• This article about changes at Little Sister's bookstore in Vancouver and the freedom fighters who run it includes a quote from employee and cartoonist Ken Boesem.

• Derek McCormack writes about superhero costumes for the National Post.

• The newspaper in Milton, Ontario, reminds us that Free Comic Book Day is coming up this Saturday, May 2, and that Milton's comic book shop is called Geekdom.

• Quill and Quire covers the Canadian Eisner nominees (subscription required).

• Canadian icon, columnist, playwright, and champion of liberty Rick Salutin, reflects on the Siegel legal decision in the U.S. and ponders the chicken/egg nature of creation and myth.

• On the subject of showing the Mohammed cartoons on CBC.

• Jeet Heer interviewed about superheroes on the CBC.

• Gary Groth and a Toronto comic buyer with a scanner interviewed by the CBC about online comics piracy.

• Newsarama at Calgary Comic Expo.

• Chris Butcher is celebrating 6 years of blogging. Congratulations!

• "BIFF! BANG! POW! Music isn't just for kids anymore!"

Labels: censorship, comics history, copyright, events links, interviews, pod casts, U.S. superhero franchises

Labels: comics retailers, comicshoptalk, graphic novels, interviews

Labels: comics retailers, comicshoptalk, interviews, shop profiles

• Pictures of the Paul Goes Fishing launch at the D+Q blog.

• I haven't seen a review copy of the book myself, but here are 3 reviews of Kean Soo's Jellaby: 1 2 3.

• The National Post on Maid Cafes in Tokyo.

• Chip Zdarsky aka Steve Murray continues his comix reportage for the National Post, this time exploring the world of crossdressing (with a cartoon cameo by Chris Butcher).

• Just in time for Valentine's Day, The Kingston Whig-Standard profiles anti-romantic Taiwanese otaku.

• Sudbury cartoonist Rob Saccetto will draw a romantic zombie portrait of you.

• The National Post interviews U.S. cartoonist Kazu Kibuishi in Toronto.

• The first report of the Vancouver Art Gallery show to be curated by Art Spiegleman and Seth that I've seen. No real details --coming later this year.

• The University of Waterloo's Peter Trinh writes on cartoonist couples.

• Julie Doucet interviewed in the Montreal Gazette.

• Fleen webcomic reviewer Anne Thalheimer tackles Claudia Davila's Transmission X offering, Luz, Girl of the Knowing.

Labels: cartoonists, graphic novels, interviews, reviews, webcomics

• Christopher Butcher on the issue of publishers selling books at conventions and the Beguiling's attitude to same.

• The aptly-named John Law writes about comics downloading for the Niagara Falls Review, including some interviews with local retailers Netral Zone and Mostly Comics and cartoonist Karl Kerschl.

• Dave Sim takes his Glamourpuss messageboard tour on the road and has some long exchanges with U.S. comic book writer, mother, and former hairstylist Gail Simone at the Sequential Tart boards.

• Tom Spurgeon reviews Therefore Repent! at Comics Reporter.

• Also at Comics Reporter, an interview that Montreal cartoonist Bernie Mireault had with himself.

• If you know your Canadian history, you know that one of Brian Mulroney's first political acts involved a campaign to ban horror and crime comic books in this country. Newly declassified British documents reveal that Winston Churchill discussed the same issue as one of his last political acts.

• The Montreal Gazette gets feedback on changes to its comics page.

Labels: comic strips, comics history, floppies, graphic novels, interviews, interweb, reviews

Labels: interviews, webcomics

• In anticipation of the concluding chapter of Y: The Last Man, Pia Guerra, who provides the beautiful artwork for that series, takes webreaders on a tour of the Dr. Who memorabilia-laden studio she shares with writer Ian Boothby. She is also interviewed by Newsarama's Zack Smith.

• Oshawa's Adam Prosser pens the first review of Dave Sim's Glamourpuss I've seen. Elsewhere, Sim himself took to the Comics Journal messageboard to field questions and promote his new comic book series. As Sim has taken pains to reiterate, he is using a computer located at LOOKIN' FOR HEROES here at 93 Ontario St. S. in Kitchener (one block away from the defunct Now and Then Books.

• Canadian cartoonist Takeshi Miyazawa (Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane) is interviewed about working as a mangaka in Japan and the differences between North American and Japanese comics editing.

• Magazine writer, editor and publisher John Macfarlane retired last week. Over the years, Macfarlane helmed such Canadian institutions as Toronto Life, Saturday Night, and Weekend magazine (home of cartoonist Doug Wright in the 1970s). The National Post's Katherine Govier has a few anecdotes.

Labels: floppies, interviews, interweb, manga, publishing

• 365 Days author Julie Doucet is profiled in the National Post: "probably the most acclaimed or respected female cartoonist of her generation," says Peter Birkemoe, owner of Toronto comic shop The Beguiling (which also sells Doucet's artwork).

• Graphic novels help teach kids Inuktitut in Nunavut.

• A quickie interview with Nepean, Ont.-based Craig Taillefer of Wahoo Morris fame, from the Carleton University student paper.

• Lynn Johnston changes her strip again. 2007's biggest comics newsmaker tells Editor and Publisher she is tweaking the nature of her long-running comic strip yet again this year:

The current plan: Continue tying up loose ends with various "FBorFW" characters (a process that's taking longer than Johnston expected). Then, no later than this September, freeze all these cast members in time. After that, the 1979-launched comic will focus on the younger versions of the characters.

But that doesn't mean the post-September strips will consist entirely of rerun material. Johnston plans to change various elements of the comics, create new story lines, etc. -- but do all that in the drawing style she used to have.

Labels: comic strips, graphic novels, interviews, Lynn Johnston

The choice to use comics was equally easy. "How do we make people who maybe don’t read the financial section of the newspapers aware of Canada's role in the mining industry around the world?" Widgington says of his decision. "It seemed like the perfect opportunity; to get some comics and some journalism together, and see what happened."

The result, released in December, is Extraction! Comix Reportage, an investigative graphic novel that reveals the dark side of the Canadian mining industry both internationally, in India and Guatemala, and at home in northern Quebec and Alberta's controversial oil sands.

Labels: cartoon reportage, comics history, interviews, political cartooning

• Debbie Ohi interviews Lori Emerson, editor of a collection of bpnichol poetry. Besides writing for Fraggle Rock, nichol was one of Canada's greatest poets, a comic book fan, and the creator of several 1970s comix/graphic novels.

• The Walrus has an online-only interview with Canada's greatest cartoonist Julie Doucet, as well as a pdf excerpt from her drawn diary: "It seems that the world of contemporary art got curious about comics in the past 3-4-5 years... and the comic world opened itself to more experimental work. So yes, it was natural... in the end. I still live from my royalties, and comics original sales... art is not very lucrative!" Besides a collection of her diary drawings from D+Q, Doucet has also just released a collage collection thru L'Oie de Cravan.

• Sandra Bell-Lundy, one of Canada's most popular cartoonists based on the syndication of her strip Between Friends, blogs about sticking to your creative guns, especially when it comes to drawing women in bikinis (via Journalista).

Labels: blogosphere, comic strips, graphic novels, interviews, poetry

• John Bell is interviewed for the Inkstuds podcast about his history of Canadian comics, Invaders from the North. (recommended)

• Jeff Lemire is interviewed by New York Magazine, and his Essex County graphic novel series is previewed.(see above)

• The Montreal Mirror interviews editor David Widdington about his new anthology of comics reportage, Extraction! The book features several prominent Canadian cartoonists and launches next week. Tom Spurgeon is impressed.

• John Mitchell reviews Scott Chantler's Northwest Passage graphic novel: "all the thrills and grit of any novel about men taming the wild, but adds to it a cartoonish charm and a good helping of fascinating Canadian history — with informative annotations."

• Robin Bougie is interviewed about Cinema Sewer and talks about his pop culture collections for Vancouver24Hs.

• Toronto comic book launch, Saturday, December 1. From the Beguiling mailing list:

Labels: book launches, events, graphic novels, interviews, links, pod casts

• Brad Mackay announces the debut of the Doug Wright Awards sticker program. See here for more images.

• Perro Verlag Books by Artists will be at Toque, the Western Front's Christmas Craft Fair. We will have Hell Passports galore (21 completed in the 24 volume series!) as well as other exciting and insightful artists' books, original gocco print postcards and exquisite small notebooks.The fair runs Friday, November 30^th, 6-9 pm and Saturday, December 1^st. 11-4pm at the Western Front, 303 East 8th Ave, Vancouver. Also launching: Ben L Jacques' Hell Passport Volume 4, and Robert Pederson's Hell Passport Preamble on Saturday December 8 at Lucky's Comics, 3972 Main Street, Vancouver @8pm. Featuring an evening of music and animation projections.

• Renaissance man Ty Templeton talks to the Laurier student nerspaper about a gallery show featuring his 2002 graphic novel Bigg Time.

• BogTO's Jenny reports on the closing of the IMaid cafe, Toronto's first cosplay eatery, and ponders the reason for the closure. My take? Maybe the food sucked.

• Scam comic book charity hooks accountant.

• Radio station listeners hate Vancouver Olympic mascots. Hard to fathom, considering how generically adorable the characters, revealed to the public only days ago, are.
  

• Lynn Johnston-related charity reaches landmark.

Labels: awards, charity, exhibits, Global Links, graphic novels, interviews

• Marvel announces a new licensing agent for Canada: Segal Licensing, a large Toronto marketing company
  
• a National Post profile of Ann Marie Fleming and her new graphic novel, Long Tack Sam
• translated interview with Guy Delisle about his new book on Burma
• Michel Rabagliati is the cover feature at Voir Weekly
• how did we miss this? James Turner's Rex Libris has been optioned as a film
• Turner is interviewed by Peter Jaffe at Comixology
• Rick Trembles reviews Cinema Sewer: The Book in his distinctive comix style (recommended!)
  

Labels: graphic novels, interviews, links, misc, reviews

Do you work on paper first? Or do you go directly to digital?

STEWART: I do both. As you've seen I have the same layout every week --the same 4-by-2 grid. I do my initial layouts in Photoshop with a tablet, and then I do the lettering and I print off my layouts in a light blue. Then I ink those. The final artwork is on paper.

So you start out on the computer and move to paper later?

STEWART: Exactly. Then I scan it back in, and the coloring is added in Photoshop afterwards.

How did you come up with that process? Is that something standard or that you'd done before?

STEWART: That's my process. If I don't do the layouts digitally, I do rough thumbnails on a piece of paper and scan them in, convert it to a blue line and then print it off. It's a process that I figured out a while ago, and it's been pretty good. It allows me to tweak the layouts as much as I want before going to the final artwork. I tend to do most of my drawing in ink and keep the layouts as loose as possible, just for composition and pacing. I do a very minimal amount of black penciling.

Labels: interviews, webcomics

• Toronto Sun policart Andy Donato is part of a group show at the Kipling Gallery. Mondo Italiano showcases the paintings of local Italian-Canadian artists.
• Roxboro Library (110 Cartier St., Montreal) exhibits Benoit Laverdiere, illustrator and cartoonist --until Nov. 30. For more information, call 514 684-8247.
• Also in Montreal, beginning Monday November 12, original art exhibit at Studio 9, from the collection of Martin Desroches comes work by Milton Caniff, Berke Breathed, Gene Colan, Dan Decarlo, Tony Millionaire, Raymond Poivet, Bill Ward, and more. 5835 Saint-Hubert. (info@studio9cs.com 514-272-6043. 7pm.
• Jody Haucke and Chris Maxwell, owners of Ottawa's The Comic Book Shoppe on Bank Street, are hosting an art gala for local artists to exhibit their comic art and genre-themed work.
• via Drawn, the exquisite illustration and toys of Gary Taxali are on display in Chicago.
  

• Pascal Blanchet's White Rapids reviewed in the National Post.

• Megan Stewart interviews graphic memoirist Sarah Leavitt about her new book, My Mom Got Sick and Died, the story of her mother's experience of Alzheimer's.

• Jennifer Contino interviews Jay Stephens, who has travelled back in time to work with the legendary U.S. superhero scribe Bob Haney on Teen Titans: The Lost Annual.

• CBC Arts profiles Ann Marie Fleming, who has created a collage graphic novel about the life of her great-grandfather, Vaudeville magician Long Tac Sam, based on her award-winning 2003 film.

• Quillblog's Derek Weiler roundsup recent news about how booksellers are dealing with the strong loonie. One reaction involves "variable discounting," which sounds like a way of averaging out wild price differences at the wholesale end of things.
  
• Related: a Canadian blogger reflects on recent changes to the cover prices of Marvel and DC comic books
  

Labels: comics retailers, exhibits, graphic novels, interviews, links, misc, publishing

We lived with the comics growing up -- we loved them. My grandfather and my father would analyze them, and my father was quite a good cartoonist but never pursued it. So all my life I remember looking at the comics not as an entertainment, but rather as a piece of art. I loved comic books too, [especially] any one where the female character was believable or strong. I liked Little Dot, Little Lulu, and of course I liked Peanuts, because even though Lucy was kind of a crab, she was strong.

Labels: comic strips, interviews

I think comics are a great medium. In a way, I think they are better for telling history. I read a lot of biographies, but six months after reading them, the details have already faded about that person's life. If I wanted to quickly refresh myself it wouldn't be as easy as picking up a comic book and reminding myself about the events that happened because pictures convey the story so quickly. Assuming I didn't write this (Chester thumbs through a copy of Louis Riel), if I wanted to review the incidents of the story, I can gleam through them pretty quickly, after already having read the book. I think comics are a good way of telling history in that way for conveying information and then making it convenient for a reader after finishing the book.

Labels: graphic novels, interviews

Quite a bit of my cartoon work is a little racy, so I knew it would never see the light of day in print. I guess I wanted to share the irreverent, kooky side of myself to a larger audience, and see if people enjoyed it, or were totally freaked out by it. Surprisingly, most people liked my wacky cartoons and ideas. But I also wanted to be a part of a larger conversation regarding discussing books and authors and ideas and the fascinating world of publishing.

Labels: blogosphere, interviews

A desire to master English was a big part of what made comics attractive; they seemed like a fast-track to literacy. The school board had labeled me a "remedial reader"; ashamed of this stigma, I tried to learn as much English on my own as quickly as I could.

Labels: comic strips, comics history, interviews

Labels: comics retailers, comicshoptalk, interviews

"I actually have two new graphic novels out this fall. Wild Ride from Orca Publishers is the first in a new series, Graphic Guide Adventures. It's a wilderness survival adventure for 8-14 year olds, about three kids who get trapped in the woods of northern BC. In addition to the story, real life, step-by-step wilderness survival tips are blended into the action, so kids can learn how to build a shelter from tree branches, how to cross a river safely, set a broken limb and lots more fun stuff. It comes out in October. The next in the series is Ramp Rats, which is about skateboarding and is packed with instructions on how to land skating tricks. It comes out in 2008.

Coming out in September is Max Finder Mystery Collected Casebook Vol. 3, the third installment in my you-solve-it mystery comic, Max Finder Mystery, which ran in OWL Magazine for four years."

Labels: blogosphere, graphic novels, interviews

FW: How far back does your interest in comics and manga extend? When did you first start drawing comics?


I've always drawn comics in some form, I just didn't realize it. I drew illustrations for the notes our family would leave for each other; I made up my own stories and drew illustrations for those, sometimes even in sequence. The book that really crystallized my yearning to make comics was ElfQuest, by Richard and Wendy Pini. I found the first issue (Russian translation) on a trip to Moscow, by chance, really. I read it until it started falling apart, I was so taken with it.

Labels: blogosphere, interviews, links, manga

Labels: interviews, U.S. superhero franchises, webcomics

NRAMA: Is it harder or easier creating stories for the limited space of serialized comics?

JT: I'd say it's harder. I like the freedom of the graphic novel format. Serialized comics forces you into an issue-by-issue rhythm. It requires much more rigorous plotting and pacing.

NRAMA: What was the inspiration for Rex Libris?

JT: Rex Libris was inspired by the whole genre of work in which mild mannered occupations are crossed with the world of action and adventure. Often this includes the supernatural and various sorts of monsters, in which case the original occupation no longer has to be mild mannered (such as the X-Files). There's all sorts of stuff out there like this. It was also a response to working on Nil, which was a satire on nihilism and quite dark. Rex is more positive. I also wanted to include a secret order, which are always popular. Sort of a communal secret identity.

Labels: graphic novels, interviews

If the story of her life were a comic strip, Svetlana Chmakova's creative process would span eight to 10 panels.

And she'd be a cat trapped in a box in the first frame.

In the second, Chmakova, a comic book author, would stare with wide kitten eyes at the confining walls. The next four panels might show her at various stages of bewilderment, clawing the cardboard and searching for a way out. The seventh panel could depict her stumbling into an exit.

In the eighth, she'd climb through.

"That's the Aha! moment," Chmakova says. "Maybe there would be two more panels...like when the cat gets out and is all happy, then realizes there's another, bigger box. `Oh no! there's a lot more to get through before the end.'"

Labels: interviews, manga

The comics are so well drawn; the narratives are so sophisticated --many, of course, from Quebecois artists. Comics are a fantastical, imaginative means of breaking open creative borders. You just have a lot more freedom to be irreverent, to go beyond the predictable even in the comic genre. I think I can really treat the narrative and artwork that go into the making of a comic book just as I would treat a painting.

Labels: events, exhibits, interviews

What can you tell us about Chiggers?

LARSON: Chiggers is about 12- and 14-year-old girls at camp. I never know how much to say because I don’t want to spoil it, and it's not coming out for so long. It's a lot more straightforward than the stuff I've done before. It has little panels and three tiers of two or three panels. It looks a lot more like a comic book than the other stuff I've done.

Labels: canadians abroad, events, interviews, links

Who's your favourite Torontonian?
Since I draw and write comics stuff, I really appreciate the fact that Toronto has such an incredible and diverse pool of comics-creators. Honestly, Toronto has one of the best concentration of comics people in North America. So many good artists have either lived at one point in Toronto or are still here now -- creators like Jay Stephens, Seth, Paul Pope, Darwyn Cooke, J. Bone, Ramon Perez, Steve Manale and Diana Tamblyn. Does Chester Brown still live in town? If so, I guess he'd be my favourite.

Labels: blogosphere, interviews

Labels: bd, events, interviews

"Growing up in Canada, I started reading French comics at a very young age alongside the Archies and Harvey comics that I loved as a kid, and I kept reading them as a teenager. When I was in graduate school in Montreal I really got much more immersed because of the used bookstores, that made a lot of material available to me for the first time. Around that time I was asked by Tom Spurgeon to write on Euro-comics for the Journal and that sort of led me deeper to the point that I realized that there were things that I wanted to say that would be beyond the scope of those reviews. I first started thinking about the book in 2000, so it's been an awful long process! "

Labels: bd, international, interviews, links