This Saturday, Breakdown Press will be at The Laundry for Visions Festival in London selling comics and watching bands. Leon Sadler of Famicon Express and Lando of Decadence Comics will be there too, so grab a ticket and come hang out.
Thanks to Craig Fischer and The Comics Journal for reviewing Connor Willumsen's Treasure Island. Treasure Island 1 will be available again from our webstore very soon, and Treasure Island 2 is available now.
We're very excited to announce the rest of our exhibitor line-up for Safari Festival, and a surprise special guest, Connor Willumsen, the incredible cartoonist behind Treasure Island, who'll be joining us all the way from Canada. That's his flyer for the festival above, which will be circulating its way around London very soon.
Here's the list:
Ditto Press
Eleni Kalorkoti
Esther McManus
Faye Coral Johnson
James Jarvis
Matt Swan
Mike Redmond
Museums Press/Good Press
Susumu Mukai
Will Sweeney
You can see the full line-up and all other festival information at safari-festival.com
Breakdown Press is very excited to announce Safari Festival, a celebration of the new wave of alternative and art comics from the UK and beyond.
The festival will be free to attend and will take place at Protein’s Studio 2 gallery in London on August 30th.
Exhibitors include:
Babak Ganjei
Breakdown Press (Joe Kessler, Antoine Cossé, Zoë Taylor)
Comic Book Slumber Party
Comics Workbook
Decadence Comics (Lando)
Donya Todd
Eyeball Comix
Famicon Express (Leon Sadler, Stefan Sadler, Jon Chandler)
Ferry Gouw
Grace Wilson
Jack Teagle
Jazz Dad Books
Joseph P Kelly
Landfill Editions (Hugh Frost)
Laura Callaghan
Rob Flowers
Sina Sparrow
Space Face Books (JMKE)
and more to be announced...
For more information, follow safarifestival.tumblr.com and @safarifestival.
Breakdown Press are very excited to announce that we’ll be working with manga expert and academic Ryan Holmberg on a series of translations of classic and avant garde Japanese comics.
The first in the series is Flowering Harbour by the great Seiichi Hayashi. One of Hayashi’s early contributions to the alternative manga magazine Garo, Flowering Harbour is a love story filtered through the aesthetics of enka music, known informally as “Japanese blues”. Our edition is the first time the comic has been translated into English and includes a new introduction by Hayashi.
We’ll be launching the book at the Japan Foundation on July 1st, where Holmberg will be interviewing Hayashi about his life and work, then we’ll be celebrating the release with a listening party at Gosh! London on July 2nd, again with Hayashi and Holmberg in attendance. The book will then be available at our online store and all good comic book shops shortly after!
We had a brilliant time at ELCAF! Thanks so much to all of you who came and bought our books, and thanks especially to Joe Kessler, Antoine Cossé, Lando and the fabulous Josephine Mairead King Edwards for signing books and hanging out with us.
Luckily for you guys, we have a few copies left of Antoine’s latest short comic NWAI, which are now available at our online store.
Breakdown Press will be at ELCAF this Saturday 14th June with a host of guests including Joe Kessler, Antoine Cosse, Zoe Taylor, Lando, and more.
We’ll also be representing the outstanding Space Face Books, with copies of all their latest books on sale, including Simon Hanselmann’s Life Zone and Jonny Negron’s Loose Joints. We’re very excited that JMKE, whose Emmy was published by Space Face last year will be joining us too all the way from nearby Brighton.
Most excitingly though, we’ll have a very limited edition new book by Antoine Cosse, NWAI, a landscape format, Risograph printed comic in Antoine’s classic magic realist style. We expect the book to sell out at ELCAF so make sure you come down if you want a copy! Any we have left over will end up at our online store shortly after the festival.
See you there!
Treasure Island 2, the latest comic from the great Connor Willumsen, will be released at TCAF in Toronto this Saturday 10th May. Connor will be in attendance at the Breakdown Press table in the Wowee Zonk area, so come say hi!
If you’re not able to make it to TCAF, Treasure Island 2 is available to pre-order now from our web store. Pre-orders will ship on May 13th and the book will be in all good comic and art book stores shortly after the festival.
The last few copies of Treasure Island 1 will be available at TCAF too, but worry not: a second print will be available very soon.
On Wednesday March 5th, Breakdown Press will be guest speakers at Process, a monthly workshop and discussion group for aspiring cartoonists. Joe Kessler, Antoine Cossé, Lando and Zoë Taylor will each be in attendance discussing their work, and Tom and Simon of Breakdown will be there representing the editorial and publishing side of things. The event takes place at Gosh! London and starts at 7pm. You can find more information about Process and the event here.
“J.1137 successfully demonstrates the diverse potential of the comics form, as Cossé’s fearless style explores and expands upon the accepted norms of the medium.” - Jessica Lee
Thanks to The Beat for such a great review of Antoine Cossé’s J.1137! The book will be available again from our webstore very soon.
Antoine Cossé's Mutiny Bay is finished! Look for a release date soon.
The Klaus merchandise you’ve been clamouring for is here!
These limited edition, screenprinted t-shirts will officially be available from February, but you can pre-order yours right now, right here.
Make sure you order soon as we’re only printing a very limited run!
Pre-orders will ship on February 4th, 2014.
So after CAB we came home and went to Thought Bubble, but we didn’t take any photos… Thanks to Oliver East and Gareth Brookes though for championing us all weekend and thanks to everyone that bought the books at Thought Bubble!
Then shortly after we got back it was on to our London launch party at Gosh!
Joe drew on the window.
We had prints and art from Windowpane 2 and J.1137 on the walls.
Joe and Antoine signed.
The masses were appeased.
Then we went to the pub and good time was had by all.
Here’s Joe with Lando of Decadence Comics, whose collected works are being published by ourselves as Gardens of Glass next year.
Thanks again to everyone who came to visit us at CAB, Thought Bubble and Gosh! and thanks for all the kindness and support we’ve received this year! We have tons more stuff coming out in 2014, so keep yr eyes peeled.
Simon & Tom
This November we released Windowpane 2 by Joe Kessler, J.1137 by Antoine Cosse and Treasure Island 1 by Connor Willumsen. We took them to CAB and Thought Bubble and had a launch party at Gosh! London to celebrate.
Photographic evidence follows:
Cartoonists in an airport.
The lovely Simon Hanselmann was one of the first guys we met on arrival in NY. Here’s Simon, Joe and Antoine waiting for udon.
Lala Albert was there too. Such mystery!
The artistic majesty of Simon, Lala, Joe and Antoine (rat courtesy of Tom O).
The next day we went to the massive Mike Kelly show at PS1 with our brother-in-arms Mack of Space Face Books. We had to have a rest and a CocaCola and a read of Life Zone afterwards. (photo:Michael Jordan)
Lale Westvind and Mr Friebert were there and all.
Then, Comic Arts Brooklyn! (photo: Tom Toye)
This is us.
"Bristolian art-comics Adonis, Joe Kessler." (photo: Chris Anthony Diaz, coloured by Graham Willcox)
CAB was an incredible festival and we absolutely intend to return next year. Thanks so much to everyone who had kind words to say about our books!
After the festival, Antoine had to fly home, but Hugh Frost, one of the creative geniuses behind Mould Map turned up, so we went partying.
We discovered shuffleboard.
Shuffleboard incited us to get fucking tanked.
Then it was goodbye to NY.
In part 2, England…
