Every year, on the second weekend in May, Croatia’s capital city Zagreb becomes a sort of haven for geeks of all stripes, because that’s when the annual SF convention, better known as Sferakon, and the annual comic convention, now called the Zagreb Comic Con, are held.
Byron Preiss was a writer, compiler, editor and publisher of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and graphic novels. As a fan of those genres, as well as comics and pulp fiction, among other things, he tried to innovate ways to present and publish similar materials for a wider reading public – something he did throughout his life.
Among his many, many books, prolific crime writer Max Allan Collins wrote a trilogy of delightful murder mysteries set in the world of newspaper strips and comic books in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The first indie comic I ever read is a short-lived series called Ismet. It’s very obscure, but I came across it at the tender age of 12 because a few years before that, I had met the guy who would go on to create it, Greg Wadsworth.
UK publisher Panini churned out a bunch of modern digest-sized reprint books that collect a wonderful quantity and variety of Marvel comics, mainly from the 1960s through the 1980s.
Marvel has finally started publishing digests – a few decades too late, but better late than never. The first two, focusing on Spider-man and the Avengers, are reviewed in brief.
A few days ago (Oct. 26 to be exact), a retrospective exhibition dedicated to the career of the late, great Croatian comic book artist Edvin “Eddy” Biuković opened in one of the major art museums and gallery halls, the Klovićevi Dvori Gallery, in Zagreb.
