Drawn may be dead, but I hope its spirit and the work of its contributors live forever.

Book Launch of three new bilingual titles!
TIBONOM, SILENT WORLDS & CHRONICLES OF A WANDERER
Saturday, May 18th 2013 in Montréal at Cheval Blanc, from 3 pm to 8 pm

Éditions TRIP invites you to its annual comic book event & launch at Le Cheval Blanc!

After travelling to Helsinki in 2012, where all existing titles were successfully received, Éditions TRIP goes international in 2013. TRIP presents our three new titles: Tibonom, Silent Worlds & Chronicles of a Wanderer.

For more than 25 years Billy Mavreas has been an important figure of the Montreal Comics Scene. One of the original creators of EXPOZINE and co-director of gallery Monastiraki. Mavreas is known for his posters in Mile-End, his comics, and his narrative experiments. As well, Mavreas was included in the international Abstract Comics anthology (Fantagraphics Books, 2009). TIBONOM is a compilation of short wordless stories about spirituality told with humor, heart, and original graphic experiments. With an introduction by Joe Ollmann in which he states: ”This book says a great deal about spirituality, magic and the search for answers…These strips celebrate the sacred and the profane in equal measure ”.

Carlos Santos published his first comic in 1995 and has since contributed to every major anthology of comics in Quebec. He is a member of the art collective EN MASSE. Silent Worlds proposes a narrative tour de force with a 40 pages wordless comic. The book also includes a revealing essay by Eric Bouchard on Santos’ unique method of creating a long narrative. On the Délivré website, Bouchard wrote in 2012 : ”Even in Quebec, he (Moebius) is still an inspiration to talented artists, one example is Carlos Santos and his recent book Raïo que te parta ”.

TRIP will also be launching Frédéric Cordier (aka FREDC)’s first book! Working as an illustrator and directing shot animated films, FREDC works in Montreal at Moment Factory. Passionate about narration, his book is inspired by the idea of a travel sketchbook as well as by the psychedelic imagery form the sixties. A perpetual pleasure for the eyes, Chronicles of a Wanderer is a trip inside the fantastic imagination of Frédéric Cordier.

These three authors illustrate perfectly Éditions TRIP’s desire to promote, support, and publish artists who have as much fun drawing as exploring the codes and language of comics.

Montréal book launch for TIBONOM, SILENT WORLDS & CHRONICLES OF A WANDERER
Le Cheval Blanc
Saturday May 18th 2013, from 3pm to 8 pm
809 Ontario street E, Montreal, QC H2L 1P1
(514) 522-0211

Hosted by actor and comedian Scott Thompson the best in Canadian comics were honoured at the 9th annual Doug Wright Awards. The fun and unpredictable ceremony was attended by more than 300 people including some of North America’s best cartoonists.

This year’s recipients of the top honours were:

Best Book: The Song of Roland, by Michel Rabagliati

The Spotlight Award (aka “The Nipper”): Nina Bunjevac for Heartless

Pigskin Peters Award: Hamilton Illustrated, by David Collier

Held as a feature event of the 2013 Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF), the evening also saw Albert Chartier inducted into The Giants of the North, the Canadian Cartoonists Hall of Fame.

The winners were decided by a jury that included: Joe Ollmann, PascalGirard, Jonathan Goldstein, Natalia Yanchak and Julie Delporte.

Read more of the awards nominees and winners at www.wrightawards.ca

“You Know This Man Has Translated The Chinese Name of Coca-Cola…”

The Library
by Chihoi
Conundrum International
ISBN 1-894994-72-8
978-1-894994-72-9
184 pages, black and white, hardcover
$20

review by BK Munn

Chihoi Lee, who creates comics under the pen name Chihoi, is one of the leading figures in Hong Kong’s tiny alternative comics scene. While most of the comics market in China is dominated by Japanese manga and the Japanese-inflected manhua industry, represented in North America mostly by a handful of genre exercises published by the same people who publish Sailor Moon and Bleach, for the past decade or so a small core of writers and artists, influenced in part by the wider world of art and literature, as well as European comics in general, have carved out a niche for themselves producing personal and sometimes political work for a growing audience. Emerging from the 90s magazine collective Cockroach, Chinhoi has gone on to co-found the group Springrolllll, made up of 5 of the most well-known “alt” cartoonists at work in the HK scene.

As evinced in this collection, the first English-only translation for the artist after a series of European publications, and the flagship title of Canadian publisher Conundrum’s new “International” imprint, Chihoi is a very subtle cartoonist, more concerned with self-expression and memory than some of his contemporaries. While not exactly a crackerjack draftsman, his cartooning is nonetheless very evocative and gestural, with an attention to body language, atmosphere, and pacing; adept at creating a feeling of space and interesting patterns, with a meandering line and regular panel grids. While some of the stories here are traditional pen, brush and ink productions, with a moderate amount of hatching and deep blacks, others are reproduced from pencils, full of sketchy lines, smudges, and shading. In this regard he has much in common with some of his more avant garde North American contemporaries like C.F. and even Kim Deitch, although he also cites Anke Feuchtenberger, Amanda Vähämäki, and the FRMK artists as influences.

Chihoi comes across as a very literary cartoonist, in the sense that many of his stories remind us of Modernist fiction touchstones like Borges and Kafka, replete with dreams, doppelgangers, labyrinths, libraries, and odd transformations. The title story, “The Library,” follows an anonymous library patron as he searches for a book mentioned in a text he inherited from his grandmother. A malevolent library clerk lets our hero into the stacks, but confiscates the incriminating book, tearing out the reference and tossing the remaining binding onto a passing cart. The hero then descends through a series of increasingly tiny and more-hellish reading rooms, until arriving in a cramped, Alice-in-Wonderland-style cave where he sits between two skeletons (his grandparents?) and reads the book he has been searching for. The same clerk reappears in the next story, “Borrowed Books,” reprising his role as bespectacled agent of bureaucracy, as part of a narrative in which an old man attempts to accumulate, by hook or by crook, all the books his dead wife ever read, in order to burn them at her shrine and them immolate himself in a fatal fit of loneliness and heartbreak.

Of the other stories, “Sorry” has a Killoffer vibe, “The Sea” and “I’m With My Saint” are almost post-Impressionist, and “Summer” and “Father” read as poignant surrealist-autobio, a la Chester Brown. Chihoi has a lot to say about family, love, and anxiety and his stories reward careful contemplation and rereading. His art is funny, absurd, depressing, and poetic in almost equal measure and the comics in The Library are a welcome addition to the ever-widening world of comics.

“Awrt doesn’t really imitate life, postcards do…”

The Grey Museum
by Lorenz Peter
Conundrum Press
ISBN 978-1–894994-71-2
$20

review by BK Munn

The Grey Museum is a wonderfully weird comic book. Lorenz Peter made his mark with 2005′s Dark Adaptation, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age graphic memoir about cancer and generational conflict on the prairies that signaled a radical change in tone and subject matter from much of his previous work. But real life is boring and there are bigger fish to fry! Peter’s new book is a heady, funky melange of concepts and cliches that seem at first glance to be working against each other in an awkward, counter-intuitive mess. The characters for the most part are all quirky “types,” introduced at the beginning of the book in one- or two-line capsule descriptions (acid case, factory worker), but through the course of the narrative and through unexpected transformations many of them come to feel slightly more substantial. Quite the trick, since, although it starts out as apocalyptic science fiction, the book quickly transforms into one big artistic environmental allegory, with the characters more-or-less intended as pawns in a larger game between alien races, abstract concepts of time and cosmic harmony, and ancient unnamed deities resembling Gaia and Hades (if Hades was a chaos-loving, shades-wearing, afro-sporting 70s pick-up artist who clothes his unwilling human mates in dresses made of encrusted serpent semen). Peter’s conceit here is that civilization ended in 1999 and Earth has become a gigantic museum of horrible conceptual art created by an alien race of coffee-swilling, spa-loving “Greys,” identical, clone-like suits who worship art historian Sister Wendy, and whose ultimate weapon is a ray that turns entire planets into postcards. The barren planet is populated by robots and the reanimated corpses of corporate shills (notably an entrepreneur who sells the skins of endangered species and a pair of naked newsanchors doomed to read the non-news to nobody for centuries). Enter our little rag-tag group, human occupants of an interstellar space ark, rescued from deep space by a pair of squabbling galactic collectors enamoured of all of Earth’s junk culture (Billy Ocean vinyl records, Ikea). The return of humans to Earth sets off a complicated series of events, including a journey though the underworld, that eventually kickstarts the mystical life process. Rendered in chaotically-controlled pen and ink (and of course, an all-suffusing grey wash), The Grey Museum is a goofy romp, its sometimes horrific scenes and cartoon violence made palatable by Peter’s fluid story-drawing, cute-creepy lithe figures, and odd juxtapositions.

Science Fiction
by Joe Ollmann
Conundrum Press
ISBN 1-894994-75-2
128 pages, duotone, tp,
$18

review by BK Munn

Practicing helps, as the Red Queen told Alice, “sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” But somethings even practicing can’t make it perfect: believing the impossible is tough, even if your personal happiness and the happiness of the person you love depends on it. Joe Ollmann’s follow-up to the excellent Mid-Life is a wonderfully sad and funny graphic novel about the slow-motion collapse of a cozily domestic love-affair after the short sharp shock of a major dose of unreality. The tag-line of Science Fiction is “What would you do if someone you trusted asked you to believe what you thought was impossible?” and this is indeed the almost unbelievable premise that plunges the likeable-but-resolutely-boring high school science teacher Mark and cynical-but-vulnerable grocery store cashier Sue down the rabbit hole of sci-fi when Mark suddenly discovers a repressed memory of being abducted by a UFO as a young man.

Ollmann does a good job of setting up a feeling of impending doom, establishing the basic relationships and conflicts of a small group of core characters, leaning on his transcendent cartooning skills to create empathy for these haggard, mildly depressed working class drones, so when the plot of the book starts cooking, we are really gripped by their situation and rooting for them to work something out. But (spoiler alert?) avoiding disaster is not necessarily what Ollmann the storyteller is interested in exploring here. Rather, he takes us on an investigation into the mysteries of the human heart and the limits of intimacy and communication. Some of my favourite moments of this book are the slow burns, shared jokes, tiny gestures, and half-sentences that make up much Mark and Sue’s daily conversation, rendering them totally believable as long-time intimates. So that when that sense of doom we pick up on in the opening pages starts bearing down on these characters we have come to care for like a late night freight train, with Mark and Sue the stalled Chevy pick-up sitting across the tracks, we can’t look away and have to keep reading to see how things unfold. Science Fiction takes a crazy premise and against all odds constructs a human document out of the wine-fueled love, dirty dishes, and Friday night video rentals of real life.

Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez in Conversation with Tom Spurgeon

by BK Munn

The last time Los Bros were in Toronto was a generation ago, so don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime mighty meeting of titans in Hogtown.

NOTE: You must register here for FREE tickets!

TCAF 10th Anniversary Kick-Off Event
Featuring Gilbert Hernandez and Jaime Hernandez, in conversation with Tom Spurgeon
Friday, May 10, 2013
@ The Bram and Bluma Appel Salon, Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge St, Toronto, Ontario, 2nd Floor
Doors at 7:00pm. Ticket valid until 7:20pm. Rush-line admtitance from 7:20pm-7:30pm

Come kick-off the 10th Anniversary of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival with us on the evening of Friday, May 10th! TCAF will welcome to the stage alt-comix legends Gilbert Hernandez and Jamie Hernandez, as they engage in a lively career-spanning conversation with The Comics Reporter’s Tom Spurgeon! Both artists will also sign autographs and meet with fans at the event. Selections from their complete comics library will be available for sale at the event.

Plus! A look back at ten years of TCAF with some very special guests.

Presented by Toronto Reference Library and The Beguiling Books & Art, with support from Drawn & Quarterly Books and Fantagraphics Books.

TCAF: Other Tongues: International Cartoonists Discuss Their Work in Translation

by BK Munn

The poster features Ulli Lust, David B. Frederick Peeters, Judith and Vanistendael, but I’m not sure if any or all will be in attendance for the event?

Here’s the PR from the facebook page:

“Have you ever wondered what your favourite French, Belgian, and other European artists think about the English translations of their books? What jokes or turns-of-phrase wouldn’t quite work in any other language? Between words and pictures, what gets lost in translation? What new meanings emerge? This is your chance to hear some of TCAF’s European guests speak in at least two languages in an informal setting, and even ask them some questions yourself! Hosted by The Beguiling’s Peter Birkemoe, and featuring a bevy of TCAF’s Featured guests.”

The Pilot Tavern
22 Cumberland St., Toronto
7pm – 10pm
(a licensed event)

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival runs this weekend, May 11-12, at the Toronto Reference Library. Admission is free and there will be tons of unique world-class cartoonists (and their books and art!) on display. Let’s see, what last-minute news is out there? Julia Wertz and Blutch will not be in attendance, it seems. Cosplay and anxiety are actively discouraged.

What else?

TCAF is traditionally the place where many hotly-anticipated books are debuted, with artists working all year, right up to the last minute, trying to have a new book ready for the fest. TCAF trumpets a massive list of debut books on its site, including many from their international slate of headline guests, but I thought I’d highlight a selection here on Sequential, based on a few posts and tweets I’ve seen around the net and the odd email that creators have been nice enough to send my way. I’ll be posting a separate list of short reviews Friday of TCAF debuts I’ve actually seen and read, but here are some of the lesser-hyped unseen artifacts that you might want to check out at the show:

Item! Marc Bell will be exhibiting as part of the Wowee Zonk-curated small press section at TCAF. The latest thing from Bell’s Half World Books imprint is the just-published Cowabunga Schnauzer, which reprints in part a selection of full-colour strips he did for Maisonneuve magazine last year, as well as “several thoughtfully arranged details from new artworks including ‘Mr. Giant Stroller’, ‘Lucy Honeychurch’, ‘On/Off Solo Schnauzer Live!’” and “a modified version of Marc’s appearance in the March 2013 issue of Esquire UK.” In addition, Bell has hinted in correspondence with Sequential that he is “also making two others that may or may not happen. One is a tribute to [Norwegian comics collective] Dongery made with Tom Devlin.”

Item! I’ve enjoyed Roman Muradov’s comics in the NoBrow anthologies but I’m not that familiar with his other printed comics work. In preparation of the show, he has just completed the third issue of his The Yellow Zine, which you can see previewed here and read digitally here. Muradov will also be in the Wowee Zonk space at TCAF.

Item! Montreal’s Dan Kim is known for being recognized by a Japanese prize for his manga-inspired NNN webcomic and for an astounding kickstarter fundraiser for the same book that raised $40,000 over its $6000 goal. All of his comics have an atmospheric painterly inkwash look, great pacing, and bravura character design. Kim will have a number of poster prints and maybe even some actual print versions of his shorter comics for sale at the show.

Item! Nina Bunjevac, jewelry designer: “A little while ago I teamed up with the Toronto-based jewelry designer BBJ to create a small but exclusive collection of pendants, brooches and key-chains that feature my art. This year the festival falls on the Mother’s Day weekend, so come by and pick up something nice for that special lady in your life.”

Item! Some PR from UK outfit Great Beast Comics about cartoonist Adam Cadwell’s “Northern Slacker Vampire series” Blood Blokes the third issue of which will debut at TCAF: “Blood Blokes #3 sees Vince awaken in the vampire house with more than a few questions. When he discovers the hard way that going home isn’t an option he finds the life of a vampire to be alarmingly familiar, yet Vince still longs for a certain someone.”

Item! Russian mystery-man Uno Moralez is the feature artist in the first issue of Frontier, a new monograph art and comics series from Ryan Sands’ Youth in Decline publishing house: “Frontier #1: Uno Moralez is the first print collection of the mysterious and tantalizing work of talented Russian illustrator, Uno Moralez. Includes a number of full page spreads, narrative comics, and GIF art in printed form. (32 pages, Risograph-printed in black, fluorescent pink, burgundy, and teal ink.) Moralez is not at the show, I don’t think, but Sands is sharing a space with NYC’s Benjamin Marra.

Item! Wowee Zonk co-founder Patrick Kyle self-publishes under the Mother Books umbrella but has just made as far as I know his first venture into publishing the work of others with this new series by Keith Jones. I like Mr. Jones’ stupid plots and even stupider cartoon characters quite a bit. Described as containing “Jones’ newest work ‘Donut Daze’ where rival drivers clash in a garbage encrusted drag race through a post-apocalyptic roadside donut den. Scrawled masterfully in Jones’ unmistakeable erratic style” (24 pages, Colour Risograph, $5). I’ve seen someof this previewed on Jones’ tumblr and am very excited to get a hold of a print copy. His work is also on display in an ongoing art show (“Budsies”) at Capital Espresso (1349 Queen Street W) and at the take-out joint he owns, Hot n’ Dog (216 Close Ave off of Queen St. W). It looks like publisher Kyle will also have some of his own new comics, smartly titled New Comics, on hand for the show.

Item! I thought the first issue of Eric Kostiuk Williams’ Hungry Bottom Comics was a smart and sophisticated autobio comics debut and was part of the team that nominated it for a Doug Wright Spotlight Award. The second issue of Williams’ series is set to drop at TCAF. I think this might be one of the included pieces? Worth checking out, especially if candid, academically-tinged, and graphic youthful ruminations on relationships in the Toronto gay dating scene are your bag.

“Seeing Is Believing” / Rutu Modan Keynote Speaker

by BK Munn

The fourth iteration of this academic comics conference returns, just in time for TCAF. Run under the aegis of the The Canadian Society for the Study of Comics and by organizer Andrew Lesk, the conference consists of short paper presentations and a talk by visiting TCAF guest Rutu Modan. The full schedule is below.

New Narrative IV: Seeing is Believing! Voire c’est croire!
Friday, May 10th, 2013
9am – 6 pm
UC140, University of Toronto, 15 King’s College Circle, Toronto, ON
Free to Attend

Panel 1: Performance 9:00 – 10:10 – Moderator: Andrew Lesk (Toronto)

Kalervo A. Sinervo (Concordia)
“Empty Speech Balloons: Aleatory Comics and the Adventures of Nitnti”
Benjamin Woo (Simon Fraser)
“’Maybe they’ve mixed me up with Joe Sacco?’: Reportage, Autobiography, and the (non-)Touristic Gaze in Guy Delisle’s Graphic Travelogues”
Frederik Køhlert (Montreal)
“Serial Teenager: Ariel Schrag’s Autobiographical Comics”

Panel 2: History / Nostlagia 10:20 – 11:30 – Moderator: Kalervo Sinervo (Concordia)

Callie Metler (Waterloo)
“Young Neil and The Smashing Pumpkins: The Power of Nostalgia in Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life”
Barbara Postema (Ryerson)
“Silent Comics and Reader Empathy”
Austin St Peter (Detroit Mercy)
“Origin and Ursprung: Comics Studies and the Politics of Historical Narrative”

Panel 3: Gender . . . and Sex 11:40 – 12: 50 – Moderator: Barbara Postema (Ryerson)

J Andrew Deman (Waterloo / Wilfrid Laurier)
“’Oh Superman” vs “Oh Well’: Julie Doucet and the (Counter) Discourse of Conquest”
Emma Vossen (Waterloo)
“Laid to Rest: Sex and Monogamy in The Walking Dead”
Gwen Athene Tarbox (Western Michigan)
“Seeing is Self-Articulation: Visualizing Gender Fluidity in Contemporary Comics”

Lunch 12:50 – 1:50

Panel 4: (En)Gendered Visual Narratives 1:50 – 3:00 – Moderator: J Andrew Deman (Waterloo / Wilfrid Laurier)

Jane Tolmie (Queen’s)
“’Can you just not be perfect at something for once?’: Anorexia, Superwoman, and Control”
Glenn Willmott (Queen’s)
“(En)gendering Wonder in Comics”
Alisia Grace Chase (SUNY Brockport)
“’Crying is a kind of thinking…’ Matrixial Narratives in the Work of Megan Kelso”

Keynote: Rutu Modan 3:15 – 4:15

AGM: Canadian Society for the Study of Comics / Société canadienne pour l’étude de la bande dessinée (CSSC/SCEBD) 4:30 – 6:00

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!

The Montreal comics publisher is celebrating its fifteenth (!) anniversary with an exhibit at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. 15 of the the cartoonists published by the company will reinterpret 15 works of art hanging in the museum, in comics form, and the pairs of works will be exhibited together, with the results collected in a book. Isabelle Arsenault, Pascal Blanchet, Paul Bordeleau, Pascal Colpron, Cyril Doisneau, Patrick Doyon, Jean-Paul Eid, Pascal Girard, Réal Godbout, Janice Nadeau, Michel Rabagliati, Marc Simard, Rémi Simard, Siris, and Leif Tande are the participants. The exhibit will run from November to March of 2014.

La Pastèque

article in Journal de Montreal

Happy May Day, everybody!

This is the day celebrate all the workers and since this is a comics blog, here’s to the comics workers of the world!

Things are tough for comics workers, these days. Everybody loves comics, but not enough people want to pay for them. I’m glad when comics workers stick together to fight the new status quo and unite against unfair practices and ripoffs. It makes my heart fairly glow!

Just the other day a cartoonist acquaintance of mine mentioned online how he lost a job with a major book publisher because he “thought author/artists should be paid royalties for original work that may be reprinted and resold in perpetuity. They strongly disagreed, and offered a one-time payout.” Whatever happened to royalties??? It seems like traditional book publishing is going the way of traditional comics publishing, just as some comics publishers have begun to behave like traditional publishers, offering equitable deals, royalties, and far-seeing transmedia options. But maybe we’ve been living in a bubble? Regardless, stay strong and vigilant, comics workers!

On the other side of the coin, the few people who write ABOUT comics as journalists and critics suffered a blow this past weekend when AOL shuttered its Comics Alliance news site, thus eliminating another scarce source of paying work for writers. With the ongoing death of print and the work for free mantra of the web, comics workers and their livelihoods are being hemmed in on all sides. Solidarity, brothers and sisters!

On this day, let’s take a moment to consider ways we can work together to make the travails of our fellows in the art form and industry of comics easier, more fulfilling, and sustaining.

Previous:

Happy May Day from Sluggo and Fredric Wertham

May Day: The Progressive Cartoon Tradition in Canada

So Who Needs A Union? Notes on Comic Book Industry Unionization

Class War Comix by Skip Williamson (1969)

Conundrum Press announced yesterday they will publish the English-language translation of Antony Huchette’s graphic novel Brooklyn Quesadillas, scheduled to be published by Cornelius in French later in 2013. Conundrum plans to have their own edition on hand for the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival in November. The French-born Huchette currently lives in Brooklyn, where he works as an animator. He has previously published the graphic novel La Marée Haute through 6 Pieds Sous Terre and the series Love Machine Comics (self-published). According to Conundrum, “The book follows a young father as he navigates the surreal streetscapes of Brooklyn, trying to produce a tv show hosted by a coffeepot, while tracking down forgotten sitcom stars from the eighties who live on a ‘fantasy’ island.”

The Huchette book joins the upcoming The Library by Chihoi in Conundrum’s “International” imprint. The book will be translated by Edward Gauvin. English rights were negotiated through Nicolas Grivel Agency, the representative of Canadian Nina Bunjevac and several international names like Igort, Ulli Lust, and Blutch.

Comics guests include Neal Adams, Joe Benitez, Ryan Benjamin, Simon Bisley, Mark Brooks, Michael Cho, Doug Sneyd, Camilla D’Errico, James Davidge, Anthony Del Col, Ken Steacy, William Stout, Arthur Suydam, Adam Warren, Jim Zubkavich, Omar Dogan, Ray Fawkes, David Finch, Alan Grant, K.C. Green, Scott Hepburn, Adam Hughes, Wendy Pini, Dan Parent, James O’Barr, Erik Larsen, and Stan Lee.

The only programming I have been alerted to is the Jack Kirby panel on Sunday at 2:00pm in Palomino room H, with Erik, Michael Cho, and Tim Lasiuta, in conjunction with the Kirby Museum.

I was totally unaware this event was happening, sorry. That didn’t stop it from actually happening, though, and happen it did, this past weekend, April 20-21 at the Vancouver Convention Center, 1055 Canada Place, Vancouver. There was a cohort of local comics creators (James Stokoe, Ian Boothby, Pia Guerra, Camilla d’Errico, Ed Brisson, David Boswell, and many more) on hand, but I haven’t seen much yet from that front. Instead, we have these items:

Item!One of the big comics guests was Stan Lee. I ranted a bit in the comments section of a Global tv news report about how Stan is usually written about in the popular media “Correction: Stan Lee is not ‘the man behind Spiderman’ (sic). The character was co-created by artist Steve Ditko and dialogue writer Stan Lee. Ditko created the design of Spider-Man, including the costume and all the supporting cast and villains (Green Goblin, Sandman, Dr. Octopus). He also wrote the plots and drew all the stories for the first years of the comic book. Ditko gets very little credit and no money. Ditko lives in poverty in a New York City apartment. Stan Lee is a millionaire. Stan Lee was the cousin of the owner of Marvel Comics and hogs much of the credit for the creation of Marvel.” Lee was also interviewed by CTV and The Vancouver Sun.

Item! On the other hand, the fight for creator’s rights is mentioned in this Stuart Derdeyn interview with Neal Adams for the Vancouver Province: “he sought the return of original artwork from publishers to the artists so they could use it to earn additional income through sales. In 1987, he won his battle. Subsequent changes to the industry meant that legends such as Jack Kirby and Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster received long-overdue remuneration and more.”

Item! The podcast Dread Media covers the show (episode 295): “Robin Bougie from Cinema Sewer joins us to talk exploitation cinema and hot grandmas. Artist Jason Copland stops by to talk about Kickstarting the printed version of his popular webcomic Kill All Monsters. We talk with artist Nat Jones of Image Comics’ ’68 about the resurgence of Vietnam in film and literature and Frank Frazetta. Finally, the master of modern realism in comic books, Neal Adams, tolerates Desmond’s fanboy drooling for several minutes!”

Item! The only traditional con report I’ve seen comes from the blog Geek Badge, written by Wyatt Fossetts, including some negative critique: “A major downfall was Saturdays clusterfuck of security lines, dopey hosts, and general disarray by all parties involved. For some strange reason, Hobby Star (the people who brought us the event) think that they can oversell and underestimate. Last year’s show was in a building at least 150% of the size of this year, yet there seems to be twice as many people here. It’s outstandingly frustrating Making interviews, proper panel viewing, and general uncomfortable feelings all around an issue.”

Item! 3 minute Youtube video.

Item! Massive photo set.

Item! Cosplay set from Comics Blend.

Item! Costume parade via radio station Newss1130.

Item! Facebook photosets: here and here.

**There will be a gratuity of 18-20% added to all bills because we are a large group**

Bring your own pencils/pens. Paper is provided. If you’re drawing with markers that bleed through paper, be sure to either bring a drawing surface or place extra sheets of paper under the paper you’re drawing on.

facebook event page

“Stratus”

by BK Munn

Vancouver’s Cloudscape Comics Collective, publishers over the last 5 years of seven books, including an annual self-titled anthology, will launch a group art exhibit May 3 at Ayden Gallery in Vancouver. The exhibit highlights the work of over 30 choice contributors to the Collective since its founding in 2008, including Sam & Fuzzy creator Sam Logan, Simpsons artist Nina Matsumoto, Wasted Talent creator Angela Melick, painter Laura Bifano, video game artist Edison Yan, Much the Miller’s Son creator Steve LeCoulliard, and veteran underground comics artist Colin Upton. Arrayed before their adoring public and curious passerby alike will be pages from the upcoming anthology Waterlogged: Tales from the Seventh Sea (check out the kickstarter here) as well as comic pages and illustrations from each artist’s personal work.

Billing it as a “giant show” launching with a signing by all the involved creators, Cloudscape founder Jeff Ellis, reminds us of the origin of the retrospective: “I had a dream that I wanted to boost local comics in Vancouver, The next idea that came… [was] ‘we have all of these artists making comics – rather than spending money to do our own individual works, why don’t we work together and pool our resources to publish something?’”

Cloudscape’s Stratus art exhibit will launch on May 3rd at 7:00 pm and run until June 2nd, 2013.

One of those guests is Michel Rabagliati. His latest translated work, Paul Joins the Scouts will be a heavy hitter for Conundrum  likely, especially given the added attention of his DWA nomination this year for The Song of Roland. Also from the BDANG line is Obituary Man. The third book to be translated from the French from Quebec City native Philippe Girard.

Another featured guest, this one appearing for the first time in Canada is Hong Kong artist Chihoi. In support of his first book in English, The Library. A book of Kafkaesque stories, it’s the inaugural release under Conundrum International Imprint.

The Grey Museum is a galactic romp from former Doug Wright Award winner, Toronto native and recently, record shop proprietor, Lorenz Peter. And Science Fiction is the follow-up to Joe Ollmann’s widely popular Mid-Life which was nominated for a Doug Wright Award. Montreal-based Ollmann won the Doug Wright Award in 2007 for This Will All End in Tears.

Conundrum & Koyama Press are teaming up for the launch of two graphic novels, both by artists being published in English for the first time.  The Library by Chihoi will be presented with Journal by Julie Delporte at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly on Tuesday, May 14, at 7PM.

Conundrum’s publisher Andy Brown says he thinks it’s a significant event in part because it brings the three prominent Canadian publishers  Conundrum, Koyama, and Drawn & Quarterly together under one roof for a day, ”…all the Canadian comics publishers together in harmony”.

Do you spend all your spare time reading google news and rss feeds about comics? Or ignoring family and business obligations, pathetically trawling social media sites for tidbits about obscure minicomics, fanart, and cosplay pics? Me too! Maybe we should go out sometime!?(I’ll be the guy wearing the too-small Nard ‘n’ Pat t-shirt and holding a rolled, impossibly soiled copy of Cap’s Bicentennial Battles.)

Item! Did you know that the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo is taking place next weekend, April 26-28, 2013 at the BMO Centre, Stampede Park (in Calgary)? Comics guests include Marvel spokesman and former dialogue writer Stan Lee, cartoonist Neal Adams, and a metric tonne of Canadian talent including David Finch, James Davidge, Camilla D’Errico, and Michael Cho. U.S. comics industry gadfly Erik Larsen will also be on hand. (Did you know that I have sworn a bloodfeud with Larsen because he dared insult the genius of Freddie Mercury and Brian May? Well, I have.) It’s actually quite a good show for non-comics guests, with 90s tv film goddess Gillian Anderson headlining along with all-time great director John Carpenter, etc, etc.

Item! Comicer Ian Daffern reviews Calgarian Bart Beaty’s Eisner-nominated Comics vs Art book for Quill and Quire: “In the not-so-distant past, the humble comic book found itself elevated to its own distinct category in bookstores: the graphic novel. However, as University of Calgary professor Bart Beaty points out, this distinction privileges the “novel” over the “graphic” aspect, praising the form for its literary qualities. Conversely, despite being intrinsically visual, comics have not only failed to achieve recognition as works of art, they have been in conflict with the art world for their entire existence.”

Item! In non-Clagary news, it appears that Chester Brown has entirely re-written his first graphic novel, The Playboy for a new paperback edition (via TCJ): “The Playboy has been reformatted and RELETTERED by Chester. He’s also rewritten a couple balloons and taken out a few panels (panels that he shows in the now patented Chester end note section which, of course, is all new and AMAZING!) Paying For It remains the same, just softer.} {UPDATE: Chester rewrote The Playboy in its entirety. POV shifted, tenses changed, conversational tone dropped. PHEW!!}”

Item! Speaking of D+Q and TCJ, Naomi Fry interviews Geneviève Castrée for the Comics Journal, which includes a shout-out to pioneering autobio cartoonist Sylvie Rancourt. Don’t you think the original Melody needs to be reprinted in English? “I don’t know what everybody thinks of my book, but a big chunk of the people who have given me good feedback on my book are women who can relate to it. And I assume it’s because the mother/daughter thing is not something many men can relate to. But I guess the reason why I’ve been feeling this duty to archive these women comics is, I do think that there needs to be more of a readership. I feel like it’s so easy to find an incredible woman cartoonist. I could go into a bookstore and I could find you so many women writers and cartoonists, and it wouldn’t be a big deal. But to find a group of women who are interested in comics, that’s a problem. I see some of these women’s books as masterpieces, for instance that book I was telling you about, Mélody, I think of it as this incredible thing, and also Ulli Lust’s book is a masterpiece. And I feel like, why aren’t these people more successful than they are, why weren’t they made a bigger fuss over when they were making these books I’m freaking out over?”

Item! I’ll post a separate link to this as we get closer to the date, but it’s worth noting that Conundrum and Koyama are planning a joint Montreal launch for two translated comics: “Koyama Press presents JOURNAL from Julie Delporte and Conundrum Press presents THE LIBRARY from Chihoi at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly on Tuesday, May 14, at 7PM.”

Item! As an organizer of the Wright Awards, I have a conflict of interest mentioning this item through a purportedly objective journalistic linkblog like Sequential, but one of this year’s Wright Award jurors, Natalia Yanchak, has written a short article for the Huffington Post about her experience with the awards so far: “Not since my teenaged years have I read so many comics. Back then I toyed with the notion of becoming an illustrator myself, but made the fated choice to move to Montreal and study creative writing instead. Then I joined a rock band and was overtaken by touring and helping manage The Dears. The wisened me can now appreciate the craft of artists so much more. These nominees are not just illustrators but writers, too — conjuring a narrative through words and images, a careful balancing act of both showing AND telling.”

Item! Emily Carroll and Brandon Graham have both done cover versions/interpretations of a Dan DeCarlo Betty and Veronica story, with interesting results. As you can imagine, Carroll’s is spooky and Graham’s is a little bit more light-hearted and sexy. You can see their versions and the original at Graham’s blog. What I like about both is that they were done as a lark, as “quick” riffs. That both have the capacity to fit multi-page, full-colour exercises into their regular work schedules speaks to their abilities as artists, and a balanced dedication to craft and experimentation that maintains a sense of fun.

Item! Finally, Michael DeForge has a new weekly webcomic, to be published every Sunday: Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero

One of the founding member of The Kids in the Hall, Thompson is known for his starring roles in the CBC Television show Death Come to Town, appearances on HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show, the 1996 feature film Brain Candy, and most recently is part of the cast of the NBC series Hannibal playing a forensics specialist!

He’s also a practiced host of awards, having done so for Canada`s Genie Awards in 2004, So if there was any doubt that the mind behind Buddy Cole would have any problem roasting. Hah! It should make for a fun night!

“With his outrageous sense of humour and impeccable comic timing, Scott is a perfect fit to helm our annual awards ceremony,” said Doug Wright Awards Director Brad Mackay. “As a long-time fan of his work on The Kids in the Hall and The Larry Sanders Show, I couldn’t be more happy that he`s agreed to lend his talents and time to our event. Welcome aboard!”

For more information, visit wrightawards.ca.

And now some Buddy…

Scott also has a very fun podcast, you should subscribe!

Along with convention season, North American comics awards season is in full swing, and the latest batch of nominees, this time for the prestigious Eisner Awards, with the Harvey Awards the premier prizes recognizing the best in U.S. comics industry production, were announced yesterday. Several Canadian artists, writers, and publishers were among those honoured with nominations, most of whom are regularly mentioned on Sequential. The Awards will be handed out at the San Diego comic convention this summer.

Michael DeForge received nominations in the Best Single Issue (Lose #4) and best webcomic (Ant Comic) categories. Becky Cloonan received several nods for her work, including Best Single Issue (The Mire) and Best Penciller/Inker (Conan, The Muse). Ethan Rilly also was nominated for Best Single Issue (Pope Hats #3). Other nominees include recent arrival Brandon Graham for multiple categories (Multiple Warheads, Prophet, King City), Darwyn Cooke, Troy Little, and writer Ryan North (many categories for his Adventure Time licensed comic). Academic and critic Bart Beaty was nominated in the best Educational/Academic category for Comics vs Art. Publisher Drawn and Quarterly had several artists nominated including local boy Chester Brown (the Ed the Happy Clown reprint) and several “furriners”.

Eisner noms website

by BK Munn

Look Straight Ahead, the first graphic novel by Saskatchewan’s Elaine M. Wil, will be distributed in print form for Fall 2013 by Cupertino, California-based Alternative Comics, run by publisher Marc Arsenault. Originally serialized online, the comic was among the last to win a Xeric grant, shortly before the prizes were discontinued a year ago. Advanced copies of the graphic novel, whose subject is mental illness, will be available at TCAF.

According to a press release, The final Xeric grants were handed out in May 2012. One of the very last books to be released from that batch is Look Straight Ahead by Elaine M. Will; and it will be distributed through Alternative Comics. This is an astounding debut graphic novel from this young Canadian artist. DC Comics’ writer Gail Simone says of the book, “Look Straight Ahead is the comic I didn’t know I couldn’t live without”.

The publisher also plans to debut the anthology Alternative Comics #4 at TCAF showcasing a David Lasky feature by Inkstuds’ host Robin McConnelland comics by Theo Ellsworth (The Understanding Monster) & Craig Thompson (Blankets, Habibi), Sam Alden (Eighth Grade), James Kochalka (SuperF*ckers), Sam Henderson (Magic Whistle), Noah Van Sciver (The Hypo), Grant Snider (Incidental Comics), Alex Schubert (Blobby Boys), Andy Ristaino (Adventure Time), and Allison Cole (Never Ending Summer).

Look Straight Ahead

“I Dream of Pale Colours…”

Journal
by Julie Delporte
Koyama Press
184 pgs, full-colour
$20
isbn: 978-0-9879630-9-3
May, 2013

review by BK Munn

Grey pages taped onto a grey page. A date, written in purple pencil. A school of fish, drawn in blue, juxtaposed with hand-written text: “the things that I dread … happen, one after the other.” A blond woman, blue face, purple clothing. The purple text: “they don’t pass by like trains, they crash into me.” Below this, yellow fish, blue letters: “I don’t have any control (there is nothing I can do).” Underneath, in purple: “I don’t know how to protect myself.” The page is poetic montage, nihilistic howl, and zen meditation.

It is also comics. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder, could this be the most brilliantly-coloured, existential comic book memoir dealing with depression, loneliness and dread I’ve ever experienced? Journal is a graphic diary kept by Julie Delporte over a two year period spanning 2011 and 2012, chronicling her life after the breakup of a long-term boyfriend relationship, first in Montreal and then during a working sojourn to the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont. Originally posted on her blog (translated from the original French for this book) partly as a method of dealing with her newfound solitude, these intense pages of narrative sketches and hand-written reflections are beautifully composed therapeutic bullets that Delporte originally aims at her ex-boyfriend before shifting the focus towards her own mental state, anxieties and ambitions. It’s a gradual shift, enabled by time and distance, but by the time she makes the move to Vermont most of her entries are no longer addressed to the ex (the nameless “you”), and the “we” she writes about are the new studio mates and cartoonists she has begun to socialize with.

Part of this self-rehabilitation (there are hints of nightmares, panic attacks, and extended blue periods) comes through the experience of art, but it’s not an easy road. Certainly her documented choices of film viewing (classic arthouse downers like Tarkovsky, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Opening Night) and reading matter (heavy stuff like Gilles Deleuze or Julia Kristeva’s Black Sun: Depression and Melancholy) don’t seem especially designed to encourage carefree joi de vivre and self-assurance, but Delporte does find solace and inspiration in other creators, and even excerpts a paragraph from the fearless French autobiographical novelist Annie Ernaux as her epigraph. But the evidence of the book is that the process of making art is a supremely liberating and therapeutic activity: both for the “practical purpose” and meaning it gives to daily life and because it allows us to pause and reflect on images of intense beauty and subtlety.

Initially resistant to the idea that heart-wrenching, excruciatingly raw diary comics could be made sufferable with the simple addition of the contents of an elementary school pencil case, Journal gradually won me over, stretching my comics boundaries along the way. Delporte comes out of the exciting Montreal comics scene, and she has published her French-language comics and comics criticism through that city’s Colosse imprint, as well as La Mauvaise Tête, La courte échelle, and through the Belgian publisher L’employe du Moi. She also runs the “48 Heures” comics festival and a local radio show devoted to comics, so her bd credentials are well-established. That being said, Delporte’s approach to comics making and figural drawing is highly personal. While Journal isn’t in traditional comics format (with the exception of the very occasional word balloon and sequence, it is mostly a series of randomly observed moments, remembered scenes, and outward expressions of inner turmoil, expressed chronologically) it follows in the best autobio comics traditions with its full blast, both-barrels honesty and stylized documentary approach. There is an immediacy to this book that maybe couldn’t be captured in any other way, reading almost like thought pictures. Composed mostly in coloured pencil, ranging in tone from dismal grey to dayglo, neon sunshine yellow, with the collage-like addition of pieces of scotch tape and different shades of paper, this is a story told through colour. Even Delporte’s signature cursive lettering changes colour several times per page, to emphasize a thought or respond to a mood –a very subtle performance. Joined with the lush reproduction of the book’s design, the overall effect transcends its surface pleasures: a pleasant diaristic combination of comics, elementary school student workbook and impressionist painting. Super inviting and superbly engaging.

more: Delporte writes about the pencils she uses here!

by BK Munn

As part of this weekend’s Festival de la bande dessinée francophone de Québec, the organizers have unveiled the winners of the 26th Prix Bédéis Causa. Awarded annually since the inception of the event in 1988, the prize recognizes excellence and vitality in comic art with five awards, including four for specifically Quebec comics. The prizes, decided on by a jury of journalists and publishing professionals, were handed out last night in Quebec City at the Observatoire de la Capitale.

Here are the winners:

Prix Alberic Bourgeois
named for Alberic Bourgeois
(best French-language album published abroad by a Québécois artist or writer)

Jacques Lamontagne, Van Helsing contre Jack l’Éventreur t. 1 (Soleil)

Prix Maurice-Petitdidier
named for Maurice Petitdidier
(jury prize for French-language album published abroad)

Chester Brown, Vingt-trois prostituées/23 Prostitutes (Cornelius)

Prix Réal-Fillion
named for the founder of the awards
(first professional album by a Quebec creator)

Isabelle Arsenault and Fanny Britt, Jane, le renard et moi (La Pastèque)

Grand prix de la ville de Québec
(best album published in French in Quebec)

Michel Falardeau, French Kiss 1986 (Glénat Québec)

Prix Albert Chartier
(lifelong contribution to comics in Quebec)

Tristan Demers, “facilitator, communicator and ambassador of comics for 30 years.” Demers is a comics editor, scripter, cartoonist and critic, creator of the character series Gargouille and Cosmos Café, and author of several books of comics history and criticism, including La Bande dessinée en classe (with Jocelyn Jalette, 2006) and Tintin et le Québec, Hergé au cœur de la Révolution tranquille (2010).

Sequential congratulates all the nominees and winners!

coverage/photos

Le Soleil
Quebec Hebdo

hey, there are some comics here!

The Toronto Indie Arts Market

Saturday, April 13th, 2013, 10:30am – 4:30pm

The Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen Street West

Admission $5, children under 12 free

“Everybody could tell any of my covers a mile away on the newsstand, and that satisfied me.” –Jack Kirby

The Looking Glass World of Jack Kirby’s 1970s Fantastic Four Covers: Or, What If The King of Superhero Comics Never Abdicated?

by BK Munn

You gotta go away before you come back.

Meanwhile, Roy Thomas kept asking Jack to draw the Fantastic Four. Thomas tried to make things as beneficial and fair for Jack as possible. A top name in comics, Thomas said he’d do the writing but speak to Stan and others to ensure Jack received credit for the plots he created with his artwork. He wouldn’t receive much more money, he told Jack, but he’d be able to do as he pleased and see his name appear first in the credits. It was a decent offer, but Jack rejected it nonetheless. He’d only do it, Jack said, if Thomas gave him a panel-by-panel breakdown for each story. Thomas rightly felt this was ridiculous. “We’d have had such a closed-off relationship,” he said later, “it wasn’t worth doing. So I dropped the idea.”

But he did ask if Jack would be willing to draw the Fantastic Four in an issue of What If titled “What If the Fantastic Four Were the Original Marvel Bullpen?” In this tale, instead of Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Sue Storm, and Johnny Storm, Stan would appear in costume as Mr. Fantastic, Jack would be the cigar-chomping, rock-covered Thing, former production manager Sol Brodsky would be the Human Torch, and Flo Steinberg –who quit the company when Goodman wouldn’t give her a raise– would be the Invisible Girl. Roy Thomas wanted to write the issue, but Jack said he wouldn’t work with another writer. And if another artist handled it, he added, he wouldn’t let them use his likeness. Roy let him create the story, but after reading the final work, Stan said that he disliked how Jack’s character kept calling him “Stanley.” Roy dutifully changed each reference to “Stan.” And Jack never drew the Fantastic Four again in a Marvel comic.
–Ronin Ro, Tales to Astonish (2004)

Jack Kirby left Marvel and the Fantastic Four, for the first time, in 1970. Angry over Stan Lee’s credit-hogging and a lack of compensation and royalties for the comics he worked on, Kirby moved to DC, where he enjoyed, for a little while at least, more creative freedom and sole-authorship credit on his Fourth World series of books. Returning to Marvel in 1975, Kirby took over the reins of two of his older co-creations, writing and drawing the monthly adventures of Captain America and Black Panther, as well as a number of other original creations, including Devil Dinosaur, Machine Man, and his late-career masterpiece, The Eternals. In addition, Kirby was contracted by Marvel to produce a certain amount of covers for other titles every month. Among these covers, many very striking and iconic, were a number featuring the Fantastic Four.

Kirby’s relationship with the FF post-1970 was very problematic. The flagship title of the Marvel line, the series in which Stan and Jack had hammered out, through trial-and-error and various levels of collaboration, the successful Marvel style of the 1960s, was also one of the series Kirby was the most invested in on a personal level. Despite its cosmic trappings, the Fantastic Four was really about the importance of family and responsibility, and many of the characters, especially Ben Grimm, aka monster-hero The Thing, can occasionally be read as authorial stand-ins for Kirby. The concepts, plots and characters Kirby had provided for the FF were the foundation of the fictional Marvel Universe but also represented a real-world million-dollar merchandising empire he did not participate in financially, having been paid a straight page-rate for their creation without obvious legal claim to ownership. Incredibly, during the mid-70s, Kirby didn’t even own the original artwork for his 1960s stories, and it was not until a protracted public battle in the 1980s, long after The King had retired from regular comics making, that a portion of the thousands of original pencils were returned to him. He was understandably bitter about the situation and although he needed the work, refused to contribute any new stories or characters to the mythos of his signature series.

That didn’t stop him from illustrating covers for new stories being told by the younger artists who had taken over the assignment in his absence, a compromise that yielded a substantial number of memorable works. Kirby’s new bosses at Marvel recognized that as a former publisher and a historic innovator of genres and formats, Kirby was a past master of the art of the comic book cover as marketing and storytelling tool, and at this point in time must have known almost instinctively the importance of galvanizing reader attention through a combination of bombast, mystery, and unusual text and visuals. Kirby was also fast, able to churn out drawings to be used as inventory and emergency fill-ins. Many of his covers from this period are classics of the form; object lessons in the delicate combination of salesmanship and narrative art. Even at their most workmanlike and straightforward, his covers are concise, concentrated doses of Kirby-tude; unmistakably works by his confident hand.

Despite the rise of a new generation of artists at Marvel in the 1970s, the house style was still an ersatz Kirby –legend has it that new recruits were often handed a pile of old Kirby comics and told something along the lines of, “Draw like this.” Even in this milieu of watered-down versions of his own style, Kirby covers stood apart on the stands, and visually represent something of a separate line of superhero comics within the larger universe of the company. As a dependable workhorse, besides illustrating his own group of books, his style was also used to sell everything from bottom-tier books, marquee names, and special projects, putting the King’s stamp on up to 13 comics per month, including several of his old 60s characters: The Avengers, The Incredible Hulk, and the jewel-in-the-crown, The Fantastic Four. In a way, looking at Kirby’s 70s cover art, it’s possible to imagine an alternate history, one in which Kirby never stopped working on the series , continuing to tell the stories of Marvel’s “first family” with his signature innovative graphic approach. Kirby’s legacy of FF covers provide a tantalizing glimpse of this parallel dimension.

For the FF and FF spin-off Marvel Two-In-One (starring the Thing), each featuring some version of his original team, Kirby drew twenty-three 1970s covers in all (the number increases when we consider the new or altered covers Kirby provided for a few issues of Marvel’s Greatest Comics, the Fantastic Four reprint title being published at the same time, as well as assorted annuals and special Treasury editions). Many of the comics covers from this period were based on designs and suggestions by Marvel’s in-house artist, colourist, inker and troubleshooting jill-of-all-trades Marie Severin, who worked closely with the New York editors in maintaining a consistent look for the line, based in part on the quality and approach to design pioneered by Kirby a decade earlier. Severin and her editors would often send Kirby (living in California by then) a batch of very rough cover sketches as part of his monthly assignment, with brief plot and character notes scrawled in the margins, and compositions indicating the basic conflicts needing highlighting. Most of these Severin layouts are fairly standard and unimaginative, with just bare-bones placements of figures and minimal backgrounds, although some I have seen have a distinct flair and graphic inventiveness. Beyond emphasizing costume details (which in any case could be easily fixed by attentive inkers), I suspect the designs Severin sent Kirby were even more basic than those given to others, since Kirby’s driven reliability was one of the reasons Marvel was retaining his services. (Severin seems to have had a closer working relationship with Bill Everett, doing detailed layouts that played to the artist’s strengths and interests on the Submariner covers they conspired on together earlier in the decade.) Regardless, the otherworldly aspect of many of Kirby’s 70s cover assignments from Marvel can in part be attributed to their origins on Marie Severin’s drawing board.

My favourite of these is the cover to Fantastic Four #180 (March 1977). Somewhat infamous among fans because it is such a red herring, the interior of this issue is actually a reprint of FF #101 from 1970 featuring Kirby art and story from the end of his initial run, and has nothing to do with the scene advertised on the exterior. Explained as a case of the “dreaded deadline Doom” [1] in an editorial blurb pasted onto the reprint’s splash-page, the actual story referred to by the cover was not to appear until the following month’s issue #181 (which of course featured a different new Kirby composition).

So the cover of issue 180 actually has no real referent, fittingly so since it seems to imagine an alternate universe FF composed of The Thing and a rag-tag group made up of former villains: Thundra, Tigra, and Impy, the Impossible Man.[2] Kirby had incorporated one-time villains like the Inhuman Medusa and her sister Crystal into the FF in the Sixties (adding evil mutants Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch to The Avengers during the same period), beginning a tradition continued through to the modern era., and co-evolutionary with the tradition of substitute or second-string teams replacing original line-ups, and the Marvel writers who replaced him were no strangers to the gimmick. Even more meta, each of the characters on this cover are essentially alternate-universe intruders into Marvel continuity. Thundra is an Amazon from a parallel-world feminist dystopia; Tigra comes from a dimension of cat-like humans; and Impy from the planet Popup where an advanced case of parallel evolution has given the humanoid inhabitants control over every molecule in their bodies.

In this Bizarro World set-up, both the female characters have romantic feelings for The Thing, here usurping the alpha-male leader role from his buddy Mr. Fantastic, while the powerful yet wildly-unpredictable Impossible Man acts out an arch disdain for straight superheroics in favour of fun, novelty and a love of popular culture. His character, who a few issues earlier (FF #176 –featuring another classic metatextual Kirby cover) had actually forced his way into the offices (and onto the pages) of Marvel Comics in a weird moment of real world crossover, is a specific comic book type, modeled on the Puck-ish, other-dimensional nuisance characters Mr. Mxypltlk and Bat-Mite, eternal tormentors of Superman and Batman over in DC Comics.

The plot the cover is supposed to illustrate is part of a longer storyline by Roy Thomas and George Perez about an alternate-universe Reed Richards (who, instead of possessing cosmic-ray-created stretch powers, in his own reality is transformed into a Thing-like monster known as The Brute) who plots to strand our FF in the Negative Zone dimension –a redux of the classic Stan and Jack alternate universe tale, “This Man, This Monster!” from FF #89. Roy Thomas seemed to love doppelgangers and tributes, and his bibliography is littered with fantasy-football-style superteams made up of pet characters that refer in some way to older or alternate versions of themselves. After Kirby’s example, writer-editor Thomas was the first high priest of the “Never Create Anything Really New for Marvel Again” religion (a religion that Kirby himself didn’t fully become a convert to until 1979, almost as if he couldn’t help himself from creating and giving value for the money he was being paid), preferring to plunder past comics for characters and concepts, fan-fiction style, in the process transforming the once-innovative Marvel into a staid, brand-protecting entity, content to rest on the laurels of its 60s achievements, with only brief flare-ups of creativity and injections of novelty through stunts and slavish trend-following, occasionally enabled by licensing and blatant rip-offs.

Along with his other ongoing series, this cover teases a “what might have been?” if Kirby had stayed at Marvel instead of leaving for DC in 1970. The character designs for the aborted Inhumans series Kirby left on the drawing board famously morphed into The Forever People at DC, but doesn’t this “kooky quartet” have a glimmer of the “newness” of the Fourth World, just as The Eternals channel Thor by way of the New Gods? On the other hand, it also highlights how Kirby had become a stranger in his own house, like Howard the Duck, stranded in a world he never made. At every stage during his second act at Marvel, Kirby was second-guessed, circumscribed, plotted against, undercut, and underappreciated. Boxed in, flashes of Kirby still peak out everywhere.

The composition of the FF #180 cover is a fairly standard one for Kirby and for superhero comics generally. A classic “confrontation” or “face-off” set-up, the scene captures a dramatic moment just before a major action piece, with two opposing groups getting ready to fight it out. The colourful group at the center of the bullseye-style image are encircled by a group of soldiers, almost comically bristling with weapons, partly softened or humanized by their commander, looking over his shoulder at the reader but directing all attention to the heroes and the supine robot they are defending. Hints about the characteristics of this new team are apparent in their attitudes and dialogue. The pugnacious Thing is obviously the leader, and his word balloon suggests “this little foursome” are more confrontational than his regular, older partners. Thundra looks like a giant sci-fi punk/disco street-fighter and Tigra’s pose reveals her feline nature almost as much as her stripes and claws. (As well, both women exemplify the barbarian/monster-chic then holding sway at marvel.) Despite his great power and “advanced” evolution, Impy is ironically the weakest link, and the cover shows this. He is stand-offish, dismissing the entire scene with a gesture and a poo-pooing grimace, perhaps representing the comics fan who has seen one too many of these brainless brawls over a tin-man macguffin and would be happier with some more self-directed fan-service suited to his sensitive ego (a very 70s comics fan sentiment, I’m sure!). The scene ably illustrates a key aspect of the comic’s plot and team-dynamic while creating curiosity about the origin and resolution of the stand-off. Readers familiar with the original team’s make-up may find themselves wondering about this new quartet (Where are the original members of the FF? Who are these upstarts?), anxiously searching their pockets for the requisite three dimes to discover the answer.

The slick inks that add to the appeal of this image are provided by long-time Kirby inker Joe Sinnott, his artistic “partner” in most of the late-period 1960s Fantastic Four issues. While Kirby provided very tight, finished pencils for most of the work he did from the late-50s on, including very fine detail, shading and areas of black, Sinnott famously smoothed whatever roughness Kirby’s drawing had while at the same time being very loyal to the original pencil linework he was making legible for print. Contrast this with many inkers Stan Lee paired Kirby with who actually obscured or reduced Kirby’s pencils (the infamous Vince Colleta, for example). The K/S signature in the lower right indicates that this is a Kirby/Sinnott collaboration, a “seal of quality” that assures us Sinnott is on board, doing his own part in providing continuity with the previous era as well as perhaps ensuring that Jack’s rendering of newer characters he has no working familiarity with (in this case, Thundra and Tigra) are “on model” in terms of costume. The Silver Age veneer Sinnott brought to all his work, as well as his experience with Kirby, was a great boon to Marvel after Jack’s original departure, aiding the transition to able replacements like John Buscema and John Romita and adding a bit of the familiar Kirby sheen and shimmer to the work of lesser lights who came on board later.

Between November 1975 and December 19778 Kirby was drawing between 30 and 100 pages of comics stories, and between 4 and 13 (!) covers monthly for Marvel, so not every one of these images is going to be a timeless classic, but it is remarkable how many still hold up.[3] Most of Kirby’s later covers for the FF feature variations on two or three elementary generic compositions, including multi-figure battles, groups of characters bursting through walls, or groups of characters posing, often with giants or disembodied heads of villains floating overhead (the team had been fighting giant monsters since Kirby drew the cover of Fantastic Four #1 way back in 1961). Many are combinations of these basic ingredients, laid out in geometric, eye-catching patterns (circles, grids, crosses), and it is a tribute to Kirby’s design sense that his dynamic, boxy figures do not seem cramped but instead often appear to spring off the page directly at the reader. There is no doubt that many of Kirby’s covers drawn for the books and stories he created himself during the same period contain more detail, inventiveness, and a greater sense of storytelling, but as made-to-order examples of how to sell a comic book, these covers still pack a whallop.

As a child of the 70s, I was among the target demographic for these books and can attest to the allure and power of their effect. The worlds Kirby alluded to with his covers were bizarre, thrilling, and strangely inviting, and I wanted to dive in. I feel lucky that I got in on the tail-end of Kirby’s reign as king of the comic book spinner rack and experienced these worlds firsthand, as mass-market artifacts hot off the press. But I didn’t know they were twilight worlds, that Kirby, and superhero comics in general, were fading from the public stage. Excepting a few licensed products like Star Wars, comic sales were in long-term decline, with the propping-up effect of the direct market and a network of comic shops still a few years off. Kirby’s trumpeted return to Marvel was really a last hurrah, a weird echo of former glories largely comprised of pastiche, bitterness, and desperation-tinged exhaustion for both the artist and the genre he helped create. Kirby would finish his working life in the tv animation industry, with only a few more stabs at creator-owned comics in the 1980s. His last two published stories for Marvel (Machine Man #8 and 9) are titled “Super Escape” and “In Final Battle.” His last FF image? The cover to the giant-sized Fantastic Four #200 can be read as an allegory of the enduring Kirby theme of scrappy optimistic reason versus fascistic dread, and features a climactic battle between Mr. Fantastic and Dr. Doom bearing the legend “Fight to the Finish!”

Notes

[1] My favourite example of great art made from missed deadlines is from this same time period: Howard the Duck #16. When writer Steve Gerber moved cross-country from New York to California, he created a text-heavy script that reads as equal parts mental breakdown, road trip diary, and postmodern meditation on superhero comics. Accompanied by full-page illustrations by some of Marvel’s best artists, Gerber’s schizoid inner dialogue with the Howard character tackles such subjects as the superhero fight scene, character development, and comics fandom. An escapee to the animation business as well, Gerber teamed up with Kirby in the 1980s on Destroyer Duck, a comic book series sold to raise funds for Gerber’s fight against Marvel for the rights to Howard the Duck.

[2] Thundra was created by Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, and John Buscema (FF #129). Tigra was created through a series of stories by Tony Isabella, Roy Thomas, Gil Kane, Don Perlin, and John Romita, Sr.(Giant-Size Creatures #1), based on The Cat, created by Stan Lee and Marie Severin (Claws of the Cat #1)

[3] Kirby’s monthly output can be seen here at Ray Owen’s Chronology. The full list of FF-related covers: FF #164, 167, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 180, 181, 190, 200. FF Annual #11, Marvel Treasury Edition #11, What If? #11, Marvel Two-In-One #12, 19, 20, 25, 27. Marvel Two-in-One Annual #1. Marvel’s Greatest Comics #77. I’ve posted most of them at my tumblr.

related:

Should We Boycott Marvel?
Cartoonist Seth on Jack Kirby and the Marvel Boycott

As part of the 26th Festival de la bande dessinée francophone de Québec (FBDFQ), taking place this weekend in Quebec City, the festival awards, known as the Prix Bédéis Causa, will be handed out at a ceremony taking place tonight, Friday April 12, at l’Observatoire de la Capitale.

The nominees are:

Prix Réal-Fillion
First professional book by a Quebec creator
- Sophie Bédard, Glorieux printemps t. 1 (Pow Pow)
– Isabelle Arsenault et Fanny Britt, Jane, le renard et moi (La Pastèque)
– India Desjardins, La célibataire (Michel Lafon)

Grand prix de la ville de Québec
Best French-language comic published in Quebec
- Jane, le renard et moi (La Pastèque), by Isabelle Arsenault et Fanny Britt
– La mauvaise fille (Glénat Québec), by PhlppGrrd
– French Kiss 1986 (Glénat Québec), by Michel Falardeau
– Glorieux printemps t. 1 (Pow Pow), by Sophie Bédard
– Radisson t. 4 (Glénat Québec), by Jean-Sébastien Bérubé

Prix Albéric-Bourgeois
Best French-language book by a Quebec creator published abroad
- Van Helsing contre Jack l’Éventreur t. 1 (Soleil), by Jacques Lamontagne
– Noé t. 2 (Lombard), by Niko Henrichon
– White Crows t. 2 (Soleil), by Djief

Prix Maurice-Petitdidier
Jury prize for French-language book published abroad
- La page blanche (Delcourt), by Pénélope Bagieu et Boulet
– Vingt-trois prostituées (Cornelius), by Chester Brown
– La grande odalisque (Dupuis), by Bastien Vivès, Ruppert et Mulot
– L’enfance d’Alan (l’Association), by Emmanuel Guibère
– David, les femme et la mort (Lombard), by Judith Vanistendae

Prix Albert-Chartier
(chosen by the organizers, life-achievement award honours person or organization who has made a contribution to comics in Quebec)

by BK Munn

FBDFQ: The Festival de la BD Francophone Quebec

FBDFQ is the big Quebec City comics festival, taking place this weekend, April 10-14. Tons of cartoonists and events, including the Prix Bedeis Causa awards for French-language comics (taking place on Friday). The whole thing is part of a larger bookfair called SILQ.

The over 80 comics guests include Réal Godbout, Delaf & Dubuc, Stéphanie Leduc, Boom, Michel Rabagliati, Iris, David Turgeon, Tristan Demers, Zviane, as well as several artists from France.The poster for the event is designed by Michel Felardeau.

Exhibits include a celebration of the Belgian magazine Spirou at the Museum of Civilization, a Guy Delisle show at L’Etabli gallery (“Québec par Guy Delisle”), and a tribute to the collective zine Le Bob featuring the art of Joel Sim, Matt Ordog, Julien Dufour, Karl Dupéré-Richer, Drako and Takasque, Alex A, Saturnome and Vincent Giard at the Mad Bar (525 St-Jean).

festival website

Mark Sable (Graveyard of Empires, Unthinkable) and our own Salgood Sam (Sea of Red, Therefore Repent!) would like to tell you a story, about how the young prince of wallachia lots his soul and became Bram Stokers’ Dracula.

The book is called Dracula Son of the Dragon. To help get it started they’ve been holding a Kickstarter drive to fund the first book of a four part series.

Described as starting in young Vlad’s childhood, “he will learn hard early lessons in politics and betrayal, as a young prince in his native Wallachia. As a prisoner of the Ottoman Turks, how to inflict pain and instill fear in his enemies. And of the dark arts in a scholomance hidden on Lake Hermannstadt.”

Their Kickstarter got off to a great start but is in need of some help to make it’s goal. They are looking to raise 14k, to fund getting the book drawn, and pay for special editions created for the drive. With the bulk of the fund going to supporting Salgood Sam while he draws the book. A case of being able to directly back an independent creator while they make a book for you, personally!

They have a smart set of rewards that include a range of limited editions – drive only trade paperbacks, hand bound soft and hard leather bound editions. Art is on the table, writing chores, walk on parts for a few. One backer is even having Mark read the story to them poolside and getting swimming lessons!

Both creators have a track record in mainstream and independent comics of producing strong work. Dracula is a totally independent production, with the initial planned limited print editions being put out by Salgood’s boutique imprint Spilt Ink exclusively, And slated to be serialized in Salgood’s Revolver Quarterly for the general audience.

The same roof under which his upcoming graphic novel Dream Life will be released. Scheduled to drop at TCAF 2013 in Toronto, May 17-18th. A nearly full preview of Dream Life can be read online. It’s a different genre but contains some beautiful examples of his work. He completed that book as well with the help of a successful funding drive on Indiegogo, making this his second crowdfunding venture.

The Kickstarter dive is ending on the 17th of April, if they fall short of the goal it’s going to be by a slim margin, Mark and Sam are considering trying again there in that case, or using indiegogo perhaps. But would much rather entertain your pledges now to make it the first time.

by BK Munn

The Expozine Alternative Press Awards Gala, held to recognize the best publications that were on display at the Expozine small press fair in the fall of 2012, were handed out last night in Montreal.

Here are the winners:

English Zine
Newsgirls, Andrea Clegg, B&D Press

English Book
The Cloaca, Andrew Hood, Invisible Publishing

English Comic
Crud #2, Vicki Nerino

Livre Francophone
Pavé et mémoire, Nicolas Lachapelle et Geoffroy Dolorey, Coopérative d’édition en Jachère

Bande Dessinée Francophone
Le Front # 5, Front Froid

Fanzine Francophone
Le Bathyscaphe no. 8

Item! I think these have been announced in various places already but Conundrum Press has listed all of the books it will be debuting at TCAF in one handy place. Authors include Philippe Girard, Lorenz Peter, and Michel Rabagliati.

Item! Speaking of TCAF, the Toronto festival has updated its guest list, adding Ivan Brunetti and subtracting Joe Decie and John Porcellino. Other people/additions we haven’t mentioned at Sequential yet include French creators Frederik Peeters and Boulet, Patrick McEown representing his publisher SelfMadeHero, and the debut of Tibonom by Billy Mavreas (Éditions TRIP).

Item! Speaking of Patrick McEown, Robin interviews the artist at his Inkstuds podcast and has this to say about the Hair Shirt creator: “I have been a fan and reader of Patrick McEown’s work for most of the time I have read comics. From his humble early days on Grendel War Child to working on variety of short stories for Vertigo, Dark Horse and Fantagraphics. His groundbreaking short story No Escape, published in the Dave Cooper series, Weasel, is a high point in comics making.”

Item! There are a couple posts about the Captain Canuck Indiegogo fundraiser launch from a couple weeks back, including one from The Mind Reels and another from the Geek Hard podcasters. With 50 days left, the effort is less than 1/5 of the way towards its goal, (possibly because the minimum buy-in is $25?) and probably could use a bit of a hand.

Item! Speaking of fundraising, the Kickstarter for Dracula: Son of the Dragon, by Mark Sable and Sequential’s own Salgood Sam is halfway to its stated goal with only 8 days left, and the Dumb goes to CAKE Indiegogo campaign that Georgia Webber launched last week has exceeded its modest goals with another week left. Two worthy self-published efforts. Please send us more…

Lots of comics excellence will be on display this weekend in downtown Guelph, including the likes of Koyama Press, Nick Mandaag, and Marc Bell. As well, Friday night (tonite), as something of a preview, features a performance piece of an ad hoc group of local artists,including cartoonists Jay Stephens, Nick Craine, and the afore-mentioned Bell, drawing a giant mural to live music (Friday April 5th, 7-10pm at Silence,46 Essex Street).

Perpetual Motion Mousetrap

Live drawing by The Original Group of $even

Guelph’s Original Group of $even is a magic art club made up of Michael Byers, Marc Bell, Gregory Pepper, Gillian Wilson, Jay Stephens, Nick Craine and Ryan Cassidy. You know them from comic books, illustration, printmaking, music, and art stuff probably, but as a group they get together and do big pictures live. In their most ambitious stunt to date, they will be rendering a 30 foot diagram of something arguably titled The Perpetual Motion Mousetrap before a crowd accompanied by soundscapes from Ben Grossman and Reborn Endless. Get your own souvenir fragments of the drawing at a silent auction at the Kazoo! Print Expo.

Friday April 5th, 7-10pm at Silence.
EXHIBITORS:

Marc Bell
Nathan Campangaro
CAROUSEL
Marta Chudolinska
Koyama Press
Jason Kieffer
Nick Mandaag
Ryan Cassidy
Christopher Green
The Dragon
Justin Gordon
Sarah Cordeaux
Chrysalis Zine
Hooligan Press
Trevor Waurechen
Alexander Kehn/Neutral Comics
James Stubbs
Peter Thompson
Static Zine
Gillian Wilson
Gregory Pepper
Maryanna Hardy
Arrow Zine Archive

by BK Munn

How did I miss this? Thanks to Tom Spurgeon for the heads up.

The nominees for the 2013 Expozine Prize, given to work that appeared at Expozine this past Fall in Montreal, have been announced. The festival hosts a number of writers, artists and cartoonists and hands out awards in the categories of Book, Comic, and Zine with separate prizes given for French- and English-language creators. The awards will be handed out this weekend, at the “Expozine Alternative Press Awards Gala” (Sunday, April 7, 8 p.m.), at Divan Orange, located at 4234, Boul. Saint-Laurent. Admission is free and the event includes readings by the nominees, MC Donzelle as host, and a performance by musician Tony Ezzy.

The nominees are:

English Zine

Newsgirls, Andrea Clegg, B&D Press
Unwanted, K. L. Flannigan
Dan-D-Noser, Kirsten McCrea, Paper Pusher
Drop Target #4, Jon Chad and Alec Longstreth
New Inventions, Michelle White
St. Henri: Down in the Deps, Rebecca Rosen
Special mention:
The Possibilities are Endless, Jamie Q

English Book

Rae Spoon, First Spring Grass Fire, Arsenal Pulp Press
Guillaume Morissette, I am my own betrayal, maison kasini
Here be Monsters Issue 7: Tongues and Teeth
Oh There You Are I Can’t See You Is It Raining, Laura Broadbent, Snare Books
The Cloaca, Andrew Hood, Invisible Publishing
26 Bizarre tales of Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang, Jeff Klassen

English Comic

You Can Never Be Me (Batman Comics), Patrick Kyle
Crud #2, Vicki Nerino
Heartless, Nina Bunjevac, Conundrum Press
Hungry Bottom Comics, Eric Kostiuk Williams
All Rumours are True, Laurel Lynn Leake
Betsy, Sophie Goldstein

French Book

La vie secrète des objets, Sylvain Robert, Édition cuisine
Volière, Frédéric Dumont, Les Éditions de l’Écrou
Les armes à penser, Shawn Cotton, L’oie de Cravan
Ménageries, Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard et Benoit Tardif, Éditions de ta Mère
Qui Vive n°3
Pavé et mémoire, Nicolas Lachapelle et Geoffroy Dolorey, Coopérative d’édition en Jachère

French Comic

Codex Montrealensis, Dimo Garcia et Gigiola Caceres
La traversée, Chloé Germain-Thérien
Entre deux mondes, Brice Artaud et Grégoire Mabit
Le Front # 5, Front Froid
Scio, Gabriel Lamarche

French Zine

Le Bathyscaphe
Histoire numéros 2, Shushanna bikini london
Emmanuel Laflamme
Sale temps, Laureline Mattiussi + deux finalistes à venir

Item! As he does four times a year, Seth covers the latest issue of CNQ, Canadian Notes and Queries. This issue (Winter 2013) is about libraries and Seth provides a gorgeous wrap-around cover of strange creatures lining up to return library books at the night depository. Besides a plethora of articles and reviews about book collecting and other literary pasttimes, there is an article by Jeet Heer on imaginary books and libraries and a 2-page “classic comics” style adaptation by the great Aaron Costain (Team Society League, Entropy).

Item! Montreal’s Georgia Webber has launched an indiegogo campaign to print the first two issues of her Dumb comics series, chronicling her year of not speaking because of a throat ailment. The aim is to print comics to finance a trip to the CAKE festival in Chicago: “In October of 2012, after a vague doctor’s assessment and much googling, I decided to stop talking for all but 15 minutes a day. See, usually my throat pain goes away quickly, but this pain showed up in May, and it stayed. Over the summer it got worse, and worse, and worse, until it was constant and unbearable.[...]In order to get better as quickly as possible (and to not be in pain), I stopped talking. I stopped singing. I stopped everything.[...]Take a moment to imagine what this would be like for you. How would you feel? How would you communicate with your loved ones, friends, coworkers, neighbours? Could you do it? [...]If you want to find out what I did, pitch in a little to help me bring the first two 20-page comics of DUMB into existence.”

Item! Tickets for this summer’s Fan Expo Canada have just gone on sale (with a few hitches) and the con has announced that former Marvel Comics editor, co-plotter, and dialogue writer and current paid spokesperson Stan Lee will be in attendance once again.

Item! The Beguiling in Toronto is hosting an event for U.S. cartoonist Brian Wood on Saturday April 13 at 3 pm. Facebook event page.

Item! The new Shuster Awards director Tyrone Biljan has made his first official statement as fearless leader: “To me the position is all about collaboration with like minded individuals to promote and celebrate great Canadian talent working in the comic book industry. I’m very proud to contribute to the ongoing celebration of these great creative talents, as well as looking back at our Canadian heritage when comic books were in their infancy.”

Item! This short article wonders if the rennaissance in French-language graphic novel creation in Quebec has stalled due to lack of demand. Jean-Paul Eid is among the commentators:

(google translation)

“L’Affaire Radisson avait mis en relief avec éloquence le mal-être dont semble être affligée la bande dessinée populaire. Rappelons que Glénat Québec avait prématurément mis un terme à la série de Jean-Sébastien Bérubé, refusant dans un premier temps de publier le quatrième et ultime ouvrage de la série, prétextant un déclin des ventes. Décision sur laquelle l’éditeur est rapidement revenu.

La question est lancée.”

Visualization
presented by Ed Video and Kazoo! Fest
April 3-30, 2013 with opening party on Wednesday, April 3, 7pm-10pm
featuring Marc Bell (Guelph), Alex McLeod (Toronto) and the CollabBand Sketchbook project from A.M.180 collective (Prague)

this is the opening night kick-off to the independent music and print festival Kazoo, taking place in Guelph over the next 5 days

“Disconcerting Youth Military”

Farm School
by Jason Turner
Retrofit Comics
b+w, 32 pgs
$5.00

review by BK Munn

Over the last several years Vancouver’s Jason Turner has slowly been building an audience for his quiet, meditative mini-comics and short stories, with a regular gig in Broken Pencil and two collections of his webcomic True Loves published by Ed Brisson’s old New Reliable Press some of the higher-profile showcases of his talents. His latest, Farm School, is a concise “done-in-one” graphic novella published by Retrofit that manages to condense a nuanced character study and a pastoral post-apocalyptic travelogue into 32 sparse pages.

As a cartoonist Turner is a minimalist, closer to the John Porcellino/Tom Hart school than Alex Toth. His figures and landscapes are blocky and angular, with only the barest detail of a few lines used to establish the basic age and occupation of his characters or to register subtle emotions (a half-milimetre line is a teenage smirk; a Herriman-esque baseball bat is the sole emblem of office for a laid-back librarian bodyguard). Given these basic tools and a limited amount of dialogue, Farm School has more than its fair share of emotionally-taut scenes, including terse confrontations with former friends and employers, street fights, and slow burns.

The plot of the book follows survivalist Hester Bailey as she makes an infrequent return to what remains of civilization, checking in with the old gang and running a few errands. Along the way, she acts as chaperone for the village baker’s daughter, also heading into town to deliver bread; their brief conversations about family and the dangers of the wider world contributing substantial backstory and worldbuilding through hints and gestures. Hester is gradually revealed to be something of a Catcher-in-the-Rye type, concerned with protecting young people from the twin threats of heartbreak and the lure of “far away” –the perils of adulthood. As a hunter on the fringes of society, Hester purposefully keeps family at arms length, with the mixed result being what you might expect from a “nothing ventured” philosophy. To borrow another proverb, like the wild deer she stalks in the fields and forests, once burned by loss, Hester is twice shy of intimacy.

Farm School is also an exercise in Turner’s own brand of sci-fi comics decompression, where Hester’s days-long journey through a wasteland is an analog for our own daily routine of minor epiphanies and robotic tasks. At the core of the book is the theme of communication. Hester’s actual mission is revealed to be checking her email, a once effortless job complicated in this comic book future by illiteracy and a post fossil-fuel economy –restricting contact with distant family members to brief, twitter-like messages interpreted by a priestly caste of telegraph-operator-like civil servants. Likewise, the time and effort devoted in Farm School to returning a library book and baking a breakfast baguette remind us of the networks and connections essential to even the most simple, pedestrian joys in life.

Part of my appreciation for what Turner does in this book is attributable to the very real sense of place he creates, a highly subjective experience since most of the setting of Farm School seems to be based on Turner’s familiarity with my own homebase of Guelph, Ontario, the University town where Turner spent his teen years. Hester’s journey through devastated suburbia and smalltown Thunderdome can be easily mapped* onto a short local bus route, a half-hour trip that, in another act of decompression, Turner transforms into an epic walkabout that involves two nights of sleeping under the stars. Despite whatever future conflagration serves as prequel to this story, it’s nice to see certain Guelph landmarks escape into the future. Hester treks over the Hanlon Expressway and down Paisley Street to a decimated downtown where the banks on St. George’s Square look like they took a hit, and the Quebec Street Mall is nothing but rubble (so long, Dragon comic shop!), but the Bookshelf, Red Brick Cafe, and against all odds, the hideous building that replaced the Crystal Palace arcade after it burned down, survive in something like their current forms. You don’t need to be a Royal City refugee to enjoy Farm School, but this kind of detail adds a delicious extra layer to the cake Turner bakes.

*I made a map!

The Crystal Palace survives the Guelpocalypse.

The National Cartoonist Society has announced its nominees for its divisional awards, which are handed out along with the coveted “Best Cartoonist” Reuben Award as part of the 67th Reuben Awards ceremony. This year, several Canadian-born cartoonists have been nominated for awards.

New Yorker cover artist Barry Blitt has been nominated in the Magazine Feature/Magazine Illustration category.
Political cartoonist Graham Harrop crosses over to comic strips and is nominated in the Online Comics (Short Form) category for “Ten Cats“.
John Martz has been nominated in the Book Illustration category for Dear Flyary.
Political Cartoonist Michael de Adder has been nominated in the Editorial Cartoons category.

Full list.

Sequential congratulates all the nominees. The awards will be handed out in May.

The group behind The Joe Shuster Awards have announced the appointment of a new Executive Director in the person of Tyrone Biljan, a long-time volunteer with the organization and one of its original founders. Biljan replaces outgoing E.D. Kevin Boyd who is stepping down to “Associate Director” status, in part to focus on his duties as owner of the Comic Book Lounge in Toronto. Biljan is an artist and had most recently held the post of Art Director, responsible for poster graphics and the overall look of the awards and ceremony.

The next Shuster Awards are scheduled for August in Toronto.

Shuster Awards blog

published by Quirk Books
ISBN: 9781594745904
40 pgs
$16.95

a cute kids book by cartoonist John Martz, based on the classic comedy routine by Abbott and Costello.

“Who’s on first. What’s on second. I Don’t Know’s on third.” One of the classic comedy sketches of all time is now transformed into a priceless picture book—and it’s a great read for kids of all ages. Follow the mistaken identities, confusion, and lots of laughs as Rabbit and Bear act out this scene. The book will appeal to Abbott and Costello fans, baseball fans, and anyone who enjoys funny banter-driven picture books. Illustrated in full color with slightly retro stylized illustrations.

“The book is stunning ~ dad and Bud would be proud!!”—Chris Costello, Daughter of Lou Costello

John’s blog

amazon ordering

news and links from around the web on the subject of Canadian comics:

Item! Mike Winters comics appear in Edmonton’s VUE weekly, Vice Canada, and online under the “Cartoon Machine” banner. Now he has a comic book compilation coming out, featuring his totally unsympathetic cast of characters and mini-strips like the frankly-disturbing Chubb, the slacker adventurers of Daggers and Dexterity, and Toronto hipster Wonderdick. National Post interview from last year.

Item! Chris Randle interviews Geneviève Castrée for Random House’s Hazlitt literary magazine: “Maybe there are cartoonists out there who work really hard on perfecting their style. It’s hard for me to relate to, I just sit down and although it comes out better as the years go by, I don’t really practice. Whenever I try to draw from life I feel like I can’t shake off the way I draw, my personal quirks. It just comes out that way. If anything I feel like I have more control over my hand-writing. That has changed more over the years.”

Item! D+Q has scheduled the next giant issue of Seth’s Palookaville series for the Fall and promises “This issue features 30+ pages of “Clyde Fans”, 30+ pages of an autobiographical sketchbook story called “Nothing Lasts”, and the debut of Seth’s rubber stamp diaries (Seth has been keeping a diary for a few years now and since he realized that he might be redrawing some of the same figures over and over again he created rubber stamps as a time-saver.” You can read a preview of the new autobio strip from the issue here.

Item! Patrick McEown’s debut graphic novel Hair Shirt, originally published by UK outfit SelfMadeHero in 2011, now has North American distribution through Abrams and hits book stores and comics shops this month. My memory of the pdf I read of this two years ago is quite pleasant and I look forward to revisiting its dream-like imagery and great colouring in the flesh.

Item! Artist, zinester, roller-derby champ, and part-time comic shop clerk Ange Drystek talks about her vision for the re-christened Kazoo Print Expo, for which she is the chief coordinator, to the University of Guelph’s Ontarion newspaper: “As far as the tablers go we have zine artists, comic artists, print makers, screen printers, there’s people with small art-books and photo art-books,” said Drystek. “There’s an illustration art magazine from [Guelph-Toronto] coming called Carousel [and] there’s Impress, a small comic-illustration company based out of Toronto that do a lot of art-books [...] I went to school for studio art (I just graduated last spring) [...] and the whole process was aiming for me to be a fine artist and I really had this disconnect,” said Drystek.” The way that I see art is not white gallery walls and pristine [work] and things sold for thousands and thousands of dollars. I really don’t like that gallery systems. What I want is for art to be more accessible, a little more practical and maybe a little bit more commercial. This gives people the opportunity to sell their work on a smaller scale.”

Item! My new favourite cartoonist is Connor Willumsen. While you may know his Marvel Comics work (Punisher Max), he is becoming better known for his sci-fi, pseudo-surrealist online and small print-run comics. Most recently, Willumsen finished up a highly-recommended mind-blowing cyberpunk insta-classic. As he notes, it’s “published in a scroll format at the Study Group Comics website, which was arranged by Zack Soto [...] I started this comic while taking Frank Santoro‘s Comic Book Correspondence Course for Comic Makers last year.” Willumsen is also interviewed at Sam Weber’s Your Dreams My Nightmares podcast.

The 9th annual awards short-list includes established creators, past winners, and many first-time nominees. They also unveiled the official poster drawn by 2012 Best Book Award winner & 2013 nominee, Ethan Rilly.

The 2013 Doug Wright Award nominees for Best Book are:

• Lose #4 by Michael DeForge (Koyama Press)
• By This Shall You Know Him by Jesse Jacobs (Koyama Press)
• The Song of Roland by Michel Rabagliati (Conundrum Press)
• Pope Hats #3 by Ethan Rilly (AdHouse Books)
• Wax Cross by Tin Can Forest (Koyama Press)

The 2013 Doug Wright Spotlight Award nominees are:
(a.k.a. “The Nipper” recognizing talents worthy of wider recognition)

• Nina Bunjevac for Heartless (Conundrum Press)
• Brandon Graham for King City (Image Comics)
• Patrick Kyle for Black Mass, Distance Mover, Wowee Zonk #4
• George Walker for The Mysterious Death of Tom Thomson (The Porcupine’s Quill)
• Eric Kostiuk Williams for Hungry Bottom Comics

The 2013 Pigskin Peters Award nominees are:
(Recognizing the best in experimental and avant-garde comics)

• Hamilton Illustrated by David Collier (Wolsak & Wynn)
• Hellberta #2 and “Sir Softly” from š! #12, by Michael Comeau
• Michael DeForge, Larry Eisenstein, Jesse Jacobs, Mark Laliberte (editor), Marc Ngui, Ethan Rilly, Tin Can Forest and Magda Trzaski for 4PANEL, a special comics features in Carousel Magazine #28 and #29
• Ginette Lapalme for “So, what should we do with ourselves?…” from Wowee Zonk #4 and  “Little Stump” in š! #12

The Giants of the North: The Canadian Cartoonists Hall of Fame announce that the Quebec cartoonist Albert Chartierwill be posthumously inducted uring the May 11, 2013 ceremony in Toronto. Chartier died in 2004 ending an extraordinary career that lasted more than 65 years during which he drew several popular comic strips including Séraphin, Les Canadiens and Onésime. Onésime is his most well-known work, running for 59 years from November 1943 until June 2002.

About the DWA: Founded in 2004, The Doug Wright Awards recognize the best in English-language comics (or translations of French) by Canadian cartoonists. Now in their ninth year, the Awards will be handed out at a ceremony at Toronto’s Marriott Bloor Yorkville Hotel on Saturday May 11 from 7:00 – 9:00 pm.

The Doug Wright Awards will also be holding a fundraising auction of original art this spring by more than a dozen well-known Canadian cartoonists, including Chester Brown, Seth, Michael DeForge, Michael Cho, John Martz, David Collier and David Boswell.

The finalists for the 2013 Doug Wright Awards were chosen from a long list of more than 120 100 works and submissions published during the 2012 calendar year. This year’s nominating committee included Jerry Ciccoritti, Seth, Bryan Munn, Chris Randle and Sean Rogers.

 For more information about the DWAs:
www.wrightawards.ca

Media inquiries: Shireen Cuthbert sfcuthbert@gmail.com

Dracula: Son of the Dragon: the Kickstarter!

Part historical fiction, part horror fantasy, a comic book chronicling Vlad the Impaler’s transformation into the vampire Dracula.

An original series by Mark Sable (Graveyard of Empires) & Salgood Sam (Sea of Red, Therefore Repent! Dream Life).

Trade paperback copies produced via CreateSpace

The mock up of the limited run leatherette edition from Soundless Soliloquy

The very limited, collectible leather bound edition of Dracula: Son of the Dragon, by No Bar Code Press.

Pages from an early pilot web comic of the story.

Pages from an early pilot web comic of the story.

Pages from an early pilot web comic of the story.

Pages from an early pilot web comic of the story.

Salgood Sam’s comix quarterly

by BK Munn

Created in 1975, the character of Canadian superhero Captain Canuck has been the star of a number of short-lived comic book series over the years, most memorably illustrated by artist George Freeman, and exists these days more as an idea/concept/brand without a forum or large audience. That hasn’t stopped creator Richard Comely from almost continually hyping the character for the past 40+ years, with the result that we have seen Captain Canuck postage stamps issued by Canada Post, Comely appearances on the Home Shopping Network, and, most recently, a reissue collecting those classic comic books by IDW.

Now comes word of a new animated web series produced by Comely’s Captain Canuck Inc. and Smiley Guy animation studio, with new character designs from cartoonist/comic book artist Kalman Andrasofszky. A teaser for the series is available on the new CC website and the creators are scheduled to launch an Indiegogo crowd sourced fundraising campaign on March 28th in Toronto.

The 5-episode series will feature the voice talents of Kris Holden-Reid (Lost Girl, Underworld: Awakening, The Tudors) and Paul Amos (Lost Girl, Murdoch Mysteries, Warehouse 13) and is directed by Smiley Guy’s Sam Chou.

The studio has a pretty good track record, with credits including the Don McKellar series Odd Job Jack, work for New Yorker cartoonist/illustrator Bruce McCall, and many others (full-disclosure: they have also done work for The Doug Wright Awards [ED: Bryan is one of the founder of the  Giants of the North and a founding member of the awards).

The announced fundraising project will solicit fan participation in the series, according to Fadi Hakim, the president of Captain Canuck INC., who notes that the production is “reaching out to Captain Canuck’s loyal fan-base and getting them involved from day one. Fans old and new can get themselves drawn into the series as animated characters, and a choice few will even be able to face off against the Captain in battle.”

Inidegogo Launch Facebook event page

CaptainCanuck.com

sent us his selection of recordings and photos from the recent convention.

Ty Templeton’s How To Write a Graphic Novel (47:32, 43.5mb)

Ty gave a shortened version of the workshops he gives at his Comic Book Boot Camp. while walking around and engaging the audience. Ty is an excellent teacher, I’ll be putting this one on my ipod myself to hear what he has to say.

Mike Zeck Spotlight (40:00, 36.6mb)

Moderated by Fred Kennedy, Mike Zeck talks about his career and doing licensing work vs drawing comic book stories. I’ll give you a guess of a hint having not yet listened, it involves something that looks like a marked up S?

Sketch Duel: Mike McKone and Lee Weeks (50:34, 46.3mb)

Mike McKone and Lee Weeks draw the Hulk for the sketch duel while people in the audience give  suggestions? Thankfully, being a recording, while they sketch they answered some questions for the audience too.  The panel was moderated by Fred Kennedy too. He’s good so it should be a decent listen.

Sketch Panel: Joe Jusko (53:03, 48.6mb)

Scheduled to be a sketch duel between Joe Jusko and Mark Texeira but Texeira did not show up so Joe talks while he draws on his own.  No mention of moderator for this one.

Jamie Coville hosts these and much more on his site here.

Item! Ty has new Buntoons! “Now that DC Comics has replaced their nearly-always-dead-Robin the Boy Wonder with Casper the Friendly Ghost, I thought it might be a nice opportunity to look back at a few other corporate, and institutional, mascots that have been replaced over the years.  It’s a fascinating history.”

Item! COLOSSE NEWS! “SHOCK REVELATION: the new COLOSSUS is called HOUBA PLUS”.

It contains new comics by Catherine Lamontagne-Drolet, Francois Samson-Dunlop, Carlos Vezina, Sara Hache, Sophie Bédard, Tuan Bui, Samantha Leriche-Gionet, David Turgeon, Vincent Giard and Luc Bossé. The limited run collection is dedicated to Mael Rannou.

Item! Gerhard reveals the cover of the Cerebus comic book that Oliver Ho and Sam Noir are contributing to.

Item! Colin Upton would like you to check out his tumblr. He’s posting a great deal of his back catalog there now.

Item! Rick Trembles shared an alternate version of the Motion Picture Purgatory strip he just did for Lech (Born to Lose: The Last Rock & Roll Movie) Kowalski’s new anti-fracking doc, DRILL BABY DRILL: “This is how revolutions start” -director Lech Kowalski

Item! Bernie Mireault has started a tumblr too!

“I plan to show the comic art I’ve done here but for a first post I’d like to put up a collaborative effort put together between 8 Montreal cartoonists years ago for a slick color magazine commemorating the redesign of the Austin Mini automobile, of all things! - I got to color the whole thing as well as contribute a sequence and I think it’s a successful collaboration that deserves to be shown again.”

Item! Andy Belanger got all Artsy on InnerSPACE hanging Shakespeare.

Item! Dave Cooper hanging in New York!

Comics & Graphic Novels Program

Camosun College comics conference is a celebration of the artistic and literary impact of comics and graphic novels created locally, nationally, and internationally. The event is open to the public, free of charge, to view the students’ works, hear and see the process of visual storytelling, and discuss the medium with the creators, teachers, publishers, and other fans. It will take place on Sunday, April 7th from 11am until 6pm, on the third floor of the historic Young Building, on Camosun’s Lansdowne campus.

Our sixteen students will be in attendance in an “artists alley” display of their publications and original artwork. There will also be displays by established local creators Gareth Gaudin, Janine Johnston, Nelson Dewey, Ash Vickers, Glen Mullaly, Simon Roy, and Glen & Kay Lovett, as well as presentations by guest speakers Paul Chadwick (Concrete), Anne Marie Fleming (The Magical Life of Long Tak Sam), Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas (Haida Manga), and Sam Logan (Sam & Fuzzy).

Comics & Graphic Novels, a program unique in the Canadian post-secondary school system, was created to address the needs of students who have a desire to learn the language of visual storytelling. The program focuses on skills-based training for six career paths, which include creation (both in print and online) of comic books, comic strips, web comics, graphic novels, storyboards, and edutainment comics. Currently offering a one-year certificate, a two-year diploma credential will launch in the fall of 2014, which will continue the program’s focus on experiential skills-building specific to the requirements of the industry.

For more information please contact:

KEN STEACY
Program Leader, Comics & Graphic Novels
steacyk@camosun.bc.ca
www.camosun.ca/comics

Ken Steacy has worked in the comics industry for close to forty years as an author, illustrator, art director, editor, and publisher. The recipient of an Eisner and an Inkpot award, he was inducted into the Joe Shuster Awards Hall of Fame in 2009, a lifetime achievement award honouring Canadian comic book creators for their contributions to the industry.

Tuesday, March 19
7pm-10pm
Free for VAG Members or with Gallery admission/pay-what-you-can

facebook event page

Brian Gable of The Globe and Mail has been nominated for a 13th time in the National Newspaper Awards, the premiere prize for editorial cartooning in this country (Gable has previously won the category six times). Nominees are chosen based on portfolios of 5 cartoons submitted by their publishers. Former winner Guy Badeaux (“Bado”), editorial cartoonist for Le Droit in Ottawa, will emcee the 64th NNA gala in Ottawa, to be held at the Canadian War Museum on Friday, May 3.

The cartooning nominees are:

Serge Chapleau, La Presse, Montreal
Andy Donato, The Toronto Sun
Brian Gable, The Globe and Mail

Sequential congratulates them all!

Bonus: jury guidelines from the NNA website.

Editorial cartoons shoot straight to the heart of an issue. Sought here is originality, bite, humor and impact as well as quality of drawing. In this category entrants may enter five editorial cartoons to represent a body of work. To determine excellence in Editorial cartooning you might consider the following.

Is sustained wit evident in all of the work?
Is humor clever and biting? If satire is a factor, is it used effectively?
Is the work original in both its message and style?
Is a clear message conveyed?
Is work outrageous (and is that justified)
Is the cartoonist’s line and style consistent, distinctive?
Are caricatures of personalities recognizable and effective?
Does this work inform the reader, entertain the reader and achieve its purpose?

Item! There are some links to stories at the con’s own facebook event page.

Item! Toy hunting on Saturday: Ed Campbell says more sci-fi than comics, no comics panels.

Item! Scott Vanderploeg covers the comics artists beat at the show.

Item! Comic Book Daily Photo Parade

Item! Con staff member shines bright light in eye of blogger.

Item! Photo blogger has all the cosplay pics.

Item! The creators of the Wexray digital comic blog about the show.

Item! The Geek Chic Elite blog focuses on the tv/sci-fi guests but has some points about the show setup/logistics: “The first signs of disorganization were the lines that zig-zagged through one vacant hall to let us in; winding around about nine times before the entrance where everyone funneled in. There were still vendors setting up at 11 when people arrived too, so it looks like they weren’t given the luxury of setting up the night before, or it was too chaotic in the morning to load everything in on time.”

UPDATES!
we got more:

Item! Amy Chu crosses the border to cover the con for The Beat, and ends up writing mostly about what she ate. She does post one non-food tidbit that I got wrong (because I don’t research this blog, duh) when I posted here about show guests last week: “Artist/writer Katie Cook (Gronk, My Little Pony), illlustrator Agnes Garbowska and I gathered at a nearby Thai restaurant with Craig and his friends Mike Del Mundo (Marvel cover artist) and Marco D’Alfonso (Deadpool). It was perhaps the opposite of Emerald City’s barcon, in that the server could only find three bottles of Sinha beer for the table, less than what many people have in their fridge. The conversation turned to talk of ponies and Bronies. I was astonished to find that Cook goes to 15 cons a year. Many comic fans are surprised to find out she is the writer on IDW’s hit My Little Pony, and not the artist. As Cook explained, it was the humor from her webcomic Gronk that got IDW’s attention.”

Item! Former FanExpo employee/current Comic Book Lounge owner Kevin Boyd had a good experience, reported via Facebook, as an exhibitor/retailer: “Financially satisfied with sales at the show…”

Item! The view from the Comic Book Shoppe.

Item! Scene Creek highlights video.

Item! The Toronto Nerd does a walkthrough vid.

Item! This video has what looks like a bald Riddler cosplayer checking his wantlist.

Item! Con-central podcast.

Item! Writing for the Toronto Standard, Tiffy Thompson sources the con’s popularity in The Big Bang Theory.: “The geeks have won.”

Toronto comics publisher Koyama Press has announced a new international distribution deal with Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, a Minneapolis, Minnesota company specializing in independent and small press publishers. Consortium brags on its website that its “publishers’ authors include Howard Zinn, Charles Bukowski, Elfriede Jelinek, Che Guevara, Tony Kushner, Pablo Neruda, and Arundhati Roy, and their honors include Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and Nobel Prizes.” In terms of comics, Consortium currently reps UK-based Nobrow Press and Tom Kazcynski’s Uncivilized Books to bookstores, chains, wholesalers, libraries and specialty markets in the U.S. and Canada.

About the deal, which takes effect April 1, Koyama notes, “we are excited to be in the good company of a diverse range of publishers and books that cover a myriad of subjects including fiction, poetry, gay and lesbian studies, politics, music, art, history, children’s books, and more. With this new partnership, Koyama Press titles will be made available to many markets and outlets for the first time.”

by BK Munn

The Kazoo Zine and Comic Expo has rebranded itself this year. The event, which runs in conjunction with an indie music festival in Guelph, is scheduled for Saturday, April 6. I know that Sequential friends Marc Bell, Mark Laliberte, and Peter Thompson have already confirmed. Event organizers have put out a call for more exhibitors and artists: “$15 a table, free snacks and coffee for the length of the event, then an afterparty with more food and beer! Tell your zinester, comic, artist, and publishing friends!”

website

facebook event page

Sequential at Kazoo 2012

from the organizers:

The Kazoo! Print Expo is the re-invention of the Kazoo! Zine and Comic Expo, which took place in conjunction with the music festival Kazoo! Fest in Guelph. The “zine and comic expo” is no more, and in its’ place stands a new (but similar) event, expanding the focus beyond just comic and zine-making, to include broader forms of print media. Print media (as we see it) encompasses a large range of art objects, including, but not limited to; comics, zines, posters, books, t-shirts, postcards, pamphlets, newsletters, illustrations, and art prints. Our goal is to represent and promote local independent artists and creators, reflecting the aesthetic and diverse history of Kazoo! and Kazoo! collaborators.

(poster by Gregory Pepper)

by BK Munn

The annual 2-day event will be taking place this weekend, March 9 & 10, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

The big comics guest this year is Katie Cook, the cartoonist who draws the new My Little Pony comic for Boom! (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic). As well, old-timers like Mike Zeck and Joe Jusko will take their places alongside a slew of artists known for their superhero work for Marvel and DC, including MIKE McKONE, LEE WEEKS, MARK TEXEIRA, DALE KEOWN, MIKE DEL MUNDO, MARCO RUDY, CARY NORD, LEONARD KIRK, and TY TEMPLETON. Comics events include panels on graphic novels and sketch duels.

Also, tons of dealers, Artists’s Alley, tv guests like the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and more.

website

Max here, thought i’d put in a post, we’ve been slow with the updates lately. Maybe a good time to also mention we’re always open to context appropriate guest blogging here at Sequential, if you’re interested in generally unpaid writing opportunities check out our about page to get out mandate and let us know if you have a story.

Item: Starting off this line up of links underlining the update we made a little while ago to our post about Joe Ollmann‘s next book, now called Science Fiction, previously Burden. Now being published by Conundrum, previously D+Q. The book moved from D+Q to Conundrum and re-titled ”Science Fiction” after D+Q backed out. Joe noted on his blog, “my latest book called Burden was supposed to come out from Drawn & Quarterly in January. It didn’t. They feel this book is not a good follow up to Midlife and decided not to publish it. I think Burden is a good book which is decidedly more serious in tone than the farce quality of Midlife, but it’s the book I want to do right now. So, the book is now being published by my old friend the good Andy Brown at Conundrum Press, and should debut at TCAF in May. As the book was already listed in catalogues and websites, we decided to change the name to simplify the publishing process.” – Kind of surprising D+Q backed away from something more serious? I guess i’ll have to reset some of my own assumptions about them. I’ve got a preview of the new book from Joe and plan to sit down with it soon with posting a review in mind.

Item: Three [1][2][3] sweet panels out of 4 from The Happy Undertaker, by written and illustrated by Drazen Kozjan.

Item: Rick Trembles says Happy 80th birthday King Kong! A film produced by a great, great great? Cousin as it happens.

Item: A clipping of a profile of Valium in the french press about his 35 years making art. Posted here first.

Item: Alan Bunce shared The Exciting Conclusion of his latest Funny Forest series! You can go read the whole 87 pages now!

Item: The Comic Book Lounge & Gallery, just after it’s 1 year anniversary of opening, threw lots of parties, and have really established themselves as one of the prime comics masons of Toronto in a very short time. Happy birthday and a bit guys.

Item: On youtube my old buddy George sat down with Jeff Lemire to discusses his approach to Animal Man and his work on Superboy.

Item: Over on the Fredcast, Fred had a great talk with writer Conor McCreery, of Kill Shakespeare fame.

Item: Once a great curmudgeon about the internet, Colin Upton has a tumbler page now!

Item: Nina Bunjevac posted the cover for the new french edition of her book, Heartless, to appear in April from Ici-Meme, and some more examples of her great rendering skill with this shot of Zemun, Serbia.

And there you have it. Keep up with all the little bits here on our page on Facebook, most of this was all posted there first. And in case you haven’t already follow us here on twitter.

For my own bit I’ve been busy, Dream Life comes very near being done, had the pleasure of illustrating something connected with Dr Daniel Levitin! Cool. Also had fun taking a swing at Lichtenstein for the IMAGE DUPLICATOR show being put on by Rian Hughes. Check this FB group to see more about that. See you after the page turn! – max

Item! Over at the Toronto-based Comic Book Daily website, collector and researcher Ivan Kokmarek has started a regular column on the subject of 1940s Canadian comic books and so far they have been excellent, chock-full of scans of ancient Canadian superheroes, comic books about hockey, and profiles of forgotten artists and publishers. There’s posts about the great cartoonist George M. Rae, the adventure hero Brok Windsor (drawn by John Stables), the mystery of a lost title brought to light through correspondence with Dave Sim, a portrait by Tedd Steele of himself and fellow artists Leo Bachle and Ross Saakelele as hockey players, and an attempt to put together a superhero team from Bell Comics’ stable. Worth checking out.

Item! Happy 90th birthday to Saskatoon cartoonist Margaret Vavra who drew cartoons about a cat named Sassy for the Star-Phoenix newspaper from 1948 to 1968! The cartoon character was a fixture of the paper’s weather report and was later adopted as the mascot of a local bomber squadron: “Saskatoon’s No. 406 auxiliary squadron christened seven Mitchell bombers” in 1952, including one with a decal featuring “a high-stepping Sassy holding a bomb above its head with the left arm.”

Item! In a short interview with Frederik Byrn Køhlert for the Lemonhound blog, former cartoonist Julie Doucet talks about her recent zines and collages and rebuffs some questions about making comics: “there is a progression and a thread uniting all of it, the starting point being comics… It’s words into pictures, or words used in a visual form one way or another. Most of the time as a narrative. Some would insist that it is all so close to comics that I am obviously Still into it… but no, I sure don’t feel like that’s what I’m doing. I would say that what I’m doing is closer to poetry, if you have to put a word on it. I don’t really like the word poetry, but I think that’s what it is.” (thanks to Brad Mackay for the link!)

Item! For TdotComics, Adira Rotstein interviews Ty Templeton about Toronto’s Comic Book Embassy, a new school and studio for burgeoning comics pros: “The Comics Embassy was started as a result of some friendships and
 professional associations among people who were working together in my Boot
 Camp courses. At the end of the year we do this self published comic called “Holmes
 Incorporated” and the end of the year about six or seven people decided they 
wanted to keep the energy going after the project was finished, so they wanted to
get a studio space together so they could continue to work together. That’s what this was–
a place for them to get together and retain that energy. The space they found 
to rent had a fairly sizable room in front. I needed a new location for running
 my boot camp and so it just worked out very nicely.”

Item! Julie Doucet shows up in this blog post from the Drawn and Quarterly bookstore blog about the launch for Geneviève Castrée’s Susceptible graphic memoir. There’s a super-awesome photo of Doucet with Castrée and cartoonist Diane ‘Obom’ Obomsawin. (is also curating an art show that includes Doucet at Anchor Art Space in Anacortes, near Seattle.

Item! New on the Inkstuds podcast: an interview with Michel Rabagliati, whose The Song of Roland was one of the big graphic novels published in Canada last year.

Item! The collected edition of Daniel Shelton’s long-running comic strip Ben has landed at La Pasteque after a period being published by Editions 400 Coups. Kubert-school-grad Shelton has placed the strip, about a senior citizen couple and their family relations, in a ton of papers and has recently landed a gig creating strips for a yogurt company’s packaging –kind of like the old Bazooka Joe except instead of a one-eyed kid the mascot is a zombie named Freddie.

Item! Julie Doucet and Simon Bossé have started a Tumblr blog to share the crazy mail art they have received over the years. Here’s one Bossé got from Marc Bell:

Choosing the New Pope from “Pope Joan” by Julian Lawrence (Crucial Fiction #2, Fantagraphics, 1992). Lawrence teaches comics at Emily Carr, co-founded The Drippytown Gazette anthology, and illustrated the Doug Wright Award-winning Magical LIfe of Long Tack Sam.

Publisher Annie Koyama has formally announced that Ed Kanerva, who had been working part-time with Koyama Press for the past year, will be making the leap to a full-time, titled position of Publishing Assistant starting March 1. Kanerva is the second full-timer at the comany after Koyama herself, and brings a fan’s enthusiasm for comics with experience in the publishing and curatorial worlds.

According to Koyama, Kanerva “was the Exhibitions and Publications Coordinator at The Power Plant where he worked in the curatorial department coordinating several exhibitions and publications, as well as providing writing, editing and curatorial assistance. He also served as the Associate Publisher for award-winning multimedia production and publishing company, Pop Sandbox.”

Sequential extends its congrats to Ed and wishes continued success to Koyama Press.

Lest We Forget

by BK Munn

2012 was a year of changes for comics, not least because we lost many great creators. Joe Kubert and Spain Rodriguez were among the American giants who passed but Sequential also celebrated the lives of several other cartoonists and writers who left their mark on our favourite medium, including several Canadians.

So here is a list of last year’s passages, lest we forget.

—–

Blaine MacDonald, 1937-2012

Political cartoonist Blaine MacDonald died February 6 in Hamilton. The colourful MacDonald, who signed his work “Blaine”, was the cartoonist for The Hamilton Spectator for 30 years until his retirement in 1993. Born and raised in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Blaine dropped out of art school and drew his first cartoons for The Cape Breton Post where he worked for several years. In 1961 he moved west and landed a temporary gig filling in for Globe and Mail cartoonist Jim Reidford before being hired at The Hamilton Spectator, where he remained for his entire professional career. It was at the Spec where Blaine built a large local and international following, churning out cartoons on all subjects during the years of Diefenbaker, Pearson, Trudeau, Kennedy and Nixon… more

John Severin, 1921-2012

The final proof that Severin is Cracked and Cracked is Severin is the fact that the magazine thrived for years, under Mad’s massive shadow … when Severin was contributing. In the early 2000s, when Cracked ownership changed hands, they couldn’t afford Severin and the magazine went out of business. When it was relaunched a few years later as a slick, color magazine, Severin (…) decided not to contribute because of the questionable editorial direction, and it bombed. Now that it has been sold again, it has resurfaced as a humor website, and quite entertaining, but as a magazine, since there is no Severin, there is no Cracked. …more

Moebius, 1938-2012

One of the most influential artists of his generation, Moebius first came to fame as the illustrator of the Lieutenant Blueberry series of historical western adventure comics. But it was as a fantasy and science fiction visionary that Moebius made his true mark on the world, beginning as one of the founders of Metal Hurlant magazine (Heavy Metal) in 1974. I’m not sure if Blueberry ever made it as far north as Canada, but Moebius has been here at least once. He was the subject of a documentary by Canadian director Damian Pettigrew and the inspiration for the 1981 animated film Heavy Metal. It goes without saying that he was also a major inspiration for many cartoonists and illustrators working in this country…more

Serge Grenier, 1939-2012

Comedian and writer Serge Grenier died April 6. He was 73. (…) For a time, he contributed as a writer and editor to the humour magazine Croc, Quebec’s answer to Mad, a fixture on the magazine racks between 1979 and 1994 and remembered for launching the careers of many cartoonists … more

Jim Unger, 1937-2012

Jim Unger, the creator of the widely-syndicated comic panel Herman, died May 28 at his home in Saanich, BC. He was 75. Born in London, England, Unger had several false starts in his career before finding his niche, working as a policeman, repo-man, and office clerk before emigrating to Canada in 1968. He eventually landed a job as an advertising copywriter and graphic artist for the Mississauga Times in 1971. Asked to fill-in for a vacationing staff cartoonist, Unger soon began churning out daily cartoons for the editorial page on the subject of municipal politics. A popular local success, Unger was encouraged by friends and workmates to syndicate his work. After putting a package together in 1974, he was offered a contract by Universal Press (now Universal Uclick), who asked him to create a humour panel in his distinctive graphic style. …more

Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012

… Bradbury also made his mark in the comic book field, most famously with an unwitting contribution to the efforts of 1950s powerhouse publisher EC Comics. As the story goes, EC editors William Gaines and Al Feldstein began swiping Bradbury’s short stories for their horror and science ficton comics in 1951, plagiarizing the plots and not crediting the writer. Bradbury, being a voracious devourer of all things sci-fi, and a fan of EC comics to boot, soon caught on and politely asked for a $50 fee. Along with a cheque, Gaines sent a note asking for permission to officially adapt more of Bradbury’s stories, and quickly began featuring the writer’s name prominently on the cover, beginning with an adaptation of “There Will Come Soft Rains” in Weird Fantasy #17, with a cover by Feldstein and story art by Wally Wood. …more

Joe Kubert, 1926-2012

…legendary comic book artist, eternal Nazi battler, and the man who can give all of us a comic book schooling. (…) What a career Joe Kubert has had! Starting out drawing comics while still a teenager in the 1930s and 40s, Kubert went on to be one of the premier visual stylists of the Silver Age of U.S. comics, working on signature characters like Sgt. Rock, Hawkman, Enemy Ace, Tor, Tarzan, and many others. …(Sequential covered Kubert’s appearance at the Toronto Fan Expo in 2011)

Spain Rodriguez,1940-2012

…Orginally appearing in 1960s underground press forums like the East Village Other and in Spain’s own Subvert comic book series, Trashman answers the question nobody asked, “What if Jack Kirby’s Sgt. Fury was a horny Marxist from the future?” Spain re-imagines the traditional superhero story from the point of view of a working-class leftist militant confronted with creeping political fascism and corporate capitalism, confronting it with paranoid drug-influenced page layouts and plotting, clunky post-Kirby figure drawing, heavy black inks, and trippy sloganeering and self-referentiality, all set in a fantasy of revolutionary sex and violence. Trashman is really a prole named Harry Barnes who is recruited and trained by the Sixth International to fight the cops and defend the workers. Trashman has several paranormal senses and the ability to change his shape at will, but he mostly likes to shoot people with machine guns in the service of a disjointed narrative –sort of OMAC meets Che Guevera. The Trashman comics are beautiful and funny love letters to a revolutionary ideal. (from my 2009 piece, “3 Superhero Comics That Were Better Than Watchmen”)

—–

2012 in Review, Part 1

still some time to see this show!

News and links from the world of Canadian comics and beyond. As always, you can see even more stuff via our Facebook page.

Item! Comics superstar Jillian Tamaki has illustrated a 150-page book included with a special edition of the debut album by U.S. music video director and musician Woodkid.

Item! And speaking of great gigs, fashionable man-about-town Marc Bell recently landed the job as go-to artist for a Prada campaign seeing print in Esquire UK. Other cartoonists include Bell’s spiritual peers Basil Wolverton and Rick Griffin. Full details at the link.

Item! I haven’t mentioned here that the Mark Laliberte-edited magazine Carousel has a tumblr strictly devoted to its comics section. The section is called 4 Panel because it features full-colour four panel comic strips by a large variety of Canadian and international cartoonists. You should really check it out, some great work there.

Item! One of the few truly working-class superheroes was my childhood fave Underdog, whose secret identity was a shoe-shine boy. The co-creator of Underdog, William Watts Biggers, died last week.

Item! Cartoonist and IDW cover artist Dave Sim talks about auctioning the artwork from his High Society graphic novel and other aspects of his doomsday plans. Some of those pieces are some of the most memorable Sim has ever done and I feel about them the same way Sim feels about Barry Windsor-Smith’s Red Nails: “But I saw it when I was 17 so I’ll always see it as a 17-year-old would see it. ‘THIS IS BLOWING. MY. MIND.’”

Item! I’ve been getting into the work of manga legend Shotaro Ishinomori lately. Ishinomori was the creator of Skullman, Kamen Rider and Cyborg 009. After Tezuka he was probably the most famous mangaka and his work in the Japanese superhero genre is comparable to Jack Kirby in influence. Many of his works are available digitally through Comixology and through this new app I just discovered. Animaru is a manga publisher whose “localizations” or manga translations are exclusively available through Facebook. They are currently publishing Ishinomori’s Mutant Sabu series.

Item! A Truro, Nova Scotia entrepreneur is pitching a comic book featuring the stars of the CBC’s smash tv show Dragon’s Den: “Johnston got the idea of featuring each of the dragons as superheroes. Johnston hired a 28-year-old single mother to draw the caricatures, as well as North River’s André Myette to help with the art and graphic design..” It’s a pretty hilarious pitch, but I think the top 10 Canadian tv shows that should be comic books are: Rocket Robin Hood, The Littlest Hobo, The Beachcombers, Mr. Dressup, Don Cherry’s Grapevine, Degrassi Junior High, Kids in the Hall, Slings and Arrows, Road to Avonlea, and 1 Girl 5 Gays.

Item! And finally, U.S. cartoonist Gabrielle Bell gets into some serious praising for Canadian artists in an interview for the Comics Journal conducted by Dan Nadel:

NADEL: Who were your — who are your work buddies these days?

BELL: I don’t know; I’ve been a bit more isolated lately. I go out sometimes with Richard McGuire and Leanne Shapton, and that’s pretty fun. I think those two are really fun.

NADEL: Yeah, Leanne’s a really interesting person. We should’ve interviewed her a long time ago.

BELL: You should. Yeah she’s smart.

NADEL: Yeah, a very interesting storyteller.

BELL: Yeah. A great artist. I loved her book.

NADEL: Which one?

BELL: Swimming Studies.

NADEL: Yeah I haven’t read that yet. Is it really good?

BELL: She’s very careful with her work. She’s so disciplined. I think I like these Canadian writers. [Laughs.]

NADEL: Alice Munro.

BELL: Well I’m Canadian, too. My grandmother is Canadian, and there’s a certain kind of Canadian sensibility I really like. It’s not too self — not too advertising of one’s self, I guess. And there’s something careful or something about it.

NADEL: Right.

BELL: Not to just generalize about a whole country. [Laughter.] But yeah, I’ve been kind of isolated lately. I met Geneviève Castrée recently on my tour. She’s cool. We have a similar sensibility. Another Canadian artist.

NADEL: Yeah. A really good artist.

BELL: Yeah.

From January 2013:

by BK Munn

As you may know, we’re big fans of cartoonist Joe Ollmann here at Sequential (read our review of his last book Mid-Life in our print edition here). That’s why we’re pretty excited about Ollmann’s newest book, Burden, scheduled for release later this month; to our minds the first big book of 2013.

This preview, available at the creator’s website as a pdf, gives a taste of the book’s deliciously dry-ronic flavour.

According to Drawn and Quarterly’s solicitation,

“Burden follows the slow, often wryly funny, disintegration of a relationship. Mark and Susan have been together for five years, and, despite Mark’s occasional bouts of depression, they have always had a strong bond, prompting envy and jealousy from their friends. A movie rental sets in motion events that test their relationship’s strength and their faith in one another. When Mark’s suppressed memory of being abducted by aliens is uncovered while watching an alien abduction film, Susan is forced to deal with the repercussions. Though she tries to be supportive, it grows increasingly difficult, as Mark becomes obsessed with alien abduction chat rooms, and refuses to leave the house. With all the keen observational wit and incisive, self-deprecating dialogue of Mid-Life, Burden is Joe Ollmann at the top of his form. Another hallmark of Ollmann’s style–his ability to write page-turning stories–is in strong evidence throughout. With a self-aware quip and a never-finer drawn line, Joe Ollmann has done it again. “

I draw comics … how can I share this with him?

Susceptible
by Geneviève Castrée
Drawn and Quarterly
ISBN: 9781770460881
$19.95

review by BK Munn

I’ve been a fan of the Quebec-born cartoonist and musician Geneviève Castrée for some years now but her small body of published comics hasn’t really found a large audience in North America. To date, a few short books published in French by boutique Montreal publisher L’Oie de Cravan, some art accompanying her recordings (she has performed as the uniquely-named Woelv and as Ô PAON), and two short comics appearing in the anthologies Kramers Ergot and Drawn and Quarterly Showcase are almost all that we have seen from her in 10 year since her debut. That’s why the publication of this autobiographical graphic memoir by D+Q is something of an event; the first long-form comics work by a unique talent with a fully-evolved style and distinctly beautiful worldview.

Susceptible tells the story of Castrée’s childhood and adolescence as an only child raised by a single mother in Quebec City and her growth as an individual and artist. Her narrative stunningly and sensitively captures isolated memories of emotional extremes (innocence, confusion, terror, self-pity, love) delineated with sumptuous brushwork and inventive cartooning. Starting from her earliest childhood memories of being abandoned by her Anglo father, Castrée leads us through the labyrinth of a complex, suffocating relationship with her mother and antagonistic stepfather, past elementary traumas (housefires, The Montreal Massacre), teenage rebellion (drugs, booze, Sonic Youth), on to eventual rapprochement with her birth father in the wilds of British Columbia and adult freedom.

Baptized by a sorcerer in the woods of Quebec (no, really, it’s in the book!), Castrée’s cartoon world is the hybrid offspring of Hergé, Croc magazine, and Claire Bretécher; her clear-line drawings have an organic fluidity, with plenty of inky grey washes, globular word balloons and diaristic cursive lettering giving her comics a distinct personality chock-full of memorable individual images and pages. Susceptible is a lyrical, snowy, atmospheric introduction to a major talent.

PREVIEW

Castrée on tour

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.

Item! The great Lizz Hickey has posted her True Romance comics, about her marriage to cartoonist and hot-dog impresario Keith Jones, all in one place. Very funny and beautiful.

Item! 8-bit Captain Canuck? 1981′s most popular Canadian video game.

Item! Dean Motter’s Mr. X at Dark Horse preview.

Item! Speaking of: a colour version of that Dean Motter/Seth photo Max posted on Monday, courtesy of Lost Heroes on Facebook.

Item! The D+Q crew at Angoul-ew.

Item! Art Spiegelman in Vancouver.

When I read this as a webcomic originally created for The Coast weekly newspaper, I enjoyed this more than anything I’ve seen by Faith Erin Hicks, who specializes in young-adult oriented adventure comics. Now that it’s a full-colour book, the story of a young Halifax woman who reluctantly and humourously takes on the mantle of super-powered evil-fighter, while dealing with cute boys and coffee-shop culture, should be a fun read with a wide appeal.

from the publisher:

“What if you can leap tall buildings and defeat alien monsters with your bare hands, but you buy your capes at secondhand stores and have a weakness for kittens? Cartoonist Faith Erin Hicks brings charming humor to the trials and tribulations of a young, female superhero, battling monsters both supernatural and mundane in an all-too-ordinary world.

A lighthearted twist on the superhero genre!”

Bestselling author Lemony Snicket invites the general public to a top secret meeting, which includes the reading of a private note, the presentation of a coded song, and the unveiling of various alarming evidence that there’s more going on than you think.

Snicket will be joined by renowned cartoonist Seth, illustrator of Snicket’s latest book, “Who Could That Be at This Hour?”, for a signing following the event.

Interested participants can book two free tickets at the TPL website.

Doors open at 6 p.m.

It featured large B&W reproductions of some of my favorite artists’ inks. Picked it up to study their lines.

Growing up in Toronto I also took note of this issue as it contained a section about home town talent.

“Mister X” feature with Chris Kelly art 1pg, Dean Motter & Seth interview with photo from UKCAC 1986 3pg, Dave McKean “Mister X” three-panel strip (“I asked Dave for a Mr X illo. The illo turned into a 3-page strip, which he has sent to Vortex on spec”) 1/2pg,

cover – 1, 2, 3, 4.

seath and dean stylin

Cover of Arken Sword no.21, 1987

Mister X

Dean Motter

Seath

Seath

Item: Much as William Moulton Marston was in his day, Dr Will Brooker was tired of seeing female characters in pop culture that fell short of his ideals, overly relied on tight cloths, high heals and physical attributes. So he set out to invent a new icon. ‘My So-Called Secret Identity‘ [site is not up yet but their Facebook page is], drawn by Suze Shore, is the tale of Cat Abigail Daniels, the smartest person in Gloria City. She remembers everything she reads, sees how everything connects. And she’s getting tired of pretending, hiding, acting dumb to save other people’s feelings. If they won’t take her seriously as Catherine Abigail Daniels, the student and cop’s kid, maybe they’ll take her seriously in a costume. Looks pretty good, I like the primes and goals a lot.

Item: Due to the SNOW, Sherwin’s Toronto launch of Serial Villan has been postponed until March. He spent the evening playing video games in his hotel room. Sounds like his idea of a nice evening off!

Item:  In the bigger picture of north american comic, CNET posted “Bizarro world! Print comics boom as digital sales rise. The common wisdom is that as a medium goes digital, the physical sales plummet. But when it comes to comic books, the common wisdom needs a new guru.” – read the full story here.

Item:  On counterpoint to some extent, Robin at Inkstuds has a fantastic interview with teacher writer and comic artist Stephen Bissette. They talk for three hours, broken up into two parts about a lot of things. In all seriousness this is one of the best big picture views of the highs and lows of making comics today. Between his own time working at DC to his front row seat watching the current generation of creators he helps to train at CCS, If you want to make comics go listen to this. If you already make comics, go listen. If you gave up, yeah, go listen. Part 1 – Part 2.

Item: In Afin de subventionner adéquatement les auteurs, ”To adequately subsidize authors”, du Journal Montréal’s DB blogger Jean-Dominic Leduc posted last month about the so far unsuccessful attempts of Voro to get backing for a comics project relating to the province of Quebec. The post is mostly an open letter to ACC & CALQ, requesting an increase in funding of their grants for the medium. Check it out, and if you’re a fan or practitioner of comics in Quebec, consider writing your own letter, emails are provided in the post. More funding for comics! It’s a good idea. More posts by Jean-Dominic can be found here.

Item: Thumbs up review here from CBR for the big finally of the Rotoworld storyline, and Andy Belanger’s first DCU story/job. I had the pleasure of reading it a day early while scanning some old art and suffering a sugar crash. I haven’t been following the books so it was a bit of being dropped smack in the middle of madness, Andy should have played me some of his metal i think!  Would have gone well with this.  Art is good stuff, solid as always. Colors a bit heavy handed, did not help in distinguishing the detail in Andy’s stuff. First are always a little disappointing. I’ll bet they had to be done in a week or something. Crazy. Yanick Paquette’s Cover art looks really nice on the review site, unfortunate about the ‘graphics’ on the printed edition. Congrats for a very respectable first DC headliner Andy!

Item: Editions TRIP are proud to announce they will publish Billy Mavreas latest book : TIBONOM, 80 amazing pages of wordless comics for all ages. Featuring an introduction by, Joe Ollmann.

Item: Kevin A. Boyd on the Shuster blog posted this link to an article for the Hamilton Spectator, about Aram Alexanian’s contributions to Canadian and American Golden Age Comics before he went to work for the family carpet business. It includes a discussion of the Canadian Whites Walter Durajlija & Ivan Koczmarek.

Item[s]:  A positive review of Salgood Sam’s [yes that's me!] Revolver Quarterly, from Rachel Fenton, a reader of the digital edition in New Zealand. All places equal distant on the internet. Éric Thériault has a new facebook page to like,  Jai Granofsky posted some fun new doodles on his blog, George Todorovski posted a cool ‘Regulators’ trailer for Visionary Comics; A comic he worked on “a while back”.  Kalman Andrasofszky joined a collective! This is from their most recent show. Sleeping Lion Heart. Acrylic and silver leaf on wood. 3′x4′ – with the plywood collective for their “HEROES” exhibit. Ramon Perez sightings at Angouleme! Here and here. Having fun doing a victory lap in the EU. Check out this cool set of photos by and of David Boswell: Cartoonist, Photographer, Illustrator, Jaded Roué. Oh hey, it’s the Comic Book Lounge’s 1st Anniversary Minicon and Industry Night today! Congratulations guys!

Ok, sun is up, time for some food and morning exercise! Keep up with us on our facebook page here.

Snowday Slushback?

by BK Munn

For a blizzardy day in February, links to a short series of posts on snow-themed comics from a few years back.

Snow in the Comics, Part 1: Sim and Snow.
“At some point in the early 1980s, Dave Sim seemed to decide to make snow a major character in his High Society graphic novel. I’m sure there was snow in earlier issues since much of the series was a parody of the Barry Windsor-Smith Conan comics and I’m pretty sure there was at least one issue of Conan that featured barbarians fighting frost giants in the wilds of Hyperboria, or wherever it was that Conan was from, but Sim’s use of snow in these later Cerebus issues really struck a chord with my 13-year-old self.”

Snow in the Comics, Part 2: Genevieve Castree revisits Herge.
“Perhaps the most famous of all snow-themed comics is Herge’s Tintin in Tibet, the classic, austere graphic novel that Herge identified as his favourite. Who could forget, after reading this story as a child, the epic journey of the indomitable boy reporter to find his long-lost friend Chang? During a troubled period of his life, Herge poured all his artistry into this simple tale of Tintin’s adventure in the Himalayas, his encounter with the lonely Yeti, and the struggles of his companions to survive and reunite Tintin with Chang, his friend from an adventure drawn decades earlier.”

Snow in the Comics, Part 3: Charles “Snowman” Schulz .
“Peanuts seems to contain the most extensive treatment of snow and winter of any comic, with the possible exception of some theoretical Scandinavian or Inuit strip I have yet to encounter. Of course, you could pick almost any subject and Peanuts will have treated it exhaustively, from football to philosophy, from World War I to worms –it was a smart strip that ran for 50 years. (And with the handy index in Fantagraphics’ new Complete Peanuts, you can actually look these things up.) Winter holds a central place in the iconography of the strip, not just as a marker for the passage of time and the basis for seasonal gags, but as a metaphor for psychological states and the various major themes of the strip.”

Jeff Lemire Headlines Weekend Minicon

by BK Munn

Comic Book Lounge – 1st Anniversary Minicon and Industry Night
Saturday, February 9
12:00pm-11:55pm

Item! The latest issues of Robin Bougie’s annual comics porn anthology Sleazy Slice and his long-running Z-movie magazine Cinema Sewer are now available. Sleazy Slice #6 features a cover by David Paleo & Rebecca Dart, a long story “about roving gangs of lesbian gangs that hunt the post apocalyptic wasteland for sniveling victims” by Maxine Frank and Bougie, and contributions from SCAR, David Paleo, Rebecca Dart, Wes Crum, Aaron Lange, and J.B. Cinema Sewer #26 has a cover by James Stokoe and the usual articles about old movies and pornos. The books will be launching February 9th in Vancouver. Details here.

Item! The Angouleme comics festival is underway in France right now and there is a healthy contingent of Canadians attending. Professor Bart Beaty is blogging about the festival for The Comics Reporter, as usual. Publisher La Pasteque is there and notes that its Red Ketchup series was singled out for a double-page profile in the special issue of the Liberation newspaper devoted to the festival. Also, Chester Brown is in attendance for the first time, pimping the Cornelius translation of his Paying For It memoir. Other Canadians? Delcourt has Guy Delisle and Zviane under its tent; L’Apocalypse has Genevieve Castree; La Pasteque has Real Godbout and Pierre Fournier; and there are more I’m sure.

Item! Writing for the University of Western Ontario’s official paper, David Scott relates the history of cartoonist and London resident Gord Johnston, whose “It Happened in Canada” strip was a big hit in the late 60s and early 70s. (I thought I posted a Jeet Heer article about the strip on Sequential years ago but I can’t seem to find it.): “In the early 1970s, Canadian cartoonist and former Western employee Gordon Johnston of London created the comic It Happened At Western, a campus history spinoff of his national comic success It Happened in Canada, launched in 1967 to mark the country’s centennial and published in more than 60 newspapers at its peak. The Western comic panels appeared regularly in the Alumni Gazette from 1971-79.”

Item! I don’t remember posting about this before, but the Strange Adventures store in Halifax is moving locations according to owner Calum Johnston: The move relates to redevelopment plans by the owner of the building where Johnston leases space for his shop. (Additional details on the redevelopment of the site were not available when this story was written.) “A renovation of the building means a loss of the relatively low rent we’ve enjoyed here,” said Johnston. So the search is on for a compatible 1,600-square-foot location with reasonable rent. Johnston said he believes it is more important for a comic book shop to have extra staff available to help customers rather than spending more money on rent.

Item! Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang graphic travelogue has been optioned as a film and I think some sort of production has already got under way? Hollywood has already tacked on an espionage/mistaken identity plot to heighten the Kafka-esque farce level: Steve Conrad, who scripted The Pursuit Of Happyness and most recently the Ben Stiller-directed remake The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, is writing the screenplay. The film is about outsourcing run amok when a young animator sent to North Korea is accused of espionage.”

Item! The Joe Shuster Awards crew would like to remind you that they are still accepting submissions for the Gene Day self-publishing award. The $500 prize could go to anyone who put out their own comics in 2012: “Copies can be sent to the Comic Book Lounge in Toronto where they will be gathered for review by the Gene Day Award Coordinator and the Jury for this award. The comic had to have been released (but not distributed through Diamond or any official channels) between 1/1/2012 and 12/31/2012. Deadline to submit is May 16, 2013.”

Item! Finally, the video from last Fall’s 12hrZineMachine event that was part of Nuit Blanche. It includes quite the roster of Toronto cartoonists, including Fiona Smyth, Chester Brown, and people associated with Koyama Press and the Toronto Comics Jam:

Lemire’s Year?

by BK Munn

Part 1 of Sequential’s look back over the last year in Canadian comics.

In 2012 I stopped posting a regular bestseller list on this site, mostly because it was too much work (lots of cutting and pasting) and because I didn’t think focusing on mass market comic sales really served the interests of the readers of Sequential and our stated concern with local and avant garde art. That being said, it’s always fun to see what is popular and have an idea of what’s going on in the comic shops of North America.

Diamond Distributors, the major supplier of comic books to specialty comic shops in North America, released its year-end numbers for 2012 earlier in the month and several sites, including John Jackson Miller’s Comichron, have analysis and estimated numbers of those rankings. Diamond doesn’t prvide separte numbers for the Canadian market, so we can’t see specifically what sold in Canadian shops, but ooking at Miller’s list, we can at least gather what were the best-selling graphic novels by Canadians from 2012:

(below you will see the rankings on our list, followed by the Diamond rankings, and Miller’s estimated number of copies sold through Diamond)

1. (79) Parker: The Score by Darwyn Cooke (IDW) 6,800 copies
2. (88) Scott Pilgrim Color 1 by Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni) 6,400
3. (113) Sweet Tooth 4 by Jeff Lemire (DC) 5,600
4. (118) Underwater Welder by Jeff Lemire (Top Shelf) 5,500
5. (141) King City by Brandon Graham (Image) 4,900
6. (149) Scott Pilgrim 1 by Bryan Lee OMalley (Oni) 4,800
7. (189) Scott Pilgrim Color 2 by Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni) 4,100
8. (199) Sweet Tooth 1 by Jeff Lemire (DC) 4,000
9. (218) Sweet Tooth 5 by Jeff Lemire (DC) 3,800
10. (269) Scott Pilgrim 2 by Bryan Lee OMalley (Oni) 3,400
11. (387) Lost Dogs by Jeff Lemire (Top Shelf) 2,800
12. (429) Scott Pilgrim 3 by Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni) 2,600
13. (504) Scott Pilgrim Vol. 4 by Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni) 2,400
14. (549) Sweet Tooth Vol. 2 by Jeff Lemire (DC) 2,200
15. (583) Scott Pilgrim Vol. 5 by Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni) 2,200
16. (609) Hark A Vagrant BY Kate Beaton (D&Q) 2,100
17. (630) Spawn Origins Vol. 1 by McFarlane et al (Image) 2,100
18. (656) Sweet Tooth Vol. 3 Animal Armies by Jeff Lemire (DC) 2,000
19. (674) Scott Pilgrim Vol. 6 by Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni) 2,000
20. (799) Jerusalem Chronicles From The Holy City by Guy Delisle (D&Q) 1,800
21. (833) Parker The Hunter Sc by Darwyn Cooke (IDW) 1,800

Notes: the reissue of Jeff Lemire’s debut graphic novel Lost Dogs even outranked the latest issue of Love and Rockets on the list. In many ways it was the year of Lemire, with his books actually outselling big books like Chris Ware’s Building Stories (#412; 2,600 copies) and Bechdel’s Are You My Mother (#600; 2,100 copies) in comic shops (those two books did much better in traditional book stores and Amazon/Indigo, I believe). Once you get below about #35 on the Diamond list, you see that most graphic novels generally sold less than 10,000 copies per title.

Overall, including all comics, trades, graphic novels, and magazines, Diamond had sales of around $474.61 million (up 15% vs. previous year).

The overall topsellers? Walking Dead ruled.

1 Walking Dead Vol. 1 $9.99 Image 74,700
2 Walking Dead Vol. 2 14.99 Image 46,200
3 Batman Earth One HC 22.99 DC 45,700
4 Walking Dead Vol. 16 $14.99 Image 42,700
5 Walking Dead Vol. 3 $14.99 Image 34,500
6 Walking Dead Vol. 17 $14.99 Image 29,700
7 Walking Dead Vol. 4 $14.99 Image 26,800
8 Batman HC Vol. 1 The Court of Owls $24.99 DC 26,700
9 Walking Dead Vol. 15 $14.99 Image 26,200
10 League of Extraordinary Gentlemen III Century #3 2009 $9.95 Top Shelf 24,400
11 Superman Earth One HC Vol. 2 $22.99 DC 23,900
12 Saga Vol. 1 $9.99 Image 23,300
13 Walking Dead Vol. 5 $14.99 Image 23,100
14 Watchmen $19.99 DC 21,300
15 Batman Dark Knight Returns $19.99 DC 20,000
—–
35 Batman Year One Deluxe Sc $14.99 DC 12,100

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival has announced a second slate of headline guests. Things are starting to heat up on the TCAF front, I think. Three months to go…

This round shows TCAF doing what it does best, mixing one or two bestselling big names with crossover appeal and indy darlings with buzz books. A delicate international balance of impeccable alt-comix cred and crowd-pleasers, sometimes wrapped up in the same person. There are a few people and books on that list that even a boring nerd like me can get interested in. Glyn Dillon had what many people consider a book of the year, for instance.

The newest additions, from the TCAF site:

Bill Amend is the cartoonist behind the comic strip FoxTrot, and has been at it for almost 25 years. He was named Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year by the National Cartoonists Society in 2007.

David B. is a French comic book artist and writer, widely regarded for the book Epileptic. In 1990, he co-founded the independent publisher L’Association, which became a major force in French small-press comics. (France)

Chihoi is a self-taught artist who has been releasing comics since 1996. His work has been translated into Italian, French, and now English with the debut of The Library. This works also marks the beginning of the Conundrum International Imprint. (Hong Kong)

Glyn Dillon has returned to comics after a lengthy hiatus from comics with the critically-acclaimed graphic novel The Nao of Brown. His work has appeared in Deadline Magazine, Shade the Changing Man, and an episode of Sandman. He is attending TCAF with his publisher, SelfMadeHero. (UK)

Michael Kupperman is an American comic artist and humorist whose words and pictures have appeared in places ranging from the New Yorker to Saturday Night Live. He has written four books and illustrated many more. He is touring in support of Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol 2. (USA)

Bryan Lee O’Malley, is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling, hometown hero and creator of the Scott Pilgrim series of comics, which has been adapted into both a video game and a movie. He will be debuting Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness Hardcover Color Edition (Canada)

Michel Rabagliati is the award-winning artist and author of the semi-autobiographicalPaul series (Paul in the Country, Paul Moves Out, Paul Has a Summer Job, Paul Goes Fishing, The Song of Roland), depicting life in Quebec. Rabagliati will be debuting the latest in the series, Paul Joins the Scouts. (Canada)

Judith Vanistendael will be debuting When David Lost his Voice with UK publisher SelfMadeHero. She holds several art degrees. Her semi-autobiographical book, Dance by the Light of the Moon was nominated for two awards at Angouleme, including the grand prize. (Belgium)

Venez gribouiller, discuter, lever le coude et libérer vos énergies créatrices en notre compagnie. Aiguisez-bien vos crayons et vos esprits, on compte sur vous!

An evening of good-humoured drawing, conversation and, incidentally, a wee bit of beverage imbibing.

Bring your artistic weapons of choice, be they your wits or brushes. Preferably both, at least early on..

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Item! Montreal bookstore Monet interviews cartoonist Luc Bossé, since 2010 the micro-publisher behind the dynamic Editions Pow Pow. Bossé talks about the transition from the zine world to books and the difficulties of editing your own comics. He also mentions the upcoming slate of 2013 graphic novels from Pow Pow’s already established stable of creators: Pierre Bouchard and Francis Desharnais are preparing the third volume of Motel Galactic for April’s Festival de bande dessinée francophone de Québec, Samuel Cantin is preparing Vil et misérable for June’s Festival BD de Montréal, Sophie Bédard will release the third volume of her Glorieux printemps for the end of Summer, Zviane will release Les deuxièmes alsdo for the end of Summer, and Michel Hellman’s Nunavik will appear in November. The publisher will also release its first full-colour work, by new-comer Jean-Claude Aumais, as well as a new volume chronicling the continuing adventures of Bossé’s and Alexandre Simard’s Yves character, Yves, fidèle à lui-même. Google translation.

Item! If you have ever wondered about the market for French-language comics in Quebec, Monet also has posted its bestsellers for 2012, with Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem travelogue placing quite high in both the overall and more-specific bd lists.

Item! According to Reuters, head of Disney/Marvel, CEO Robert Iger, got a 20% raise in 2012, earning $40.2 million. “Iger, who turns 62 in February, succeeded Michael Eisner as CEO in October 2005. His reign has seen acquisitions of filmmaker George Lucas’s Lucasfilm Ltd and its “Star Wars” franchise, “Toy Story” creator Pixar, and the comic book powerhouse Marvel. Disney’s stock has more than doubled since Iger took over at the helm. It jumped 33 percent in 2012 alone. The company earned $3.07 per share, excluding items, on revenue of $42.28 billion for its fiscal year ended September 2012.”

Item! Through a haze of nostalgia, National Post columnist Dave Bidini reflects on the new Black Canary cafe attached to Silver Snail comic shop (I always thought the Jet Fuel cafe was the city’s comics coffee shop): “the Canary as not only a true comics cafe, but a Yonge street portal, maybe the only place on the strip to sit and drink and watch Toronto; a new Toronto; new and fast and lively and busy.”

Item! The Inkstuds podcast has kicked off 2013 with three great interviews: Nate Bulmer, Chris Wright, and
Nicole Georges. Robin is also posting crazy out-of-print weirdness, including some lost Marc Bell, on his Canadian Comics Archive tumblr.

first Ottawa Comics Jam of 2013

facebook page

Why spend a cold winter night drawing alone when you can draw comics in a warm, cozy atmosphere with other artists? Barring a blizzard, the first jam of the year will celebrate SNOW (and the eventual melting of it all…)

Come and experience a comic-making technique called ‘Melting Snow Ball’ where each new panel has one object/character removed from it than the previous panel (applies to text as well.) Thanks to Gérard Bélec for suggesting the new technique!

January ‘Melting Snowball’ Comic Jam
Wednesday, January 30th, 7 pm – 9:30 pm
Shanghai Restaurant
651 Somerset St. W.
Ottawa, ON K1R 5K3

Contact: Suzanne
613.863.8264
ottawacomicjam(at)gmail(dot)com

Paper provided, event cost: free

PRESENTATION AND SIGNING AT:
LOS ANGELES • FRI FEB 15 • 7:30 PM • SKYLIGHT BOOKS
CHICAGO • SAT FEB 16 • 7 PM • QUIMBY’S
TORONTO • MON FEB 18 • 7 PM • THE BEGUILING
MONTREAL • TUES FEB 19 • 7 PM • LIBRAIRIE D+Q
BROOKLYN • WED FEB 20 • 7 PM • DESERT ISLAND
PORTLAND • THU MAR 7 • 6-9 PM • FLOATING WORLD COMICS
SEATTLE • SAT MAR 9 • 6-9 PM • FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKSTORE

The WAG is the 6th largest public gallery in Canada with 10s of thousands of items in its permanent collection. Sequential covered the 2006 Funny Papers exhibit here.

New Narrative VI: Seeing is Believing!

University of Toronto, 10 May 2013

Human beings display worlds to others in performances that engage and generate images. The spectacle of performance leads to many kinds of reflection–from performativity to epistemology, from theories of history to literary and aesthetic theory, from cultural criticism to palaeography. It extends ultimately to examining the role of reflection (speculation) and criticism of images and their worlds.

We are again soliciting papers on a wide range of issues that fall generally under the rubric of “Seeing is believing!” The focus of the New Narrative has been graphic novels, comic art, and related visual media; but we also welcome papers from a variety of fields: English, Philosophy, History, Art, Film, Cultural Studies, and Political Science (among others). Essays may engage the following (incomplete) list:

-representation and photography
-illustrated and multi-media works
-web design and on-line comix
-historical repertoires of images
-Guy Debord and the spectacle
-images in archives
-political manipulations of images
-the speculative and the spectacular
-bande dessinée & European comix
-illustrations in (literary) novels

Proposals should be 400-500 words and must clearly indicate significance, the line of argument, principal texts considered, and relation to existing scholarship (or originality). One email copy of the proposal, and a 50 word bio note must be included, as an attachment in MS Word (in .doc or .rtf, not .docx).

Deadline for proposals is 31 March 2013 (responses by 15 April 2013) - Questions? Submissions? Email me! Dr Andrew Lesk, Department of English, University of Toronto - andrew.lesk@utoronto.ca.

Here’s an interview our own Salgood Sam conducted with Andrew at last years conference.

Another delayed C-List coming ‘atcha.

by Robert Pincombe
[edited and reformatted by max,
"good lord who let
the cyberweasels loose
with the style guides?!"] 

Items! I had a chance to pop by Ty Templeton’s Comic Book Boot Camp and the Comic Book Embassy’s 24-Comic Event, hosted by the Comic Lounge and Guerilla Printing.

The turnout was most impressive with over thirty people working at the halfway point. There are several round ups and links for a lot of the diverse new work created. Alice Quinn has a video report over at tdotcomics.ca. And over at Mr. Templeton did a Bun Toon tributes to 24 hour cartoon warriors! And in the notes on Quinn’s clip you’ll find this excellent list as well! Keiren’s post on the event (all the participants). 24 hour comics online: Christopher Yao & James Cooper’s Sad Robot. Rodrigo Bravo: The Last Day. Brice Hall’s  Two Hapless Chaps. Aaron Feldman and Rebecca Slack’s Space.  Ricky Lima’s Huma Am & Adam Gorham’s malevolent spider.

Item! Speaking of the Comic Book Lounge. This week they held their first Ladies Night. But given the success, we doubt it will be their last.

Item! Brian Lee O’Malley’s “Sex Bob-Omb”, Scott Pilgrim’s cartoon band, was honoured by Now Magazine as one of Toronto’s Best Fake Bands.

Now let’s get the heck out of Toronto for a bit…

Item! Victoria’s Times Colonist writer, Robert Amos, interviews artist Lyle Schultz (www.lyleschultzart.com)

Item! San Francisco’s Berkely Rep Theatre stages comic book style play.  We’ve seen this approach before. Does not always work though.

Two cartoony items from across the pond of note:

Item! The Telegraph profiles about an exhibition at the Cartoon Museum of London, England honoring Canada-born cartoonist Wally Fawkes (Trog).

Item! www.planetslade.com, the website of journalist and essayist Paul Slade, offers an extensive history and summation of the life and work of Reg Smythe, creator Andy Capp. Slade argues convincingly that Andy Capp is one of the most successful comic strips ever and Smythe is unfairly overlooked. Grab a coffee and maybe a sandwich. It’s a long read but well worth the time.

Saturday, Jan 19, 2-7pm Comic Book Lounge

Help us make our Quinntessential Comix Introduction Series a reality! Come out and buy some sketches from these amazing local artists:
Adam Gorham http://aprincelydreadful.blogspot.ca/
Brian Evinou http://brianevinou.com/
Christopher Yao http://yaozagraphics.com/
Savvannah MacIntosh http://savannahmacintosh.com/
Megan Kearney http://www.thequietly.com/
Leonard Kirk http://www.comicartcommunity.com/gallery/categories.php?cat_id=254
Adira Rotstein http://www.adirarotstein.com/
Rodrigo Bravo www.rodrigobravo.ca

the first QCX series on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/user/QuinntessentialComix/videos

For those who haven’t been to a sketching event, this is an event where you get to ask an artist to draw you stuff! You can check out their art style above & choose which artist would make the coolest… sketch of batman directing traffic …or Spider-man in the loo! I mean you could ask for superman flying but it is up to you . If you are reallllllly nice and bring photo reference maybe you could get one of artists to draw your mom & send her the portrait for her birthday – the possibilities are endless!!!!

Thanks for support in telling all your friends and coming out & buying lots of sketches!!

Art Spiegelman Heads List

by BK Munn

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival has announced its initial slate of featured guests for 2013. Taking place May 11th and 12th 2013 at the Toronto Reference Library, this year’s show will feature an international group of headliners including Art Spiegelman (Maus, Co-Mix), Francoise Mouly (Art Editor of The New Yorker, Founder of Toon Books, Co-Founder RAW Magazine), Taiyo Matsumoto (Tekkon Kinkreet, Sunny), Raina Telgemeier (Smile, Drama), Blutch (So Long, Silver Screen), Gengoroh Tagame (The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame), Dash Shaw (BodyWorld, New School), and Canada’s own Maurice Vellekoop (Gloria Badcock). Vellekoop also designed this year’s poster, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the festival.

The 10th anniversary is the subject of an art show at the Steamwhistle Gallery featuring contributions from every past guest of the festival on the subject of comics and Toronto. TCAF events will also include The World Of Taiyo Matsumoto exhibit, and the debuts of new books by Matsumoto, Shaw, and Spiegelman. PictureBox will also debut The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame: The Master of Bara Manga, designed by Chip Kidd and introduced by literary icon Edmund White, billed as “a collection of works by [the] undisputed gay bondage comics master.”

A regularly-updated lists of books scheduled to debut at TCAF can be seen here. Exhibitors and publishers are listed as well.

full press release here

by BK Munn

Koyama Press has announced four new books for its Spring 2013 line-up. The books are scheduled to debut in May (well, one in June), just in time for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and include two titles by Michael DeForge. The DeForge books are the collection Very Casual and the fifth issue of DeForge’s one-man anthology Lose. Also on the slate: Journal, the first English translation of work by Montreal’s Julie Delporte; and Everything Takes Forever, by New Yorker Victor Kerlow.

If you are like me and lie awake at night worrying that DeForge might release a minicomic at some American festival that you will never see, then the publication of Very Casual should help ease your anxiety. Along with the upcoming collection of his Ant Comic serial by D+Q, Very Casual goes a long way towards ensuring that a large amount of DeForge’s non-Lose stories will be collected in something more permanent than photocopied and stapled self-published minis.

Very Casual
ISBN: 978-0-9879630-7-9
$15.00
6 x 9 inches, 152 pages, b&w and colour interior, colour softcover.

Publisher’s description: “Culled from mini comics, online comics and anthology contributions, Very Casual collects notable short stories from DeForge’s prolific oeuvre. Included are stories about litter gangs, meat-filled snowmen, righteous cops, beagle/human hybrids, and forest-bound drag queens. Very Casual also collects Spotting Deer, which won the Pigskin Peters Award for best non-traditional, non-narrative or avant-garde work at the 2011 Doug Wright Awards.”

Lose #5
ISBN: 978-0-9879630-6-2
$8.00
7 x 10 inches, 48 pages, b&w interior, colour softcover.
(scheduled for June but maybe available for TCAF?)

see a preview here

Publisher’s description: “Lose #5 is the latest issue in his one-man anthology series. This issue houses three self-contained stories: “Living Outdoors” tracks two high school students as they explore a zoo and experiment with hallucinogens. “Muskoka” is the story of a cowboy on the road home to see his family. “Recent Hires” follows a young author’s descent into the criminal underworld in order to win the affections of a girl.”

Journal
ISBN: 978-0-9879630-9-3
$20.00
6.5 x 9 inches, 184 pages, colour interior, colour softcover.

Publisher’s description: “Koyama Press will also be publishing the first English translation of Montreal-based artist Julie Delporte’s autobiographical comics called Journal. Delporte is a fellow of the renowned Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS) in White River Junction, Vermont. She co-organizes Montreal’s annual “48 Heures” comics festival and newsprint anthology, runs and co-hosts the comics-centric radio show “Dans ta Bulle” (“In Your Bubble”), and has been published in French by Brussels-based publisher L’employé du Moi and Montreal-based publisher Colosse. Journal displays Delporte’s organic and immediate drawings that utilize an uncanny sense of colour and composition to illustrate their intimate, diarist narratives. Cataloguing an emotional breakup, an artist’s residency at CCS and the anxieties and joys of everyday life between February 2011 and October 2012, Delporte’s elegant illuminated diary is a private life made public and poetic.”

Everything Takes Forever
ISBN: 978-0-9879630-8-6
$10.00
8 x 10 inches, 60 pages, b&w interior, colour softcover.

Publisher’s description: “Spring 2013 will be rounded out by Manhattan-born and based Victor Kerlow’s Everything Takes Forever, which is a collection of the cartoonist and illustrator’s ink-and-wash comics that blur the quotidian with the absurd. In Kerlow’s world tacos and toast have bodies and smoke, tiny men who can no longer copulate or consume sandwiches deal with existential angst, and dream logic pervades. Kerlow has worked with a diverse range of clients including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Fantagraphics, MTV, IFC Films, Random House, The Believer, Bloomberg, and many more. Kerlow also draws weekly illustrations for The Metro Diary in The New York Times.”

(I did not buy any of these comics. To my knowledge none of them featured art by Gary Panter.)

Top 25 Books of 2012

1. Walking Dead vol.1 by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore
This post-apocalyptic story of how ordinary people deal with a zombie invasion, is not just a smash hit on TV! You’ll see Walking Dead repeatedly on this list, a testament to how good the story is, and how invested its readers have become.

2. Walking Dead vol.16 by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

3. Walking Dead vol.17 by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

4. Adventure Time vol.1 by Ryan North, Branden Lamb, and Shelli Paroline
Based on the hit Cartoon Network TV series, this book continues the adventures of Finn and Jake as they fight against the Lich, who is trying to take over the land of Ooo. They are joined by Marceline, Princess Bubblegum, the Ice King, and Lumpy Space Princess.

5. Walking Dead vol.2 by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

6. Saga vol.1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
It’s a sci-fi Romeo and Juliet, set in a fantastical world steeped in the mystery and intrigue we’ve come to expect from Vaughan (Y the Last Man, Ex Machina).

7. Underwater Welder by Jeff Lemire
This is the story of an expectant father, trying to figure his life out, especially in the context of his relationship with his own late father. Mysterious and touching, with a hint of The Twilight Zone.

8. Amulet vol.5 by Kazu Kibuishi
The latest in a series about two kids who find themselves embroiled in a hereditary battle to save a fantasy world populated by demons, robots, and talking animals.

9. Avatar the Last Airbender: The Promise vol.1 by Gene Luen Yang, Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko, and Gurihiru
This long-anticipated series picks up where the hit Nickolodeon cartoon ended. Aang must fight against the Fire Nation in order to prevent another world war.

10. Walking Dead Compendium vol.1 by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard

11. Batman Black Mirror by Scott Snyder, Jock, and Francesco Francavilla
This contains two stories reprinted from Detective Comics. In Black Mirror, Batman must track down a serial killer and face one of Gotham’s oldest evils. In Hungry City, Batman must deal with Gotham’s underworld of organized crime.

12. Bone vol.1 by Jeff Smith
The epic fantasy story in which Fone Bone’s quest to return home is waylaid, when he finds himself intertwined in a much larger adventure. This classic comic, originally begun in the early 90s, is a must read for fans of all ages and remains one of the best comic stories of all time.

13. Walking Dead vol.3 by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

14. Walking Dead vol.6 by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

15. Chew vol.5 by John Layman and Rob Guillory
John Chu is a cibopathic federal agent, gaining clues by tasting things and sometimes victims. In this volume, he is kidnapped by someone wanting to find out exactly what he knows.

16. Blacksad: A Silent Hell by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido
Replacing Blacksad vol.1 on our list is its sequel, A Silent Hell. This volume of the acclaimed anthropomorphic crime noir takes place in 1950s New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

17. Walking Dead vol.7 by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

18. Walking Dead vol.15 by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

19. Chew vol.1 by John Layman and Rob Guillory

20. Sailor Moon vol.3 by Naoko Takeuchi
Reprinted at last, this series continues to see the same rampant popularity it had the first time around. This is a classic good vs. evil manga, in which Sailor Scouts fight to protect the Moon and the moon princess against powerful forces.

21. Walking Dead vol.8 by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

22. Sailor Moon vol.1 by Naoko Takeuchi

23. Batman Earth One by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank
A dark reimagining of Batman’s origin, in which his thirst for vengeance clouds his ability to distinguish between friend and foe.

24. American Vampire vol.1 by Scott Snyder, Stephen King, and Rafael Albuquerque
This popular series is a fresh take on vampires. It follows a new breed of vampire through periods in American history. This volume includes stories set in the 1920s and in the Wild West.

25. Walking Dead Compendium vol.2 by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

“Something came up recently on the Comic Book Daily site about Anglo-American artists and there’s an unfamiliar name on one of the strips (sample attached), Dr. Voodoo, from the Canadian edition of Whiz Comics.

Who the heck was M.Leake and how long did he (or she) work for Double A?”

If you have any information about this artist, please let us know through the comments or the email link at right.

Dr. Voodoo by M. Leake, Whiz Comics #11.

CARL CAMPEAU : Louis Riel
VERNISSAGE – ESTAMPE & DESSIN

VERNISSAGE SAMEDI 12 JAN, 15hr -18hr

EXPOSITION 12 JAN – 3 FEV, 2013

Communiqué de l’artiste

Le présent projet m’a été inspiré par la lecture de la bande dessinée Louis Riel A Comic-strip Biography de Chester Brown. De cette lecture est né un désir de raconter cette histoire à mon tour, dans un vocabulaire qui m’est propre, à travers l’art visuel. J’ai cherché un vocabulaire graphique simple pour illustrer cette page d’histoire. Le parallélogramme me semblait la forme parfaite et assez chargée de sens parce qu’elle illustre bien les multiples dichotomies que contient ce récit. J’ai déposé sur un support vierge différentes compositions qui rappellent tantôt les empennages d’une flèche, tantôt des gerbes de blé ou les frontières de lots de terre agricole. Le but est de résumer les revendications des Métis : le droit à cultiver et le droit de chasser sur des terres qui étaient à eux.

Bio

Carl Campeau vit et travaille à Montréal. Après des études en littérature et en cinéma, il glisse vers l’art visuel. Autodidacte, sa production artistique se caractérise par une économie du langage plastique, par des formes géométriques simples, lignes droites, couleurs monochromes, où chaque action est déposée sur un support brut et immaculé. Que ce soit par ses collages, pastels ou sérigraphies, il réside toujours un désir de raconter une histoire à travers les vides laissés sur les œuvres.

Il présente ici pour sa première exposition solo une relecture très personnelle de la révolte du Nord-Ouest par les Métis et leur chef Louis Riel. À travers un corpus de sérigraphies, il propose vingt-quatre totems modernes en mémoire des hommes emprisonnés, tués ou exécutés lors de la révolte.

“Dimly Lit Thinking Cap”

review by BK Munn

Just what is it that makes today’s zines so different, so appealing?

Had a nice chat with zine-king, cartoonist and international collage phenomenon Marc Bell on New Year’s Day and he passed along his two latest offerings. The Senior Set, subtitled “A Drawing Booklet by Old People That Nobody Cares About,” is a collection of collaborative drawings by Bell and Vancouver artist Owen Plummer on the theme of old school zine technology (glue sticks, long staplers) and includes visits from senior citizen friends like “Senior Tired of Drawing Unit” (the bearded ancient-one who uses a magical “drawing cane”) and “Thee Old Kinko’s Ghost” (known to spout word balloons full of helpful platitudes like, “you should send your new zine to Broken Pencil!”). I think some of the drawings here (or parts of some of the drawings?) date back several years and have been dusted off, completed/enhanced, and compiled into this handsome photocopied edition that you can either add to your collection of zine masterpieces or save to wipe the drool from your toothless mouth after you reach retirement age.

Tired of Drawing Books picks up the theme of aging (or is it tiredness?) and spreads it among a larger group of collaborators including Peter Thompson, Billy Bert Young, Mehdi Hercberg, Amy Lockhart, Michael DeForge, Patrick Kyle, Keith Jones, and the afore-mentioned Owen Plummer –as Mad Magazine would say, the usual gang of idiots. Although the phrase “eclipsed by ‘the kids’” appears on the cover, this collection of drawings is less concerned with generational issues and more with the patented Bell-style stream-of-consciousness mash-ups and goofs, stirring a few younger artists into the mix.

What makes these zines so appealing? Besides seeing the results of artistic socializing and unfettered creativity? Look at the cover to Tired of Drawing Books above. Bold lines, shanty-town textures, weird architectural compositions, those perfect clusters of non sequiturs, neologisms, and stoopid-smart observations. It’s a friggin werk of aht.

Printed in editions of 50 each, both books are available for $4.00 a piece through Bell at his Etsy store. The store is also chock-full of past offerings like Marc Connery’s Melamine Car Bomb, the Nog a Dod anthology, and old copies of Bell’s Mojo Action Companion Unit. Snap ‘em up before more people from France beat you to it!

Take it away Robert:

Item! Diana Tamblyn has started posting her personal Best of 2012 on her blog, starting with Brian K. Vaughn and our own Fiona Staples.

Item! Dave Lapp’s latest book People Around Here, gets more love from InsideToronto.com.

Item!Toronto’s Comic Book Lounge, Ty Templeton’s Comic Book Bootcamp and the Comic Book Embassy are sponsoring a 24 Hour Comic Challenge at the Lounge on Sat. January 5. the announcement is a Facebook page.

Item!This extra webby Christmas gift making the YouTube rounds (and spotlighted on ABC News apparently) was partially filmed at Toronto’s shared Comic Book Lounge and Guerilla Printing shop.

Item! Kingston collector Sheila Marsh is interviewed in Kingston Business Today by a reporter who knows nothing about comics.

Item! St. Catherines Standard’s Health Reporter and writer of a twice monthly anti-stupid rant, cites 1950’s anti-comics crusader Frederic Wertham as part of his don’t blame gaming for violence argument.

Item! The Economist talks webcomics, including a shout out for Kate Beaton.

Item! Robot Roulette plays six questions with Faith Erin Hicks.

Item! Need a belated Christmas Gift or some New Year’s non-football viewing? You couldn’t’ go wrong with Ron Mann’s seminal comix documentary, Comic Book Confidential’s 20th Anniversary release, reviewed here at whatdvd.net.

“Why wouldn’t I be happy? My girlfriend’s obsessed with a cat!”

Fanny & Romeo
By Yves Pelletier and Pascal Girard
(translation by KerryAnn Cochrane)
Conundrum Press
isbn 978-1-894994-65-1
136 pages/full colour
$20

review by BK Munn

This beautiful little book quietly slipped into bookstores at the end of 2012 like a stray cat sidling through a kitchen window in search of warmth and vittles. And while at first glance it appears a tad scrawny and undernourished, once given a chance it repays attention with some amusement and emotion.

The titular characters in this low-key romantic comedy are underachieving graphic designer Fanny and the stray cat Romeo she adopts when his previous owner (and Fanny’s best friend) moves to the Philippines to save a long-distance romance. Fanny’s own relationship to real-estate agent Fabien is on slippery ground. Fabien’s career is in the ascendant, but his passive-aggressive, emotionally-distant personality is at odds with Fanny’s desire for motherhood and domesticity, a situation she tries to rectify with her own passive-aggressive introduction of a feline child-surrogate into the mix.

Of course Romeo turns out to be a cupid in reverse, his presence shining a spotlight on the minor faultlines in Fanny and Fabien’s relationship and essentially driving a wedge between them; both sides using the cat as a club to belay the other. Fabien’s allergic reaction to Romeo transforms into a full-blown case of the breakup blues, with Fanny and the cat subsequently moving into her friend’s vacated apartment the first in a series of comic episodes, replete with relationship set-pieces and slapstick moments. True to formula, Fanny eventually gets her shit together and has a few relationship epiphanies, just in time for a holiday-themed resolution. The whole thing reads like a pitch for a made-for-cable rom-com or, if Romeo was a dog, a heartwarming Hollywood production starring Luke Wilson (writer Pelletier has credits as a director, sketch-comedy actor and television scripter).

The fizziness of the plot is more than made up for by the charm and grace of Girard’s cartooning, which transforms the cardboard characters into fleshy individuals, blushing, sweating, and mewling their way through the conventional plot. Under his wiggly pen-line and blobs of pastel watercolour, Fanny and Fabien’s tribulations are given a human, albeit super-cute, emotional dimension. Originally published as Valentin by Quebec’s La Pasteque, and ably translated, lush sound-effects and all, by KerryAnn Cochrane, Fanny and Romeo is a charming love letter from a great cartoonist and a pleasant holiday treat.

PREVIEW

and from Jasper, Chopper and the gang (art by Jim Simpkins)

Doug Wright’s cartooning career had basically four streams.

In the first place, and most famously, there was his weekly pantomime comic strip Nipper, later rechristened Doug Wright’s Family. Secondly, there was Wright’s work on Juniper Junction, the weekly strip he inherited from Jimmy Frise. Originally a single panel that ran in The Family Herald magazine and a few other rural papers, Wright turned the feature into a real strip and used it as a place to prove himself and later stretch his wings and play with dialogue and verbal humour. Set in a rural community, its larger cast of characters made possible an exploration of a wider variety of experiences than his nuclear-family strip. This “side” strip was also the precursor for later syndication efforts like “The Wheels”, “Cynthia”, and “Ticky Tacky Township”.

Wright’s other two career streams were illustration and editorial cartoons, examples of which are included below. His editorial cartooning career gained momentum in the mid-60s and mirrors the peak period of his strip work. At the height of his cartooning powers, the cartoons done for The Hamilton Spectator are full of bravura draftsmanship and wry humour. In the tradition of other gentle Canadian satirists like Len Norris and Sid Barron, Wright’s cartoons focused on socio-economic and cultural situations rather than the front page news. In the introduction to the Spec’s 1973 collection of Wright’s cartoons from which these samples are taken, publisher John D. Muir had this to say about the work:

“You wont find many politicians or public figures in Doug Wright’s cartoons, either in the family strip with the two bald-headed little boys in The Canadian Magazine every week, or in those he does for The Spectator. Doug thinks such people receive far too much free advertising already, and prefers to draw the average man. From the reaction we get to his frequent appearances on our pages, we at The Spectator infer that there are a lot of other people who enjoy Doug’s average man, beset as he is by pot-holes and pussycats, taxes and trailer trucks.”

Wright’s 70s editorial cartoons were often more adult-oriented than his strip work. Mini-skirts were shorter, cocktail parties more frequent, and opinions more caustic.

Pigskin Peters in Juniper Junction (Family Herald, Dec 20, 1956)

Illustration from The Christmas Ties That Bind by Stuart Trueman (Weekend Magazine, December 1960)

Nipper (Weekend Magazine, December 14, 1963)

From Doug Wright Editorial Cartoons, 1973

From Doug Wright Editorial Cartoons, 1973

From Doug Wright Editorial Cartoons, 1973

From Doug Wright Editorial Cartoons, 1973

From Doug Wright Editorial Cartoons, 1973

(the original art for this image is available through The Beguiling art store for only $120!)

@Pauper’s Pub
539 Bloor St W (near Bathurst TTC)
Monday, December 17th
7:30 pm

THE (third annual) BEGUILING, DINOSAUR COMICS, ADVENTURE TIME, HARK, A VAGRANT!, BRAVEST WARRIORS, A SOFTER WORLD, HOLIDAY PARTY!

booksigning and inteviews featuring Ryan North, Kate Beaton, and Joey Comeau

facebook event page

by BK Munn

I think it’s safe to say that Charles Schulz was obsessed with the commercialization of Christmas.

While Schulz originally chose Beethoven as Schroeder’s idol, he simply did it because Beethoven “sounded funnier” than the names of other composers. But the proximity of Beethoven’s birthday (December 16th) to Christmas soon gave him another source of humour: the ability to satirize holiday idolatry and the ubiquity of the “only xx more shopping days to Christmas” countdowns in every department store of the era. Schroeder’s almost non sequitur habit of parading a series of signs “prophesizing” the coming of the great date was a classic absurdist comedic device.

Rural Route by Walter Ball, Star Weekly Magazine, December 24, 1966.

Ball’s Uncle Elmer character has his annual run-in with Saint Nick, but this year ends up seeing double and getting involved with a labour dispute along the way. Love the skinny Santa and the inky question marks; Ball’s great composition. Classic “vernacular Canadian cartooning” for the second-to-last Friday before Xmas.

Item! As Salgood Sam has reminded us on facebook, Ryan North’s To Be or Not to Be choose-your-own-adventure-style book project has become the #1 most funded project of all time on Kickstarter, measured by how much it has exceeded its asking goal.

Item! Vancaf, the Vancouver Comic Arts festival, has just sent out its 2013 exhibitor invitations and is asking for RSVP from the artists and groups who have been accepted. The festival is scheduled for the weekend of May 25 and 26, just two weeks after the Toronto Festival event, and a small contingent of local guests have already been announced, including Rebecca Dart and Camilla d’Errico.

Item! The great Spain Rodriguez died last week and tributes are all over the net, but my favourite is this giant series of mysterious murals that appeared in the artist’s hometown of Buffalo.

Item! UK comics publisher Nobrow, the people behind the super-accessible Hilda comics by Luke Pearson, have officially announced a new kids comics imprint, Flying Eye Books. According to an article from The Bookseller, the imprint will “publish 12 new titles in the next year, with a mix of débuts, work from established authors and illustrators, and a range of work in translation. Company director Sam Arthur said: ‘Nobrow has created a few titles aimed at children before, but because our list is mostly adult, we found that a lot of places weren’t really interested in stocking us. It made practical sense to create a dedicated imprint and make it that much simpler.’”

Item! Does this mansion owned by Quebec Premier Pauline Marois look like Captain Haddock’s Moulinsart (Marlinspike Hall in English translations) in the Tintin comics?

Item! Robin McConnell blogs (with pictures!) about the Horror Hangover art show he curated in Vancouver. The work from the show is available in a limited edition zine and some of the originals are still for sale.

Item! Finally, and in reference to the image up top, Nina Bunjevac has sold out the Serbian edition of her Heartless graphic short story collection.