Paul Gravett | |
---|---|
Occupation | Journalist and author |
Nationality | British |
Subject | Comics, Manga |
Years active | 1981–present |
Notable works |
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Notable awards | UK Comic Art Award for Best Auxiliary Contributor (1990) [1] |
Partner | Peter Stanbury |
Website | |
www |
Paul Gravett is a London-based journalist, curator, writer, and broadcaster who has worked in comics publishing since 1981.
He is the founder of Escape magazine, and for many years wrote a monthly article on comics appearing in the UK magazine Comics International , together with a monthly column for ArtReview . He has written for various periodicals including The Guardian , The Comics Journal , Comic Art , Comics International, Time Out , Blueprint , Neo , The Bookseller , The Daily Telegraph, and Dazed & Confused .
Gravett's career began in 1981, as he and his "longtime partner" Peter Stanbury [2] managed the Fast Fiction table at bi-monthly Comic Marts held in Westminster Hall. Gravett invited artists to send him their homemade comics, which he would sell from the Fast Fiction table with all proceeds going to the creator. His role in the British indie comics scene is depicted in Eddie Campbell's Alec comics, in which Gravett is called "The Man at the Crossroads." [3]
Later in 1981, Gravett was employed as promotions manager for Pssst! , an attempt to publish a British equivalent of the lavish French bande dessinée magazines.
In 1983, Gravett and Stanbury launched Escape magazine [2] in an attempt to showcase the cream of the alternative cartoonists of the day. Under the Escape Publishing imprint, they co-published Violent Cases by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, three volumes of Eddie Campbell's Alec between 1984 and 1986 and London's Dark in 1988 by James Robinson and Paul Johnson. Titan Publishing Group took over the publication of Escape in 1987, with Gravett also coming on board as an editor at Titan Books. [1] Escape lasted for 19 issues before closing its doors in 1989 (when Gravett also left Titan). The Comics Journal is quoted as saying of Escape, "This ... anthology remains one of the most sorely missed comics of all time not simply because of its tremendous track record of translating European comics but simply because it was always good in so many ways." [4]
From 1992 to 2001, Gravett was the director of the UK charity the Cartoon Art Trust, [1] dedicated to preserving and promoting the best of British cartoon art and caricature, and to establish a museum of cartoon art with gallery, archives, and reference library.
In 2003, Gravett founded Comica, the London International Comics Festival, which he helped run until its demise in 2014. [5] [6] [7] Gravett coordinated a number of events surrounding Comica, like Comica Comiket and the Graphic Short Story Prize contest, run in conjunction with The Observer . [8]
Gravett has written a number of books on comics. He also co-edited Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption , a political anthology comic produced in 2009. [9] Gravett and Stanbury's Great British Comics: Celebrating a Century of Ripping Yarns and Wizard Wheezes was nominated for a 2007 Eagle Award for Favourite Comics-related Book. [10]
Gravett is the author, co-author, or editor of several non-fiction books on the topic of comics and sequential art, including:
Eddie Campbell is a British comics artist and cartoonist. He was the illustrator and publisher of From Hell, and the creator of the semi-autobiographical Alec stories collected in Alec: The Years Have Pants, and Bacchus, a wry adventure series about the few Greek gods who have survived to the present day.
A graphic novel is a long-form work of sequential art. The term graphic novel is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comics scholars and industry professionals. It is, at least in the United States, typically distinct from the term comic book, which is generally used for comics periodicals and trade paperbacks.
Comics is a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically takes the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia can indicate dialogue, narration, sound effects, or other information. There is no consensus among theorists and historians on a definition of comics; some emphasize the combination of images and text, some sequentiality or other image relations, and others historical aspects such as mass reproduction or the use of recurring characters. Cartooning and other forms of illustration are the most common image-making means in comics; Photo comics is a form that uses photographic images. Common forms include comic strips, editorial and gag cartoons, and comic books. Since the late 20th century, bound volumes such as graphic novels, comic albums, and tankōbon have become increasingly common, along with webcomics as well as scientific/medical comics.
A British comic is a periodical published in the United Kingdom that contains comic strips. It is generally referred to as a comic or a comic magazine, and historically as a comic paper. As of 2014, the three longest-running comics of all time were all British.
Tales from the Leather Nun was an American underground comic published by Last Gasp in 1973. It was a one-shot anthology of bizarre, violent, and perverted stories featuring nuns by Dave Sheridan, Robert Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, Jaxon, Roger Brand, and Pat Ryan.
Glenn Dakin is a British cartoonist and author of children's books. He is the author of the Candle Man book series, and he contributed to a number of British comics magazines including Escape and Deadline, and was part of the British small press comics scene in the 1980s. His main creations are Temptation and the semi-autobiographical strip Abe.
Escape magazine was a British comic strip magazine founded and edited by Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury. Nineteen issues were published between 1983 and 1989. Eddie Campbell, Phil Elliott and Glenn Dakin were amongst the many cartoonists published within its pages. Escape Publishing also released a limited number of graphic novels in the period 1984–1989, some co-published with Titan Books.
Phil Elliott is a British comic book creator who was published in Escape Magazine. He was part of the British small press comics scene in the 1980s.
Fast Fiction was a market stall, magazine, mail order distributor, and news sheet that played a key role in the history of British small press comics. It existed in its various forms from 1981 through to 1990 under the stewardship of Paul Gravett, Phil Elliott and Ed Pinsent.
British small press comics, once known as stripzines, are comic books self-published by amateur cartoonists and comic book creators, usually in short print runs, in the UK. They're comparable to similar movements internationally, such as American minicomics and Japanese doujinshi. A "small press comic" is essentially a zine composed predominantly of comic strips. The term emerged in the early 1980s to distinguish them from zines about comics. Notable artists who have had their start in British small press comics include Eddie Campbell, Paul Grist, Rian Hughes, Jamie Hewlett, Alan Martin, Philip Bond and Andi Watson.
Big Numbers is an unfinished graphic novel by writer Alan Moore and artist Bill Sienkiewicz. In 1990 Moore's short-lived imprint Mad Love published two of the planned twelve issues. The series was picked up by Kevin Eastman's Tundra Publishing, but the completed third issue did not print, and the remaining issues, whose artwork was to be handled by Sienkiewicz's assistant Al Columbia, were never finished.
This is a bibliography of works by British author and comic book writer Alan Moore.
Woodrow Phoenix is a British comics artist, writer, editorial illustrator, graphic designer, font designer and author of children's books.
Notable events of 2003 in comics.
Alan Moore is an English author known primarily for his work in comic books including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Ballad of Halo Jones, Swamp Thing, Batman: The Killing Joke, and From Hell. He is widely recognised among his peers and critics as one of the best comic book writers in the English language. Moore has occasionally used such pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, Brilburn Logue, and Translucia Baboon; also, reprints of some of his work have been credited to The Original Writer when Moore requested that his name be removed.
Wilson the Wonder Athlete was a British comic strip, first published in 1943 in the British illustrated story paper The Wizard published by D. C. Thomson & Co. It follows the sporting adventures of a heroic character named William Wilson. The stories were written by Gilbert Lawford Dalton and drawn by Jack Glass. The stories ran until 1984 in various British magazines.
The Hornet was a British boys' comic published by D. C. Thomson & Co. for 648 issues from 14 September 1963 to 7 February 1976, after which it was merged with The Hotspur. The free gift with the first issue was a balsa wood "Kestral Glider".
Gary Spencer Millidge is a British comic book creator best known for his series Strangehaven. He has also written and contributed to books about comics.
Pssst! was a short-lived British comics magazine published by Never–Artpool in 1982. Pssst!, which lasted ten monthly issues, was an attempt to publish a British equivalent of the lavish French bande dessinée magazines.
Comica, the London International Comics Festival, was a comics festival held in London. Organized by Paul Gravett, the festival generally took place over a number of weeks. In the beginning, the festival's main venue was London's Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA); thus the name, "ComICA".
...Paul, with his longtime partner Peter Stanbury, was running the small press anthology Fast Fiction, the Fast Fiction stand at the bimonthly Westminster Comics Marts where the small press books were sold, and launching Escape - an excellent European-style professional comics magazine whose book-publishing arm led directly to the careers of James Robinson, Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman.
The Man At The Crossroads. That was a title bestowed upon Paul Gravett by Eddie Campbell. Because what I managed to do for a couple of hours, Paul Gravett spent his Eighties and Nineties doing all the time. Publisher, curator, event organiser, retailer, Paul Gravett brought – and still brings – people together in comics more than anyone I know.
6: Escape