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Grade seven students launch their own comic book - Shazaam!

TORONTO, Nov. 29 /CNW/ - Tonight, students of Second Street Junior Middle
School officially launched Shazaam!, a comic book of their own creation.
Freeze DNA, a local graphic design company, delivered in-class training
at the school that focused on art techniques, creativity, literacy and
communication skills. Through group dynamics and team building, students
created their own story and storyboard. Each student then completed one page
of the comic book. The book has been professionally printed and each student,
homeroom teacher, and the school librarian will receive a full colour copy.
Shazaam! is a joint partnership between the City of Toronto, the
Lakeshore Community Partnership, Toronto District School Board, Lakeshore Arts
and Humber College.
The comic book format offers an open, inclusive method to engage the
students in drawing, design and writing while enabling their teachers to
adhere to the curriculum and to reach out to youth who may be struggling and
give them an alternative way of expressing themselves.
"This is an opportunity for young people to discover their artistic and
writing talents and to develop them in a fun and non-academic manner. It also
offers students a chance to be mentored by professionals in the comic book
business," said Toby Fletcher, president of the Lakeshore Community
Partnership.
Shazaam! is the first step in a pilot program that will grow every year
to include the next grade and extend into high school, giving students a
unique opportunity to explore career choices in art and graphic design at the
post secondary level.
"Through this creative process the participants have developed skills not
only in making art, but also in leadership, co-operation and personal
empowerment," said Nadira Pattison, Manager, Arts Services, Toronto Culture.
"They will be able to take the skills they have learned into the future. They
have discovered a new vehicle with which to express themselves, in a medium
where anything is possible."

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Neyestani's months-long search for an appropriate visa has been followed by his cartooning colleagues and they are alarmed that UNHCR seems to be his last resort. "Western countries who claim to have enlightened policies in support of freedom of expression like to have their cake and eat it, too," said Nik Kowsar, a cartoonist who encountered Iranian protesters in 2000 due to one of his cartoons. He, too, fled Iran and now lives in Canada. "They position themselves as supporting freedom of expression, but now make achieving asylum almost impossible for the individual who is at risk for exercising it." Kowsar serves on the board of directors of Cartoonists Rights Network, International.

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"There's a real movement within the comics medium into that sort of middle ground, between corporate superhero comics and the independent artsy comics that veer toward mopey autobiographies," says Chantler. "That whole middle ground has been largely unexplored. The rise of the graphic novel format in the last couple of years has created an opportunity for people like myself and these others to stake out that middle ground."

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"Bartleman was a child, his family was so poor, he and his three siblings learned to read from comic books abandoned at the town dump.

It might not have been a traditional way of learning, but his love of literacy dates back to learning to read from comic books."

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"My parents died young. I would like to jump out of an airplane again and bungee jump and see the Eiffel Tower ... from the top." Fans will be delighted to know that the strip will not end. Rather, it will continue as a still-being discussed hybrid of some earlier, little seen work along with some new material."

But, with the exception of a possible book to catch readers up on what happens to the Pattersons, the characters will not age beyond the day Johnston sets aside her India ink.

"I just can't see them growing older," she says.

Labels: Ontario, Ottawa, Toronto

NOVEMBER 15, Montreal: Brian Chippendale and Julie Doucet will be celebrating the release of their new books, Ninja and Elle-Humour, in Montreal at Zoobizarre (6388 St. Hubert, Montreal). The book signing is from 7 to 9 and at 10 Brian's solo act, Black Pus, will play, along with Yomul Yuk.

Chippendale's NINJA is a 144 page, 11 x 17 monster of a graphic novel/art book about Ninjas, gentrification, sex, walking, and such things. Four years in the making, it's Brian's first book.

ELLE-HUMOUR is Julie Doucet's first full scale artists book, an epic exploration oflove, poetry, and luggage, and is also 144 pages, but like 4 inches thick. It's a brick.

Labels: Quebec

I was watching a Polish Movie from 1965 called the Saragossa Manuscript. It's a great movie, a little long and slow in some parts, where a couple of characters start to tell a story and the narrative switched to that story and this continues until you have all these stories that have to wait their turn to be told. I thought this was a really neat structure, but it was easy to get lost and forget who was whom. I thought it would work better as a comic [because] you could have the stories running simultaneously on the same page.

Insomniac Press present

The Montreal book launch of:
The Mole Chronicles: a novel by Andy Brown
This Will All End in Tears: a graphic novel by Joe Ollmann
Tuesday, November 14 at 7:00 pm
Boa Bar, 5301 St. Laurent

On Tuesday, November 14th at the Boa Bar, Montrealers Andy Brown and Joe
Ollmann will be presenting readings of their recently published books by
Insomniac Press.

Brown¹s Mole Chronicles traces the complexities of family relationships
through a paranoid landscape of skin disease, secret societies,
eco-terrorism and post-global culture. Recalling Susan Sontag¹s Illness as
Metaphor, Brown¹s innovative novel shifts between the weathered streets of
Montreal and the uneasy utopian beauty of Vancouver to locate an associative
site of regret, humour and longing‹the often malignant traces of our
upbringing and cultural surroundings.

"Brown's conflations of self and landscape, illness and passage are
insightful reminders of the vast overlapping surfaces that structure
contemporary experience. And the prose is good too ‹ subtle, daring at
times, always assured. I enjoyed reading this book. A lot."
‹ Michael Turner

In the five, long-form stories that comprise This Will All End in Tears, Joe
Ollmann finds inspiration in the forgettable, magical and disturbing moments
of the mundane‹our uncomfortable silences, subtle acts of self-delusion and
fleeting seconds of self-awareness. Ollmann¹s illustrated tales reveal a
remarkable sense of detail, unforgettable characters and delicate narrative
structure which lulls the reader into a place that is part Charles Schulz,
part Edward Gorey.

Originally from Vancouver, Andy Brown is the author of the short story
collection I can see you being invisible (D.C. Books, 2003). He is an editor
of Matrix magazine and the founder of conundrum press. His writing has
appeared extensively in publications throughout North America.

Joe Ollmann is a cartoonist who lives Montreal by way of Hamilton, Ontario.
He is the author of two other books, Chewing on Tinfoil (2001) and The Big
Book of Wag! (2006). Other comics and animation may be viewed by visiting
the web co-ordinates www.wagpress.net. Ollmann also works as the art
director at Ascent, Canada's only yoga magazine.


MEDIA INQUIRIES:
Chrisptopher DiRaddo
(514) 842.5087
(514) 806.5087
diraddo@videotron.ca

Labels: British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, Vancouver

In this newspaper and others across the country, Chuckle Bros, a single-panel comic strip he co-created with his brother Ron and area illustrator Ronnie Martin, is making its debut.

Mr. Boychuk gets excited when discussing the more than two-dozen instances of "fate" he says eventually turned a few scribbles on a colouring book in 2003 into a syndicated comic.

Take a chance meeting with the man who would eventually put his ideas to paper.

Driven by a love of Far Side creator Gary Larson's work, Mr. Boychuk compiled hundreds of comic-strip ideas with his Regina-based brother. While the two had plenty to work with, they hadn't even thought of finding a suitable artist who could display their vision for all.

They put ads on the Internet, but all the responses turned out to be "pathetic." Mr. Boychuk also toured Ottawa animation classes and an art class at Canterbury High School, but just couldn't find what he was looking for.

One evening, he ran into Mr. Martin at a choir performance both of their daughters were participating in.

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"When I called The Beguiling a couple of weeks ago to ask after additional copies, though, I was told that the publisher had explicitly asked them to stop selling Lost Girls in Toronto, until their appeal against Canada Customs can go through. In the meantime, Chapters has put a hold on all orders for the book in Canada, and most of the other comic book stores in the city won't stock it, or weren't ever planning to.

The Silver Snail, known the world over as one of the best comic book stores in North America, wouldn't touch Lost Girls with a ten-foot cattle prod, saying that theirs is a family store, and Lost Girls is not family material."

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Mark and Chester

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"As the title of the latest book suggests, this chapter of the story is based in Edmonton and features characters dredged up from Jorden's life.

It's the old case of the pen being mightier than the sword -- or, in this case, the gun. Jorden's characters switch between pens, markers, and spraypaint as weapons in the stories. Even when guns are used, the line gets blurred, such as blood splatters that look like ink sprays from a pen.

The business runs in a holistic fashion, with each area feeding off the others. The characters from the graphic novels show up in No Dice's clothing line, photographic art displays and company logo designs.

It's all quite methodical.

ThreadZ, for example, will release distinct lines of clothing based on each of Jorden's graphic novels and the fashions portrayed by characters."

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Kernachan is always on the lookout for absurd or unfair situations.

"People picking on people who can't defend themselves, or where people say, this is the best thing since sliced bread," he says.

He loves to poke holes in fuzzy logic or overblown self-importance.

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