#Sean Azzopardi

[downthetubes]

The SEQUENT’ULL Interviews: Jemma Webster-Sharp

Ahead of the free SEQUENT’ULL Comic Art Festival in Hull, organiser and fellow creative Sean Azzopardi chats with Jemma Webster-Sharp creator of the new book, The Scrapbook of Life and Death, launching soon from Avery Hill Publishing

[brokenfrontier]

Don't Miss 'The Sea Shepherd' Signing at London's Gosh! Comics with Sean Azzopardi on Saturday, June 26th

Don’t Miss ‘The Sea Shepherd’ Signing at London’s Gosh! Comics with Sean Azzopardi on Saturday, June 26th

As the world slowly begins to open up again it’s heartening to see book signings return to the comics calendar. Saturday June 26th sees frequent BF favourite Sean Azzopardi signing his recent comic The Sea Shepherd at London’s Gosh! Comics. Full details in the press release below. (Read our review of The Sea Shepherd here). The Sea Shepherd is a graphic novel about the the history of the Marine…

[kierongillen]

This is out in comic shops today. It's an anthology comic to aid the PTSD needs of the survivors of the Grenfell Tower Fire. I think it's well worth supporting.

Last year there was an anthology of prose shorts performing a similar function, called 24 Stories. This is twenty-four comics, half drawn from professionals we curated, and half from open submissions. Each features no more than 24 panels.

There's a lot more information on the site, but it's in all your comic shops now. It's in book shops shortly – Amazon has it for a week's time, so you can pre-order from a standard book shop. All proceeds goes to Trauma Response Network.

Contributors? They include... Al Ewing, Alan Moore, Alex de Campi, Antony Johnston, Caspar Wijngaard, Dan Watters, Dilraj Mann, Doug Braithwaite, Gavin Mitchell, Laurie Penny, Leigh Alexander, Lizz Lunney, Melinda Gebbie, Paul Cornell, Rachael Smith, Ram V, Robin Hoelzemann, Ro Stein, Sara Kenney, Sarah Gordon, Ted Brandt, Tom Humberstone and more. Tula Lotay provided the cover. Dee Cunniffe did the design.As well as the 24 comics, I provide an introduction, in a collaboration with my old friend Sean Azzopardi.

There's a launch party on December 6th, betwee 7 and 9pm, at GOSH in London. Yes, that's the same evening as my DIE signing at Forbidden Planet. I'm having a busy night.

It's tricky to write about. I write about what it means to me, I make it about me. I write about Grenfell, and anger overpowers everything, and while that's correct, this is not a book that's primarily about anger. It's about hope and helping one another. Choosing the material was definitely one of the hardest things about it – it's for a PTSD charity. By definition, we don't want material that can be triggering. That isn't to say it doesn't include some material that's powerful and angry – but it's precisely aimed. It's also a true anthology, with us trying to capture the variety in the comics community in style and approach.

Everyone has done amazing work in it, and I hope you support it. It's a hell of a thing.

[thecomicon]

Best Of British: Black Leather Brings Azzopardi And Noble Back Together

Best Of British: Black Leather Brings Azzopardi And Noble Back Together

In this all too infrequent look at the British comics scene, I’m here to champion a scene I’ve been involved with for many, many years. The strength and depth of quality in British comics is huge with some incredibly talented writers, artists, self-publishers, micro-publishers, and more.

Here, it’s a tale of growing up, bikers, heavy metal in Black Leather…

So… Black Leather. I’ve already…

[torontocomics]

Debuting at TCAF 2017 - 50 by Sean Azzopardi

50 is a loose anthology of pieces - some autobiographical and some fictional functioning as an askew retrospective of both Sean’s life and work to date. The Main story deals with the death of Sean’s Dad and the aftermath.

A4 50 Pages $12

[stripforme]

“Are we the only sane ones here?” A stage, a drink, a vision of terror. An old name returning once more. Black Leather is a wild ride of heavy metal, motorbikes and the explosion of youth. A tragedy of first love, of sacrifice, and of discovery, Black Leather is the scream of yesterday echoing right now. The fourth issue of a five issue series. A comic by Sean Azzopardi and Douglas Noble, creators of Sightings of Wallace Sendek, Built of Blood & Bricks and After the Sessions. “Together they seem to bring something gloriously dark out of each other” -Andy Oliver, Broken Frontier Link to the store in the bio, as always. https://www.instagram.com/p/B2xMmXOBZhD/?igshid=2o6ijgwd3bf9

[iesorno]

SHOP! - Strip for me (Douglas Noble)

SHOP! - Strip for me (Douglas Noble) @douglasnoble own work is like a sunken wreck - broken yet beautiful, and his collaborators are the brightly coloured reef fish that prosper from the shelter he provides #comics #horror #heavymetal

(click on the images to follow the links) Douglas not only creates his own fascinating comics, he often works with a raft of other interesting creators including Sean Azzopardi, Jon Paul Milne and Olivia Sullivan who all produce amazing work of their own. you can find him here: twitter instagram facebook website webstore comixology Sean Azzopardi Jon Paul Milne Olivia Sullivan all…

[redcontemporaryarts]

QR CDES > SEAN AZZOPARDI PRINTS X MBW > UNKUST PUBLICATIONS

[nongravity]

TCAF 2017 Post Mortem

This is my 9th post mortem convention write up! You can find the rest on the Events page on my website or the post mortem tag here on my tumblr.

My total outgoing costs for the convention in order of leaving my house to the start of the show: €1073

Round trip plane ticket to North America €530

Hotel for 3 nights in Toronto €330

TCAF half-table €173

Food €40

What I brought with me:

5 Copies of Strong for C$8

4 Copies of Hats for C$10

5 Copies of Odd Reels for C$4

10 Copies of We Can’t Afford This for C$6

What I sold:

1 copy of We Can’t Afford This

For a total incoming of: €4

On the surface that’s a loss of €1069 but it’s not the whole story, we piggy backed TCAF onto a trip Damhnait and I were already planning, I could never afford to travel to a North American comics event if it didn’t coincide with a family trip.

So minus the plane ticket, that’s now a loss of €539.

The Stray Lines gang pitched in a very generous €287, which brings the total loss down to €252. Not even my biggest loss for an event ever, but I felt bad cause now it wasn’t just me losing money, it was the group.

And I’ll come back to this later, but we had another savior comic book shop buy  some of our books after the show, I made an extra €25, the gang as a whole got an extra €166.

In the end then, my losses for TCAF were about €227.

Rescue

The TCAF trip almost didn’t happen. A few weeks before we were set to fly we received a message from the AirBnB we’d booked in Toronto saying that our reservation was cancelled due to the hosts recently adopting a rescue kitten who would have been traumatized by the disruption caused by guests. The sharing economy makes fools of us all!

We didn’t have much luck finding a replacement AirBnB and were about to cancel the TCAF portion of our trip when we found a vacancy at the Howard Johnsons right near the venue for the same price! Really lucky.

Customs

I’ve read enough horror stories of artists trying to bring comics to Canada for comic shows. I read and re-read TCAF’s advice for traveling exhibitors and decided of all the options (shipping books from Ireland to Canada, declaring this that and the other, invoicing comic shops, etc) I would choose the option that I’m best suited for: playing dumb and apologizing profusely. 

The customs line at the Toronto airport was ridiculously long and slow, painful with two tired kiddos (and two tired adults), but thankfully I didn’t need to worry about anything because traveling as a family means no-one cares, stamp-stamp, move along. PHEW.

Our Table and Us

A half table is really too small for our collective. I doubt I’ll go to any more shows where we’re only offered a half-table. 30 different books is too many to display in a  3′x3′ space.

The Stray Lines gang talked about how for future half-table shows we should limit ourselves to half as many books.

I was jet lagged and wonky trying to set up my table on the Friday night. I set up a total failure of a table design before I had to give up and go to bed, but thankfully after a little sleep I figured out a better arrangement Saturday morning, stitched together from a cardboard nappy box that I had used to keep the books flat in my suitcase.

What I brought for the group:

30 different books by over 7 different Irish artists! 140-ish books total.

What the group sold:

15 books! 

Winner

Debbie’s historical anthology War Chest was the winner of the weekend, selling 5 copies. It was a total last minute lark, it was just back from the printer and Debbie had to post them to me in Naas from Dublin when we couldn’t coordinate a meet up before my flight. I tried to give it as primo placement as I could manage without a stand, piled on top of cardboard from a box of nappies, held together with tape and scrap paper. 

Even though it sold the most, the “DEBUT” sign didn’t work as well at TCAF as it did in LICAF and ELCAF. Labeling books debut at those shows tended to bring people to the table and move books on its own. At TCAF I had to steer people towards our debut and pitch it to them. 

Helpers

Being at the show as part of a family trip meant trading alternating kids with Damhnait a few times to give her even the slightest rest and leaning on my table-mate to watch my table so I could run out to lunch with Damh and the kids. 

Baby Tamaillín’s charms did nothing to help our sales but Pollito did help me make a paper chain to decorate the table. 

Toronto Comic Arts Festival

The Toronto Reference Library is MAD, it’s massive and beautiful and it was a very cool and very different venue for a comic festival. 

The crowds were tricky to navigate at times, since exhibitors are spread out all over the library, you sometimes end up in traffic jams as certain areas are more for library books than comic exhibitors. 

Stray Lines was off in a conference room, which was good and bad, good because we weren’t crammed in with the library books, bad because the conference room had strict fire-safety occupancy rules, so it was almost like another entrance to another venue with people waiting in line to get in.

We had just watched the episode of Mister Rogers Neighborhood where Mister Rogers goes to a mall to see glass elevators, so Pollito was really excited to ride the glass elevators up and down.

The kids section downstairs was a great place to bring Pollito for a little while to draw and have some quiet. 

Page & Panel, the TCAF shop is one of the coolest comic book shops I’ve seen. I was sad that I didn’t have time to visit The Beguiling but Page & Panel was an incredible small-press-focused comic shop. I really wish we had anything like it in Dublin. 

Finnish Anime Witches

Our table-neighbor at TCAF was internet famous! More power to her, and it was through no fault of her own, but she swallowed the Stray Lines table whole!

Our Stray Lines table was more a queueing up space for her table. I don’t know what you do about that. We weren’t really in the same genre either, so people queueing up for a Finnish anime witch t-shirt weren’t really into our Irish collective offerings. 

Luck of the draw I guess, but painful to stand there for two days watching people bypass your table to avoid the Finnish anime witch crowds.

Small World

A few people knew us! Not our group Stray Lines, but individually! Explaining who we are to people, someone told me “I know Sarah Bowie.”

A kind person told me they’d seen We Can’t Afford This on The Nib and how it related to the part of Canada they’re from. Then another person said they’d already bought She Always Looked Good in Hats at Gosh! Comics in London! It was extremely encouraging.

Gavin Fullerton and Luke Healy both stopped by the Stray Lines table to say hi, funny to be so well connected to Ireland in Toronto.  

Big Planet

After the show I was greatly discouraged, leaving Toronto with a suitcase as heavy as when I arrived. This was the first leg of our family holiday and I had three cities to drag the suitcase full of unsold comics through, and then potentially drag it back to Ireland!

During TCAF, I had spotted David & Dave from my old local comic shop, Secret Headquarters but wasn’t able to flag them down.

I started writing American comic shops that I knew did firm sale (as opposed to consignment), but I don’t know that many! 

Thankfully, Jared at Big Planet Comics (MD/DC/VA) got back to me and bought 75 books from our remaining stock! Coincidentally he was at TCAF too but never saw our table!

Absolutely saved the day. We made a little money, our books would be in a high profile American shop, and I wouldn’t have to carry them back to Ireland. 

Highlights

I got to meet Colleen Coover! You know that story of Orson Welles watching John Ford’s Stagecoach 100 times in preparation for directing Citizen Kane? That was me and Colleen Coover’s Gingerbread Girl while I was making She Always Looked Good in Hats. 

So I really wanted to say hi to her and say thank you and give her a copy of Hats. I got down to her during a quiet moment in the morning and she was super friendly and very cool and I got to buy a copy of Small Favors from her! After reading Gingerbread Girl I was trying to find more Colleen Coover books and had no luck hunting down copies of Small Favors on eBay.

Small Favors is a porno though, so I wasn’t really able to read it openly during our little family holiday! I’ve read it since though and it is the most fun!

Hannah Blumenreich of Spidey-zine fame had a table across the isle from us. I bought the Spidey Zine online but wanted to get a physical copy, but good for her she sold out before I could get one! Happy to find she had other original work I hadn’t seen before on offer. 

Kory Bing was also across the way and Damhnait got a gorgeous Cretaceous poster for the girls’ room!

Caitlin Cass was my table mate, she had a bunch of cool local history comics about Buffalo, New York, great style and lovely book designs. She had a newspaper comic! And a comic about hats!

Sean Azzopardi and Aaron Navrady were on the next table over. Turns out Sean, Aaron, Caitlin and myself are all organizing local comic events of our own. Fun to chat event organizing shop with people.

Celebrity-spotting-wise, I saw Ryan North. He was busy chatting with someone so I wasn’t able to say hi and dorkily bring up that I used to hang out on the message board he started a decade ago.

Conclusion

Like a lot of the bigger shows I’ve been to, they’re way more fun as an audience member than as a small-time exhibitor. I imagine it’ll be a long while before the Stray Lines group finds its way back to Toronto. 

Having never been to a North American show, and knowing how much bigger the North American small press market is compared to Ireland and the UK, it was disappointing that the change in scale and size and cost made no difference for our sales (and maybe even put us at a disadvantage). 

We have no more North American shows on the horizon. I still apply to the Small Press Expo lottery every year. I imagine if we ever won a table there we’d give that a try. Really the only way to get there is to coincide it with a family America trip, which is a lot of work for Damhnait for very little payoff. 

Epilogue

Toronto is lovely! I wish I could have spent more time there. I found three (3!!!) ice cream shops on Yorkville Ave, the street between our hotel and the TCAF library. What more could I ask. And there was a perfect diner, Flo’s, which was the warmest “welcome back to the North American continent” we could have asked for.

Pollito loved the dinosaurs at the museum. We didn’t travel far but all the neighborhoods we explored were adorable.

Afterwards we traveled by train to Niagara Falls which I hadn’t been to since I was a kid. The family holiday aspect of the trip totally outshined the comic-business aspect of the trip.

We may never be back again, and it was a total financial failure, but as the first leg of a month-long North American family holiday it was fun.

[drawthelinecomics]

PIN A BADGE ON

This tiny action takes your beliefs out into the world, and shows people you’re ready to discuss them. Badges on the lapel? That’s fashion forward, too!

Art by Sean Azzopardi

[downthetubes]

The SEQUENT’ULL Interviews: Lucy Sullivan

Ahead of the free SEQUENT’ULL Comic Art Festival taking place in Hull this month, organiser and fellow creative Sean Azzopardi chats with guests at the event, continuing with independent comic creator Lucy Sullivan

Ahead of the free SEQUENT’ULL Comic Art Festival taking place in Hull on Saturday 31st August 2024, organiser and fellow creative Sean Azzopardi chats with guests at the event, continuing with independent comic creator Lucy Sullivan, creator of the acclaimed graphic novel, BARKING… Could you talk a little about yourself and your work. Sure! I’m Lucy. I’m a Londoner, raised in a pub (literally,…

[brokenfrontier]

Substrata - Olivia Sullivan and Sean Azzopardi's Abstract Comic Looks "Beneath the Skin of Things"

Substrata – Olivia Sullivan and Sean Azzopardi’s Abstract Comic Looks “Beneath the Skin of Things”

Substrata is a collaboration that sees two generations of UK indie comics coming together as stalwart of the British small press scene Sean Azzopardi teams up with Olivia Sullivan, undoubtedly one of the most important new talents in alt/art comics practice and a boundary-pushing voice. Published under Douglas Noble’s Strip for Me imprint it’s an experimental zine that is as fascinating for the…

[tellusepisode]

Agora (2009)

Adventure, Biography, Drama |

Agora is a Spanish English-language historical drama film directed by Alejandro Amenábar and written by Amenábar and Mateo Gil. The biopic stars Rachel Weisz as Hypatia, a mathematician, philosopher and astronomer in late 4th-century Roman Egypt, who investigates the flaws of the geocentric Ptolemaic system and the heliocentric model that challenges it. Surrounded by religious turmoil and social unrest, Hypatia struggles to save the knowledge of classical antiquity from destruction. Max Minghella co-stars as Davus, Hypatia’s father’s slave, and Oscar Isaac as Hypatia’s student, and later prefect of Alexandria, Orestes.

In 391 AD, Alexandria is part of the Roman Empire, and Greek philosopher Hypatia is a teacher at the Platonic school, where future leaders are educated. Hypatia is the daughter of Theon, the director of the Musaeum of Alexandria. Hypatia, her father’s slave, Davus, and two of her pupils, Orestes and Synesius, are immersed in the changing political and social landscape. She rejects Orestes’s love as she prefers to devote herself to science. Davus assists Hypatia in her classes and is interested in science. He is also secretly in love with her.

Meanwhile, social unrest begins challenging the Roman rule of the city as Pagans and Christians come into conflict. When the Christians start defiling the statues of the pagan gods and cause one of their priests to burn in a fire, the pagans, including Orestes and Theon, ambush the Christians. However, in the ensuing battle, the pagans unexpectedly find themselves outnumbered by a large Christian mob.

Director: Alejandro Amenábar

Writers: Alejandro Amenábar, Mateo Gil

Stars: Rachel Weisz, Max Minghella, Oscar Isaac, Ashraf Barhom, Michael Lonsdale, Rupert Evans, Homayoun Ershadi

►Cast:

Rachel Weisz…HypatiaMax Minghella…DavusOscar Isaac…OrestesAshraf Barhom…AmmoniusMichael Lonsdale…TheonRupert Evans…SynesiusHomayoun Ershadi…AspasiusSami Samir…Cyril (as Sammy Samir)Richard Durden…OlympiusOmar Mostafa…IsidorusManuel Cauchi…TheophilusOshri Cohen…MedorusCharles Thake…HesiquiusHarry Borg…Prefect EvragiusYousef ‘Joe’ Sweid…Peter (as Yousef Sweid)Clint Dyer…Hierax-ParabolanoSam Cox…Pagan RivalGeorge Harris…Heladius DignitarySylvester Morand…DignitaryPaul Barnes…DignitaryAmber Rose Revah…SidoniaJordan Kiziuk…Hypatia’s DiscipleFrancis Ghersci…Hypatia’s DiscipleJonathan Grima…Hypatia’s DiscipleEdward Caruana Galizia…StudentChris Dingli…Student (as Christopher Dingli)Stephen Buhagiar…ParabalanoJoseph Camilleri…ParabolanoCharles Sammut…PhilosopherMichael Sciortino…PhilosopherJoe Quattromani…Old PhilosopherAlan Meadows…RabbiPeter Borg…Pagan PriestPaul Portelli…TroublemakerRobert Ricards…Roman Officer (as Rob Ricards)Alan Paris…BodyguardJohn Montanaro…BodyguardMalcolm Ellul…BodyguardRay Mangion…Crier via CanopicaMary Rose Bonello…Old Jewish WomanAndré Agius…Child (as Andre Agius)Frederick Testa…ChristianSean Buhagiar…Christian StudentTheresa Celia…Christian WomanFrank Tanti…DeaconAnthony Ellul…DeaconPierre Stafrace…DeaconChristopher Raikes…Frightened Hellenic ManClare Agius…Frightened Hellenic WomanMario Camilleri…Alarmed NeighbourWesley Ellul…GuardJohn Marinelli…GuardSimon Cormi…Informer (as Simon Curmi)Peter Galea…Roman OfficerNikovich Sammut…Roman OfficerRonnie Galea…Ship’s CaptainDavid Ellul-Mercer…Slave (as David Ellul)Philip Mizzi…Surgeon (as Phillip Mizzi)Alan Azzopardi…Suspicious JewPolly March…Woman with FigsJoe Pace…StallkeeperJohn Suda…CustomerMichael Tabone…RabbiAngele Galea…CharitionMalcolm Galea…Charition’s BrotherPaul Celia…Indian King (as Paul Cilia)Jean-Pierre Agius…Clown (as Jean Pierre Agius)Samuel Montague…Crier (as Sam Montague)Marieclaire Camilleri…Jewish GirlGuilherme de Franco…Roman OfficerJimmy Grima…Hypatia Disciple No.2Andrew Hillsden…Pagan WarriorJovan Pisani…Drunken IndianJuan Serrano…Dead JewNovica Todorovic…Parabalano Fighter

Sources: imdb & wikipedia

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[thecomicon]

Best Of British: Sean Azzopardi Calls Last Orders

Best Of British: Sean Azzopardi Calls Last Orders

Last time we talked Sean Azzopardi, it was with his comic, 50, back in 2018. Now, a year plus on, it’s time to shine the Best of British spotlight on him again, with Last Orders, a collection of short tales on drinking issues, illness, old friends, memories of younger, better times… it might sound downbeat, but it’s anything but.

Azzopardi’s relationship with alcohol is something he’s talked…

[torontocomics]

Debuting at TCAF 2017 - After The Sessions by Sean Azzopardi and Douglas Noble

Over the course of a day, images return unbidden to therapist Karen Quinlan’s memory, brought on by the messy stories and everyday complaints of her clients. A key, or a beach, or a sunset. The things that she thought she had left behind. In After The Sessions, Karen will discover that the things she thought were gone are still very much with her.

This is the fourth collaboration between Sean Azzopardi and Douglas Noble, following Sightings of Wallace Sendek, Pirouette and Built of Blood and Bricks.

A5 Format 34 Pages $ 8