    Here’s a post-meal photo with some friends on the last evening: Charles Ferreira, who works for Joseph Gibert, Laurent Lerner, Delirium publisher, and Xav Cazuax-Zago, writer on Lone Sloane.

    For the rest, I’m still laid low with the bug we picked up on our travels, so the pictures can speak for themselves.

  • News

    Interview in International Journal of Surrealism Volume 1, Number 1

    It seems like an age since Bryan and I did an interview for this new journal from the International Society for the Study of Surrealism (ISSS). In fact it was just in May, when Armed with Madness first came out. Here’s the open access version of volume 1, number 1: International Journal of Surrealism. This first issue deals with The “Problem of Woman” in Surrealism.

    The live event we’re doing via Memberplanet for the ISSS is fast approaching. Here’s the link:

    An Interview with Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot, creators of ARMED WITH MADNESS: THE SURREAL LEONORA CARRINGTON

    14th January 2024 6.30pm BST – be there or be rectangular!

  • News

    In Valenciennes, for the 16e Salon de la BD!

    Just back from another comics festival, the 16th Salon de la BD in Valenciennes, close to the Belgian border. Valenciennes is in Hauts de France, so it was reachable by train for us. After our Tuscany experience, I don’t intend to fly ever again (I have said this at least once before…)

    Bryan’s Grandville series is being published by Délirium, a very nice and rather niche French publisher that specialises in British and American comics in translation. He was kept busy signing on Saturday and Sunday. There were copies of Louise Michel, la Vierge Rouge to sign too, which was good.

    We were grouped with some Spanish artists, including Carlos Puerta:

    and Gabor, who had just been awarded a prize by the festival when I took this photo:

    We also encountered Ivo Milazzo, an Italian artist Bryan once spent time with in Lucca (who knows how many years ago?):

    And in the evenings, we spent some time with people from the magazine Fluide Glacial, especially Arthur Borsei, a.k.a l’Abbé:

    For our third and last evening, after the festival, we were in Lille, where we met up with Lucie Benagrouba, a Lilloise friend. Unfortunately I forgot the camera, so no jolly dinner-table photo to finish. Here are some books instead:

  • News

    Lucca, Florence and the case of the missing case

    A fine new Italian edition of Bryan’s Tale of One Bad RatLa Storia del Topo Cattivo – took us to Tuscany for this year’s Lucca Comics & Games. Unfortunately Storm Cíaran arrived in Tuscany before us. We eventually made it to the festival around 24 hours later than intended, missing the opening events and various press interviews (and one suitcase).

    Once we finally got there, Bryan was kept busy with several signings at the publisher’s stand. The deluge and high winds didn’t seem to have deterred festival goers one bit. The place was heaving:

    He was on a panel discussing underground comics with Rattigher, chaired by Fabio Gaducci:

    and finished with a showcase session, after which we left for a couple of relaxing days in Florence:

    And the suitcase? It turned up at our B&B, barely an hour before we left for home 🙂

  • News

    Comics Marketplace at LICAF

    In a last-minute change of plan, Bryan and I will now have a table in the Comics Marketplace at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in Bowness next weekend. We’ll be selling artwork, prints and books, including copies of Bryan’s biography. I’ve no intention of being glued to the table all weekend, though. There’s a lot going on and I don’t want to miss it all. You can check out what’s on, guests, exhibitors and more on the website.

    On Saturday 30th, we talk about our new book Armed with Madness, the Surreal Leonora Carrington, with Dr Harriett Earle in the Lake District Boat Club at 12 noon. See you there!

  • News

    The Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2023

    LICAF is returning to Bowness-on-Windermere!

    We’re delighted to be taking part again in 2023. The festival runs from Friday 29th September to Sunday 1st October and this year’s fabulous line-up of guests and exhibitors is as impressive as ever. You can check it all out on the festival site, where you’ll be able to find out what’s on, browse the lists of guests and exhibitors, book your tickets and more.

    Bryan and I will be presenting our latest collaboration Armed with Madness, the Surreal Leonora Carrington. On Saturday 30th September at noon we’ll be in conversation about The Last of the Surrealists with Dr Harriet Earle in the Lake District Boat Club. There will be a signing session close by after the event, at the SelfMadeHero tables in the Exhibitor Marketplace.

  • News

    Armed with Madness launch events

    Our new book Armed with Madness: the Surreal Leonora Carrington will be published by Self Made Hero in the UK in mid May (25th April in USA). Bryan and I will be in London to talk about it at a public event at the Cartoon Museum on Friday 12th May at 6pm. Do come along if you can! Tickets are £10 and available from the Museum here. The following day we will be at a signing session in Gosh! from 1-2pm.

    Later in the month we’ll be at a launch event hosted by Lancaster University at the Storey in Lancaster on 23rd May at 7.30pm. The event is free but ticketed via Eventbrite.

    Meanwhile, check out the stunning trailer below (it’s less than 2 minutes long). It was directed and edited by designer Jordan Smith and features music composed by Gary Lloyd.

    Jordan has collaborated with Bryan before, notably producing the cover to Alice in Sunderland, based on Bryan’s pencil rough. Gary, who in the past has worked on projects with Alan Moore and Iain Banks, composed the music for the modern dance performance piece When You Light a Candle You Also Cast a Shadow, featuring a specially commissioned poetry cycle that I wrote for them.

    The trailer soundtrack includes the fine voice of soprano Isabelle Mohan and a specially recorded cameo by composer-musician Gary Carpenter playing the same Nordic Lyre that he used for Willow’s Song in the film The Wicker Man (1973). Amazing!

  • News

    Armed with Madness trailer!

    A two-minute trailer has been released to promote the new graphic biography by Mary M Talbot and Bryan Talbot, Armed with Madness: The Surreal Leonora Carrington. Directed and edited by designer Jordan Smith, it features music composed by Gary Lloyd and is available to view on YouTube here.

    Jordan has collaborated with Bryan before, notably producing the cover to Alice in Sunderland, based on Bryan’s pencil rough.

    Gary, who in the past has worked on projects with Alan Moore and Iain Banks, composed the music for the modern dance performance piece When You Light a Candle You Also Cast a Shadow, featuring a poetry cycle written by Mary. The trailer soundtrack includes the fine voice of soprano Isabelle Mohan and a specially recorded cameo by composer-musician Gary Carpenter playing the same Nordic Lyre that he used for Willow’s Song in the film The Wicker Man (1973).

    Reluctant muse and feminist champion… society heiress and rebel refugee… the last of the Surrealists: Leonora Carrington played many roles in her long and extraordinary life. Renouncing her privileged upbringing in pre-war England for the more exciting elite of Paris’s 1930s avant-garde, she comes to rub shoulders (and more) with the likes of Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, and Salvador Dalí, after embarking on a complicated love affair with Max Ernst. But the demons that have both haunted and inspired her work are gathering, and when the world goes mad with the outbreak of war and the Nazi invasion, Leonora’s own hold on reality collapses into a terrifying psychotic episode of her own. Eventually fleeing war-torn Europe, she emerges into a new and richly creative life in Mexico City, establishing herself as a prodigious painter, writer, and advocate of women’s rights.

    Armed With Madness: The Surreal Leonora Carrington is published in April in the USA and May in the UK by Self-Made Hero.

     

  • News

    Company Carpi are back…

    …with three more public performances! When You Light a Candle You Also Cast a Shadow was first performed in Lancaster’s Peter Scott Gallery in November 2021. This time it takes place in Chester Cathedral on Thursday 2nd March 2023, performed underneath Luke Jerram’s stunning Gaia installation (as seen in Lancaster Priory last June). Further details and tickets are available on Company Carpi’s website here. My poetry cycle will be there but, sadly, this time I won’t.