• Tonite: Industry Night at the Vic --the monthly gathering of comics industry-related types at the Victory Cafe in Toronto. Drop by and kvetch. No special event or booklaunch this time around. Wednesday, November 28th, 8pm-Close, Victory Cafe, 581 Markham Street (South of The Beguiling).
  
  
• The first volume of Kean Soo's Jellaby graphic novel is now available for preorder. A successful webcomic, Jellaby was picked up by Hyperion Books. More news at Jellaby's online home, The Secret Friend Society.
  

• Kevin Boyd reviews the 20 (!) comic book conventions he attended over 2007, a wild year, at least for Kevin and the Toronto con scene.

• Sandra Bell-Lundy (creator of the comic strip Between Friends) lists her biggest cartooning influences in this interview and blogs about her road to syndication on her own blog: parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.

• Ho Che Abderson is interviewed for an Italian website about his influences as a cartoonist, his latest project (Godhead), and the genesis of his graphic novel biography of Martin Luther King.

• They're here! After a long wait, he mascots for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics were unveiled yesterday, according to every Canadian news outlet:

None of the three mascots actually exist in real life. Miga the Sea Bear is a combination of an orca and a sea otter. Sumi, the Paralympic mascot, is a Thunderbird but looks more like a bear with wings. And Quatchi is the first Sasquatch in history to actually make an appearance before human beings.

Mukmuk is the only real animal. But the committee said it isn't really a mascot and will only make appearances on its website.

The mascots are the creation of Vancouver graphic designers Vicki Wong and Michael Murphy, who own Meomi Design. The committee said that although the two provided more than 20 different concepts, it was Quatchi, Miga and Sumi that they first proposed and which were selected as winning designs.

Labels: blogosphere, comic strips, Global Links, graphic novels, mascots, publishing