Anna Haifisch and pals to open the sixth Millionaires Club, a comic and graphics festival in Leipzig

Illustrator Anna Haifisch and a team of brilliant, brilliant illustrators, cartoonists and graphic designers, will open The Millionaires Club – a comics and graphics festival this Friday (16 March), during Leipzig’s International Book Fair.

Now in its sixth year, The Millionaires Club is a festival which brings “attention to artist collectives, small publishers and single artists who are working in the field of comic and printmaking,” Anna tells It’s Nice That. “We founded the festival in 2013 when all of us were pretty poor and a bit desperate since there wasn’t a big comic and printmaking scene in our fairly small hometown.”

The Millionaires Club’s aim is to invite interesting artists from across the globe to Leipzig, to share their work with a new audience, sell some bits too and generally have a great time. “We keep the table prices very low and provide our guests with a warm meal every – and a wild party. We’re well aware of the fact that people are coming from so far away, and put so much energy into their work, that our mission is to create an atmosphere where everybody feels invited.”

Taking place in “the perfect space, Conne Island, a legendary left-wing club located in the south of Leipzig,” this year’s Millionaires Club includes a complete female line up, championing the work of Margot Ferrick, Jul Gordon and Stefanie Leinhos. “Every artist in this all-female show is challenging the boundaries of comics and drawing,” Anna explains. For instance, Chicago-based Margot’s “drawings are impressive in its unusual look and use of colours, unlike anything we have seen before”. Whereas Hamburg-based Jul is “mastering dark and brutal humour to a degree where you first laugh and then cough!” Finally, Stefanie’s work is known for “her formal approach to drawing,” says Anna. “By using methods such as repetition, variation and several printing techniques she is exploring the limits of storytelling,” and will be releasing a new book Read It Out Loud at the festival too.

The Millionaires Club will be open from 16 – 17 March and more information can be found here.