Peter Pontiac wins the 2011 Marten Toonder Award

Comix
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an exemple of work by Peter Pontiac

The Dutch Fund voor Visual Arts, Design and Architecture (Fonds voor Beeldende Kunsten, Vormgeving en Bouwkunst) has awarded the 2011 Marten Toonder Award to Peter Pontiac. The Marten Toonder Award is an lifetime achieve awarded annually to cartoonists with outstanding contributions to the development of Dutch comics. Pontiac is the second cartoonist to get this award; last year’s winner was Jan Kruis, creator of the longrunning family strip Jan, Jans en de Kinderen. Pontiac was awarded the “Marten” not just for his long service, but especially for his graphic novel Kraut, the biography of his father who worked as a war correnspondent for the Waffen SS during WWII. From the jury report: “Pontiac wrote and drew the best Dutch graphic novel. His work is innovative. He added something to the Dutch comic that had not been present before: combining penmanship with artistry“.

Pontiac’s win is completely justified: he is one of the grand old master of Dutch comics, with a forty year or so career in both comics and illustration, working for both comix zines and more commercial magazines, especially rock magazines. It is perhaps his drawings of various rock stars for which he is best known. He hasn’t done much long form comics work, with Kraut being a bit of a departure for him. The only thing I’d quibble with is that nonsense about being the first to combine artistry with penmanship — if nothing else, the guy whom lends his name to the award, Marten Toonder did so decades before him. But I’l forgive the jurors that bit of poetic license.

With Pontiac being only the second artists to get this award, who will be a likely candidate for next year? Joost Swarte is one possibility, as one of Holland’s best internationally known cartoonists, or Henk Kuijpers, whose Clear Line drawn Franka series is one of the more important and commercial succesful modern Dutch comics. Of course there’s always the possibility that the jurors go for a more contemporary cartoonist like Barbara Stok, who has played an important role of getting comics accepted by “proper” book publishers through her autobiographical collections.

The award ceremony will be held at the Breda Stripfestival which runs from 9 to 11 September. It includes 25,000 euros in prize money.

At last some justice for Ian Tomlinson

Ian Tomlinson, Policing
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Finally, after more than two years, Ian Tomlinson has gotten some justice:

The police officer who attacked Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests in London in 2009 could be prosecuted for manslaughter after an inquest jury ruled that the newspaper seller was unlawfully killed.

Returning their verdict after three hours of deliberation, jurors said Tomlinson died of internal bleeding in the abdomen after being struck with a baton and pushed to the ground by a police officer.

For legal reasons, the verdict did not name the officer, Metropolitan police constable Simon Harwood.

However, the jury said that “excessive and unreasonable” force was used when he struck the newspaper vendor who “posed no threat”.

The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, immediately said he would “review” his decision last July not year not to prosecute Harwood.

There were shouts of “yes” from Tomlinson’s family when the jury confirmed their belief that the 47-year-old father of nine was unlawfully killed.

The family’s lawyer, Jules Carey, said : “Today’s decision is a huge relief to Mr Tomlinson’s family. To many, today’s verdict will seem like a statement of the blindingly obvious. However, this fails to take account of the significant and many obstacles faced by the family over the last two years to get to this decision.”

If Simon Harwood is prosecuted and convicted of manslaughter, it will be a welcome but rare outcome. Too often, as we’ve seen with Jean Charles de Menezes, the police authorities, including the Crown Prosecution Service, prefer protecting their own over allowing justice to be done.

John C. Wright comments on that Superman news

Comix, science fiction, wingnuts
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James Nicoll, delighting in the pain of his readers again, brings us John C. Wright’s considered response to the news that Superman is giving up his American citizenship:

No, to avoid the legal implications, I suggest we, the comicbook-loving community, merely appear at the offices of DC comics, and stage a riot, have the level of violence spiral out of control, drag the editors and owners bodily out of the building, and hang them from lampposts, and laugh and tell Monty Python jokes while their legs kick, dancing with spasms, in the air, inches from the ground. Then we can scratch their car paint with keys.

I agree, this might cast a pall over the comicbook-loving community, and folk may look down upon us as barbaric—which is why we should all dress in headscarves and Bedouin robes for the bloody event, whereupon the news media and all righthinking people will take great care to present our side of the story in the most sympathetic possible light, and any one who points out, truthfully, that our barbaric act of vigilante multiple murder over an issue of trivial comicbook geekdom nerdification was, well, barbaric, any such feckless abecedarian naif can be silenced and ostracized by being called a racist.

John C. Wright, for those who not know him, is a science fiction writer and a self confessed Christian Randoid whose writing has been noted for being fond of having underage school girls getting tied up and spanked and liking it. The response above is typical of him; yet he thinks of himself as a rational man. Which is also why he can be an Ayn Rand fan and a Catholic. We might think these beliefs conflict, but we lack his innate rationality.

That Osama killing

US foreign policy, War on Terror
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Slightly suspicious, isn’t it? Suddenly, after a decade of failure Osama Bin Laden is found conveniently in a compound in Pakistan, an American special forces team is flown in and manage to subdue Osama after a brief firefight, then executed him, dumping his body in the sea on their way back. It all seems tailor made for conspiracy theorists.

Which shouldn’t distract from the main question: why not take him alive and let him stand trial for his crimes? The stupider sort of American may believe this is justice, but it remains a revenge killing that shows how of little value America’s supposed ideals are when things get tough. This looks like a triumph for America but instead it is an act of fear — a truly strong country would find the strength to put its enemies on trial.

UPDATE: come to think of it, having Osama executed in this way makes Khadaffi’s accusations of NATO trying to kill him and his family that more plausible.