Brian Bolland

Interview by Rada Djurica

International Salon of Comic Books in Belgrade

Remember that film about comic book artists called Chasing Amy, where the characters identify with comic book characters? Anyone who ever liked comic books knows what I'm talking about. Comic books may be very imaginative, with flying superheroes, or may emphasize real life situations or characters, but the first purpose is to entertain.

In September and October 2004, the International Salon of Comic Books was held in the festival in Belgrade, capital city of Serbia. This was the second International Salon of Comic Books, held in the Happy Gallery of the Student Cultural Center in Belgrade. The first competition gathered 15 candidates from 15 countries.

The honored guest of the festival was a well-known British comic book author, known for Batman, Brian Bolland, who also gave a lecture and opened the festival.

This year, the festival had 204 candidates from Greece, Canada, France, Portugal, Great Britain, Germany, Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia and Montenegro. The competition was won by Maja Veselinovic from Belgrade, who won the Grand Prix award and a monetary award. The Best Story Award for classic comic book language was won by Dragan Bosnic from Belgrade. The Award for Best Alternative comic book language was won by Richard Suicide from Canada. The Best Drawing Award was taken by Evelina Daneva from Bulgaria, and the Best Script Award by Tassos Papaioannou from Greece.

Brian The Batman

Brian Bolland is famous for his detailed comic art and covers, and he's one of the tops comic book artists in the UK. In the '70s he was desperately drawing samples of Napoleonic war comics and romance comics without any prospect of a job on sight, wondering what to do with his life. But look at him now.

So what is Brian Bolland like? Just an ordinary man with an extraordinary talent and a fantastic sense of humor. "Masochist? Me? Apart from my preference for hanging from the ceiling with meat hooks through my nipples, I'm just a regular guy," he says.

Even though he wasn't the first artist to draw Judge Dredd for the UK weekly, 2000 AD, his detailed pictures made an impression on readers. When Bolland's first major work for an American publisher, DC's Camelot 3000, was published, in the years before Moore and Gibbons' The Watchman, the industry was ready for a direct-market-only "maxi series."

The 1980s' British invasion of the comic book industry took hold, and Bolland struck with his cover art for Grant Morrison's Animal Man. For now, Bolland is well known for Judge Dredd, as an artist for 2000 AD Magazine, as well as being the artist on DC's Camelot 3000, a 12-issue maxi-series with Mike Barr about the return of King Arthur to save England from an alien invasion in the Year 3000.

Then came the Batman novel Batman: The Killing Joke, written by the legendary Alan Moore. The Killing Joke was published in 1995 as an origin story for the villain The Joker, a failed one-man-show comedian. The story also delves deeper into the interaction between Batman, Commissioner James Gordon, and Gordon's daughter, Barbara, the former Batgirl.

Bolland, however, is much more famous as a cover artist. He has contributed covers for Grand Morrison's The Invisibles and Animal Man and assorted issues of Tank Girl, The Flash, Superman, Green Latern, Wonder Woman and Batman.

Of his early days as an artist, he said, "I produced crude and immature bits of work in various artistic styles. I had to make a stab at painting and sculpting, and I did a huge amount of life drawing. Life drawing was, of course, very useful — we all have to learn how to observe and draw the human form — and I spent many hours sitting with my drawing pad in front of an endless succession of naked women. I did grow to love much of what I saw in the wider art world, and gradually became very interested in the more avant garde forms of modern art and music. My comics drawing was done well away from teachers and tutors, and remained my first and last love."