A reminder to all cartoonists, the submissions deadline for Issue #15 of carte blanche are coming up in a month!
There is more than one way to tell a story.
Carte Blanche would like to know how you would!
There’s no theme for this issue, it’s wide open. There is a small honorarium, and you retain all rights to your work.
Stories can be 1 to 25 pages long – If you want to hit us up with something longer write first before submitting. We accept original submissions through our online submission form. See here for instructions. If you have problems using our submission form, please send us an email.
For comics/graphic fiction, we’ll consider work that has been published in a limited venue, say on your personal blog or via a small press local/regional publication. Work that has not had wide exposure.
A few images from cartoonist CW Jefferys‘ aborted adaptation of Thomas Chandler Haliburton’s Sam Slick stories, scanned from Sam Slick in pictures: the best of the humor of T. C. Haliburton, edited by Lorne Pierce (Ryerson Press, 1956).
In this workshop, participants will work collaboratively to create hybrid mutations of comic characters and illustrate comic pages together and individually. Inspired by our current exhibition Personal Mythologies (curated by Zoë Chan with works by Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo and Marigold Santos), participants will be asked to respond, for example, to such notions as autobiography, dreams, or imagined worlds.
Artist Joanne Hui is currently working on her PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies at Concordia. Hui will be creating a graphic novel on Chinese-Canadian history as part of her final thesis.
Registration is mandatory. Write to info@m-a-i.qc.ca to reserve your spot. FREE
NOTE: Instruction will be given in English however the workshop is suitable for a bilingual audience.
The 1st collection of short comics by up-and-coming illustrator/cartoonist Daniel Ha. For sale now In print on demand or digital, via Magcloud.
It includes the story “A Sunset,” which was nominated for the 2011 3Macs carte blanche Prize and apperas in carte blanche 14 online.
The digital version is just 1$ (saves trees)! And the Print edition is pretty affordable at $4.56 + shipping.
If you know Daniel and live in Montreal, he will personally deliver your copy (anywhere accessible by public transportation). He plans to have the 2nd issue ready for Expozine 2012.
Here’s a gallery of Daniel’s hand that happen to have the book in them!
Did you know this year marks our 10th anniversary? The site debuted in August 2002 and for our 10th anniversary we’ve been jazzing up the site a bit and while trying to stay more current than usual on the subject of the Canadian comics scene.
We are also soliciting pitches for pieces, in written or comics form, on the theme of the past 10 years of comics in Canada. Accepted submissions will be run on the site and potentially in the next print issue of Sequential. Please share your ideas with us.
About Sequential:
Sequential exists to give Canadian creators and the Canadian comics industry an independent voice separate from the greater north american market. We exist to raise the profile of new and talented creators over the established commercial mainstream. To promote the local. Quality over quantity. Revive our history. And celebrate our avant garde. We believe this is the best way to help build our own markets and readerships.
This semi-regular feature of Sequential presents a snapshot of comics sales in Canada.
Fittingly for Groundghog Day, this week’s list closely resembles last week’s. No new publishing “events,” really. A few perennials bumped a few other perennials, that’s all. For instance, an uptick in the sales of a few Tintin books bumped Louis Riel right out of the Top 30 (to #33). Interestingly, the top 25 comics in the country all fall within the top 1000 bestselling books overall (Kate Beaton is #94 and Walking Dead Volume 15 is #993). I don’t know about you, but I’m quite amazed that 25 of the top 1000 books in Canada are graphic novels. Even more amazing? Those 25 books are by only 8 different creators.
(Note: previous week’s rank indicated in (parentheses). N=new and R=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. (2) Amulet 4, Kazu Kibuishi (Scholastic)
3. (3) Tintin Secret of the Unicorn, Herge (Egmont)
4. (4) Amulet 1, Kazu Kibuishi (Scholastic)
5. (5) Tintin Red Rackham’s Treasure, Herge (Egmont)
6. (6) Inappropriate Tales for Young People Graham Roumieu (Random House)
7. (7) Bone 1, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
8. (8) Tintin Crab w Golden Claws, Herge (Egmont)
9. (11) Amulet 3, Kazu Kibuishi (Scholastic)
10. (9) Bone 9, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
—–
11. (18) Tintin in Tibet (Egmont)
12. (12) Amulet 2, Kazu Kibuishi (Scholastic)
13. (10) Walking Dead Vol. 1, Kirkman, et al (Image)
14. (14) Naruto 54, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
15. (13) Bone 11, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
16. (15) Tintin Explorers on the Moon, Herge (Scholastic)
17. (16) Tintin Destination Moon, Herge (Scholastic)
18. (17) Bone 2, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
19. (19) Tintin Black Island (Egmont)
20. (20) Black Butler 8, Yana Toboso (Yen)
—–
21. (21) Tintin Cigars of the Pharoah, Herge (Egmont)
22. (N) Tintin Red Sea Sharks, Herge (Egmont)
23. (23) Tintin Blue Lotus, Herge (Egmont)
24. (22) Tintin Black Gold, Herge (Egmont)
25. (25) Walking Dead Volume 15, Kirkman et al (Image)
26. (24) Tintin 7 Crystal Balls, Herge (Egmont)
27. (N) Tintin Shooting Star, Herge (Egmont)
28. (28) Bone 8, Jeff Smith (Scholastic)
29. (26) Best of Archie Comics Various Archie and Friends All-stars, Dan DeCarlo et al (Archie)
30. (30) 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) Paying For It, Chester Brown (D+Q)
5. (6) Scott Pilgrim 1, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
6. (4) Essex County, Jeff Lemire (Top Shelf)
7. (26) The Klondike, Zach Worton (D+Q)
8. (8) The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, Seth (D+Q)
9. (7) Two Generals, Scott Chantler (McClelland & Stewart)
10. (11) Scott Pilgrim 2, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
—–
11. (9) Scott Pilgrim 6, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
12. (20) Pyongyang, Guy Delisle (D+Q)
13. (10) Scott Pilgrim 3, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
14. (12) Kill Shakespeare 2, Connor McCreery et al (IDW)
15. (16) Scott Pilgrim 5, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
17. (18) Kill Shakespeare 1, Connor McCreery et al (IDW)
18. (24) Nightschool, Vol. 1, Svetlana Chmakova (Yen)
19. (29) The Never Weres, Fiona Smyth (Annick Press)
20. (22) You are a Cat! Shirwin Tija (Conundrum)
—–
21. (15) Skim (pb) Mariko and Jillian Tamaki (Groundwood)
22. (N) The Next Day, Jason Gilmore/Paul Peterson/John Porcellino (Pop Sandbox)
23. (14) The Blue Dragon, Robert LePage et al (House of Anansi)
24. (R) 500 Years of Resistance, Gord Hill/Ward Churchill (Arsenal Pulp)
25. (19) Nightschool, Vol. 3, Svetlana Chmakova (Yen)
26. (13) Big Foot, Graham Roumieu (Plume)
27. (28) Nightschool, Vol. 2, Svetlana Chmakova (Yen)
28. (23) Bigfoot, Pascal Girard (D+Q)
29. (N) Collier’s Popular Press, David Collier (Conundrum)
30. (R) Something Old, Something New, Lynn Johnston (Andrews McMeel)
Canadian Darwyn Cooke Involved in 2 Watchmen Books
by BK Munn
Today DC finally made official what has been the subject of online speculation and rumour for the past 6 months. In a press release, DC announced a series of 6 comic books, collectively titled Before Watchmen, with story and art by Brian Azzarello, Lee Bermejo, Darwyn Cooke, J.G. Jones, J. Michael Straczynski, Adam Hughes, Andy and Joe Kubert, Len Wein, Jae Lee, and Amanda Conner. The books will tell stories of the characters before the events of the Watchmen graphic novel. The project has been a source of controversy, since the original contract for the book made it impossible for its writer, Alan Moore, to ever regain copyright of his creation, leading to statements like the following from DC:
“It’s our responsibility as publishers to find new ways to keep all of our characters relevant,” said DC Entertainment Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee. “After twenty five years, the Watchmen are classic characters whose time has come for new stories to be told. We sought out the best writers and artists in the industry to build on the complex mythology of the original.”
“Comic books are perhaps the largest and longest running form of collaborative fiction,” said DiDio and Lee. “Collaborative storytelling is what keeps these fictional universes current and relevant.”
But as the Beat notes, Moore feels differently and says so in the New York Times:
Mr. Moore, who has disassociated himself from DC Comics and the industry at large, called the new venture “completely shameless.”
Speaking by telephone from his home in Northampton, England, Mr. Moore said, “I tend to take this latest development as a kind of eager confirmation that they are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago.”
… Still, Mr. Moore said he was unlikely to stand in the way of Before Watchmen or to fight the project in court, where he said DC Comics would meet him with an “infinite battery of lawyers.”
“I don’t want money,” he said. “What I want is for this not to happen.”
Fans of Moore’s original story have expressed their displeasure in an online petition which has so far garnered over 300 signatures and in humourous articles like last week’s rant by Toronto cartoonist Steve Murray.
Item! Jillian Tamaki has illustrated a young adult novel by the writer Hiromi Goto.
Item! Not sure if this is comics news, but the Calgary Expo has the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation signed up for their show. Also, Arthur Sudyam. No permalinks at main site.
Item!This article about the graphic novel adaptation of Robert LePage’s The Blue Dragon almost doesn’t mention the illustrator, cartoonist Fred Jourdain.
Delisle was awarded the prize for his album Chroniques de Jérusalem (published by Delcourt). The book is a memoir of Delisle’s sojourn in the titular city along with his wife, a volunteer with Doctors Without Borders, and his personal take on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
In accepting the award, Delisle declared he was touched, calling the prize “a great honor,” especially considering the jury foreman and president of this year’s Festival was Art Spiegelman, whose seminal Maus made a book like Jerusalem possible.
Delisle’s book will be published in English by Drawn and Quarterly this Spring.
The Grand Prize of the festival was awarded to French cartoonist Jean-Claude Denis, the cartoonist behind the Luc Leroi series. Denis will serve as next year’s festival president.
Delisle and Joe Sacco talk about their books at the Festival (video):
Don t forget that the next Comix Jam will be held this coming Tuesday, January 31th, at 7.30PM in our usual lair of L Escalier (in front of metro Berri-UQAM Ste-Catherine exit) where we will enjoy beer, nachos and of course comics!
N oubliez pas que le prochain Comix Jam aura lieu mardi prochain, le 31 janvier prochain à 7.30 PM dans notre repaire habituel du cafe l Escalier (en face de la sortie de la rue Ste-Catherine de la station de metro Berri-UQAM) ou nous nous delecterons de biere, de nachos et de bedes, bien sur!
Jane
Le Montreal Comix Jam se déroule le dernier jeudi de chaque mois, sauf en décembre.
The monthly Montreal Comix Jam is on the last Thursday of the month, except in december.
No, Jeff Lemire's next graphic novel is not an attempt to "fix" this old Chester Brown series. (At least,I don't THINK it is...)
The world of Canadian comics as we saw it at Sequential this week:
Monday TCAF revealed its first poster and announced its initial slate of guests for the 2012 Festival. As well, our regular round-up of webcomics, Hey Kids, Comix!, includes a shout-out to a cult classic by Ty Templeton and more.
Tuesday Drawn and Quarterly announced it would be publishing three collections of classic Pippi Longstocking comics from the 1950s.
Friday A special weekend C-List directed your attention to a recent blog post by Faith Erin Hicks, among other things. Plus, our Friday Flashback this week featured U.S. superhero Captain Marvel facing off against a team of villainous superpowered lesbians in a Kurt Schaffenberger illustrated tale from 1977.
So, no Canadian comics history for this week’s Flashback. Instead, a treasured find from a pile of old comics I had stacked in a closet. Awhile back, in response to Jaime Hernandez’s Ti-Girls epic I wrote a blog post about the history of all-female superhero groups. I dug up a few, but missed this one. The Rainbow Squad were a group of villainous super-powered women created by ringleader Mr. Wonderful in this story from a 1977 issue of Shazam! written by E. Nelson Bridwell and drawn by Golden Age Great Kurt Schaffenberger. The premise of the strip is that the female characters match Capt. Marvel power for power. Lots of cute stuff here (Cap can’t hit a girl and is overcome with kisses, etc.) but the really interesting aspect of the story is the name of the group and the sort of butch way Shaffenberger draws most of the women, as if the whole thing is not just a play on post-Stonewall, First Wave Feminist-era politics but on the stereotypical 1970s view of feminists as lesbians. Anyway, here are some scans of the ladies in action against Captain Marvel and Minute Man, another 1940s character making his big comeback. The team is made up of leader Sibyl (wisdom), Gibralta (stamina), Virago (strength), Dynamoll (lightning power), Dauntless (fearlessness), and Celeritas (speed). Schaffenberger delivers his classic awkward poses and funky 40s designs, marred only by an inking job by Vince Colleta. I’ll let you puzzle out the plot and the ending. Read more ›
Item! Highly recommended: Faith Erin Hicks (The War at Ellsmere, Friends With Boys, Superhero Girl) talks frankly about the economic situation of young Canadian cartoonists. I think the availability of grants for artists, not to mention healthcare, is one of the major differences between the U.S. and Canadian version of this discussion.
Item! Speaking of how hard it is to make a living as an artist, the latest issue of Canadian Notes and Queries (CNQ), featuring design and cover by Seth, is a “What Happened to Canadian Literature” special issue, with essays on the coming Digital Apocalypse and the death of CanLit as a cultural imperative. Fun reading, with lots of details about things like how much a z-list author makes per year and how much Chapters charges publishers to have their books facing out on the shelves. As well, Seth contributes a cover and essay about Canadian vernacular book design, including his inspiration for the Collected Doug Wright, to the printers’ journal The Devil’s Artisan.
Item! U.S. cartoonist Frank Santoro (Storeyville) will be bringing his Comic Book Layout Workshop to Lucky’s in Vancouver, Feb 28th.
“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.”
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
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.
