Canadian Comix News & Culture
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Monday, June 11, 2007
Gerry Lazarre Profile
:: Posted by Bryan @ 6/11/2007 12:01:00 AM The North York Mirror profiles painter Gerry Lazarre, who was inducted into the Shuster Hall of Fame yesterday. Lazarre drew for Canadian comic book publisher Bell Features in the 1940s:
Lazare was among the first Canadian comic book illustrators, embarking on that part of his career in the 1940s at the tender age of 16. He drew and wrote nine separate comic strips, including such titles as Nitro, The Wing, The Dreamer, Drummy Young and Air Woman, for Golden Age comic publisher Bell Features. While he has always had both a knack and a passion for art, he fell into comic illustration purely by accident.
"During the Second World War, there was an embargo at the border and American books couldn't come into the country," he said. "That's when a group of people started up our own comic book industry in Canada, and I guess I'm one of the few left from that Golden Age period."
Lazare enjoyed the freedom he had working for Bell Features. Unlike current comics, which often have an artist and a writer who work together to create the finished product, comic illustrators in those days had almost complete creative control over their work.
"It was really an artist/writer kind of thing, which is a dream job," he said. "They didn't tell you what to do; you'd go home and come back to them with ideas, which they'd either like or they wouldn't. It's more your creation and you really are more invested in the work."
He wrote strips that reflected his own interests, with Air Woman, a strip revolving around a Canadian woman in the Air Force, the only one that had the war as a major part of the storyline.
"My other strips were only incidental to the war," he said. "Like any writer, what I wrote was a bit autobiographical, so it would come through from time to time, but (the Second World War) was never a real focus for me."
By the time American comics were once again able to make it across the border, which all but doused the Canadian comic industry, Lazare had already moved on to illustrating for magazines.
"I wasn't a born comic artist, so I moved into something that was more in line with what I wanted to be doing," he said.
Labels: awards, comics history, paradise comicon
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