03.May.2013 Saturday: Free Comic Book Day!
by BK Munn
Saturday, May 4 is Free Comic book Day across Canada. Comic shops will be giving away select free comics and many shops will be hosting special events with comics creators.
Montreal publisher Drawn and Quarterly has prepared two kid-friendly comics to be given out from their international catalog of cartoonists. First, they are offering a comic book-sized preview of Marble Season, the new graphic novel from U.S. cartooning master Gilbert Hernandez about life as a kid in the 1960s. Second, a short excerpt from their Pipi Longstocking series, written and drawn by the original writer and artist of the Pipi stories from the 1950s.
See here for a full list of books on offer.
According to the FCBD website, stores in Hamilton, Brampton, Toronto, Ottawa, Mississauga, Saskatoon, Laval, Kitchener, Nepean, Ottawa, Burnaby, Nanaimo, and Calgary, have scheduled special appearances. But I’m pretty sure most shops are participating in this in some way. Check out Comic Shop Locator for a store near you.
Bonus: Here is a great map of the Halifax-Dartmouth area and participating comic shops!
18.Feb.2013 “I did Maus and I did this page.”
Notes on Art Spiegelman in Vancouver @ the VAG
Feb. 16, 2013
By David Lester
As he puffed on a cigarette, Art Spiegelman was charming and witty in conversation despite the meandering questions of Vancouver Art Gallery curator Bruce Grenville. In town for the opening of the art gallery’s retrospective of Spiegelman’s work called CO-MIX, the artist touched on his origins as a cartoonist at Topps Bubblegum; the stain glass window of art he created at the request of his former high school; the importance of Robert Crumb, Spain, S. Clay Wilson; his New Yorker covers; and making prints from stone.
In reference to a projected slide Spiegelman talked about how it was a page of art he is proud of and it “took six months to draw,” and he thought it weird to be able to say in retrospect “I did Maus and I did this page.”
He pointed out the unique qualities inherent in comics to be able to compress a story. For Maus, Spiegelman wanted the art to have a hand drawn feel but the look of a font. And how Maus “was built around language.”
While talking about the work he and his wife Francoise Mouly did as makers of books and RAW he said, “You can’t Kindle Chris Ware’s latest book.”
Spiegelman noted the ongoing debates over comics as high art or low art, and his annoyance at Roy Lichtenstein. “Lichtenstein did no more for comics than Warhol did for soup,” he said.
Art Spiegelman CO-MIX: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics and Scraps runs until June 9, 2013 at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
David Lester is author/artist of The Listener, and the guitarist in Mecca Normal.
11.Sep.2012 D+Q, Kate Beaton and Tale of Sand at the Harvey Awards
Saturday night, Baltimore, the Harvey Awards announced the 2012 winners.
Kate Beaton won three, and Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand took two. Drawn & Quarterly was well represented as the publisher of Kate’s book, as well as best repackaged book for Clowes’ Death Ray.
From the official list of winners:
BEST WRITER – Mark Waid for “DAREDEVIL”, published by Marvel ComicsBEST ARTIST – J. H. Williams for “BATWOMAN”, published by DC Comics
BEST CARTOONIST – Kate Beaton for “HARK! A VAGRANT”, harkavagrant.com; printed edition published by Drawn and Quarterly
BEST INKER – Joe Rivera for “DAREDEVIL”, published by Marvel Comics
BEST COVER ARTIST – J. H. WILLIAMS for “BATWOMAN”, published by DC Comics
BEST LETTERER – Chris Eliopoulos for “FEAR ITSELF”, published by Marvel Comics
BEST COLORIST – Dave Stewart for “HELLBOY: THE FURY”, published by Dark Horse Comics
BEST NEW SERIES – “DAREDEVIL”, published by Marvel Comics
BEST CONTINUING OR LIMITED SERIES – “DAREDEVIL”, published by Marvel Comics
BEST ONLINE COMICS WORK – “HARK! A VAGRANT”, by Kate Beaton, harkavagrant.com; print edition published by Drawn and Quarterly
BEST SYNDICATED STRIP – “CUL DE SAC”, by Richard Thompson, syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate
BEST AMERICAN EDITION OF FOREIGN MATERIAL – “THE MANARA LIBRARY, VOLUME 1: INDIAN SUMMER AND OTHER STORIES”, published by Dark Horse Comics
MOST PROMISING NEW TALENT – Sara Pichelli, for “ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN”, published by Marvel ComicsSPECIAL AWARD FOR HUMOR IN COMICS – Kate Beaton for “HARK! A VAGRANT”, harkavagrant.com; printed edition published by Drawn and Quarterly
BEST ORIGINAL GRAPHIC PUBLICATION FOR YOUNGER READERS – “ANYA’S GHOST”, published by First Second
BEST ANTHOLOGY – “DARK HORSE PRESENTS”, published by Dark Horse Comics
BEST DOMESTIC REPRINT PROJECT – “WALT SIMONSON’S THE MIGHTY THOR, ARTIST’S EDITION”, published by IDW
BEST SINGLE ISSUE OR STORY – “JIM HENSON’S TALE OF SAND”, published by Archaia Entertainment
SPECIAL AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN PRESENTATION – “WALT SIMONSON’S THE MIGHTY THOR, ARTIST’S EDITION”, published by IDW
BEST ORIGINAL GRAPHIC ALBUM – “JIM HENSON’S TALE OF SAND”, published by Archaia Entertainment
BEST BIOGRAPHICAL, HISTORICAL OR JOURNALISTIC PRESENTATION – “GENIUS ISOLATED: THE LIFE AND ART OF ALEX TOTH”, published by IDW
BEST GRAPHIC ALBUM PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED – “THE DEATH RAY”, published by Drawn and Quarterly
15.Jul.2012 Subscribing to our Facebook fan page
A while back due to mall-ware and bots trying to exploit it, I shut down the sites subscriptions list. A few of you even wrote to protest! Sorry about that.
Just installed a new Facebook plugin that will post all our stories to our fan page, so now you can use Fbook to subscribe to Sequential! { we also have traditional RSS feeds, for Entries & our Comments }.
Also if you have a story you can post it there to let us know if you like. While your there, if you love blogging or posting socially about comics and live somewhere in Canada, check out our call for contributors. And if you think can make a good case for why it does not mater if you live in the country, you should let us know about that too. – Max
27.Apr.2012 This Weekend: 2012 Calgary Expo
As I mentioned at the bottom of yesterday’s C-List, The Calgary Comics and Entertainment Expo takes place this weekend, April 27, 28 and 29. Events start with an opening party tonight and other features include a Stan Lee cocktail party and all sorts of programming. The Calgary Expo is one of the bigger shows in the country and boasts an impressive list of pop culture guests as well as comics people. Besides the aforementioned Stan the Man, the comics guests include actual U.S. and Canadian superstars like Kate Beaton, Arthur Suydam, Adrian Alphona, George Perez, Ryan North, Fiona Staples, Steve Rude, and Bernie Wrightson, among many others. See the full list here.
BMO Centre
20 Roundup Way, Calgary
Show Hours
Friday 3pm to 8pm
Saturday 10am to 7pm
Sunday 10am to 5pm
Admission Prices
Up to 4 kids 12 & under with each paid adult ticket.
At The Door
3-Day Pass $50.00
Friday Only $25.00
Saturday Only $25.00
Sunday Only $25.00
25.Feb.2012 International Manga Award Winners Include Canada’s Dan Kim
by BK Munn
The International MANGA Award Executive Committee has announced the 14 winners of its 5th annual competition. The awards, presented by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and chaired by Minister Koichiro Gemba, made the announcement on February 14, selecting “I Kill Giants” by artist J M Ken Niimura (Spain) and writer Joe Kelly (United States) as the Gold Award Winner.
Among the 1 Gold, 3 Silver, and 10 Bronze winners was a sole Canadian, Dan Kim, who won Bronze for his NNN graphic novel. The book was originally serialized online and then self-published through Kim’s Clone Manga imprint. He is the first Canadian to win honours in the competition, which is co-sponsored by the Japan Cartoonists Association. Toronto-born Kim won 2 Joe Shuster awards in 2007.
The International MANGA Award was established in May 2007. This year the awards received 145 entries from 30 countries. This year’s jury included mangaka Machiko Satonaka (Karyūdo no Seiza), Leiji Matsumoto (Space Battleship Yamato, Captain Harlock), and Seika Nakayama (Fantamoosh, Alfheim no Kishi). Winners receive a trophy designed by Taku Sato.
15.Feb.2012 NY | The unholy melding of Poetry and Comics’ superpowers
Mahendra Singh wrote us to let us know he’s taking part in a roundtable hosted by the NYU reading series on the 17th. Six artists that use both text and images in their poetry discuss the merging of two media into one art form. The conversation will feature poets Sommer Browning, Matthea Harvey, Mark Leidner, Mahendra Singh, Bianca Stone, and Paul Tunis.
The event will be moderated by Matthea Harvey, and some of the events are posted as pod casts so those not in NY for the event may be able to catch it here. Otherwise, the round table will be live on February 17, 2012, 2 – 4 p.m, held at Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, 58 West 10th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues, New York, NY.
info:212-998-8816
creative.writing@nyu.edu
Event URLs: cwp.fas.nyu.edu ~ www.poets.org
04.Feb.2012 Football
The Globe and Mail has this great John Martz Super Bowl Sunday strip that has 0 football in it!
A Superbowl Party Glossary
03.Feb.2012 CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS : CARTE BLANCHE 15
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.
For an idea of our editor’s taste [that would be me, max douglas aka Salgood Sam.] check out the last few stories we’ve published. Stories by Daniel Ha, Ainsley Olsen, James Romberger, Shannon Wheeler, Nina Bunjevac, Mara Sternberg, & Dustin Harbin!
10.Jan.2012 Call for submissions : Carte Blanche 15
There is more than one way to tell a story. Carte Blanche would like to know how you would
We’re taking submissions now for the spring issue. The submission deadline is March 1st - for publication in May.
There’s no theme for this issue, it’s wide open. 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, previously unpublished submissions through our online submission form ONLY.
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.
For an idea of our editor’s taste [that would be me] check out the last few stories we’ve published. Stories by Daniel Ha, Ainsley Olsen, James Romberger, Shannon Wheeler, Nina Bunjevac, Mara Sternberg, & Dustin Harbin.
Last issue we had a really strong batch of stories submitted, looking forward to what people send in this time!
29.Sep.2011 Rock N’ Write Over: The Partnership Behind the New Comic About Jerusalem, Street Messiahs and Madness
by Dalton Sharp
The early evening crowd at Toronto’s Cameron House pub is packed so deep it’s pushing out the front door. The usual torch and twang. Eugene Zhilinsky spots me immediately, the nerd in the middle of a music show reading a comic book. We’re meeting along with his collaborator Kimberley Whitchurch to talk about Rock Testament, the book I’m conspicuously holding.
The back room of the pub is empty save for a necking couple and a woman sleeping in a booth. In the front, a new band has taken the stage. A girl with the saddest voice in the world croons. It’s fitting to talk here – Rock Testament is a riff on the mystery of music and the people it attracts.
Set in Jerusalem circa 32 A.D., the story centres on David Ro, a street profit proselytizing the revolutionary power of a new sound – rock n’ roll. “Words don’t matter! Not even in music – you can even sing in tongues!” says a follower. “Awop-bop-a-loo-mop Alop-bam-boom!”
“All of my life I was listening to music”, says Zhilinsky, a Russian-born architect renderer who lived in Jerusalem for twelve years. He plays piano and bass, but chose a career in architecture over music. “I’ve always made friends with musicians.” Many of the characters in the book are taken from sketches he drew at parties with the DooLee Band. They call their sound Drunk-and-Brass. “I have no idea what that means. It’s some modern musical term. It sounds like Rock Steady and Ska, but a little bit different.” 
Time is elastic in Rock Testament, and reality…in flux. Rock n’ roll exists alongside Roman soldiers. Bands jam with actual instruments, the ancient kithara, as well as invented ones, the kumkumahr, shaped like something from Dr. Suess. “You always have to have some mystery, because otherwise it’s going to be carnet des voyages, otherwise it’s going to be travel sketches at best.”
Jerusalem has had a profound influence on Zhilinsky. “It made me forget all about St. Petersburg! The first time I walked around there I thought, ‘wow! This is real ancient history. This is 1001 Nights, this is Lawrence of Arabia, and here I am in a white suit!” His friends can’t understand why he left the sun swathed city for Toronto, a work addicted city of naked branches and slush, but he credits the move for finally getting the comic out. “Only here did I make something with a completion to it.”
With Rock Testament finished he posted on Facebook: “Would anyone like to proof read my book?” “Sure”, thought Whitchurch. They had first met at a Dr. Sketchy’s gallery show opening. They both had drawings in it. Dr. Sketchy’s is a burlesque model sketching group. Whitchurch, an accomplished caricaturist and illustrator herself, admired his drawings of Frenchie Fatale and Paralee Pearl. “I thought ‘who did this? I have to meet this person!’ It turned out to not be proof reading. I rewrote everything,” says Whitchurch. (more…)
18.Aug.2011 carte blanche deadline is September 15th
A reminder to all cartoonists, the submissions deadline for Issue #14 of carte blanche are coming up in a month!
The Issue’s special feature is on Obsessions.
From your vintage stapler collection to spying on your exes,
we want to know about your passions, compulsions, and preoccupations!
The Theme is optional but it will win you brownie points if you can fit it.
Submission deadline is September 15th, 2011.
Being published in carte blance will put you in good company, our previous published graphic fiction submissions include stories by James Romberger, Shannon Wheeler, Nina Bunjevac, Mara Sternberg, & Dustin Harbin!
- -Submission can be between 1 and 20 pages! For anything longer please send a query first.
- -Original work, previously unpublished or limited [like on your web site] published stories.
- -Contributors receive a $45 honorarium per published piece on carte-blanche.org. And since I began editing I’ve published a set of the runner-up comics here on Sequential too, with the permission of the creators of course.
Check out the submission guidelines for more information.
Please indicate in your cover letter if your your work is themed for the feature on obsessions.
Attention!: All submissions from Quebec residents that are selected for publication in carte blanche are eligible for the 3Macs carte blanche Prize ($300) sponsored by MacDougall, MacDougall, & MacTier Inc.
PS: carte blanche also is looking for submissions of Fiction and Nonfiction, Poetry, Translations, & Photography! Check out the submissions page for details!
PPS: carte blanche is a not-for-profit journal published by the Quebec Writers’ Federation. We rely on funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and the support of individual sponsors. Our editorial staff is largely volunteer and generously donate their time to keep carte blanche going.
You can help us cover costs by donating to carte blanche. Your donation will help us pay our contributors honorariums, update our website, and explore new ways of distributing carte blanche (e.g. print-on-demand, apps, and eBooks). Any size donation is greatly appreciated
23.Jul.2011 KARL KERSCHL, DARWYN COOKE WIN AT EISNER AWARDS
The Eisner Awards were handed out last night in a ceremony at the San Diego Comic-con. Two Canadian artists and one publisher were recognized. Karl Kerschl won Best Digital Comic for his Abominable Charles Christopher serialized webcomic and Darwyn Cooke won Best Writer/Artist for Richard Stark’s Parker: The Outfit (IDW). The Drawn and Quarterly-published Wilson by U.S. cartoonist Daniel Clowes tied for Best Graphic Album—New with Return of the Dapper Men by Jim McCann and Janet Lee (Archaia).
15.Jul.2011 Peter Laird Announces End to Cartoonist Grants via Xeric Foundation
One of the last benefactors of the 2nd-last round of Xeric comics publishing grants is Canadian legend Bernie Mireault.
by Max Douglas and BK Munn
Ninja Turtles co-creator Peter Laird has announced that his charitable Xeric Foundation will no longer award publishing grants to struggling cartoonists and will instead focus on supporting other charitable organizations.
Laird reasons that the internet and webcomics have essentially eliminated the need for print publishing aids. Since 1992, his foundation has given out over $2 million to cartoonists, including many Canadians –notably Bernard Edward Mireault received one this year in May, for his long-in-the-works Graphic Novel, “To Get Her“, and an earlier amazing cohort of 5 Canadian cartoonists in 2010.
One of the most recent Canadian winners of a Xeric grant: Nick Maandag's Streakers.
In a letter posted on the Xeric website July 14th, Laird stated,
“Roughly twenty years ago, I started something called the Xeric Foundation. It came about because, with the success of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” property that Kevin Eastman and I had created back in 1983, there were a lot of people asking for money. Many of these requests were legitimate and came from real need, and I wanted to find a way to deal with them in a fair and organized fashion.
I also wanted to help out struggling comic book creators. Having started TMNT with Kevin as a self-published venture, I knew very well how critical even a relatively small amount of money could be for success at that nascent stage.
The Xeric Foundation accomplished all that. The Foundation was able to give many grants to self-publishing comic book creators and local charitable organizations. To date, those grants have totaled more than $2,500,000, and those funds were split equally between the two aforementioned categories.
When I began the Xeric Foundation back in 1992, things were very different. The Internet — and web-based publishing — was in its infancy. This has changed, radically, and the Xeric Foundation needs to change accordingly.
The advent of essentially free web publishing has forever altered the way aspiring comic book creators can get their work out into the public eye. With this in mind, I have decided that it makes sense that the Xeric Foundation will no longer provide grants to self-publishing comic book creators, and instead devote all of its available grants funds to charitable organizations. “
Troy Litttle's "Chiaroscuro", a 2001 Xeric grant winner.
There is one more round of grants to go…
“There will be a final comic book review in May 2012. Details can be found at the following link: FINAL GRANT APPLICATION. Please note that the November review is cancelled [sic], allowing creators more time to prepare and present their best work.”
“Good luck to all of the dedicated self-publishers. Get in there and show us what you’ve got during the last round of comic book grants!”
Reaction from many creators naturally laments the lost opportunity for future grants.
Marcel Guldemond - “As someone who’s received a Xeric Grant, that’s pretty sad news. It’s also true about the internet & Kickstarter changing the game, but really, I love print editions, especially creatively well designed ones, so it’s still sad.”
Patrick Joseph - “I cherish my rejection post card from the Xeric foundation. Seriously.”
Troy Little - “I received a Xeric way back in 2001 and it was a BIG DEAL to me starting out. News of this ending saddens me.”
It will certainly mean future emerging talents will have to try other routes. While this complicates things for the lucky who would have gotten backing from the Xeric–around 13 or so a year for the last half of the ’00s –representing a lot of great work. But one could argue it won’t keep others from getting in print if they’re willing to take advantage of some kind of digital self publishing or POD in the mix.
Laird’s perspective seems to be accurate. We do seem to be at the point where someone can develop and prove work on-line, and get it to where putting something in print either on your reader base alone if you have one large enough, or by using something like kickstarter to co-fund a book with a small publisher the way people often did with Xeric, is within reach.
The same people can take advantage of that if not a wider group than could have benefited from their grants. Even barring those options for finely crafted tomes –something new to comics historically. We’re still only 10 years from a time were 90% of what was published only ever appeared in a cheap pamphlet. Far from being a closed door, now anyone going to a small press or comics festival also has few excuses for not putting together a handful of copies themselves with what you can do DIY or in a copy shop with two or three hundred bucks.
And as Danny Hellman puts it…
” Look at it from the perspective of a wealthy person who wants their money to make a difference in the world: would you give to help feed the hungry, or would you bankroll print editions of weird comic books…?” - “Hopefully his turtle money’s going to help fund a robot that’ll scrape white hot radioactive waste off the bottom of the Sea of Japan.”
Salgood Sam- “Don’t think we’ll seen the end of print by far, I just think the dynamics have changed when it comes to how you get there, if you want to get there. I also feel like I snoozed on that one, missed an opportunity. But looking around I don’t think anyone will really miss a chance.”
07.Jul.2011 TREMBLES’ SLIDESHOW & ANIMATED MOVIES IN NYC
sample images from the slideshow
MOTION PICTURE PURGATORY DECENSORTIZED!
Undead & in person next to the slithery slideshow screen, using hand-drawn biographical anecdotes, Rick Trembles will make you tremble as he narrates how he first got into macabre movies & the comix medium as a youngster & what made him think he could merge the two!
He’ll detail his weekly comic strip Motion Picture Purgatory’s bumpy early controversial history & give insight into how he picks apart films with his patented process of condensing pertinent plot points via creepy x-ray vision cross-sections, maniacal maze-like aerial views, & screwy schematics! From King Kong to Clockwork Orange & The Candy Snatchers, don’t miss Trembles’ titillating alternate terror-tinged take on the history of cinema! Come say hi face-to-face to the cartoonist THE GUARDIAN called “a genius” & ROBERT CRUMB declared “even more twisted & weird” than himself, & he’ll personally sign & doodle all over copies of his FAB Press books for you, Motion Picture Purgatory Volumes 1 & 2!
Free event takes place from 4pm to 6pm, Saturday July 9
@ Word Up, 4157 Broadway @ 176 Street, Washington Heights, New York City!
Rick Trembles’ critically acclaimed hybrid comic strip movie criticism column Motion Picture Purgatory has been appearing every week in the Montreal Mirror since 1998 (after originating in the same pages with the paper’s inception in the 80’s). Trembles continues to make animated short films that occasionally tour the globe, & continues to play in his 30-year-old post-punk band The American Devices. His more experimental comix work has been featured in numerous galleries & published internationally. The L.A. Times called him “a famous free thinker,” & Concordia University English Professor Marcie Frank featured Trembles in her chapter about comix for the book QUEER DIASPORAS (Duke University Press).
Trembles’ 3 short animated films will follow (each of which he’ll discuss in his slideshow); GOD’S C*CKSUCKERS, DECENSORTIZED, & the award winning GOOPY SPASMS based on the comic strip of the same name that was recently published in Danny Hellmans’ comix anthology Typhon Volume One.
In Lezsther Rott & Jamie Ross’ GIRLS OF PREY, “when gender identity politics & battles against authority cease to feel sacred, a new influence arises in an abandoned quarry, inspiring a dynamic where progress can be made. Rott & Ross’s short film is an acutely staged atrocity that makes it feel like the future is now.” -Butcher Gallery
Esther Splett AKA Lezsther Rott, who will be in attendance during the screening, is a multidisciplinary artist working with installation, sound, performance, video, film & digital media. She’s exhibited at the VAV Gallery, Art Mur, Le Cagibi, Room & Board, Les Territoires, & Casa Del Popolo & her short video, Les Princesses Qui Pissent (The Princesses Who Pee), will be screened in Versailles this July at UEEH (Universités d’Eté Euroméditerranéennes des Homosexualités). Recently, her irreverent occultist sexploitation film Girls of Prey has screened at Montreal’s Radical Queer Week, the Houston Anarchist Film Festival, The Montreal Underground Film Festival, & The Legend is Black exhibit at Butcher Gallery (Toronto). She looks forward to further opportunities to menstruate in Tupperware containers as her artistic practice grows.
Jamie Ross is interested in personal psycho-geography, land & place. His work deals with mythology, genealogy, language, storytelling, dreams & ritual. He is intent on creating & documenting queer community based on a sincere engagement with magic, drawing on the artistic traditions of his cultural ancestors.
27.Jun.2011 Manga = Child Pornography? Canada Customs says yes.
CBLDF Forms Coalition to Defend American Comics Reader Facing Absurd Criminal Charges In Canada
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has announced that it’s forming a coalition to defend an American citizen facing charges of possessing of child pornography and importing it into Canada.
This is not the first time the expansive code regarding child pornography has been applied to Drawings. The code encompasses not just images of actual children, but any one of age, depicted as under age, engaged in an elicit act. Or drawings deemed to be of children even if no real people other than the artist were involved in their creation. Other cases involving art or comics, were regarding the drawings of Eli Langer in 1993. Against Gordon Chin for importing Japanese magazines in 2005, and Dominic Sousa in 2006 who along with videos and images of real children was cited for 13,000 cartoon images in his possession.
If convicted, the accused could receive a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in prison for comics brought into the country on his laptop. The client’s name is being withheld on the request of counsel for reasons relating to legal strategy, and out of concern for the accused’s future ability to be gainful employed.
The American citizen, a computer programmer and comic book enthusiast in his mid-twenties, was flying from his home in the United States to Canada to visit a friend. Upon arrival at Canadian Customs a customs officer conducted a search of his personal belongings, including his laptop, iPad, and iPhone. The customs officer discovered images on the laptop they considered to be child pornography. The images are comics, drawings, in a manga style. No photographic evidence of criminal behavior is at issue. At worst the material involves no actual children at all. Nevertheless, a warrant was issued and the laptop was turned over to police, and the young man has been charged with the possession of child pornography and importation of said into the country. Update 06:28:11 : CBR obtained more information for their post about the case regarding the specific nature of the Manga…
“My understanding with regard to the material at issue is that it includes fantasy comics drawn in a variety of manga styles,” he said in an e-mail to Comic Book Resources. “One of the items is believed to be a doujinshi, or fan-made comic, of the mainstream manga series ‘Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.’ Another is believed to be a comic in the original Japanese, depicting stick figure-like figures in various sexual positions. In all cases, the authorities are targeting expressive art and not any photographic evidence of a crime.” – Charles Brownstein.
So basically what we’re talking about along with stick figures, is drawings of young adult Anime girls in school girl outfits having graphic sex, like this [WARNING: Link is Not Safe For Work, and possibly liable to get you arrested at the border if found on a laptop or phone.] “Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha Hentai Doujin“. Found with a google search, will someone be charging Google now? Raunchy yes, but child porn? Criminal?
The CBLDF says this incident is the most serious in a trend including a recent incident when cartoonists Tom Neely and Dylan Williams were stopped at the border and art comics in their possession were seized. Any of the books on this list can run you afoul now at the boarder they claim.
“Although the CBLDF can’t protect comic fans everywhere in every situation, we want to join this effort to protect an American comic fan being prosecuted literally as he stood on the border of our country for behavior the First Amendment protects here, and its analogues in Canadian law should protect there.”
“This is an important case that impacts the rights of everyone who reads, publishes, and makes comics and manga in North America. It underscores the dangers facing everyone traveling with comics, and it can establish important precedents regarding travelers rights. It also relates to the increasingly urgent issue of authorities prosecuting art as child pornography. While this case won’t set a US precedent, it can inform whatever precedent is eventually set. This case is also important with respect to artistic merit in the Canadian courts, and a good decision could bring Canadian law closer to US law in that respect. With the help of our supporters, we hope to raise the funds to wage a fight that yields good decisions and to create tools to help prevent these sorts of cases from continuing to spread.” – Charles Brownstein.
The CBLDF is assisting in the most recent case by contributing funds towards the defence, which has been estimated to cost $150,000 CDN. The CBLDF will also provide access to experts and assistance on legal strategy. The CBLDF’s efforts are joined by the recently re-formed Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund, a Canadian organization that will contribute to the fundraising effort.
This is an entirely charitable operation so if you would like to contribute to a worth while cause, and ensure you’re not jailed yourself in the future for transporting cartoons across international borders, make a tax deductible contribution here.
Find out more on the case here.
UPDATE: Some good links.
io9: American Faces Minimum 1 Year in Prison for Bringing Manga to Canada On His Laptop.
CBR: Comics Lead to Child Porn Charges at Canadian Customs.
Be Informed! – Know how to protect yourself
when you’re traveling with comics.
Read the CBLDF Advisory on traveling with comics
before getting on the plane.
All our posts tagged Canada Customs
22.Jun.2011 New Books: The Art of Doug Sneyd
The Art of Doug Sneyd
by Doug Sneyd
Dark Horse Books
248 pages, HC, 9″ x12″
$39.99
ISBN-10:1-59582-725-0
ISBN-13:978-1-59582-725-8
Few people know that one of the architects of Playboy’s graphic “look” was a cartoonist from Canada. Doug Sneyd is still producing sexy cartoons and this book looks to be a celebration of his long career.
From the publisher:
The scintillating cartoon works of Doug Sneyd, an artist for Playboy magazine since the early 1960s, are now collected in this stunning art book. This book features the most lush, sumptuous, striking, and hilarious of Doug’s full-page cartoons. Readers will be charmed with the lovely scantily (and even non-) clad “Sneyd” girls and the one-line jokes they so ably illustrate. Don’t miss this collection by one of Playboy’s veteran cartoonists!
This book includes a foreword by Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, an introduction by Lynn Johnston, cartoonist of the nationally syndicated strip For Better or For Worse, and reflections from the artist himself!
* Nearly three hundred full-color cartoons!
* Featuring cartoons previously unpublished by Playboy magazine.
* The deluxe limited-edition collection features an exclusive print inside the book that is signed by the artist, presented in a handsome slipcase, and limited to one hundred copies
30.Apr.2011 Lorenzo Mattotti & Lou Reed’s The Raven
The Raven
Lorenzo Mattotti & Lou Reed, based on the work of Edgar Allen Poe
Debuting at TCAF 2011
Hardcover, 9″ x 9″, 188 pages. Price: $22.99 US
ISBN-13: 978-1-60699-444-3
Reviewed by Salgood Sam
For Lou Reed the project started as a suggestion from a stage manager. The forward tells the story of how he wrote a play around the writings of Edgar Allan Poe before and after shows while on tour. Put on the play with Robert Wilson, and released an album.
Seeking to publish an illustrated book, Art Spiegelman suggested he look at the work of Lorenzo Mattotti. The result is a beautiful set of illustrations and somewhat narrative, expressive poetry.
Mattotti’s work is fairly unique in the comics world, there are not many like him. He only has one of his many feet in Sequential Art. He is also a renowned painter and fashion designer. An illustrator with an architect’s training and eye for structure. His diverse interests and background probably in part lends itself in his comics work to his distinctive ability to break with convention while still rendering stories as coherent as they are unconventional and lovely.
But Raven is not a comic. Sequential Art perhaps but more a story book then.
The text is mostly given a separate space from the images, Mattotti’s work plays off and interprets Reed’s re-imagined Poe. There is some narrative here but it does not feel like the point of it to me reading the PDF review copy. I’d like to see how it plays out in print but i think you could easily flip back and forth through this book to read it as a sampling of, two–three?–accomplished artists works. The arrow of time is not intensely felt here.
Reed’s take on Poe is interesting. I’m not exactly an expert in poetry but I’ve read a fair bit, and this was of the better but not ground breaking. An ode to Poe it reads to me as the back story to it’s creation suggests.
”I wrote before after and during our rehearsals. It was inspiring and having the genius template of Poe made this a verbal emotive joy”
So I take it as a labour of love and pleasure, by an artist who was having fun more than pushing boundaries [the core complaint about the album incarnation of the project leveled by Brian James at pitchfork].
For fans of Lou, two of his songs also show up in the mix along with his re-imagined Poe, including one of my favorites “Perfect Day“.
Mattotti’s art I think is the more adventurous aspect of the book, but it also well reflects the comfortable, dark and playful note of the writing. This is a very beautiful book, and poignant, unsurprisingly given the source material much preoccupied by death and mortality.
While it’s not dealt with in a trivial way I also don’t think it says anything new about the subject. But it does what it does with considerable skill and facility, and a fair bit of raw honesty. Some like Brian James might not like the occasional frank reference to one’s balls shriveling up, not find it poetic. But having recently dodged testicular cancer I can relate there.
I’m not sure if anything else was intended by it, if they set out to be avant-garde in anyway by intention. I don’t really think so. Being a fan of Mattotti’s narrative work I was hoping for more of a narrative beast. But I enjoyed this work and look forward to getting my hands on a copy of the printed edition when it’s presented at TCAF.
-S.S.
Order the book from fantagraphics.com
Preview: There’s a nice sized chunk of the book you can preview on Issuu ici.
Listen: Lorenzo Mattotti had a great long interview about this project and his work in general on the Vancouver comics show Inkstuds at the start of the month.
Find: Lou Reed; Lorenzo Mattotti.
26.Mar.2011 Rob Granito
Ty Templeton's scathing humorous satire of Rob Granito is one of the highlights of artist responses.
Start with Who On Earth Is Rob Granito? posted March 24 by Rich. Then More Fun With Rob Granito Before MegaCon, Yes Orlando, Rob Granito IS At MegaCon – Pics, Rob Granito Hits YouTube At MegaCon, When Ethan Van Sciver Met Rob Granito, all posted March 25. Concluding for the moment with Artists React To Rob Granito In The Only Way They Can, posted today, March the 26th. [yep, there's been a lot of posting about this, hasn't there?]
The short of it this Rob guy is producing art and prints that are clear swipes of other people’s work–something you do see in comics but is only tolerated if you credit the work as an homage–and saying it’s his own.
This is on top of what can only be described as a fantastically packed full of lies list of false credits, like saying he drew Calvin and Hobbes for example, or other titles we know full well he had nothing to do with.
Well, buddy…
I think mostly the things i linked to up top cover the bases, i just want to add one note coming from having read this from a friend on facebook posting on Ty Templeton’s wall.
Anastasia Acid PopTart [one of the more obvious victims of Robs swipes] has already contacted Chiller [con] and, at this time, they will not cancel Granito’s appearance. They have been informed of his thievery but say that it is up to the individual artists who have been ripped off to deal with the situation. Anastasia has said that she will possibly go to the convention and present papers in person.
Here’s my very public reaction to this, in the form of a note to all convention managers.
This is not how to handle this. The quote is anecdotal, but if it’s true?
Very bad PR and possibly leaves you liable. You have it on very good word from numerous creators, regardless if they have contacted you personally, that someone is forging their work, selling it as his own at your shows. And furthermore that the credentials he presented you with were faked was well.
If you’re taking money from Rob you’re profiting from fraud. You are also a victim of fraud. Even if you are providing space for free. You took him on under the understanding this person is someone who did X Y & Z, and they did not. They lied to you.
In either case you most certainly should not be leaving it to creators to do your job for you and police the event. That’s asking to host a brawl and not going to help create the kind of positive event environment that is in your own best interest. And while i’m not a lawyer, I think you are leaving yourself open to legal consequences by taking money from Rob, who is really playing Russian Roulette here with his brushes.
True, artist don’t have tons of money for legal action. So maybe Rob will get lucky with them and never receive a cease and desist letter or get sued by that crowd. Maybe. Perhaps he’ll just get punched in the face.
But the man is claiming to have worked on some pretty big license properties and is selling their copyrighted merch illegally at YOUR shows.
Get ahead of the curve on this one, and invest in some karma. And keep in mind leaving it to creators, Marvel or DC, Bill Watterson or Jim Davis to file suit or papers means probably leaving yourselves open to receive papers too.
Just a thought.
Rob's rip on the left, Ty's work under a DC/Time Warner copyright on the right.
16.Mar.2011 Interview with Joe Sacco (Part 1)
Portland-based cartoonist Joe Sacco is in Toronto for the next little while as part of the University of Toronto Speakers in the Arts series. A longtime cartoonist, Sacco’s oeuvre is well-known by now, particularly for his long-form comics journalism books Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde and The Fixer. His latest (and largest) work is Footnotes in Gaza, a work that tells the story of hundreds of tragic-and mostly forgotten- deaths in Gaza in 1956. Through Sacco’s investigation, people who lived through the era tell their stories and history’s echoes resonate.
Sacco graciously made time to speak with Sequential in Toronto and will deliver a public lecture at U of T on Thursday (Innis Town Hall, 8-10 PM Details here).
So you’re here in Toronto at U of T speaking to some students and doing a lecture Thursday. I was wondering, what do you get from this process?
You mean besides a cash cheque?
That helps.
What do I get out of the process?
Yeah, what do you learn from it?
It’s not so much what I learn—it’s interesting to get feedback from people—but I kind of like meeting the people who have read the book and they often have good questions. And, if anything it helps me hone my so-called theory of what I do. I mean there’s no theory when I set out to do it, but when people ask you lots of questions about it, you kind of have to come up with answers or see if there’s some kind of organic process that you can’t quite put your finger on. So it makes you think about your work when you hear the questions.
As far as giving a lecture, where I get up and give some straight talk with a PowerPoint, maybe assembling that together I have to think about my work. But I get more out of the questions from people, I enjoy that part a lot.
Do you see part of your role as a cartoonist as an educator too? Lots of the work you do are stories that you don’t see on the news every day, certainly not in the same depth.
I don’t really see myself as an educator, that’s sounds—
--didcatic?
Well, I guess I have a mission that’s not… education is an offshoot of it. It’s to get to the truth as I see it, an honest truth of some situation. Often some situation that I’m interested in and feel compelled to find out about. So, that’s sort of what I see as my mission, and doing that, I think has an educational purpose. People learn about what I’m interested in. Ultimately, it’s very much focused on my own interests. And I know those things are interesting for some other people, I guess they’re along for the ride. I’m educating myself by going there, they’re educating themselves by reading my book about my going there.
And those interests you were talking about earlier, it seems like one common theme throughout the stories you choose to cover are those that don’t get a large amount of coverage… I hesitate to use the word ‘underdog’…
…it’s fine, you can use the word ‘underdog’, ‘dispossessed’. The disinherited, whatever you want to call those people. That stuff matters to me. I hope when people read my book that it will matter to them in the same way. That’s the idea. With comics you want to take people, the reader, and allow the reader to meet the people I met. So maybe they’ll be interested in those people’s lives as I was. Maybe they’ll befriend someone through the book in a way that you feel as though you’ve met on some level. Those lives matter.
There are a lot of interesting things in the world. I mean, I think it would be perfectly valid to write about architecture or that kind of thing, or the new car coming out, fashion week. I think there’s nothing wrong with that, I’m all for it. But my own particular interests are with those people we kind of run over.
That’s something you’ve done pretty much from the start of your career it seems. Even in your rock n’ roll journalism. They weren’t necessarily big name bands, but represented the gritty lifestyle of a touring band. What first got you interested in those kinds of stories?
I think ultimately it was a satirical impulse. I’ve always been interested in satire and satire is always looking at social, political problems or issues or values and holding them up to the light, somehow refracted through humour. That social criticism that comes from satire led me to a more direct analysis or direct journalism about subjects. I mean, if you read my very earliest work, they’re all kind of life’s big losers or life’s big winners at everyone else’s cost. Because even as a kid you say, “why is that asshole there, how did he make it to be CEO”, or “why does that guy think he can run for president? Why do any of them think they can run for president? What’s in the psychology of that person?” Those things start to go through your head and you begin to look at the world critically. So it comes out of humour, satire.
Yeah, and in some of that early stuff I see a Mad Magazine influence.
Oh yeah, and especially the Mad comics. The magazine I read and once there were some reprints of the early comics in the early 70s, I could never look at Mad Magazine again. All that mattered were those old Mads, they were truly funny. Mad Magazine suddenly looked like a child’s magazine. I was no longer interested, I didn’t know what I had been missing. That had a big influence on my sense of humour.
Bill Elder had a huge impact on the way I drew because his backgrounds were so busy that they overwhelmed the foregrounds. It’s that sense of detail, all that stuff that you can put in that’s amusing, I used to do that in my early comics and my earliest stuff that probably hasn’t been printed. Later, you develop that detailed style. So it comes out of that on some level I imagine.
What were some other influences on you growing up?
You know, I read these Sgt Rock comics before that, these British war comics—I used to live in Australia, so I used to read those. They didn’t really have an effect on me except that at some point I looked at Sgt Rock and said ‘this couldn’t possibly be true’. You know when you have that moment when you’re not sure something you’re reading is true or not and you say, ‘wait, these five American soldiers wrestled a gun out of a German tank and then shot down a plane with it’. Even in my child’s mind, I could realize this wasn’t possible. You realize that of course there’s a facade there, and maybe it’s understood that it’s a facade but when I was a kid I took it a bit more literally I guess.
And that kind of connects to your quest to find truth
I’m not sure you can draw a direct line, I mean you do realize there are lots of tall tales told and as much as possible I’m interested in work that is honest. It can have an opinion. It can have a perspective. It doesn’t have to be objective in that so-called way but honesty matters.
You made that transition from your early comics in Yahoo to Palestine, that was quite a jump. From satirical comics to gritty, meaningful stories about people who are struggling.
Right. That trend sort of started in my Yahoo stuff, I did a story about my mother in WWII and I did a story called “How I Loved the War” about the Gulf War started up and I was living in Berlin and breaking up with my girlfriend in America and how these stories intertwined, which I think is still one of most sophisticated works although I think other people might not think so.
But, yes, there are certain things that carried over. I had learned to tell other people’s stories, I had some inkling on how to tell other people’s stories from telling my mother’s story. I did a story, one of the last Yahoos, was about a stripper and she wrote it and I drew it. So you learn to work in that way where it’s someone else’s story and you’re trying to imagine it in your head and you ask visual questions to fill it in.
And then I also came out of that autobiographical trend, which is the reason why my journalistic work is autobiographical was that I wasn’t really thinking about, ‘oh, journalism has to be a fly on the wall’, so going to a place like the middle east and writing about my own experiences seemed to just come out of autobiography. It might be a leap, and I think it is, but it definitely is rooted in some of those early Yahoos.
And then Palestine did not do too well.
Oh, it was a rock, it sank like a rock.
As a cartoonist, I’m sure that was fairly difficult.
Yeah, it was difficult. Comics in those days, the idea was that you got one done every three months. The reality was you got one done every six months, or four or five months because you couldn’t make a living at that and you have to do other things to support yourself. Even other work- and I did some work with Harvey Pekar which helped a lot- but yeah, it’s depressing. In those days you would find that number four sold this much, number five sold a little less and so on. By all rights, Fantagraphics should have cancelled that book. One of the issues sold less than 2000 copies. Really pathetic. When it came out as a book, it did quite well which to me showed that the distribution system was probably a problem. In those days, people didn’t go into comic book stores. They were just the nerdiest places to go into, some of them probably still are. But there wasn’t a store like the Beguiling, or if there was there were very few. Was it around?
Yeah, I think so.
Oh. Was it up to its current standard and independent?
It was at a different location, but from what I’ve read about then, it was.
Very few places and avenues like the Beguiling though. And I suppose the subject matter was just coming out of the blue for a lot of people in comics. It took people who were not comics readers to pay attention to it before comics readers ever did and I still think I have a bigger fan base among non-comics readers than I do with comics readers. Most of the people who read my work are not big comics people.
That’s really interesting. How do you find interacting with those individuals? Do they respond to your work differently?
I think there are people interested in the art form of comics in every way it can go, so those are people who are interested in my work; they’re interested in the literary comics, political comics, they’re interested in the medium itself.
I find more than half of my readers are from schools, in classes where they read my work. People have been to the regions and they’ll see, oh this medium has taken this on, I’ll pick that up. It’s sort of more book people than comics people. Although some of those are the same people, and thank God.
But I mean, Palestine wasn’t a grunge comic. In that way, it wasn’t looking at alternative lifestyles and I love those comics, I really enjoy them. But it wasn’t that comic, and I think that’s one of the reasons it had a very muddy beginning, an uncomfortable birth.
And then Safe Area came out.
Safe Area was the one that sold well. And that pulled Palestine up and now Palestine sells better than Safe Area. Actually, I think Palestine came out as a single volume book after Gorazde. Just months after, or a year or something.
And Gorazde did well. I kind of owe that on some level to a review I got in the NY Times Books Review. For better or worse, there’s a few publications where they will do a feature or a review and other editors pay attention to that. It was after that that I started to get calls from other journalists. I mean I had always had some interviews but never from the big mainstream publications and suddenly I was just getting a lot of that. That’s when things started to work out financially for me.
In Part 2 Joe talks about the 7 years it took to make Footnotes in Gaza and his process among other things.
