Declan Shalvey on Irish TV for Irish Comic Book Month

Why doesn’t the US have a Comic Book Month? It’s almost not fair!

One of our favorite comic book artists, Declan Shalvey, appears on Irish national telelvision network, RTE to talk about the comics industry, along with Eoin McCauley of lightningstrikecomics.com. The appearance went fairly well, especially considering that public knowledge of comics in Ireland is even way below what the general public knows in the U.S., and mainstream news is still mainstream news.

Declan Shalvey on RTE

You can watch it here, and the comics segment starts at 44 minutes.

If you want to hear more about Declan’s journey into American comics, you can listen to our podcast with him here.

We’re a little upset it didn’t afford more stills like this one, but they can’t all be magic.

Comments

  1. It’s alittle unfair that we don’t have a national comic book month, but we do have Free Comic Book Day (my 2nd favorite holiday), the SDCC, the NYCC… well thats alot right? Plus we had Robert Kirkman on Conan not long ago (still need to watch that video), and Stan Lee is such a recognizable figure to the general populace. I’d say things have improved somewhat. Oh, I forgot about “Read a comic book in public”, did I miss that already?

  2. Wow, what a terrible host.

    Not only she didn’t know squat about what they were talking about, relying solely on the most stupid clichés about comics as a medium (“who reads comics? are they just for kids?”), she kept on interrupting the guests as soon as they started talking.

    Declan and Eoin McCauley even tried to educate her, but she seemed to remain clueless for the most part.

    Terrible journalism is not limited to Brazil, it seems.

    • No it is not!

    • Right, it’s like get with it already, Watchmen & DKR came out decades go, Sin City, Y the Last Man……a buttload of rated R movies based on comics….Philip K Dick stories adapted, amongst other authors obviously…what does it take to state the obvious to some people? Out of the loop I guess as we all aren’t up on everything but in this case it’s a journalist doing her job on a subject, it’s not journalism if you don’t know what you’re talking about.

  3. Awesome just to see Ireland mentioned, being from Ireland and all. But Josh is right comics are waaay under the radar compared to the USA and I’d say the stereotypes are also 10 fold worse.

    Still, any other Irish reders out there?

    • Ye im with you man!

      Beside the odd person who has read Watchmen, V for Vendetta etc., I do not know another soul in Ireland who reads monthly comics. It’s pretty baron.

    • By confirming the existence of monthly comic book readers in Co. Cavan, I’m hopeful that the picture isn’t bleak altogether.

      I know folk in Tipperary, Leitrim, Monaghan & Dublin, who are regularly consulted by the wider community, just prior to the next superhero cinematic blockbuster release.

    • I’m in Wicklow so that’s a few county’s covered

  4. Portland, OR has a comic book month in April, usually centered around the Stumptown Comics Festival. Hell, even our mayor cosplayed as a contestant winner’s original idea. It was pretty cool.

  5. There’s a really great comicbook scene in Ireland and it’s only continuing to grow by the year.

    I’m from Galway in the west of Ireland. We have a dedicated comic shop(Sub-City Comics) that fuels the monthly comic book scene here. There is also a dedicated Comic Book Society in the local University(NUI Galway), who in the past have teamed up with the Debate society to host evenings curated by Warren Ellis and Max Brooks. NUI Maynooth also have a comic book society who hosted JG Jones in the past plus there have been several comic book conventions in Dublin over the past few years.

    It also helps that Galway city itself has a large arts scene with dedicated festivals to literature, film, music and theater every year. These have often had comic book connections with past panels led by Joe Sacco and David Loyd. Generally anyone with half a passing interest in the culture scene here are all really interested in comic books.

    It’s a pity Keelan Shanley(the interviewer) didn’t do any research before speaking with the guys.