• Art Spiegleman on the Vanouver Gallery show.

• Can you read your webcomic in this tiny device?

• Heroes in London, ON gets new digs.

• Are most graphic novels "little more than poorly drawn meandering thoughts of self-obsessed people"?[scroll down for the review of Awkward and Definition, Spoiler:the answer is no]

• International: are the 5 cartoon mascots responsible for disasters in China?

• Bestsellers at Fichtre in Montreal.

• New find at last week's Anime North: Camilla D'Errico.

Labels: art show, can-con, comics criticism, comics retailers, links, mascots, Quebec

China's Flame of Shame

Forget boycotts – human rights activists say they welcome the upcoming Beijing Olympics as an opportunity to get under China's skin.

"As an organization, we believe the Olympics are an opportunity for different movements to voice their opposition to the Chinese government; that's been clear since China was awarded the Olympics back in 2001," said Kyla Mendoza, an Ottawa organizer for the New York-based Students for a Free Tibet.

With only four months until the start of the summer games - whose slogan is "One World, One Dream," – groups like SFT have accepted the reality that participating countries are not likely to boycott China for its poor human rights record or support for countries like Sudan and Myanmar.

Instead, they've begun ratcheting up the PR pressure on Beijing, using the various photo ops and symbols that make the Olympics so memorable as leverage in their campaigns. (See photos)

Even before the violent protests and subsequent police crackdown in Tibet took centre stage in the media, Mendoza said, the Canadian branch of SFT was organizing campaigns inside China, unveiling "Free Tibet" banners at high-profile locations like the Great Wall of China and the base camp of Mount Everest.

"Basically, Beijing wants to try and to open themselves up to the world as much as possible but control their image to the world, too," he explained. "We want to show that if you open yourself up for the Olympics, you have to air your dirty laundry."

Arguably the most enduring symbol of the games, the Olympic torch has also become an important instrument for expressing dissent.

Last week, the torch was lit at its traditional starting point of Olympia, Greece and transported to Beijing, marking the start of the relay that will see it travel to all five continents before returning return to China in time for the opening ceremonies on August 8th, according the official relay website.

It's also supposed to travel to Mt. Everest and the Tibetan capital of Lhasa sometime in June, raising fears of further violence and prompting calls to the IOC to have it bypass the area. "If you bring the Olympic torch through these Tibetan villages, you're basically inciting further violence and giving China another excuse to crack down," claims Tsering Lama, National Organizer for SFT.

In order to draw attention to what Tsering calls a "humanitarian crisis" in Tibet, clever SFT artists converted Beijing's torch relay logo into a graphic of a silhouetted police officer beating a protester.

Logos aside, the torch hand-off ceremony at the Acropolis in Athens was an embarrassing symbol for China, as three members of the international group Reporters Without Borders stormed the field with a banner depicting the Olympic rings as handcuffs.

Three members of the group, including Secretary-General Robert Ménard, were arrested by Greek authorities and are currently out on bail.

World leaders decried the interruption of what was supposed to be a sporting ceremony, by supporters insisted the move had greater purpose. "The Olympic flame may be sacred but human rights are even more so," Reporters Without Borders stated in a press release following the arrests.

"We could not let the Chinese government take the Olympic flame, a symbol of peace, without denouncing the dramatic human rights situation in China with less than five months to go to the start of the Olympic games."

The organization, which has national offices in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, says it was protesting the imprisonment of Chinese cyber-dissidents and the continuing ban on reporting inside Tibet.

Even the market-oriented Olympic mascots haven't escaped controversy. At a faux news conference this week, SFT announced that one the five mascots of the Beijing Oympics, an endangered Tibetan antelope named Yingying, had "defected" in response to China's development in the region, which environmentalist claim is degrading the antelope's habitat atop the Tibetan plateau.

"I've defected from the Olympic team because I can no longer stand being used as a puppet to cover up China's destruction of my homeland," the cartoon character said in a press release sent out by SFT.

Instead, the yellow critter has apparently changed her name to Yingsel and now operates a blog, part of her efforts to "use the Olympics to turn the tables on China."

Labels: international, mascots

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labels: mascots, Quebec, Vancouver