“Do You See How the Story Exists Not in the Images But in the Conflict Between The Images?”
Comics Class
by Matthew Forsythe
Koyama Press
55 pgs
$5.00
isbn 978-0-986873966
review by BK Munn
Matt Forsythe’s Comics Class is my favourite kind of “educational” book: one that makes you laugh as it cunningly imparts little nuggets of wisdom and fact. The tiny book’s 55 pages chronicle the author’s fictional-ized short stint teaching a group of 11-year-olds a course in cartooning and comics history. The whole thing is played for laughs, with Forsythe usually the butt of the joke, hopelessly out-classed by the kids, who display a sort of divine combination of guilelessness, affected pre-teen cynicism, and boredom that would befuddle any sane adult. Originally a series of webcomics uploaded as sort of a steam valve pressure release, the book is structured in a gag-a-day format using mostly 4-panels per page/gag, with a few longer 2-page/8-panel strips thrown in for particularly traumatic or humiliating experiences.
Forsythe’s deadpan delivery is aided by his use of a sketchier style (using I think a computer stylus set-up?) than he employs in his webcomic-turned-graphic-novel Ojingogo (D+Q)), re-using stock poses and settings. In fact, Forsythe is so skillfully sneaky that it was only after a strip half-way through the book made reference to clip art that I realized the whole book is mostly made up of variations on only a dozen or so drawings, cropped and varied in size, with facial expressions slightly altered depending on need. Smart!
With its great pacing and storytelling chops, I recommend the book to anyone looking for a quick and humourous take on basic comics making, with stops along the way for discussions of the apocalyptic artistry of Japanese mangaka Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, Hegelian dialectics and Marxist revolution, and, most elusive of all, the quest for “strong female characters.”
publisher preview
Everyone’s invited to an evening of scribbling on paper. And word is, a Jam book has been printed.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - Time7:00pm until 12:30am @ the Cameron House.
Are you a comics self-publisher? You may be interested in submitting your work for consideration of the Gene Day Award for Self-Publishing, which includes a cash prize of $500.
The award is handed out as part of the Shuster Awards every year. The deadline for this year’s award is March 1st, 2012. Any made-in-Canada work published in 2011 is eligible.
The award is named for Gene Day (1951-1982), an early Canadian zine publisher, prolific underground cartoonist, and an inker for Marvel Comics
Submissions should be sent to:
Robert Haines
c/o The Dragon
The Old Quebec Street Mall
55 Wyndham Street North, Unit T19B
Guelph, Ontario, N1H 7T8
Top Shelf to Publish Underwater Welder in August
by BK Munn
Jeff Lemire (Essex County) has a announced he’s finished his new graphic novel. Underwater Welder will be published by Top Shelf in August 2012. Top Shelf is also the publisher of Lemire’s Essex County collection. In the works since at least 2010, Lemire let his fans know yesterday he has finally finished the 250-page book, which he completed in addition to his work writing and drawing his creator-owned Sweet Tooth series as well as scripting several monthly superhero comic books (all for DC Comics). The ad copy for the book describes Underwater Welder as taking place on an oil rig off the coast of Nova Scotia, “equal parts blue-collar character study and mind-bending science fiction epic.” A preview is available here.
compiled/edited by BK Munn
This semi-regular feature of Sequential presents a snapshot of comics sales in Canada.
For our second list of 2012, another radical reorganization. It turns out that Bookmanager classifies both Tintin and the Amulet series primarily as juvenile fiction and not graphic novels so these titles have been missing from previous incarnations of the list. Hardly seems fair that the father of European bande dessinee and the current challenger to the Bone throne should be left off, so here they are added, bumping a ton of stuff (Metamaus, Naruto 53, The Adventures of Herge). Maybe it’s time to separate the children’s and adult categories?
(Note: previous week’s rank indicated in (parentheses). N is new and R means returning after an absence from the top 30.)
Part 1 .
Intro: The bestselling graphic novels and comics collections in Canada, courtesy of BookManager. The full list by BookManager is available, with some work, here. The list is compiled by BookManager based on sales through over 400 independent bookstores, including several comic book stores and the D+Q store. Sales through most comic shops and larger retailers like Chapters-Indigo are not reflected in this list. BookManager national sales Rankings are updated weekly. For balance, you might want to try the Amazon.ca and Chapters-Indigo lists. See here for our previous Sequential list.
Sequential’s Over-All Top 30
from BookManager
1. (1) Hark a Vagrant Kate Beaton (D+Q)
2. (N) Amulet 4, Kazu Kibuishi (Scholastic)
3. (N) Tintin Secret of the Unicorn, Herge (Egmont)
4. (N) Amulet 1, Kazu Kibuishi (Scholastic)
5. (N) Tintin Red Rackham’s Treasure, Herge (Egmont)
6. (2) Inappropriate Tales for Young People Graham Roumieu (Random House)
7. (3) Bone 1, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
8. (N) Tintin Crab w Golden Claws, Herge (Egmont)
9. (N) Bone 9, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
10. (5) Walking Dead Vol. 1, Kirkman, et al (Image)
—–
11. (N) Amulet 3, Kazu Kibuishi (Scholastic)
12. (N) Amulet 2, Kazu Kibuishi (Scholastic)
13. (6) Bone 11, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
14. (8) Naruto 54, (VIZ)
15. (N) Tintin Explorers on the Moon, Herge (Scholastic)
16. (N) Tintin Destination Moon, Herge (Scholastic)
17. (7) Bone 2, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
18. (N) Tintin in Tibet (Egmont)
19. (N) Tintin Black Island (Egmont)
20. (N) Black Butler 8, Yana Toboso (Yen)
—–
21. (N) Tintin Cigars of the Pharoah, Herge (Egmont)
22. (N) Tintin Black Gold, Herge (Egmont)
23. (N) Tintin Blue Lotus, Herge (Egmont)
24. (N) Tintin 7 Crystal Balls, Herge (Egmont)
25. (10) Walking Dead Volume 15, Kirkman et al (Image)
26. (9) Best of Archie Comics Various Archie and Friends All-stars, Dan DeCarlo et al (Archie)
27. (12) Louis Riel, Chester Brown (D+Q)
28. (16) Bone 8, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
29. (18) Bone 5, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
30. (4) Bone 4, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
Part 2. Canadian Content:
You have to wade through an awful lot of translated Japanese manga, U.S. superhero fantasies, and collected editions of Sherman’s Lagoon to come up with a list of 30 bestselling books created by Canadians. In total, BookManager lists over 4000 graphic novels, trades, and strip collections, the vast majority of which are not by Canadians. On this list, a single sale in a single tiny bookstore can make all the difference. This list does not include books that are only illustrated but not written/created-by Canadians.
Sequential’s All-Canadian Top 30
from BookManager
1. (1) Hark a Vagrant Kate Beaton (D+Q)
2. (2) Inappropriate Tales for Young People Graham Roumieu (Random House)
3. (3) Louis Riel, Chester Brown (D+Q)
4. (5) Essex County, Jeff Lemire (Top Shelf)
5. (6) Paying For It, Chester Brown (D+Q)
6. (4) Scott Pilgrim 1, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
7. (9) Two Generals, Scott Chantler (McClelland & Stewart)
8. (7) The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, Seth (D+Q)
9. (12) Scott Pilgrim 6, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
10. (8) Scott Pilgrim 3, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
—–
11. (10) Scott Pilgrim 2, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
12. (15) Kill Shakespeare 2, Connor McCreery et al (IDW)
13. (19) Big Foot, Graham Roumieu (Plume)
14. (11) The Blue Dragon, Robert LePage et al (House of Anansi)
15. (25) Skim (pb) Mariko and Jillian Tamaki (Groundwood)
16. (16) Scott Pilgrim 5, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
17. (14) Scott Pilgrim 4, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
18. (N) Kill Shakespeare 2, Connor McCreery et al (IDW)
19. (N) Nightschool, Vol. 3, Svetlana Chmakova (Yen)
20. (21) Pyongyang, Guy Delisle (D+Q)
—–
21. (22) Burma Chronicles, Guy Delisle (D+Q)
22. (13) You are a Cat! Shirwin Tija (Conundrum)
23. (18) Bigfoot, Pascal Girard (D+Q)
24. (28) Nightschool, Vol. 1, Svetlana Chmakova (Yen)
25. (N) Cinema Sewer Volume 3 Robin Bougien Fab Pr
26. (17) The Klondike, Zach Worton (D+Q)
27. (23) Pure Pajamas, Marc Bell (D+Q)
28. (N) Nightschool, Vol. 2, Svetlana Chmakova (Yen)
29. (N) The Never Weres, Fiona Smyth Annick Press
30. (29) Lost At Sea, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
catching up with some news from across the land…
Item! Kate Beaton illustrates an article about her various reading habits and positions for the Globe and Mail.
Item! Did you know that Dave “Glamourpuss” Sim wrote a comic book for Image in 2006 called Gun Fu: Showgirls Are Forever? Me neither.
Item! Alice Quinn’s Quintessential Comics interviews Ramon Perez at the launch of his Jim Henson-scripted graphic novel, A Tale of Sand.
Item! The Inkstuds podcast this week features legendary troublemakers Aaron Costain, Dustin Harbin, and John Martz talking with host Robin McConnell about the best of 2011 comics.
Item! Chester Brown talks to Playboy blog The Smoking Jacket about his Paying For It memoir and about getting a letter from Hugh Hefner.
Item! If you know your Canadian comics history, you know that Canada had a thriving comic book industry in the 1940s when imports of U.S. superheroes, cowboys, and funny animals were restricted. What may be less known over here is that the UK had a similar short-lived industry, in addition to their traditional weekly comics and annuals. Now there is a limited edition book collecting some of these comics, The Great British Fantasy Comic Book Heroes, as Lew Stringer explains.
Item! The Shuster Awards has posted its tentative list of eligible creators from 2011. That’s quite a respectable group of comics work. If you would like to make sure your 2011 comic is considered for the Shusters, you should check it out.
Item! Speaking of John Martz, the cartoonist recently tackled the news of changes to Tim Horton’s serving sizes for the Globe.
Item! More on the battle for control of Betty and Veronica.
Item! Apparently, Keith Jones has a new comic soon.
Item! Jason Thompson provides a considered expert opinion about why the manga industry is dying in North America AND in Japan.(via The Beat)
and that’s that!
D+Q to Publish Pippi Longstocking Comics
by BK Munn
Montreal publisher Drawn & Quarterly announced today that it would be translating the 1950s comic strip adaptation of the classic Pippi Longstocking stories for Fall 2012. The strips, by Pippi creator Astrid Lindgren and illustrator Ingrid Vang Nyman, originally appeared in the Swedish magazine Humpty Dumpty between 1957 and 1959.
The first of a series of three books reprinting the strip, Pippi Moves In will form part of D+Q’s new “Enfant” children’s line and will be available through the company’s regular distributors, Raincoast (Canada), Farrar, Straus & Giroux in (United States), and PGUK (United Kingdom).
Do You Suffer From Freckles?
Known as the world’s strongest girl, the freckled, pig-tailed Pippi Longstocking is an internationally beloved Swedish export and icon and has enthralled generations of children the world over with the original chapter books of her adventures appearing in multiple editions and translated into 60 languages. These comics will appear for the first time in English, translated by Tiina Nunnally, and based on a Finnish reprint discovered by D+Q’s Creative Director & Acquiring Editor Tom Devlin.
“When I was at the Helsinki Comics Festival this last September, I stumbled across a Finnish translation of the comic, and I was immediately awestruck and fascinated by two things,” said Devlin. “The first was that [there were] unpublished in English Pippi Longstocking comics by the iconic Astrid Lindgren and the second being the incredible talent of the original artist Ingrid Vang Nyman.”
Calling Vang Nyman’s bright artwork “presciently and eerily contemporary,” Devlin sadly notes that while she was the artist originally associated with the books, and was “an avant-garde champion of the importance of children’s literature,” Vang Nyman “tragically committed suicide in 1959 due to mental health issues,” and never shared Lindgren’s success in the worldwide sale of over 145 million Pippi books.
New Books by Delisle, Bechdel
by BK Munn
The Toronto Comic Arts Festival website has gone live, starting its first round of publicity for its 2012 event which takes place over the May 5th and 6th weekend. International headliners announced so far include returning guests Gary Panter and Jeff Smith, as well as first-timers Alison Bechdel (debuting her new book, Are You My Mother?), and Guy Delisle (debuting the D+Q-published Jerusalem).
Today’s launch also included the release of the TCAF poster image, featuring the art of Festival guests, Brazilian twins Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon (above).
Calling the 2012 line-up of guests a “who’s-who of comics and graphic novels,” TCAF also presented a partial listing of its 300-odd other guests and exhibitors, including a healthy contingent of Canadian, U.S., and international artists and publishers (representing 15 countries in all) including Canadian comics stars Kate Beaton, Bryan Lee O’Malley, and Michel Rabagliati (debuting The Song of Roland), plus Arne Bellstorf (Germany), Tom Gauld (U.K.), Gabriella Giandelli (Italy), Jason (Norway), and Olivier Schrauwen (Belgium).
Exhibiting publishers include Adhouse Books, Blank Slate Books, 2d Cloud, Conundrum Press, Drawn and Quarterly, Grimalkin Press, Fantagraphics, Bento Comics, Koyama Press, NoBrow Press, Pop Sandbox, Sparkplug, Top Shelf, Tugboat, and Vertical.
As well, the Festival announced it will be returning its by now usual assortment of features, including the art exhibits, Webcomics area, the OWLkids Kids area, Wowee Zonk Small-Press area, and panels, interviews, signings, and parties.
A little something old, a lot of something new.
First, Reading this next blog post i realized it’s been a while, since before I started doing the hey kids comics posts, that we mentioned “Stig’s Inferno“ around here.
Comics a-go-go.com posted this glowing review of what I agree, was one of the funniest comics to come out of Vortex. With Stig’s and Mr. X it was one of the coolest line ups during the B&W boom.
“Long story short, Stig’s Infernois hilarious and should be read. Written and illustrated by comic book veteran Ty Templeton, it’s one of the books that lived too short a time after Vortex Comicsimploded. Why, oh why must the good ones pass on so soon?! Oh, the humanity!
But, at least we can enjoy what actually made it to print. Ty’s brother posted all of the issues in their glorious entirety for your reading and viewing pleasure. Seriously, take our word for it – this is funny stuff.”
It’s all true. Here, read it for yourself!
Ok, so that’s a classic.
Here’s the new wave.
Zack Soto, the southern born Portland cartoonist and instigator used to publish a nice little anthology of comics and art called Studygroup12. There were 3 issues the last of which won an Ignatz award. Extent little books from what I recall.
Zack has just relaunched Study Group as a Magazine and Webcomics site. And I have to say he could have not picked a cooler line up of artists from what I can see to feature for the first issue of the reborn series! Farel Dalrymple, François Vigneault, Ian MacEwan, Jason Leivian, Jennifer Parks, Kazimir Strzepek, Levon Jihanian, Malachi Ward, Michael DeForge, Milo George, Simon Roy, Tom Neely, and Zack himself!
Go see, be amazed.
…and with one 7-day leap the week is over:
Monday: The first Canadian Comics Bestseller List of 2012. Hark a Vagrant is the top book in the country!
Tuesday: More Dragon Lady history on the C-List. The other big news this week is that Dragon Lady’s manager Joe Kilmartin will be opening a new shop called Single Bound in association with The Toronto Cartoonists Workshop at College and Clinton in Toronto.
Wednesday: Sequential joined the Stop SOPA blackout, and then the next day SOPA stopped. Coincidence?
Thursday Review of Josh Bayer’s KIng Size Retrofit Annual, Raw Power, “one of the more viscerally enjoyable comics I’ve experienced in a long time.” Plus some thoughts on the Retrofit line so far.
Friday: for our Friday Flashback feature, we dug up an old ad for a collection of Doug Wright’s comic strips drawn by the master himself. Bonus: we got a comment from Phyllis Wright (aka, Nipper’s mom)!
House Ad, Canadian Magazine, October 9, 1971
The Canadian Magazine, the regular venue for Doug Wright’s Famiily during it’s run, was a weekend insert syndicated to newspapers across Canada (my copy is from the Toronto Telegram’s “Weekend Magazine”). They published two of these little collections of the strip which were once common in used book stores across the land.
A nice full-page ad with great composition and fun details like Nipper stomping on his dad’s penny loafers. I wonder what kind of cut Wright got from the $2 sale of this book?
RAW POWER
by Josh Bayer
Retrofit Comics
48 pgs, b+w
$6.50
Every Scar on My Body a Line in a Book Written with Will Alone
review by BK Munn
Josh Bayer’s Raw Power is one of the more viscerally enjoyable comics I’ve experienced in a long time. His pages are great examples of comics-as-handwriting, using every expressive, crammed panel totally in the service of demonstrating his titular theme. Ad to that it combines several of my favourite things, including punk rock, politics, conspiracy theories, and comic books, and you have the makings of a nearly perfect cultural artifact.
Subtitled “King Size Retrofit Comics Annual,” Raw Power is the latest offering from the Kickstarter-funded line of comic books published by cartoonist Box Brown, part of a quixotic 17-books-in-17-months project to resuscitate the traditional stapled pamphlet-style, “floppy” comic book format with an injection of cutting edge alternative cartooning. The previous three books of the series, 90s indie darling James Kochalka’s cute comedic riff on his newly-minted video game characters Fungus, newcomer Colleen Frakes’ & Betsy Swardlick’s cute crossdressing romp Drag Bandits, and Pat Alisio’s cute swirly psychedelic Bowman, did little to prepare us for the paranoid gutteral onslaught of Bayer’s Raw Power. To date, the Retrofit line has been decidedly slight, formally and narratively, with little in the way of work that is really exciting or even promises to carry the burden of saving or perpetuating the idea of the floppy comic as a viable comics delivery platform and space for art to flourish, an alternative to digital delivery, graphic novels, or even the world of zines and minicomics.
The most promising of the previous books, Alisio’s Bowman is a high-concept tribute to Jack Kirby’s 2001 comics series of the 1970s, itself an extended re-imagining of the film adaptation of the Arthur C. Clarke novel. Alisio’s tiny comic, rendered in a line-heavy, meticulously sketchy style, follows 2001′s astronaut Dave Bowman as he remembers his past life and experiences a slacker alien civilization as if it was a drug-addled halucination. The narrative of Bowman follows the sort of video-game, dungeon-master logic familiar to readers of much of the post-Fort Thunder generation of comics makers, but ultimately is little more than a winking homage in a beautiful package.
By contrast, Raw Power represents the next stage in Retrofit evolution. It’s built on the same sort of genre foundations as Bowman, but everything in it is bigger, louder, and messier (fittingly, Alisio provides the colour to the front cover of Bayer’s book, a sort of passing of the Retrofit relay baton). More than Alisio, Bayer manages to incorporate his influences and build on them. There is a ton of Kirby in Raw Power, but I could just as easily say the book is a tribute to E.C. Segar, Frank Stack, Spain Rodriguez, Chester Gould, Harold Gray, or Raymond Pettibon, a heady mix of laboured linework and ideology in a prole art package.
The two-pronged story follows the mental degeneration of social mistfit/psychopath Terry Kaminczyk, whose name is ominously reminiscent of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. Terry’s Bruce Wayne-style early childhood trauma gives him a lifelong hatred of punk rockers and muggers, leading him to adopt the identity of The Cat, a feline mask-wearing thug who wanders modern day New York City, beating up innocent bystanders and purse-snatchers with savage randomness and seeming impunity. In a flashback, we see that Terry’s thoughts and actions are inspired by the Cointelpro-style efforts of President Jimmy Carter and his secret henchman, Watergate fall-guy G. Gordon Liddy. Carter recruits Liddy, the infamous Korean War vet, FBI sharpshooter, and commando lawyer, to neutralize the punk rock threat posed by people like Jello Biafara (Dead Kennedys) and D. Boon (Minutemen), who comic book Carter obsesses about in the same way Nixon obsessed about youth culture in the 60s. Bayer’s Liddy is a fascinatingly dark character, prone to monologuing, Hitler-like, on themes of willpower and The Fatherland, while Carter crawls around the Oval Office like Iggy Pop or GG Allin, barking out scripture verses. The whole story is a pulpy stew of a mess painted in broad, goofily histrionic strokes, equal parts horrific and hilarious, with echoes of post-1970s fascistic superhero narratives like The Dark Knight and Dan Clowes’ Death Ray, grafted onto a metanarrative of the secret history of punk.
New York-based cartoonist, illustrator and art teacher Bayer draws Liddy and his spiritual “son” Terry as visually imposing man-mountains, often pictured facing the reader in the manner of Crumb’s Harvey Pekar, spewing Travis Bickle-style, non-sequitor-laden confessions along the lines of “This world is a grimy river regularly overflowing that someone could punch back with their fists if they were willing to stand…” These same monolithic characters often explode into rubbery-limbed violence, all big feet, hands, flying sweat beads, and action lines. Bayer delineates each scene with just as much or as little linework as he needs to get across his plot point, sometimes with figures and backgrounds only sketchily represented, other times intensely cross-hatched. His characters are expressive, ranging from willowy to rock hard as the occasion demands. Mostly they seem to be manifestations of the thoughts they express, pure stream-of-conscious caricature; inky ids. For instance, despite his mountainous El Borbah build, Terry’s facial features, when not masked entirely, are sort of babyish and tiny, indicative of his simple-minded obsession and maleable philosophy. By contrast, Liddy, perhaps because based on a real-world figure, is presented with more sputtering, mustachioed detail.
Bayer’s crazy narrative eventually derails itself, perhaps out of exhaustion, and takes a step sideways into even more meta territory in the book’s denouement, in a sort of b-side or backup (in keeping with the giant-size annual tradition), as Bayer follows one of the Cat’s victims
home, listening in as she tells her story to a roommate (and possible author stand-in) who tries to console her with a comic book! Bayer proceeds to round out his tour de force with a “cover version” of said comic, an issue of the execrable 1980s Marvel title DP7, a seeming panel-for-panel “reshoot” done in his depthless punk style, which demonstrates, more than the preceding 35 pages, that Raw Power‘s style has more to say than most comic book substance.
The Toronto Cartoonists Workshop and The Joe Shuster Awards present Industry Night with Ramon Perez: A TALE OF SAND launch party!
This semi-monthly event usually features an individual artist or group and tonite’s episode celebrates the premiere of this adaptation a lost Jim Henson script illo’d by Toronto artist Ramon Perez.
If you are a cartoonist or illustrator-type in the Ottawa area, let it be known that there are 2 comic jam events for you to check out over the following week:
1. January Ottawa Comic Jam – ‘Origins’
Come to the first Central Ottawa Comic Jam of the NEW YEAR and shake the snow off your pencils. Warm yourself around a cup of hot tea, steaming noodles or a ‘Dark & Stormy’ (ginger beer & rum). The theme is ‘Origins’.
Wednesday January 25th, 2012
7:00pm – 10:00pm
Shanghai Restaurant
651 Somerset St. W.
Ottawa ON
Event cost: free, materials provided
Artwork is collected at the end of the evening, scanned and posted on a semi-regular basis to the official site: http://comixjam.tripod.com/
Contact: Suzanne
suebrainpower(at)gmail(dot)com
613.863.8264
Sponsors
DragonHead Studio
http://lucarinfo.com/dragonhead/
Brain Power Studio Inc.
http://brainpowerstudio.com/
———-
2. Orleans / East End
January Orleans/ East End Comic Jam
Whether you’re professionals, amateurs, hobbyists…if you want to draw comics and meet with others doing the same and you live anywhere from Beacon Hill to Rockland, from Convent Glen to Navan, this is a group to join! A comics jam is where two or more of us get together. One artist grabs a sheet of paper, draws a panel (or two), passes the page to the next artist and they do likewise, and so on. Eventually, we get at least one story done on the fly for fun, uploaded for all to see!
Date: Friday, Jan. 20th, 2012
Location: Ruby King Restaurant,
3014 St. Joseph Blvd. Orleans, ON
Time: 7:00 pm.
Event: free, paper provided, bring your own drawing materials.
Contact:
Dwight: williams(dot)dwight(at)gmail(dot)com
or Suzanne: suebrainpower(at)gmail(dot)com
Item! The FanExpo Toronto Comicon Spring event is scheduled for March 10-11. Guests include George Perez. Tickets on sale January 24.
Item! What? The voice of KITT on Knight Rider was originally tv’s Captain Nice, created by Buck Henry? And he had a comic book drawn by Joe Certa in 1967?
Item! I like to compare the career arc and politics of Chester Williams and Chester Brown.
Item! A new webcomic portal debuted on the weekend. Saturday Morning Webcomics is a new site featuring serialized comics for kids by established talents. My favourite is J.Bone’s Gobukan.
Item! Max mentioned this in his most recent Hey Kids, Comics! post at Sequential, but Ty Templeton remembers his complicated relationship with the soon-to-close Dragon Lady Comics in comics form, with cameos by James Waley, Dave Darrigo, Harvey Pekar, Joe Kilmartin and Keiren Smith.
Item! Alice Quinn’s Quintessential Comics Vidcast visits the aforementioned Joe Kilmartin at the aforementioned Dragon Lady Comics. The interview includes a tour of the shop, details about rents in Toronto, and some kind of wistful thoughts from store manager Kilmartin. (That’s one of the old ads mentioned in the interview up top, scanned from Marvel Two-In-One #58, 1979). The really sad thing is that it sounds like the shop is just going to fade out, with mention of extremely vague-sounding plans on the part of the 70-year-old owner to start listing the store’s massive stock on eBay.
Item! Righting Kirby wrongs, one inking job at a time.
Item! Illustrator and painter Gary Taxali has designed a series of coins for the Canadian Mint. (via Diana Tamblyn)
Item! The exhibition of work by comics pioneer Lyonel Feininger is moving from the The Whitney in New York to the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal beginning on January 21.
Item! Press and media registration is now open for the Calgary Expo in April.
Item! Richie Rich is totally ripped.
Item! The Kazoo! Fest in Guelph is looking for a coordinator for its Zine and Comics Expo. The show could be growing into a unique little regional art comix event, it just needs your help!
Item! Robin McConnell reviews some comics from his Reading Pile at the Inkstuds blog. Also, on the Inkstuds podcast, Robin interviews Patrick Kyle, the young cartoonist behind Black Mass and the Wowee Zonk co-op anthology and Mother Books imprint. As well, he talks to David Lester about The Listener graphic novel, and the Next Day crew of John Porcellino, Jason Gilmore, and Alex Jansen.
Item! Great Planet of the Apes cover or Greatest Planet of the Apes cover?
Item! Terry Mosher aka Aislin reveals the origins of his first published cartoon.
Item! The London Free Press profiles Scott Chantler and his Two Generals graphic history/novel.
compiled/edited by BK Munn
(Note: This is the first edition of this list since August 2011. I’m basically starting over at zero, with hopefully some new refinements and additions as the year progresses.)
This semi-regular feature of Sequential presents a snapshot of comics sales in Canada.
Part 1 .
Intro: The bestselling graphic novels and comics collections in Canada, courtesy of BookManager. The full list by BookManager is available, with some work, here. The list is compiled by BookManager based on sales through over 400 independent bookstores, including several comic book stores and the D+Q store. Sales through most comic shops and larger retailers like Chapters-Indigo are not reflected in this list. BookManager national sales Rankings are updated weekly. For balance, you might want to try the Amazon.ca and Chapters-Indigo lists. See here for our previous Sequential list.
Sequential’s Over-All Top 30
from BookManager
1. Hark a Vagrant Kate Beaton (D+Q)
2. Inappropriate Tales for Young People Graham Roumieu (Random House)
3. Bone 1, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
4. Bone 4, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
5. Walking Dead Vol. 1, Kirkman, et al (Image)
6. Bone 11, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
7. Bone 2, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
8. Naruto 54, (VIZ)
9. Best of Archie Comics Various Archie and Friends All-stars, Dan DeCarlo et al (Archie)
10. Walking Dead Volume 15, Kirkman et al (Image)
—–
11. Bone 4, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
12. Louis Riel, Chester Brown (D+Q)
13. MetaMaus, Spiegelman (Knopf Doubleday)
14. Walking Dead Vol. 2, Kirkman et al (Image)
15. Bone 7, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
16. Bone 8, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
17. The Adventures of Herge Bocquet, (D+Q)
18. Bone 5, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
19. Sunday Brunch: The Best of Zits Sundays Jerry Scott (Andrews McMeel)
20. Bone 3, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
—–
21. Naruto, Vol. 53 Masashi, Kishimoto
22. Walking Dead 3, Kirkman et al (Image)
23. Percy Jackson 1, Rick Riordan et al (Disney)
24. Bone Prequel: Rose, Smith/Vess (Scholastic)
25. Habibi, Craig Thompson (Knopf Doubleday)
26. Asterix and Obelix’s Birthday, Uderzo (Orion)
27. Black Bird 12, (VIZ)
28. Scott Pilgrim 1, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
29. Bone 6, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
30. Essex County, Jeff Lemire (Top Shelf)
Part 2. Canadian Content:
You have to wade through an awful lot of translated Japanese manga, U.S. superhero fantasies, and collected editions of Sherman’s Lagoon to come up with a list of 30 bestselling books created by Canadians. In total, BookManager lists over 4000 graphic novels, trades, and strip collections, the vast majority of which are not by Canadians. On this list, a single sale in a single tiny bookstore can make all the difference. This list does not include books that are only illustrated but not written/created-by Canadians.
Sequential’s All-Canadian Top 30
from BookManager
1. Hark a Vagrant Kate Beaton (D+Q)
2. Inappropriate Tales for Young People Graham Roumieu (Random House)
3. Louis Riel, Chester Brown (D+Q)
4. Scott Pilgrim 1, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
5. Essex County, Jeff Lemire (Top Shelf)
6. Paying For It, Chester Brown (D+Q)
7. The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, Seth (D+Q)
8. Scott Pilgrim 3, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
9. Two Generals, Scott Chantler (McClelland & Stewart)
10. Scott Pilgrim 2, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
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11. The Blue Dragon, Robert LePage et al (House of Anansi)
12. Scott Pilgrim 6, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
13. You are a Cat! Shirwin Tija (Conundrum)
14. Scott Pilgrim 4, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
15. Kill Shakespeare 2, Connor McCreery et al (IDW)
16. Scott Pilgrim 5, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
17. The Klondike, Zach Worton (D+Q)
18. Bigfoot, Pascal Girard (D+Q)
19. Big Foot, Graham Roumieu (Plume)
20. 500 Years of Resistance, Gord Hill (Arsenal Pulp Press)
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21. Pyongyang, Guy Delisle (D+Q)
22. Burma Chronicles, Guy Delisle (D+Q)
23. Pure Pajamas, Marc Bell (D+Q)
24. The Listener, David Lester (Arbeiter Ring)
25. Skim (pb) Mariko and Jillian Tamaki (Groundwood)
26. Red: A Haida Manga, Michael Yahgulanaas (D&M)
27. Harvey, Herve Bouchard/Janice Nadeau (Groundwood)
28. Nightschool, Vol. 1, Svetlana Chmakova (Yen)
29. Lost At Sea, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
30. Kenk, Richard Poplak et al (Pop Sandbox)
Damn it’s cold out today.
First, Ty has a diary memoir dedicated to the soon to be closed Dragon Lady in Toronto…
It’s sad to see the old lady go. I had been wanting to paint them a new sign at some point.
So I must say, thanks to their need to index all and sundry for the awards, the folks at the Joe Shuster Awards have put together one of the most comprehensive lists of Canadian related comics links.
For the next while i’m going to tour their list of can-con web comics and post some of the highlights. First sessions is in the ‘A’s, starting with…
Asymptote by Simon Banville is a classic newspaper style gag strip available in both English and French.
Adventuresome by Keith Mclean is another gag comic, more web oriented though…
Faith Erin Hicks‘ Superhero Girl is also a classic strip, and all kinds of awesome. She’s still at it but she put up a fun holiday comic last…
Alison a fini l’école [ Alison finished school] by Alison McCreesh is a French & English art blog on which she sometimes posts comics, some of which are very good.
Ant Comic by Michael DeForge is updated a lot more regularly than i realized!
Along with other doodles he puts up a new strip roughly Every second Monday.
That guy is prolific! Damn you DeForgeeeee!
Vincent Giard is another prolific talented surealistic cartoonist, he posts doodles and cartoons often here on his blog.
He also organises the 48 hour comics international festival
and leads the St-Hubert workshop; French language comics classes held in Montreal.
Jonathon Dalton is currenlty posting a short story called The Unconquerable City as a brake from his ongoing comic A Mad Hatter Tea Party.
And that’s it for today.
As always have a look at my own comic Dream life,
i’ve set up a new site for it with improved navigation to make reading easier.
And now for a comic moment of zen:
From Poutine, a “place for Noel Tuazon and Jason Coplandto experiment, sequentially speaking.” This is ’Cookie’ by Noel Tuazon.
Dazzler villain Dr. Sax
Sax-y highlights from the past week at Sequential.
Monday: Our fearless leader Max Douglas aka Salgood Sam posted an editorial lambasting artist Dave Dorman’s criticism of the breastfeeding image in Fiona Staples’s publicity for Saga, the new comic written by Brian K Vaughan.
Tuesday: Chester Brown and his publisher announced the great Canadian graphic novel Ed the Happy Clown would be back in print for the first time in 20 years. Also, we shared a few announcements from the Toronto Cartoonist Workshop and Carte Blanche magazine.
Wednesday: The big news on the C-List roundup this week was the purchase of Canadian publisher McClelland and Stewart by German multimedia giant Bertelsmann AG. Also, we reported on the Canadian graphic novels that made the Diamond Top 1000 of 2011.
Thursday: WTF? We didn’t post anything on Thursday? Must have been still reeling from the buyout of McClelland and Stewart… or maybe I was poring over this website that rates every saxophone solo from 1980s pop songs…
Friday: our Friday Flashback feature was a classic photo of Superman-creators Siegel and Shuster.
