Bulgarian Comic Books

In this post I would like to talk about comic books, which are drawn by Bulgarians and have been published lately in my home country. I recommend all of these if you are interested in contemporary Bulgarian artwork and comics. There is a lot to be seen and learned from these five books.

 Aniventure 2013: Manga, Art, Fanfic - Winning Entries

This is the annual Aniventure book, in which you can find all the winners from the contests, mentioned above. There are three short mangas for the three winning places:

First place - "Kaena" ("Каена") by Boyan Ganev

Second Place - "Legend of Sunny Moon" by Cindy Nayn (Alexandra Stryaskova)

Third Place - "Two worlds" ("Два свята") by Kalin Popov Kalin Popov's Gallery

And the winning fanfic is "Think of the future" ("Мисли за бъдещето"), a "Naruto" fanfic by Cindy Nayn (Alexandra Stryaskova).

There are also photos of winning cosplayers from Aniventure 2012:

Dara Karaboeva as Hizaki from Versailles

Jivko Kabaivanov as Loki from the Marvel Universe

Kiril Popchev as Pyramid Head from Silent Hill

Kiril Lambrev as Vash the Stampede from Trigun

And finally in this book you can find artwork by the artists Denitsa Stancheva,  Fotis Ntalianis, Silviya Ivanova and Bistra Sandjakyan. 

This book is only 90 pages long, but it's a really good compilation of works. I personally really liked Boyan Ganev's and Kiril Popov's works, although I think that Kiril Popov's work look kind of unfinished artwork wise. I don't think that you can find this book in the bookstores, but you will probably be able to get it at the events organized by club Nakama. 

"Co-mixer" - vol 3 and vol 4

"Co-mixer" is a compilation of short, 2 to 5 pages long, black and white comics that are gathered under the same theme. The theme of volume 3 is Weaknesses and the theme of volume four is Noises. I really like "Co-mixer", because it gathers so many different artists in one place. You can see manga styled artwork and caricature artwork and so much more in less then 100 pages.
For more information on "Co-mixer" itself

For more information on "Co-mixer" vol 3 

For more information on "Co-mixer" vol 4 

Places, where you can find "Co-mixer" 

 "Pocket comic book" ("Джобен Комикс")

"Pocket comic book" collection of short stories by 9 Bulgarian artists like Ivan and Sybilla Koritarevi, Satanasov, Nikolai Popov and more. Inside you can also find interviews of famous Bulgarian artists, working in the film industry like Antoni Hristov, Evgeni Tomov and Vladimir Todorov. 
This book is an amazing project and I really hope they continue to publish such compilations. 
For more information on "Джобен Комикс"

"Stephen King's N."

"Stephen King's N." is a graphic novel, based on Stephen King's short story "N.", written by the American writer and producer Marc Guggenheim and drawn by the Bulgarian artist Alex Maleev. This graphic novel was published by Bard in 2012 and can be found in almost every bookstore.

The artwork and the story are amazing and I definitely recommend this to anyone, who likes suspense horror stories.

Click here for more information on Stephen King's N

I'm back home and Claymore

Hey guys! I'm safely back home, but I have been doing a lot of stuff for university and my new home (mainly cleaning and decorating (a lot of decorating)), so I haven't had much time to write a new post. I'm planning to write posts about all the new Bulgarian comic books, that I have read (the new volumes of Co-Mixer, Pocket Comic Book (Джобен Комикс) and Stephen King's N.). I'm also currently reading the Bulgarian releases of Naruto and One Piece and I really want to say a few words about them, so expect a bunch of new posts soon. 

For now I just want to make a little announcement (again). The last manga, that ArtLine Studios has planned to publish next year is Norihiro Yagi's Claymore (クレイモア). It's a dark fantasy/horror manga and I have watched the anime, so I'm really looking forward to this release.

Comicbook Colletion

Comics:
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns - complete
Batman: The Killing Joke - complete
Battle Chasers - 1, 2, 3, 4
Blacksad - vol 1 
Dragon Last - 1
Hunting Season by Diana Naneva - complete
Rabies - vol 1
Samurai: Heaven and Earth - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Scott Pilgrim - 1, 2
Sky Doll - vol 1
Spawn - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68
Spawn: Godslayer - pilot, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4
Stephen King's N. - complete
The Colour of Magic (Discworld) - complete
The Creech - 1, 2
The Invention of Hugo Cabret - complete
The Light Fantastic (Diskworld) - complete
The Sandman - vol 1
V for Vendetta - complete
Watchmen - complete
W.i.t.c.h. - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52 + Specials: Elyon, Christmas, Boys' Planet, Cornelia and Caleb

Fantasy Art (Bulgarian)
Sofia Comics Expo - Exhibition collection book
The art of Miro Petrov
The Art of Sybilla Koritareva

Comics Magazines:
Дъга -  5, 7, 8
Джобен комикс 
Комикс - 1, 2, 3, 4
Co-mixer - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

A little comic book adventure

So I had some spare time the other day and went to the bookstores to search for volume 1 and volume 2 of Scott Pilgrim (since these are the only two that have been published here so far). Actually, volume one came out last year, but I wasn't really interested in the series at the time (I had only seen the movie), but when I saw that they had translated and published volume two, I decided to give it a try. And besides, the price is 10 lv (about 5 euro), which is quite acceptable.

I am mentioning Scott Pilgrim in this blog, because it's a black and white graphic novel, which is inspired by Japanese manga and it's a really great comic!

Anyway, I got in a bookstore, that was on my way home. This bookstore is in a subway and it's usually a pretty bright place, but that day the lights were kind of dim and you couldn't see very well inside. So I got to the comic book section and found volume two. I looked for volume one, but I didn't see any, so I ask a staff person, who also said that there are none left. I said ok and went to pay for volume two.

 I went out of the bookstore and decided to go to another one to see if they had volume one. After a little looking around I finally found it (in the children's books section -_-''') and took it, too. I started reading on the bus on the way home and got really into it. 

So I finished volume one and found nothing wrong with it. Well, the were two pages, that were stuck together, but I fixed them really easily.

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
and
Scott Pilgrim vs. World
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

And then I took volume two out of the bag and... Remember how I said that it was really dim in the first bookstore? Yeah.... I saw that the edges of the cover were kind of worn out as you can see in the picture on the side. And this is a brand new book! I really couldn't see that in the store.

This morning I found out there is one more thing that is wrong with this book. On the side you can see a comparison of two pictures. The first one is a photo, that I took of the book, I have, and the second one is a picture of what there should have been in the blank space. There is quite a big difference! Now, I can deal with the worn out edges, because what's important for me is the inside of the book, but this really irritated me.

I don't know if the publisher decided to print every copy of the book this way, or I was just "lucky" enough to get the messed up copy, but I plan to find out. And if the other books have this picture I might just buy a new copy and sell the one I have for lower price, I'll see. 

All in all, I liked the first two volumes of Scott Pilgrim and I am really tempted to read the next four volumes. The artwork is simple, but really nice, the story is very interesting and the characters are intriguing. What more would you want from a graphic novel?