Michael Matthys - I'm An Angel Too...

I bought this little book from FRMK just for the drawing. It's very hard to see on the scan below but the pages are very beautiful.
They are all scenes of streets and children's parties. Very dark, and covered with bulls blood splatters. They really are great drawings. The story seems to be about a children's party, it also seems quite sad. I would have liked more story to go with the great art. I also really like the lettering which seems to have been done with the bulls blood. I think it might have been better to see the original drawings in an exhibition at their full size than as a little book.

More Stuff I Got at Angouleme

'Hardcomics 7 - First Sexual Experience' is a great big book of porn comics from Romania sponsered by Playboy Romania. Some nice stuff in here. I was reading it on the train home and thinking 'how cool am I'.

'The Book of George' is a great big book from Romania that they were giving out for free! They had been paid for by their Romanian Arts council equivalent. There's some really good comics in here. Loads of different artists and different styles. This should be orange not pink but my scanner doesn't think so.

I also bought 'Feraille Illustre no. 27' from the Requins Marteaux stall. It's very good with stories by Sara Varon, Trondheim, Blex Bolex, Killofer, Blutch, Winschluss and many more.

Imiri Sakabashira - Nekokappa

I had seen this manga artist in The Comics Journal so I thought I'd buy his book. It's in French but it doesn't matter as there are hardly any words. There's one of the great full page scenes he draws above. These are the adventures of the cat / water spirit character on the cover. There not really adventures though as they are very surreal and he just wanders about looking at all the weird stuff. They are full of decaying organic machinery, giant factories, people buying rotten meat and fish and monsters. I like them a lot. There are also some stories I wouldn't have expected, like a weird giant monster story and 'TikiRod', about tiki statues and American cars. He draws a lovely decaying urban scene, all damp and filthy with loads of black ink.

Amanda Vahamaki - Aitienpaiva

This is a lovely comic I bought at Angouleme drawn by Amanda Vahamaki who did 'The Bun Field'. Look how beautiful the drawing is, I think it's done with pastels and coloured pencils. It's much better in the book of course than on these scans. I'm thinking of doing a colour comic soon so this is the sort of stuff I need to look at. It's all in Finnish so I'm not sure of the story but it's about two kids living in a little coastal village in Finland. Sometimes the colours go a lot less naturalistic and everyone goes green or red. It's a very interesting thing you can do with colour.