NATION'S CAPITAL GAINS INSIGHT INTO VANCOUVER'S GAY VILLAGE.

OTTAWA, CANADA --Ottawa's gay and lesbian newspaper, Capital Xtra, begins running Vancouver cartoonist Ken Boesem's comic strip, " The Village," set in Vancouver's gay Village, in it's next issue (#172, release date June 28, 2007) and features the cartoonist on the cover.

Boesem's comic strip tells the ongoing story of a diverse group of characters whose lives intersect in Vancouver's Davie Village neighbourhood, where the city's gay community is centered.

Storylines, both humorous and dramatic, generally revolve around universal themes such as relationship and money woes but the cast includes a diverse range of types including a gay barista, a lesbian Sikh and a street person descriptively referred to as 'Toy Heads Guy.'

The fortnightly comic often features nudity, sexual situations and, being set in British Columbia, marijuana use.

"The Village" comic strip originally premiered in Capital Xtra's sister paper, Vancouver's Xtra West, in December 2005 and quickly developed a loyal following. The strip celebrated its first anniversary of publication with a two-page feature in Xtra West.

Creator Ken Boesem was nationally profiled in Maclean's magazine in 2003 after the American publication of his short graphic narrative, " 1918," concerning the global influenza pandemic of that year, coincided with the SARS outbreak in Toronto. The work appeared in the 2003 SPX Anthology.

His cartoon and illustration work has also appeared or been positively reviewed in numerous publications including Discorder, Xtra West, The Vancouver Sun, Broken Pencil, Geist and Seattle's The Stranger. He has also been referenced in The Prism Comics Guide to LGBT Comics (Prism Comics, 2006) and Canadian comics historian John Bell's book Invaders From The North: How Canada Conquered the Comic Book Universe (Dundurn Group, 2006).

Labels: British Columbia, comic strips, corrections, Ontario, Toronto, Vancouver