Comics and taboos

Time to put the comic strip in the picture! Comic strip reviewer Peter Breedveld talks to Inge Heremans (Ilah), who breaks taboos with her cartoon Cordelia, and Peter Milligan, scriptwriter of X-Men, Batman and Hellblazer, among others, who succeeds in calling attention to controversial issues through popular comics. in English.

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Information

Date and time Saturday 21 January 2012 21:00 tot 21:45 uur
Location Theater aan het Spui - kleine zaal

Time to put the comic strip in the picture! Comic strip reviewer Peter Breedveld talks to Inge Heremans (Ilah), who breaks taboos with her cartoon Cordelia, and Peter Milligan, scriptwriter of X-Men, Batman and Hellblazer, among others, who succeeds in calling attention to controversial issues through popular comics and reaching an audience of millions. 

Peter Breedveld

(Apeldoorn, NL, 1968) entered the public eye as founder and editor-in-chief of Frontaal Naakt (Frontal Nude), which he calls a "fundamentalist-hedonistic webzine for the whole family that tries to tamper with taboos and certainties and truths set in stone." According to Breedveld, the project is meant to be completely ironic, although many people don't understand this. He launched the webzine seven years ago out of frustration with the politically correct climate surrounding multicultural society, which became unbearable to him after the murder of Dutch filmmaker Teo van Gogh. He spoke up against the new political correctness of Geert Wilders and his populist PVV party, and against the dictatorship of the influential Dutch right-wing populist newspaper De Telegraaf. Breedveld also works for the magazine Ad Valvas of the Amsterdam Free University, and is a freelance writer about comic books, including for Vrij Nederland magazine. Previously, Breedveld was editor-in-chief of Naturisme magazine and a staff member of Stripschrift, De Haagsche Courant and the Nederlandse Islamitische Omroep.
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Inge Heremans

(Belgium, 1971) a.k.a. Inge Liesbeth Alfonsina Heremans (ILAH) studied applied graphics in Leuven. She had a child at a young age and went on to sudy philosophy after all. When she was 25 she had her first big success with the comic strip figure Cordelia. Since then her comic strip Cordelia has appeared in De Morgen. In it she especially ridicules the often laborious relationship between males and females. Meanwhile Uitgeverij Oogachtend has published ten collections of her Cordelia comic strips. Since 2007 she is also the spiritual mother of Mira in Flair, a somewhat younger version of Cordelia, with similar problems. Mira has been published in albums too. Cordelia has kept pace with her in terms of growth and has two children, just like Inge. As a fulltime strip cartoonist ILAH, as one of few women, belongs to the young Flemish strip cartoon guild. In 2001 and 2002 Cordelia appeared in the Algemeen Dagblad on a daily basis for a few months.
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Peter Milligan

(London) is the spiritual father of internationally successful surrealist comic books like Shade, The Changing Man, Hellblazer and Skin, but he also wrote Greek Street, a tribute to Greek mythology seen through the eyes of the violent present-day citydweller. Owing to the coarse language and the hard-boiled violence it was quite a job for Milligan to get a book like Skin published. The hero in this comic strip, which eventually came out in 1992, is a skinhead who was born without arms and legs because his mother used thalidomide. Milligan has also come up with new versions of Batman and since 2001 has invented the stories about the mutant superheroes of X-Statix. In spite of the brute force and explicit use of language in his books Milligan also deals with social issues such as homosexuality (one of his heroes is gay), war traumas (one of the main characters in Greek Street is a traumatised soldier who fought in Afghanistan). Milligan also wrote screenplays for two films, Pilgrims and An Angel for May.
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