The traveling Maus tribute exhibition that I contributed to, Mus/Mouse/Maus, will be at the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris, open from 18 September through 30 December 2011: The opening ceremony on the 18th will begin at 3PM. Sadly I can’t be there myself, but our quite capable curator Jamil Mani will be there to represent the unfortunate absent.

If you’re in Paris during those three months (and be honest, who isn’t?!) go see the exhibition. There are loads of great interpretations of art spiegelman’s book – oh, and there’s mine, too:

What would a Finnish comics exhibition be without a token Tom of Finland presence?

This papier maché model has been overseeing all official proceedings at the Kemi festival with a lurid composure.

Every year, the Kemi comics festival presents a branded festival beer. Below, a close-up of this year’s label, and a display of previous years’ brew.

I’m at the Kemi comics festival in Finland, a tiny but renowned event held at the city cultural centre. Just an hour’s drive shy of the Arctic Circle, it is likely to be the world’s northernmost comic festival.

Walking around the cultural centre yesterday, I came upon a sculpture that struck me as fitting for the weekend’s event. A simple, but clearly sequential piece, it’s like a three-dimensional version of a newspaper strip.

The sculpture is right in front of the men’s room. There might be some cross-media commentary there that I can’t quite put my finger on.

All content is one or another form of variation on comics that have previously published in C’est Bon Anthology  by C’est Bon Kultur members:

• Oskar Aspman went and remixed Niklas Asker’s story Second Thoughts, originally published in CBA vol. 7.
• Mattias Elftorp has reinterpreted an illustration by Daniel Novakovic, originally published in Publikation(34)C’est Bon.
• Sofia Falkenhem took Martin Flink’s story The Troll for a spin, originally published in CBA vol. 7.
• Martin Flink contributes a variation of Jamil Mani’s story Passage, originally published in CBA vol. 4.
• Susanne Johanssons has made a photocollage of Johan Jergner-Ekervik’s story H2O, originally published in CBA vol. 6
• Jamil Mani redid Sofia Falkenhem’s story Dawn, originally published in CBA vol. 8
• My own contributions to this volume of CBA is SEX (after Mattias Elftorp’s story Violence, originally published in CBA vol. 3) and the cover (above), a tribute to Nathan Fox’ cover for CBA vol. 2.

Scaling down from 12″ to 7″ square pagesize freshens up the work, as does the tight schedule. It’s both exciting and counter-productive to work against the clock like this but I often find it a great way of getting stuff out.

Besides, I have spent way too long thinking and planning the project, which doesn’t exactly characterise the 2-3-go rock’n'roll I usually favor.

Better to just bang some great comics out, even if the planned singles are played sort of safe — Black Sabbath and Engine City being riffs on other people’s work (Sabbath and Jack Kirby, respectively).

The B-side to each single will give pointers to some of the other directions I am taking Astoria. Thankyou’s to my Danish editor Torben Hansen of Fwd Pub for reminding me there should *be* B-sides to complete the concept