Danielle Lavigne

Danielle Lavigne is a writer and musician from Dublin, Ireland. She writes comics, short stories, poetry, unpublishable novels and badly-worded bios. Danielle is on the committee for the National Irish Science Fiction Convention and loves the concept of love. Her website can be found at http://daniellelavigne.com, where she posts free stuff on a regular basis. Having spent a great proportion of her life in an all-Irish-speaking school, she finds it fun to remember the language by translating things into the tongue for amazing writers.

Or Bareket, 30 years old, resides in Tel Aviv after concluding his BA in history and east asian studies in TAU, is an avid comics reader, practically lives in the internet, earns his daily bread as an editor and sometimes as a translator, and enjoys playing with words. Valentine is actually his first translation work outside of the academic arena. He enjoys every minute of it.

Episode 03: Russian cover

Courtesy of translator Igor Studenkov, Valentine is now available in Russian! The Russian edition will mark our 14th language edition, joining: Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Irish, Polish, Serbian, German, Dutch and English.

Russian versions of Episodes 01-03 are currently making their way through the Amazon and iPhone approvals process. From Episode 04 (to be released 17 February), Russian editions will be available at the same time as the other thirteen editions.

From the Russian edition of Episode 02

Felipe Sobreiro

Felipe Sobreiro is the artist behind The New Adventures of Sigmund Freud and a handful of other short comics. He has published his work on Heavy Metal Magazine, Image Comics’ Popgun and a couple of BOOM! Studios titles. He is currently handling the colors and lettering of Earthbuilders on Zudacomics.com. You can see more of his work at http://www.sobreiro.com .

nout Capiau

nout Capiau has been a comics fan since time immemorial. His tastes are so eclectic, the floors of his house groan under the weight of all the amassed paper. In real life, he studied languages for longer than he can remember. Combining those studies with the printed pages resulted in an obsessive interest in the English language especially. Ironically, he teaches foreign people how to speak, read and write Dutch, his native tongue. Translation is something he does on the side, to keep the linguistic skills alive and because he can’t leave well enough alone. Working on Valentine with Alex de Campi has been a great experience and something he hopes will continue for a long while yet. Valentine is his first translated literary work to date. His blog is hopelessly outdated. At the moment, he and his illustrative collaborator willborough are hoping to get a (for the moment very work-in-progress) project off the ground and into online space. A blog that should be checked out by all because it’s so beautiful (and a lot more interesting than anything nout could cook up at the moment): http://willborough.blogspot.com

Akiko Altmann, together with her husband Jens, has a decade of experience as a translator of manga and anime. Among these are Spirit of Wonder, Paranoia Agent and Guardian of the Sacred Spirit. She is a native Japanese who now lives in Germany. You can find out more about their work on http://www.jensaltmann.com

François Luong

Originally from Strasbourg, France, François Luong currently lives in San Francisco with his partner and his daughter. His poetry and literary translations have appeared or is forthcoming in Action Yes, Parthenon West Review, Washington Square Review, Cannibal, Bombay Gin, New American Writing and elsewhere. He has translating the French poets Esther Tellermann and Rémi Froger, and the Canadian poets a.rawlings, François Turcot and Hector Ruiz, among others.

LoOney

About Looney: 29 years old. Ex-child star. Filmmaker. Underground comics artist. Mainstream comics writer. Singer / songwriter. Awesome. Why am I translating Valentine?: Because I know how. I’m good with words and word-play. I know how to make the comics sound domestic. This is my first job of that kind and also a pleasure. What am I doing at the moment? Trying to figure out why am I single for a month now. I don’t like it. Doing music videos and stuff. Working for Serbian mainstream comics magazine Dynamite. Starting the mix of my debut album, since I’m 5 years on the music scene and never published a solo effort. I don’t even have time to masturbate…

Comics: They Look Great On iPhones

Courtesy of our friends at Comics by Comixology, you can see what the English version of Valentine Episode 01 looks like on an iPhone… whether you own an iPhone or not! Simply click here to be taken to the Flash simulator, where you can read the entire episode. The simulator user experience isn’t as nice as reading the comic on the actual device, but it is still pretty darn nice. Enjoy!

You can also try the Robotcomics simulator here; it’s in a variety of Flash that is viewable on iPhones.

Alex de Campi hails from the Delaware Valley, about 45 minutes southwest of where Christine grew up. They did not know each other before this project; it took a mutual facebook friend to put them in touch. Alex fell in with a bad crowd (yuppies) early in life, and under their pernicious influence ran off to be an investment banker in Hong Kong. After a number of rather startling adventures across the underbelly of South Asia, she found herself in London a decade later, and decided to clean up and get a more socially-acceptable career. She thus became a comic book writer. Her first graphic novel, Smoke, was nominated for an Eisner, and she has also written bande dessinée series for French publishers Humanoids, as well as girls’ manga series for Tokyopop.  She directs music videos and experimental films, which you may see here. She lives with her husband and their dog, The Celebrated Hound of England’s Lane, in an old piano factory in the South Bronx. She posts lolcats on twitter and facebook.

You’re also welcome to ask any questions right here.

During Napoleon’s retreat from Russia in the War of 1812, cavalry officers Valentine and Oscar are separated from the main army by a brutal blizzard. They think the worst thing waiting out there in the snow for them is Death. They could not be more wrong. The two soldiers stumble across an ancient conflict between beings more powerful than humanity can imagine, a conflict which now threatens to consume the Earth and all upon it – because those who have stood in the horror’s path, the few bastions of light, are going home.

Valentine is a fantasy / thriller graphic novel series by writer Alex de Campi and artist Christine Larsen. It is available in 14 languages and counting.

You can’t buy it in a comic book shop because it’s not a traditional comic; it’s a project which has been tailored specifically to be enjoyed on wireless devices: iPhone, Android, e-Readers and of course your laptop. This means rather than pages, we have screens – all the better for optimising viewing on small devices, and adapting to languages which read right-to-left (such as Japanese) as well as left-to-right. On iPhone and Android, we also make use of simple transitions to enhance the reading experience.

The first episode is free. After that, each 65-75 screen episode costs 99 cents, and new episodes come out monthly. However the project is released under a creative commons licence so if you come across a version for free somewhere please do take it and enjoy it with our blessing. If you like it, please recommend it on to friends, or consider tipping us (tip jar at left!) or buying a future episode. We are not a big corporation or a publisher, we are just two women who sometimes can’t even afford groceries.

If you prefer good old paper books to all this wireless malarkey, fret not. When the series is over, we intend to publish it in one big fat digest-size volume. We like books, too, but releasing Valentine episodically like this is a lot of fun for us, and it means we get (hopefully!) a little income and some feedback while working on the series.

Please do get in touch or post if we currently don’t support your language (we are always looking for translators!) or your device. We are working as fast as we can to get Valentine rolled out across most major devices, but sometimes life gets in the way.

Valentine is available in 14 languages (and counting!) and on a variety of platforms.

iPhone: Comics by Comixology (all 14 languages), Robotcomics (4 languages only)

iPad: Comics by Comixology (all 14 languages)

Android phones: Robotcomics (English only; other languages coming soon from Ave! Comics)

Sony/Nook/iRex: ePub

Amazon Kindle: Kindle Store

Laptop/web: Comics by Comixology (launching Apr 2010)

Actual printed book: First collected edition (Episodes 01-08) expected October 2010 from Image Comics