The cult comic book artist Simon Hanselmann is a special guest of the XXIII edition of Romics

From star of the web to best seller of the New York Times:  the ascent of the underground australian artist whose stories centre around the tragicomic adventures of a witch, a talking cat and a strange groups of outcasts.

 

The cult comic book artist Simon Hanselmann will be the guest of the XXIII edition of Romics (5-8 April 2018). Fresh from his award for the best series at the last Angoulême Festival with “Happy Fucking Birthday”, the Australian author has chosen Romics to meet the Italian public.

 

Born in Tasmania, Hanselmann now lives in Seattle in the United States. He has been recounting and illustrating comic book stories since he was a child. His beginnings as a comic book artist were on his Tumblr page “Girl Mountain”, where he started posting the comic strip adventures of Megg the witch and her friends, finding growing success with the public and being discovered by Fantagraphics, king of the independent US publishers, who collated his web stories in several anthologies. In Italy, two of these were released, Megahex and Special K, published by Coconino Press-Fandango. They were both New York Times bestsellers and were followed in the United States by Worst Behaviour and One More Year.

 

The protagonists of his stories are Megg the witch, Mogg the talking cat, their friend Gufo and Werewolf Jones, a group of loser, confused and inconsiderate characters who struggle unsuccessfully with depression, drug use, a complicated sex life, poverty, lack of ambition and their complex relations with each other.

 

Translated into 13 languages and loved by both critics and the public alike, the author was nominated three times for the Ignatz Award and twice for the Eisner (2017), the prestigious award dedicated to the American Will Eisner, one of the most important comic book artists of all time. His work has received the approval of true masters of underground counterculture such as Robert Crumb and Daniel Clowes. A pop character with a strong personality, Hanselmann loves to dress up as a woman and says he is “happy despite some panic attacks, and always confused about his sexual identity”.

 

Simon Hanselmann will be the star of an interview/meeting and also scheduled is a book-signing meeting with readers and a live painting on the wall dedicated to the Romics guest artists on Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th of April.