Hi Neil,You may or may not have heard about the controversial issue on the publication of a comic by Danish newspapers portraying the prophet Muhammad. Now i know you dont usually talk about any political or religous issues on your site for obvious reasons, and my question doesnt aim at getting an opinion. What i wanted to ask is what do you think about this issue in a more general sense, as in a comic sparking riots and protests. How do you, as a leading figure in the comic business, feel about the power of comics, now that you've heard or seen what they can do at a global level. And do you think more people will start taking comics, in general, more seriously after these events, or am I just being too optimistic. All the while i'm not trying to undermind the issues that have taken place. I live in Lebanon, and was in a close proximity of the riot as it was happening.Okay, for those who haven't been watching the news (or for those reading this blog long after these events have been forgotten), a Danish paper, on discovering that depicting the prophet Mohammed in pictoral form was considered blasphemous by Moslems, decided to challenge that idea and commission local cartoonists to draw cartoons with Mohammed in them. The cartoons, at least the ones I've seen reproduced, were fairly sophomoric. Then a Danish Islamic group, considering this blasphemous (see above), took the pictures, along with some more that they apparently made up, through the Middle East, in order to get people upset. (Here's an article -- http://media.guardian.co.uk/presspublishin...698394,00.html)It was demanded that the Danish government apologise -- which, as I understand, after initially declining to, they eventually did, while making it clear that they didn't own or control the newspaper in question.Around this point, several newspapers in Europe decided to demonstrate their right to Freedom of Speech by reprinting the cartoons. Different European countries seem to have had various attitudes to the cartoons -- some of them viewing it as a freedom of speech issue (which it is) and others regarding it as a being sensitive to the feelings of others and not getting bombed and torched by a dangerous minority issue (which it also is).What do I think? I think a bunch of things, many of them contradictory and some of them fuzzy (which is the main reason I don't do much on politics in this blog). I think the main thing I think is that doing something purely calculated to offend people, a small minority of whom have shown no compunction previously about killing and harming people who've done similar things, is something that you had only better do if you are prepared for all of the consequences. That doesn't have anything to do with freedom of speech, that has to do with cause and effect, in a post-Satanic Verses world.(In Beirut, the leader of Hizbullah said the row would never had occurred if a 17-year-old death edict against British writer Salman Rushdie been carried out."Had a Muslim carried out Imam Khomeini's fatwa against the apostate Salman Rushdie, then they would not have dared discredit the prophet, not in Denmark, Norway or France," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah told Reuters last night.)I don't really think this is about the power of comics, other than the power that images have to transcend language. (It's worth noting that the three of the images that upset people the most were apparently created by the people who were showing them.)Do I support the ability of a free press to print whatever it likes? Hell, yes. Do I think it was wise, sensible, or even sane to print or to reprint those particular cartoons? Not particularly, no.Do I think reacting to the cartoons by burning down embassies, killing people, or, in the case of the UK, threatening more suicide bombers, is an even vaguely sane reaction? Of course not.(Most of the placards appeared on Friday, running through permutations on several themes. They read: "Butcher those who mock Islam", "Slay those who insult Islam", "Behead those who insult Islam", and "Kill those who insult Islam". Some evoked previous al-Qaida suicide bombings: "Europe you will pay, your 9/11 is on the way", or "7/7 is on its way", "Europe you will pay, fantastic 4 are on their way", and "Europe you will pay, Bin Laden is on his way". As well as the rhyming "Europe you'll come crawling, when the Mujahideen come roaring", there were splenetic varieties: "Freedom go to hell", "Liberalism go to hell", and "Freedom of expression go to hell".)(The Fantastic Four are on their way?)I keep wondering what would happen if, hypothetically, Dave Sim decided to turn the life of Muhammed that he wrote in the back of Cerebus (in Islam My Islam -- http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/artists/islampt2.html) into a comic, and he drew it with pictorial representation of Muhammed in it, and around the world Death Threats Were Issued, and Canadian embassies were torched...Probably best not to think about it. Be a good comic, though.
Quant à la nouvelle sortie Gaiman chez Delcourt, malgré tout mon interêt pour l'auteur je ne pense pas que je tenterai le coup : je ne suis pas fan des comics et le thème est quand même assez "spécial" 
Je me demande bien comment ils vont retranscrire l'ambiance des livres de Gaiman en musique, ça peut donner quelque chose de pas mal. Et puis j'aime bien Tori Amos ... 
J'espère qu'il ne s'agira pas d'un mauvais signe. 
dans son genre. En tout cas il fait bien illusion. 
, mais en même temps c'était pour le bon déroulement du scénario 
Plus qu'à le lire maintenant ! ;)Et, au fait, le CD de chansons inspirées par Gaiman est désormais dispo ! 
Ils sont spéciaux les effets derrière sa tête par contre, enfin ça reste marrant comme style de pub, comme sa réaction ! 
