EDWARD GAUVIN

UPDATE: This just in from Evil Twin! Advance copies of the AWESOME! anthology may be ordered here at the AWESOME price of 45% off cover! That’s right: only $8.22 for 208 pages of pure comix AWESOMENESS. What’s more, your support goes to two AWESOME causes: all profits will be split between the Indie Spinner Rack podcast and a student scholarship for the Center Of Cartoon Studies. The more pre-orders, the more books are printed. You owe it to yourself to spend your money AWESOMELY. » Read the rest of this entry «

First Second founder Mark Siegel, in an interview at ICv2, has referenced their Cyril Pedrosa Spring ’08 title I’d kept unnamed on the Translations page, alors autant vendre la mèche, moi aussi: Three Shadows, from Delcourt’s Shampooing imprint, is a paean to parental love and the necessity of letting go from the former Disney animator. I can only agree with Mark’s murmured and admiring assessment during our brief San Diego conversation: “angles you’ve never seen before”. The French version, tentative cover above, comes out this fall.

Scheduled to be out the door and on the freeways 10 minutes ago, with a box of donuts in my lap, on the road south from L.A. Yessir, it’s Friday, and I’ll be at the great Comic Con of 2007, for all those fans of… er, translation. Seriously, though, today or tomorrow, check out my friend and co-creator G.B. Tran‘s table in Small Press, or drop by at the Archaia Studios booth and say Hi! I’ll likely be there or roaming the vast nerdy plains. Can’t wait! Also, check out the afternoon premiere of NBC’s fall series Chuck, co-created by the formidable Chris Fedak–known in college days of yore simply as The Fedak.

“The French,” begins Miss Bird, “are different from you and me.” Vive la différence, and vive Miss Bird, prolific Amazon reviewer who in the thoroughness (mystifyingly unmotivated, but let’s not give gift horses oral exams) of her commentary saw fit to honor me beside Alexis Siegel with a mention for my work on Tiny Tyrant in these choice words:

“Not for the first time would I wonder to what extent translator Alexis Siegel and (uncredited) Edward Gauvin added their own personal touches to these exceedingly funny bits of wordplay. Princess Hildegardina, for example, speaks with a lofty convoluted speech that frequently leaves Ethelbert tongue-tied himself. How many of these words are direct translations of the French and how many the delightful vocal curlicues of Siegel and Gauvin?” » Read the rest of this entry «

Happenings in Translationland: I’m pleased to announce I’ve gone from a single person to a service, joined by two other superb translators to form a company now handling the rendering of French, Japanese, and Chinese into English.   That means not just BD but manga and manhua.  Let’em eat brioche.  And mochi.  Now we are officially UNSTOPPABLE, a FORCE unto OURSELVES, a TRIPLE THREAT, a TRANSLATING TRIUMVIRATE—or just three guys who speak in tongues.  Click on TRANSLATIONS at the top of the page to see the revised page.  Give us your bizness, wot?

Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert’s rollicking Sardine 4, now at the First Second site with a preview, hits shelves this fall! Or pick up an early copy at SDCC.  I’ll be there.

Some exciting changes on the Header Page: click through above for a look and links! That cropped panel currently headlining will be seen in all its glory when the story it’s from, drawn by the topnotch G.B. Tran and written by yours truly, is published in the Indie Spinner Rack anthology AWESOME! this October at Bethesda’s SPX. We are proud and honored to rub pages with such comic talent.

Just finished the semifinal draft of Okko #6 this week. That’s two issues into The Cycle of Earth, which will follow on The Cycle of Water—which I trust you all are reading faithfully—when that concludes this summer. No spoilers, hopefully, in forecasting a satisfying character arc for our young narrator Tikku, and a rare creature for any D&D fans of Oriental Adventures from back in the day. Also, hints of pleasingly troubling moral ambiguity shadow our heroes’ triumph—seeds of greater future uncertainty and even thematic grandeur? We deny monsters, the other, whatever we hate, the capacity to feel what we believe ennobles us—for if they too were so entitled, then what should tell us apart? And how should we justify our mercilessness toward them?

I myself haven’t read the second volume of The Cycle of Earth yet. Maybe it’ll even tell what the deal is with Noburo and his mask.

Okko # 3 out in stores this very month! Go buy it! Or, er, be square. » Read the rest of this entry «

A little plugging never hurt a blog. In hectic February I missed the boat when another series I’d been translating for Archaia Studios Press made its debut on the racks the week after NYCC—namely, The Secret History. Here I am, catching up with a few words in time for the release of the second issue.

I’ve now read and translated my way through four books of The Secret History, taking me in the story’s chronology up through the late Middle Ages, via the Crusades and the Wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, and the Renaissance siege of Rome, featuring everybody’s favorite action hero artisan, Benvenuto Cellini, whose classic memoirs I’m now inspired to read. The series has definitely grown on me, and the transition from crazy Igor Kordey’s art in the first two books to the more even, if less impassioned work of Goran Sudzuka in the third hasn’t been jarring. There’s some particularly lovely brushwork in the third volume, when a band of evil monks raid a sacred forest (shades of Broceliande and Fangorn, and also naked killer druid chicks. That phrase alone should draw some Google traffic my way). » Read the rest of this entry «

A short stateside tour: popping up at, among other places, NY Comic Con. Forgive the absence–too luddite, or is it lazy? to post from the road. Happy Lunar New Year, best wishes to all believers for the pig days ahead. Snow country, here I come.