My name is Christopher Butcher, and I am the co-founder and Festival Director of The Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF). Just last weekend, I presided over our 7^th festival in 9 years, a continued celebration of all that is great about comics and graphic novels, and their creators.

TCAF 2012 was our fourth event since making the Festival an annual affair, and the fourth to be held at Toronto Reference Library with Presenting Sponsor Toronto Public Library. Continuing our increased success and attendance year-over-year, TCAF 2012 was clearly our biggest and best-attended Festival yet, with more people than ever filing into the library to take part in all that our exhibitors, and the library, had to offer. Personally, as the Festival Director, I’ve never been happier or enjoyed one of our Festivals more than I did this weekend, and that’s thanks to the great staff of Toronto Public Library and TCAF, our amazing volunteers and exhibitors, and all of you members of the public who came to take part in our event.

In keeping with our tradition, I’m sending out this informal little note to talk about TCAF rather than doing a big PR, because TCAF is just that kind of show. :)

Higher Attendance, Less Crowded: Win/Win!

When you’ve done 7 of these events, you can feel when things are a little more bustling, a little more energized than they’ve been previously… and Saturday afternoon I could tell that we were seeing record crowds at the show. The best part though is that, following up on feedback from our exhibitors, the public, and the Toronto Public Library, the flow of traffic was smoother and less crowded than it had been for the past several years. The Festival evolves with each iteration, and this year’s decision to add additional offsite venues, to widen aisles and remove tables from the atrium, and to cap attendance in certain areas, meant that all of the library customers—regardless of why they were visiting—could have a more enjoyable year.

TCAF 2012’s attendance was a record 18,000 people. What that figure comprises is 17,896 people counted by Toronto Reference Library’s security gate above the average attendance on a normal Saturday/Sunday. While people were coming and going all day, this figure balances out the instances of a flood of people exiting through the counter all at once where only one person might be counted out of 4-5. Beyond that, we’ve averaged in the 400+ people in attendance for our awesome Friday-night kick-off event in The Bram & Bluma Appel Salon with Jeff Smith, Gabriel Ba, and Fabio Moon, and the more than 800 people per hour accommodated in our off-site venues: Owlkids Day @ St. Paul’s on Bloor, The Marriott Bloor Yorkville, The Pilot Tavern, and Ristorante Fortuna. While the possibility exists that there were in fact far more than 18,000 participants in 2012, we’re quite happy with the idea of a 20% increase in attendance over 2011. :)

Thank you for your continued support!

As TCAF heads into its 10^th Anniversary show next year, it is our continued partnership with Toronto Public Library that enables it to easily remain an annual, free event for the people of Toronto and visitors from around the world. The partnership between TCAF and Toronto Public Library, and working with venue Toronto Reference Library, continues to reinforce the core ideals of the Festival: TCAF is a free event, TCAF is about books and authors, and TCAF is open to everyone—not just the ‘initiated’ comics fans. On behalf of myself and the entire TCAF organizational team, we’d like to thank our Partner and Presenting Sponsor Toronto Public Library for their support, promotion, and hosting of TCAF 2012. They’ve had a pretty tough year, as have many institutions in the City ofToronto, and we’re glad that we’re able to work with them.

We’d also like to thank TCAF’s other sponsors, the folks who help make the Festival viable financially. 2012 Kids Sponsor Owlkids was fantastically supportive in all of our new children’s and library initiatives, and allowed those initiatives the successes that they enjoyed. Thanks to Media Sponsor NOW Magazine, who provided us a wonderful avenue to help get the word out about the Festival and our satellite events, to The Marriott Bloor Yorkville as the Offical TCAF 2012 Hotel and to Air Canada for travel support. Our thanks also to local sponsors Midoco, who helped supply the festival with all of the supplies we needed for exhibiting artists to present their craft to the masses, and Little Island Comics, for stocking and representing the best of children’s comics at TCAF.

Our consular and cultural sponsors helped us bring the world of comics and cartooning to Toronto for a week, and we greatly appreciate all that they have done. Our thanks to The Consulate General of France in Toronto; The Italian Cultural Institute; NORLA—Norwegian Literature Abroad, Fiction & Non-Fiction; The Flemish Literature Fund; and The Japan Foundation Toronto.

Finally, TCAF would not exist without the funding and support of The Beguiling, and their generous donations. It’s TCAF every day at The Beguiling, and their dedication to the medium of comics is unwavering. I’m truly grateful to them to be able to do what I’m able to do with TCAF every year.

About TCAF 2012

TCAF 2012 was the most ambitious festival yet, and my most ambitious personal undertaking. With more off-site and lead-up events than ever before, more partnerships than in previous years, an additional day of programming, and more than 20 featured guests, I worried in the weeks leading up to the show that perhaps we’d bit off a bit more than we could chew. Luckily through the talent and support of some wonderful folks we had varying levels of success on every front, and as always, lessons were learned and we think 2013 will be even stronger.

The personal highlight for me was the strengthening of our programming for children, by including a large dedicated space for children’s exhibitors on the floor of TCAF, as well as the creation of a day-long special event for children’s graphic novel creators. TCAF is about engaging every reader with the medium of comics, and I’m so happy that our ambitions to promote the medium to the next generation were fully-realized this year. We also expanded our amazing “small press” area, headed once again by the fine folks in the Wowee Zonk collective. They really transformed the space they exhibited in and created something unique, wonderful, and surprising—it was amazing to see. The addition of a day of panels and programming about comics aimed at librarians and educators was the realization of a long-held dream of mine to more fully share the vast amount of knowledge possessed by our attending authors and exhibitors with the people on the front lines of bringing new readers into the medium. It was a success, and it is a service we will continue to provide and support in the years to come.

We were also treated to a wonderful array of ‘gala’ presentations this year, from Guy Delisle’s Thursday-night launch of Jerusalem: Tales from the Holy City, to Friday’s amazing Topatoco spring launch and the aforementioned Kick-off Event with Smith, Ba and Moon, TCAF started with the biggest bang yet! We also had a real first, a team-up between TIFF Nexus and The Hand-Eye Society that saw a gallery’s worth of comics/videogame hybrids that showed at both Magic Pony and TCAF! Joining the events of Thursday and Friday night was our co-presentation of Kid Koala’s Space Cadet Experience with Wavelenth, a truly incredible concert event! The amazing activities continued into the weekend with three wonderful Saturday night comics events—the launch of Alison Bechdel’s long-awaited new memoir Are You My Mother?, a once-in-a-lifetime interview with Konami Kanata, and the 2012 Doug Wright Awards for excellence in Canadian Cartooning. All three events were packed to the rafters—as were our various afterparties around the city!

In short, I feel TCAF 2012 engaged more people inToronto—and from around the world—than it ever had before, bringing the medium of comics to thousands of new readers. That’s a truly great thing, and everyone who organized, volunteered, or participated in these events should feel proud.

We Couldn’t Have Done It Without You…

Speaking of the folks who worked so hard to make TCAF 2012 a success, we’d like to thank some of the individuals and organizations who were a part of this event. Thanks to:

- Our Sponsors: Toronto Public Library; The Bram & Bluma Appel Salon; The Beguiling; Little Island Comics; NOW Magazine; Owlkids; The Consulate General of France in Toronto; Istituto Italiano di Cultura (The Italian Cultural Institute); NORLA—Norwegian Literature Abroad, Fiction & Non Fiction; The Flemish Literature Fund; The Japan Foundation; Midoco; Hotel sponsor The Marriott Bloor Yorkville; travel assistance by Air Canada.

- Our partner organizations and guest sponsors: TIFF Nexus; The Hand-Eye Society, Miguel Sternberg, and Matt Hawkins; Magic Pony; Wavelength; Kid Koala / Envision Management; Houghton-Mifflin & Thomas Allen and Associates, First Second Books; Drawn and Quarterly; Selfmadehero; Topatoco, Vertical Inc.; Scholastic Books; Wowee Zonk; and Koyama Press.

- Our TCAF Librarian and Educator Day Sponsors: VIZ Media LLC.; Drawn & Quarterly; First Second Books; Kids Can Press; Owlkids; Scholastic Books; and UDON Entertainment.

- Venue Partners Toronto Public Library, The Bram & Bluma Appel Salon, Magic Pony, The Carlton Cinema, 918 Bathurst, The Pilot Tavern, The Marriott Bloor Yorkville, St. Paul’s on Bloor, Ristorante Fortuna, The Japan Foundation, Buddies in Bad Times, Art Gallery of Ontario’s Jackman Hall, Pauper’s Pub, and Lee’s Palace.

- TCAF 2012 Poster artists Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon for their amazing 2012 poster!

- To the staff of Toronto Public Library and Toronto Reference Library for all of their work on our behalf, with special thanks to TCAF Liaison Ab Velasco and Bram and Bluma Appel Salon Liaison Beth Kawecki.

- To our TCAF Featured Guests and Exhibitors, including Aislin, Gabriel Ba, Kate Beaton, Alison Bechdel, Arne Bellstorf, Jose-Luis Bocquet, Guy Delisle, Tom Gauld, Matt Holm, Jennifer Holm, Jason, Konami Kanata, Kazu Kibuishi, Kid Koala (Eric San), Bryan Lee O’Malley, Micol and Cornelius Books, Fabio Moon, Catel Muller, Michel Rabagliati, Jeff Smith, Pendleton Ward, Adam Warren, and the more than 300 other attending artists, exhibitors.

- To the hosts and staff of The Doug Wright Awards for throwing another wonderfully successful event.

- To Corey Mintz for his spectacular restaurant guide; To Chip Zdarsky for his continuing design assistance; To John Green and Dave Roman for their amazing TEEN BOAT comic in our program guide; To show photographer Paul Hillier for capturing so many wonderful aspects of the festival; To Nathalie Atkinson for her continuing support.

- To 2012 Festival Guide Designer Diana McNally—it was wonderful working with you, thanks for saving our butts… ;)

- To 2012 Website Designer Nadine Lessio; with additional thanks to Shane Bennett for technical assistance.

- To the staffs of The Beguiling and Little Island Comics, for once again working through their weekends.

- To on-site coordinators Greg Baker, Athena Pheasant, Linda Moss, Andrew Eaton, Alex Hureanzu, Christopher Hureanzu, Bled Celhyka, Michael Lamore, and Laura Prinselaar.

- To our more than 200 volunteers: You were amazing, and are routinely regarded by people all over the world as one of TCAF’s greatest strengths. Our sincere thanks for your time and effort, and we hope you’ll continue to support us into 2013 and beyond.

…and finally, my personal thanks to our amazing TCAF organizational team, Miles, Gina, Scott, Andrew, Andrew T, Parrish, and Krystle: It was a hell of a year. Everyone gets one month off until we start planning the next one. Speaking of which:

TCAF 2013: TBA

Last year, we waited a month until we had the date and location of TCAF 2012 locked down before writing this little note to all of you, and people didn’t seem to enjoy that as much—they wanted to know all about how the fest went down right after the big event! So this year we’ve released our little year-in-review much earlier, but that means we haven’t had a chance to sit down with our partners and sponsors to review this year, and talk about next year.

What can I say about TCAF 2013? Well there’ll be one, for starters. While we’d played with the idea of going back to a biennial event, there’s just no way we’re going to miss our 10^th anniversary year! From our modest beginnings as a one-day-event for 600 people on March 29^th, 2003 at Trinity St. Paul’s Church, to our new home for 18,000 at Toronto Reference Library, it’s been an amazing period of growth and change for the Festival and for comics in general, and we look to continue supporting and promoting authors and comics next spring.

As soon as we can confirm the 2013 show, we will.

In Conclusion…

So on behalf of myself and the entire staff, I’d like to offer our sincere thanks to everyone who made The Toronto Comic Arts Festival 2012 such a massive, unprecedented success. Whether you’re an attendee, and exhibitor, or a volunteer, your support of each other and of TCAF is what makes this amazing, free, accessible, comic book event possible. We appreciate it, and we hope we’ll have you back for the years to come.

Best,

Christopher Butcher, Festival Director and Co-Founder
The Toronto Comic Arts Festival

On behalf of…

Peter Birkemoe, Co-Founder

Miles Baker, Assistant Festival Director

Gina Gagliano, Programming Coordinator

Scott Robins, Kids Programming Coordinator

Andrew Woodrow-Butcher, Volunteer Coordinator

Andrew Townsend, Festival Assistant

Parrish Kilthei, Tech Coordinator

Krystle Tabujara, The Beguiling/Little Island Comics Liaison

…and the staff of The Beguiling, The Beguiling Library Services, and Little Island Comics

All Photos by Paul Hillier.

I’ve got a million other things I should be blogging about, but I was just talking some smack about eating Pizza in Japan/Tokyo and I recalled that, on my last trip to Tokyo I had some of the best pizza ever, in my hotel restaurant of all places.

I know Japan gets a bad rap for pizza, and I’ve had a whole bunch of truly awful pizza in Japan (married to/travelling with a vegetarian), but the restaurant in “The B Ikebukuro” is called Salvatore Cuomo & BAR, and it is a straight-up excellent Italian restaurant, and I had a wood-fired pizza with real prosciutto that was so good that I went back a second night to have it again (every other meal was Japanese food, don’t judge me).

I suppose if I were in better blogging form I’d tie this all together with something about preconceived notions and surprises and yadda yadda but I haven’t blogged since like March or something and so your closing thought is: Most of the pizza I had in Tokyo was terrible, but I had some amazing pizza too and I recommend it.

- Chris

“Sparkplug Comics is ready to take on new publishing projects and we’d like to ask your help!

This campaign is a fundraiser for three of Sparkplug Books’ upcoming publishing projects.  Our soonest release, scheduled for April of 2012, is the graphic novel Nurse Nurse, by Katie Skelly.  This book compiles the previously self-published first seven issues of Katie’s ongoing sci-fi saga of nurses traversing the planets of our solar system.  The new book includes an eighth chapter to conclude the story.  The book has a two-color cover and black and white interior.”

This is a solid publisher who suffered a real loss. Head over and if you can spare a few bucks on some books, it’d really help them out.

- Chris

The Article: http://www.thestar.com/living/food/article/1150830–marvel-comics-talent-scout-has-us-marvelling-over-poached-eggs

The Transcript: http://porkosity.blogspot.ca/2012/03/fed-122-comic-scout-cb-cebulski.html

If you are my family or don’t care about comics, stop reading here.

–

I don’t have the best things to say about Marvel Comics a lot of the time–like most corporations they make every move for their own benefit, but unlike most corporations they end up controlling better than 50% of the industry in which they participate, and those moves tend to dramatically alter people’s livelihoods for the negative, other than Marvel’s. It’s a truly awful situation.

The problem is that many (though not ‘all’) of these decisions are made above the heads of the people who actually create the comic books. There are folks who are in essence good people, who do right by others, who have a passion for creativity and art. Some corporate fuck will come in and lay off a bunch of editors and staff, reduce the number of washrooms, admit that they’re consciously trying to wring as much possible money out of customers as possible through lower page counts, lower quality, and higher prices… but you (meaning you the reader, you the ‘comics journalist’, you the muck-raker desperate for hits on your site) can’t touch those people. You can’t. You’re not shouting at Isaac Perlemuter or whichever VP of TheBottomLine decided books didn’t need cover-stock any more–there’s a reason those people either aren’t on Twitter or simply know how not to respond to you at all. So ‘you’ lash out at the folks who are the public face, paid to put a spin on whatever the next shitty cost-cutting measure to come down the pipe is, because their job is to make a tenth the salary but eat all of the shit. Because they love comics.

I feel for someone like David Brothers, who is a smart guy who writes smart things, who bothered to engage someone like Steve Wacker on the subject of rotating in sub-par artists on a top title with Daredevil. The artist switch-ups on Daredevil are a shitty situation, I think we all agree, but Wacker proved himself completely damaged in his inability to engage a legitimate complaint in a direct way… I don’t know him but I’m going to assume eating other people’s shit (metaphorically) on the internet all goddamned day is why he responds to a legitimate question from a fan like a total nutbar stalker, maybe he was different before he started working for Marvel, but I can’t really say. But yeah, so much shit is flung at the public faces of companies that even when they’re greeted with real questions, real journalism, sometimes they’re too down it to do much but fling shit themselves. Being famous, or representing something famous, in public, it sucks. The public sucks. It’s an awful situation all around.

Occasionally, you can get someone in one of those positions, and you can take them out of the echo-chamber of insanity that Twitter/Facebook/Comics Blogs have turned into, and you can talk to them at least like they’re a real human being, and if you’re lucky you can even talk to them like you’re a journalist and they’re an interesting subject, and they respond in kind. So a month back or so, I was invited to brunch with journalist Corey Mintz, Jen Agg (owner of The Black Hoof), fine-artist Roland Jean, and C.B. Cebulski, talent scout for Marvel Comics. We sat down, we had a great brunch, had maybe two or three drinks over 4-5 hours, and we talked comics. We talked about the comics industry. Here’s a taste:

MINTZ
If you perceive what you do, whether it’s cooking or comic books, if you perceive it as an artistic discipline, not as a straight matter of business, is it ok that the majority of people, your clientele, don’t see it as an art form? Is there anything wrong with them seeing it as a product?

BUTCHER
Yeah. Because that’s where piracy comes from.

MINTZ
Ok. Food and comic books just separated themselves completely in that example.

BUTCHER
well, I know a lot of people who didn’t purchase the Momofuku cookbook but have it on their iPad. And I wag my finger at them.

MINTZ

Names!

AGG
What? What do you mean?

BUTCHER
People have scanned the Momofuku cookbook.

AGG
Scanned it?

BUTCHER
Scanned the whole book.

AGG
Who would bother to do that? Spend the $35 dollars you cheap fuck.

BUTCHER
Welcome to comics.

CEBULSKI
Every week.

From http://porkosity.blogspot.ca/2012/03/fed-122-comic-scout-cb-cebulski.html.

(By the way, Comics Internet, that’s how an “excerpt” works. If you’re reposting 75% of the content on the original site, you’re just being an asshole.)

We sat around and talked about the comics industry. As Corey said in his column, “Cebulski is extremely polite and candid in a way that has nothing to do with our drinking cider and rum at 1 p.m. A pleasure to talk to, he never once dodges a question.” Mintz treated Cebulski as he would any subject of his column, with respect, and removed from “the comics internet” Cebulski was able to discuss things like a grown-up would. He talked about the economic realities of superhero comics, of producing art, of working for Marvel. I disagreed with some of the finer points, but I never thought for a second that he was equivocating, or even speaking out of turn. It was a lovely brunch, a very fun time, and a great conversation with someone I respect, even while I don’t agree with all of his views. It was a pretty rare thing, for Marvel and DC Comics, and the internet went all kinds of crazy for a few days, with my favourite bit being that the words of this interview were so twisted as to somehow make it sound like a representative of Marvel says that Jack Kirby didn’t make art. Ugh. Uggggggggh. So stupid. I wouldn’t talk to people either. It got so bad Corey actually wrote a response to the public response:

“On the record, with the red light of a recorder going, C.B. Cebulski shared his views. I speak to a lot of people in my work, most often chefs and politicians. Most of them do not say what is on their mind. And who can blame them? I poke fun at the Toronto restaurant scene for the level of public insincerity and back-slapping, but I’m a hypocrite. It’s pretty rare that I’ll criticize a local news organization in public.

“So when someone does us the courtesy of speaking plainly, whether we agree with them or not, we ought to applaud them. True believers, take it from someone who has been paid to criticize others, the truth is a rare and valuable thing.”

- Corey Mintz, http://porkosity.blogspot.ca/2012/03/until-internet-gets-mailing-address.html

Unsurprisingly I haven’t seen anyone excerpting that bit of writing anywhere.

Here’s the thing though–does the comics internet respond so fucking poorly to people talking to them like grown-ups because it never actually happens (from Marvel or DC), or did Marvel and DC’s incessant, never-ending stream of hype and refusal to talk to people like grown-ups lower the discourse so far that the internet can no longer respond with anything other than cheers, outrage, or the standard comments-section-passive-aggressive-mixture-of-both? Was it always doomed to be a cesspool out here or are we now doomed to be in this cesspool? Discuss.

Actually, don’t bother, either way we’re still standing around in a cesspool. Recrimination is, in this instance, pretty pointless.

My pleas tend to fall on deaf ears so I get that this is all a bit pointless. But I wanted to point out that it is possible for people in this industry who disagree to respect one another, to sit down and have a meal and talk openly and honestly about situations that exist, and hopefully try to find some common ground. It’s possible to initiate these talks and cover them as a journalist and not be a jerk, and not have your subject be a jerk. I personally believe it’s even possible to not be that lazy reader and choose to interpret every single statement in the worst possible light because you’ve got an axe that needs grinding at every opportunity. This interview is by no means a rare thing-there are tons of great, professional and honest interviews out there. It’s just rare to see one from someone who works at Marvel or DC, sadly. I certainly hope that, given the reaction to this one, it hasn’t become rarer still.

- Christopher

There’s still time to pre-order a copy, or get some amazing prints or original art–you’ve got until Friday in fact! Head over to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/765505753/little-heart-a-comic-anthology-for-marriage-equali?ref=live for details.

Meanwhile, I was just informed about another queer comics Kickstarter, though this one met its fundraising goal in just 48 hours! It’s for Alex Woolfson’s gay sci-fi series “Artifice”, and it looks like there will now be a graphic novel collection of that web series. I’ve attached the full PR under the cut below, but you can check out the Kickstarter at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alexwoolfson/artifice-graphic-novel-print-drive.

While miles and miles has been written on Kickstarter and the like, I will throw in exactly 2 cents worth and say that that it’s pretty clear having a strong, dedicated following and a very public personality at the helm of your Kickstarter campaign yields very different results than not. I think the Little Heart book is an incredibly important project, but it “suffered” by not having a 25,000-readers-per-day lead-in (if one can suffer that), and it really did take the full month of non-stop promotion to get the word out about the project. I hope that other indy projects looking to use the service take note. A multi-creator book that supports marriage equality should, theoretically, have a much broader appeal for support than a dual-creator gay sci-fi graphic novel, but the web as a mass-funding medium is pretty darned unique.

(This also ties into my thoughts on why Kickstarter as a replacement for the NEA or governmental arts funding is abhorrent, but my two cents are up… for now.)

- Chris

GAY SCI-FI WEBCOMIC REACHES $7000 KICKSTARTER PRINT GOAL IN LESS THAN 48 HOURS

[March 11, 2011] Less than 48 hours after launching a Kickstarter project to raise $7000 to publish his gay science-fiction webcomic in book form, Artifice writer Alex Woolfson has reached his goal. Now, following the example of other successful Kickstarter projects, he’s “scrambling” to come up with additional goals and rewards for remaining 28 days his project will remain online.

“I wrote Artifice because I loved action and sci-fi stories as a kid,” Woolfson said. “But I never got to see what I really wanted to see and that’s kick-ass genre stories with heroes who just happened to like other guys. Artifice was my attempt to write the kind of story I always wanted to see. And now it’s going to be a book that I can hold in my hands and you’ll be able to find in your local library. This is dream-come-true stuff!”

With full-color art by Philadelphia-based artist Winona Nelson, Artifice is about Deacon, an android solider, fighting for love and survival against the powerful Corporation that made him. Artifice starts just after Deacon has failed a mission spectacularly. Not only did he disobey orders, letting a 19-year-old business liability named Jeff survive, he also attacked and killed those who were sent to retrieve him. Soon, both their lives are on the line as his corporate masters push for answers and look to tie up loose ends.

Artifice has been running as a webcomic for just less than a year and, at 83 pages, is nearing completion.

Woolfson continued: “Even though I’ve been releasing Artifice as a weekly webcomic, I actually wrote first it as a complete sci-fi graphic novel script. We’re in the last scene, so almost all the pages are now available to read online. I launched this Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a small print run because I’ve always wanted to have this story be something you could hold in your hand, read on the bus, give to friends. But coming up with $7000 to do that seemed like a huge amount of money to raise. More than I could afford on my own, actually. So, I’m just bowled over and deeply, deeply grateful for the response from our readers. They’ve just blown me away.”

Now that Woolfson has reached his initial goal of $7000, in the tradition of other successful Kickstarter projects, such as for the webcomics The Order of the Stick and Diesel Sweeties, he has decided to offer “bonus goals”.

“With this amazing response and 28 days more remaining in the project,” Woolfson said. “I’m scrambling to come up with more awesome things to create for my backers, to show how grateful I am and keep the momentum going. I’ve talked to Winona and she said she’d be up for creating additional art prints and short comics that fill in backstory and pick up with the characters after Artifice the webcomic ends. These bonus rewards would be available to all backers and would certainly include another ‘romantic scene’ with our heroes. They’d all be parts of the story that I’ve really wanted to tell, but since I pay all my artists out of my own pocket, I didn’t think I could afford to.

“Either way, though, I’m very happy and very grateful just to be able to print our webcomic as a book you can kick back and read on the couch. Printing is very expensive and it’s something I was afraid would never happen. And now in just two days after launching this Kickstarter campaign, our readers have made it into a reality. Amazing.”

“I mean, when I grew up, advertisers would flee if you showed one innocent kiss between two men on a TV show. And now thanks to crowdsourcing initiatives like Kickstarter, I don’t even need to ask publishers for permission to get an action comic with gay heroes (who do a lot more than that) into the hands of my readers with a full offset print run. It gives me hope that over the next ten years, I’m going to get a chance to see a lot more of the kind of stories I always wanted to see growing up, but never could find. This is a really great example of the democratization of media that the Internet has made possible. It’s awesome to be able to reach so many people with one of my stories and something I thought I’d never live to see.”

Readers who are interested in finding out more about the Artifice Graphic Novel Print Drive Kickstarter project can go here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alexwoolfson/artifice-graphic-novel-print-drive

The Artifice webcomic can be read for free online here:

http://artificecomic.com/

Full Artifice webcomic synopsis:

“It was supposed to be a routine “clean-up” mission on the isolated colony Da Vinci Four, but Deacon, a prototype android soldier, has failed spectacularly. Not only did he disobey orders, letting a 19-year-old business liability named Jeff survive, he also attacked and killed those who were sent to help him. Now, the brilliant and uncompromising robopsychologist Clarice Maven has been summoned by the Corporation to determine why.

With Deacon at her absolute mercy, Maven will find out exactly what happened between the android and this boy—and she will use her terrible power to make sure Deacon never fails the Corporation ever again.”

Alex Woolfson is a gay male writer who creates action-adventure comics with gay characters for both women and men to enjoy under the playful banner Yaoi 911. Artifice is his first webcomic. He launched this Kickstarter project on Friday, March 9th at 10:00 P.M.

Winona Nelson grew up dreaming of making comics and painting fantasy and scifi book covers. She freelances in concept art and illustration and works on Magic: the Gathering cards and Warhammer novel covers. Winona lives and works in Philadelphia with artist Anthony Palumbo and their bad cat, Diego.

I eventually got to the booth, didn’t tell the guys what had happened and let them discover on their own as they got texts for relatives and loved ones. I spent the day numb, worrying about the people I know, the friends that I’d made, and the country I’d come to love. I’ve talked about it before, but from the time Electronic Gaming Monthly previewed the Super Famicom and Super Mario 4 (World) to my pre-teen self, Japan and Japanese culture has represented tomorrow to me, and moreso than the economic fallout, the homelessness issue, or any of the challenges Japan had had to face in my lifetime, the quake and tsunami in Northern Japan illuminated for me the idea that the future was not set, that promise could go entirely unfulfilled. Without notice.

I tweeted and blogged and donated about it at the time. A month later I helped to organize a fundraiser to support relief and rebuilding in Tohoku–we raised $20,000! I grit my teeth and knew that visiting Japan in the months following the quake would be a mistake–Japan had to deal with a number of issues before worrying about my nonsense–and I got back to the country as soon as I could. Despite the hardships and the adversity, it still was, still is, Japan, and I recommend to anyone that’s ever been curious about visiting the country to please do so; improving the tourism economy improves day to day lives, and direct donations to affected peoples directly improves the lives of those most afflicted.

Now it’s one year later, and I continue to do my best to promote Japanese culture and ideas, and to help the country rebuild. I’m not so naive as to believe there are not fundamental, institutional problems with the country that are hindering rebuilding and progress–faith in the government and/or belief in anything they say is at a spectacular low. The economy is still suffering badly, with no real plan in site to fix that either. But I look at my life and around my world and the effect that Japanese culture has on the life I live is, frankly, inescapable, and why would I want to escape it anyway? I’ll do my best to continue to give back to the country that has given me so much.

I don’t have a grand statement here–this isn’t one of my best pieces of writing. But I’ve been thinking for the past few days what I could say about this event that can still bring me to the verge of tears if I think about it too long, and I’ve got nothing more than what I’ve said above.

- Donate for relief, if you can.
- Visit Japan, if you’re able.
- Support the Japanese artists and authors who create the culture you love with money.

To my friends in Japan: I’m glad I didn’t lose any of you, and you’re in my thoughts.

- Christopher

–

Introduction

I married my husband Andrew in 2006, shortly after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the gay marriages that had been performed by our provinces since 2001 (give or take) were in fact informed by Canadian values, not merely provincial ones. Despite a challenge or three from the Conservatives, the law… and my marriage… has remained on the books to this day.

Growing up as a gay kid, and then a gay teenager, and finally a gay adult, the notion that I could ever get married was simply not something that occurred to me. Perhaps it was just a failure of imagination on my part, but from what I knew and had experienced of gay culture, gay people could have just as loving, committed, and important relationships as heterosexual people could… but ‘marriage’ was just something that wasn’t for us. I can’t tell you how happy I was to be wrong about that, and I am forever in the debt of the brave gay and lesbian couples that fought the battles, and won them, that allow me to have rights that I quite frankly should’ve been born with. That gay kids today, and the gay teens and adults of tomorrow, will hopefully never have been without.

I met my husband in 2004, and I’ve spent the better part of our 8 years together indoctrinating him into the world of comics and graphic novels. I’m a comics guy; I’ve read written, drawn, lettered, published, talked about, and sold comics since I was 8 years old, and indoctrinating new readers is just what we do. Andrew didn’t really have comics growing up—I think he’d only ever read Spiegelman’s Maus for school when he met me. He’s an opera, symphony, perfect diction kinda fellow, and so when sharing my first comic with him I went the intellectual route and chose McCloud’s “comics textbook” Understanding Comics. Frankly I was/am so in love with Andrew he probably could’ve hated it and we’d still be together, but he loved it and we talked about it at length, and he was curious for more. Now I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure the very next comic I gave him was Maurice Vellekoop’s sadly out-of-print classic Vellevision, a repository of accumulated gay culture, gay wisdom, and gay folly. It’s was also quite the unique work at the time as, save for perhaps Howard Cruise’s excellent Stuck Rubber Baby, it was the only ‘gay graphic novel’ I was aware of that wasn’t intended solely as pornography (though, make no mistake, Vellevision’s got some pretty great scenes in it that address those particular interests…!). He loved that too, and when Vellekoop’s “A Nut At The Opera” came out it was the best of both worlds for both of us!

In 2011, it was very heavily rumoured (and somewhat supported) that if the Conservatives in Canada were elected with a majority government they’d reopen ‘the marriage debate’ and that future marriages between same-sex couples, and even already-conducted marriages between same-sex couples, could be stopped or annulled. I know, it seems crazy that something that’s been happening for 10 years (give or take) could, with a change in government, be stopped or rescinded, but looking at the rhetoric coming out of the Republican party right now, where they’re seeking to roll back women’s rights 50 or 60 years, well, it still doesn’t seem so far-fetched does it? I made a fairly impassioned plea to vote against the Conservative party because I didn’t want the nature of my relationship attacked or invalidated by a bunch of government thugs… and this is where Raighne Hogan, editor of this book, noticed what I was saying and decided I might be a good person to say a few words on its behalf.

And here we are.

Little Heart: A Comic Anthology for Marriage Equality is a fascinating document of a time and a place, of comics creators coming of varied sexualities and genders and backgrounds coming together to comment on the nature of marriage and the nature of love. Of course Maurice Vellekoop is here, and his journalistic piece on the realities of gay marriage in Canada 5-10 years later is just as melancholic and just as ironic and just as delightful as his work has ever been. Marinaomi’s wonderful piece about the trials and tribulations of getting married in a ‘non-traditional way’ certainly hit home, as did Noah Van Sciver’s thoughtful piece of comics journalism about miscegenation—last century’s marital ‘boogeyman.’

Probably the pieces in this book that ring truest to my experience are the ones by Jeremy Sorese, and Emily Carrol and Kate Craig. Sorese’s “Love Me Forever! Oh! Oh! Oh!” resonates deeply with me, because the incredibly talented Mr. Sorese, at 23, has all the same questions about life and relationships and especially gay marriage (“Who is walked down the aisle? Who wears white?”) that I did at 29 on my wedding day. My only advice to Mr. Sorese, 10 years my junior, might be that I found my answers to those questions by doing them, and if that’s what he wants I hope he gets the opportunity. Likewise for the talented Carrol and Craig, mine and my husband’s wedding rings are vintage (or perhaps ‘second hand’ if you’re feeling uncharitable), and I couldn’t help but wonder at the lives lived by the bearers of those rings before we wore them. Carrol and Craig in their ring neatly encapsulate the hopes of marriage, of commitment and anticipation, that I feel unite anyone who enters into the practice, while still making allowances for the unique relationships and agreements that define every union.

Even the pieces that don’t directly address marriage, but instead talk about queerness obscured, like “Roosterlegs” by Ed Choy and Sam Sharpe, or mediate on the complicated nature of young love, like Joseph Remnant’s “I Told You So,” speak to human experiences that touch all of us. Moreover every contributor to this book answered the call, “Help us support marriage equality in Minnesota,” by doing what they do best; creating comics—regardless of style, theme, or materials used. They’ve come down on the side of supporting the rights of all people to equality under the law and by picking up this book and supporting this fight you have too.

I was taught from an early age that equality needed to be fought for. I learned last year that what should be inexorable rights are not always so, and we must fight on. I learned from Jeremy Sorese that rights are worth fighting for even when they might not speak to us directly, from Marinaomi that celebrating what we have does not come at the expense of fighting on the behalf of others, from Noah Van Sciver and Emily Carrol and Kate Craig that love—and marriage—have always faced questions and obstacles, and from Maurice Vellekoop that even when marriage turns out not to be what you think it would, that the core concept of equality is still incredibly important. Finally, I learned from Raighne Hogan, 2d Comics, and the dozens of contributors to this fine volume that this is a battle that may need to be fought state by state, and even heart by heart, but that people regardless of background can come together and lend their voice. I’m happy to be lending mine and, by purchasing this book, thank you for lending yours.

-          Christopher Butcher, March, 2012.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/765505753/little-heart-a-comic-anthology-for-marriage-equali

I’ll be honest, it’s not near its fundraising goal but with just a little help it absolutely could be. This book features new comics by Maurice Vellekoop, Emily Carrol, Zak Sally, MariNaomi, Joseph Remnany, Jeremy Sorese, Noah Van Sciver, Michael DeForge, and over a dozen more amazing contributors. Also, I’m writing the introduction!

For $20 you can get a copy of the book, and all you need is to start a Kickstarter account (free, takes 2 minutes) and an Amazon account (everyone has one of these, right?). But the rewards for this comic are insane if you want to donate more! For $100 you could get the book and original drawings by Dustin Harbin or Noah Van Sciver! For $250 you could get a copy of the book and a “date with the artist” of one of the stories! For $400 you could get a copy of the book and an original comics page by Maurice Vellekoop (and as his art dealer I can tell you that’s a great deal!).

In short, this is a great cause, there are some truly excellent comics in this anthology, and I hope you will head over and sign up for a copy through Kickstarter because if you’re the sort of person reading this on this particular site, then you’re definitely the sort of person who will get more out of this than the money you put into it.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/765505753/little-heart-a-comic-anthology-for-marriage-equali

In the next post, I’m going to post the first draft of my introduction to this book, for a fuller picture of why this book, and the fight for marriage equality, are important to me.

- Chris

The contest is now open! Head to https://www.welovefine.com/contest.php?id_contest=10 for details.

Original Post below…

- Chris

–

I was asked to be a judge for a t-shirt design contest that Mighty Fine is doing for Scott Pilgrim t-shirts, which is cool. I said yes mostly because Mr. Bryan Lee O’Malley and Mr. Edgar Wright are also judges, and I like those dudes a lot.

Today the first teaser was released and like, I am the only person listed on it*, because I am clearly the judgiest out of all of the participating judges. Edgar and Bryan are just too nice, is the problem, and so entrants need to know they will be judged by the judgiest, and that is Me.

Teaser: http://welovefineshirts.tumblr.com/post/18101616007/its-coming-artists-get-ready-to-level-up

- Chris “Judge” Butcher
*Cue 10,000 Scott Pilgrim fans asking “who the fuck is Chris Butcher?”

http://welovefineshirts.tumblr.com/post/18101616007/its-coming-artists-get-ready-to-level-up

Hi, my name is Christopher Butcher, and I’m the manager of The Beguiling Books & Art in Toronto, Canada. We’ll be celebrating our 25th year in business in 2012, and I personally am in the midst of my 17th year working in comic stores. I started out buying my comics from the corner store—Transformers and G.I. Joe before discovering comic book stores, X-Men, Vertigo, and eventually the wide world of art comix afterwards. Comic book stores opened my eyes to the wide variety of material available in comics, and because of that I’d always thought that the point of them, really, was to carry a diversity of material… and, when budget allows, the widest possible diversity of material.

When I started working in stores Diamond did not have a monopoly on the comics market, we ordered new comic books from a bunch of distributors for a bunch of years… Andromeda, Multibook, Grosner, then Capital, Diamond, and Heroes World. While all of those distributors (save Diamond) and many more have subsequently gone the way of the dodo, in my day-to-day at The Beguiling we deal with dozens of distributors in a given month. Comics, books, art, and more. Most retailers are also dealing with toy distributors, t-shirt distributors, supplies distributors, and all kinds of niche and specialty product distributors.

(Can I drop in a shout-out to Last Gasp here? They’re phenomenal at stocking a wider variety of art and alt-culture books. Investigate opening an account with Last Gasp post-haste. )

Anyway, the point of all of this (other than to introduce myself) is to say that as comic retailers, we have options and we have responsibilities. More responsibilities than we often want, not as many options as we’d like, but we’ve got some elbow room and it’s our job to use it. We’ve all suffered under a series of poor distribution decisions that have made things difficult for us, but if we’re willing to put the leg work in we can have the kind of store we want, carry the products we want, and have the kind of industry we want, and on something resembling a level playing field as well.

The problems come in when we are excluded from certain areas of what should be our business, by forces beyond our direct control… and that’s my biggest issue with the current crop of digital comics and distributors of same.

Currently, there is only one digital comics purveyor that has an ‘open’ affiliate program for comics retailers to participate financially in the sale of digital comics, Comixology. I will go on record as saying that the terms are horrible for retailer participation in Comixology’s program in almost every way; in terms of the percentage of the sale we make, in the information that we need to give up to Comixology, in providing that company with access to our customers, and most aggravatingly of all that we receive no information about the customers who are buying from us through Comixology. Compared to an affiliates program like Amazon’s the terms are kind of awful; compared to even a consignment agreement in a brick-and-mortar establishment it is gross.

And that’s even if you can participate—the program is only currently open to American retailers. While I as a Canadian retailer can sell all manner of physical comic books, I am completely excluded from selling digital versions of the same… and to reiterate, none amongst their competition doesn’t seem to have an accessible affiliate program at all.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s not a level playing field. Excluded economically, through bad terms and bad finances; excluded regionally; excluded completely; digital comics don’t have much (if anything) to offer brick and mortar retailers. Just recently, when brick and mortar book retailers Books a Million and Barnes and Noble were excluded from DC’s digital offerings, they boycotted the publisher by removing from store shelves every single book that was digitally exclusive with another publisher. I don’t mention this to incite comic retailers to do the same, I mention it merely to point out that this is Serious Business, and something every retailer should be aware of.

Here’s the most important part though: The whole system is utterly broken anyhow, and we should be demanding not only better access to digital comics sales, but better sales methods for digital comics.

Let me break this down for you as simply as possible: No one who is “buying” digital comics is actually buying digital comics. What they are doing is renting them for an indeterminate period of time, and they’re renting them in an extremely inconvenient format. If you buy a comic book from a comic book retailer, you own it; you can read in whenever you want, however you want, for as long as you physically possess it. If you want to ‘purchase’ a digital comic, you’re merely gaining access to that content on a specific device and in a way that can’t generally be transferred between devices, that may or may not be available without a live internet connection, and your permission to read that comic book might be revoked at any time, with no recourse.

It’s a closed system, it’s full of hoops you have to jump through, and ultimately the content provider is in charge of what the consumer has purchased: the consumer is cut entirely out of the loop. Digital downloads, at least in this instance, aren’t ownership, they’re rental, and that’s not our business model.

We as comic book retailers should be pushing for a new system, and a forefront-inclusion in that new system: A standard-format digital comic that can be read on every device and on any format, a download that exists independently of the store that sold it, and that can be sold by us (rather than just marketing someone else who’s selling it, and being paid a pittance to do so).

There are dozens of arguments against a ubiquitous, copyright-free, non-locked file format, most having to do with the spectre of digital piracy, but it’s my contention that locking down this content so tightly, and so expensively, with “DRM” or “Digital Restrictions Management” ultimately drives more consumers to piracy than not. Even Apple’s iTunes eventually caved and let you download music that you could freely copy and share amongst any device you owned; and while an app store is an attractive option for content providers, it is a needlessly restrictive, censorious, and anti-equality system. A closed system is never a fair system, and as independent business owners it’s not in any of our best interests to support such a system.

In the end what I’m saying is that if a digital comics distributor comes along offering consumers actual purchases, and is willing to work with the Direct Maket—which has direct access to hundreds of thousands of comic fans—and that person offers to treat me fairly and with respect? That’s someone I will happily work with, and an enterprise I will recommend supporting. But I don’t see anything resembling that in the current marketplace and that’s a damned shame and a missed opportunity.

- Christopher Butcher

This article was written in October 2011, and ran in the fall issue of C&G Monthly Magazine

Edit: I’ve been contacted by a representative of Comixology, to let me know that the reporting of Comixology to retailers about sales has been significantly improved. Unfortunately I didn’t have access to this info at the time, and I am interested to read the new contract terms. 

The board of directors is looking for a full-time store manager for the location, to help in revitalizing the business and the space, and they’ve posted the job in various spots. I thought that the least I could do was post it up here, so those of you who might be looking for a great, challenging, rewarding job in the book field might apply.

- Chris

POSITION AVAILABLE
Glad Day Bookshop Store Manager

Glad Day Bookshop is now the oldest LGBTQ bookstore in the world and is under new ownership. We are seeking an individual who meets challenges with a creative mind and a fierce heart – someone who can balance imagination and concrete results.

This position will be a phenomenal amount of work but training will be available and you will have a skilled Board of Directors who are able to support you in every aspect of the job.

POSITION OBJECTIVES
Sales
-Increase revenues and profitability
-Actively market and merchandise to meet sales targets
-Create positive relationships with vendors and suppliers
-Manage online sales including inventory, shipping, etc.
-Track revenues and expenditures and report these to the Board
-Improve daily processes and systems to maximize profitability
-Work to ensure fiscal stability and longevity of the business

Direction
-Revitalize Glad Day as a cultural institution in Toronto and Canada and
as the world’s oldest bookstore dedicated to the LGBTQ community
-Provide the highest level of customer service to the public
-Procure and replenish the most robust selection of queer books and media in Toronto
-Know what’s current in LGBTQ print and media, and respond to trends and market demands
-Develop a roster of event programming and promotions that engages the community and that generates short- and long-term sales
-Embrace new technological opportunities as they become available
-Manage website and social media
-Develop positive relationships with queer authors/artists and organizations
-Foster a sex-positive, anti-racist and anti-oppressive environment
- Other duties as assigned

People
-Recruit, develop and sustain a team capable of doing the work
-Hire, train, and manage the performance of part-time employees
-Work with the Board of Directors to meet organizational priorities
-Work with the Board and staff to facilitate special projects & events
-Meet with the Board and staff regularly

QUALIFICATIONS
- Retail management experience or related experience that prioritizes multi-tasking, delegation and flexibility
- Experience in book retail, or another facet of the book industry
- Demonstrable knowledge of LGBTQ literature
- Microsoft Word, Excel
- Familiarity with internet and internet applications including social media and database-driven applications
- Excellent spoken and written communication skills in English
- Understanding and connection to the LGBTQ community
- Professional or volunteer experience within the LGBTQ community is an asset

CONDITIONS
- Full-Time Salaried Position
- Evening and Weekend Shifts Required
- Salary, Benefits and Bonus options will be discussed with successful applicants

Please reply with a resume and cover letter by 9pm on Wednesday February 15th.

Send resumes and inquiries to: gladdayhiring@gmail.com

–

As of December and in addition to my roles at The Beguiling and TCAF,  I officially became the Marketing Director for UDON Entertainment (http://www.udonentertainment.com). For those of you that don’t know UDON, they’re a publisher here in Toronto releasing about 24 books per year, mostly licensed video game-related art books and manga translated into English and distributed internationally. They’re also producing licensed comics (based on the Street Fighter video game franchise) and original comics and artbooks. I’ve cited them before as being people who I think take doing licensed work seriously, and I’ve always admired their commitment to quality and that they truly believed in their products.

I mention this now because I’ve started doing more public work for the company in the past few weeks and, while it wasn’t really a secret, I figured it might be a bit weird not to mention that here since I’ve been so public about my professional life at Comics212 for the past 15 years (srsly). I’m proud to be working with Erik, Jim, Matt, Stacy, Ash, and the legion of talented creators and production folk that make up the company. I like that, because I’m working in the comics industry in so many other capacities, UDON is really doing their own thing, and the potential for conflict of interests is more or less zero. In the eventuality that something does pop up, like UDON choosing to debut their new graphic novel Makeshift Miracle at TCAF this year, Marketing Coordinator Stacy King (handling primarily our kids/young adult lines and kids manga) will be able to take over.

The reality of the situation is that I’d been good friends with the folks that make up the company since its inception 11 years ago, and I’d been helping out at various times and in various capacities (mostly running convention booths for them) for the past few years. Formalizing the relationship feels pretty right, and while it’s mostly confined to working with press and developing relationships there, occasionally I’ll do something nice and public like write about out of print books or conduct an interview with a mangaka. In short, stuff I’d probably do anyway.

It’s a good fit and I’m happy to be here. Thanks to Erik Ko for the opportunity, and thanks to Peter Birkemoe at The Beguiling for his faith that I could do both jobs without fucking them both up. So far, so good.

- Chris

(Incidentally, and this seems to be glossed over a lot these days, DC pissed off Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons originally because they started selling merchandise related to Watchmen, even though that wasn’t in the contract (if I remember correctly), and because they declared it was “promotional” and therefore Moore & Gibbons weren’t entitled to any of those profits. Rift created.)

Now there are spin-off books being released, and one of the original creators who feels taken advantage of by DC (and I happen to agree with that by the way, he’s been basically defiled by DC) doesn’t want anything to do with them. He feels that they’re being published by a company that does not ethically treat the people who work for it, and every inch he’s given them in the past has been taken for a mile.

A creator feels utterly mistreated by a corporation; the corporation is now making spin-offs of his original work and he is not okay with that.

You’re either okay with that or you’re not.

- Chris

I was quite happy to see Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ new comic SAGA on the cover of this month’s PREVIEWS catalogue for a couple of different reasons. For one it’s an independent, fully creator-owned series from Vaughan, whose “Y The Last Man” and “Ex Machina” are at least partially owned by DC, despite him creating them from whole cloth. For another it’s the highest-profile work Canadian Fiona Staples has ever done, and she’s wonderfully talented and deserves all the accolades sent her way. It’s another high-profile book for Image and I’m always happy to see them in the spotlight. And the cover features two action/adventure heroes, one with a sword and one with a gun, a man and a woman standing shoulder-to-shoulder, and the woman’s even breastfeeding her baby. If there’s a better “our family against the whole universe” image I can’t really think of what it might be.

Then I thought “Maybe I should point this out on the blog, this is a cool thing.” Then I thought “If I’m the first one to point out breastfeeding on the cover of Previews and the cover of a comic book, it’s just going to tip-off some neanderthal who objects to a woman’s breasts (but covers that up with some other sort of rationalization).” Then I thought “I’ll just enjoy that it’s happening, let those who would object discover it for themselves.”

Cut to: Vaughn and Staples end up with a feature in USA Today! As expected, the wide release/distribution of said image did bring an unsavoury objection from someone in comics, in the form of a nasty little screed from Dave Dorman, since deleted. I had a list of awful conservative comics ‘pundits’ who I thought would be the first to take a swipe at the image… Dave Dorman though, who’da thunk? His objections mostly centered around the fact that the image of a baby being breast-fed was inappropriate for children to see (think about that for a moment), and that the act of breast-feeding on a comic cover was exploitative, but unspecifically exploitative, as the rest of his post seemed concerned with “women having it all” and what not… it was a muddled and confused thing, that post, very irrational and for someone like me an absolute joy to read. Basically, whatever point he may have thought he logically had was so totally obfusticated by his puffery and indignation that he came off, rightly, like an ass.

Now of course the reactions/round-ups have been posted (I’ll link to my friend Andrew Wheeler’s because maybe he gets paid by the hit or something: http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/01/09/saga-fiona-staples-dave-dorman-breastfeeding/), and people on the internet have torn a strip off of Dorman. As I’ve noted, Dorman has pulled down his post and is doubtlessly going to follow-up explaining that he was ‘misunderstood’ doesn’t find breastfeeding objectionable, just that it’s been exploited for this comic, yadda yadda yadda. Same old bullshit internet spin cycle, no one is accountable for anything, everything’s misunderstood, and it all gets swept under the rug as soon as Marvel makes an announcement about a new variant cover or some other such bullshit.

I’m just saying, congrats to Vaughan and especially Staples, on a great-sounding new series, on a lovely piece of promotional artwork, and on the boost to your sales that will surely follow a 10s of thousands of people being made aware of your series that might have missed it otherwise, even on the cover of Previews.

- Chris
P.S.: If Dave Dorman is reading this, hey, I like your work. Sorry you said something stupid on the internet. As someone who was there for the ‘birth’ of internet comics journalism, which you now find yourself trapped in, I strongly suggest you just flat-out apologize, with no conditions or ‘explanations’. Anything else will just be incessantly picked apart by blogs/websites/angry fans, who honestly have nothing better to do until Marvel makes that variant cover announcement. Just “I’m absolutely sorry, I spoke entirely in haste without thinking, my apologies to the creative team, I wish them well.”  That will placate all but the craziest of commenters. Then spend a few days and figure out where all of that anger is coming from inside you about breastfeeding and maybe try and work that out, because… yeesh.

Good times! :D

- Chris

Happy New Year!

I had a pretty great year, all told, and I’m probably gonna go over that in it’s own post in a day or two. But for now, I just want to wish you all the best, and I hope you all have the 2012 that you want. Up top you’ll find a special “Year Of The Dragon” Kit Kat that was gifted to me (Thanks Jocelyne!) on my recent trip to Japan, and that is just adorable, and this is also a plug for you to go check out my other blog http://oyatsubreak.com, where I’ll be blogging every day this week. :)

All the best,

- Christopher

Lovely!

http://www.ralphbakshiart.com/3/artist.asp?ArtistID=34588&Akey=7HKQV3HR

- Chris

Season’s Greetings from UDON ENTERTAINMENT!

http://udonentertainment.com

- Chris

Happy Holidays right back atcha, ICv2.

http://icv2.com/

- Chris

And a happy nude year to you too, Kevin Colden.

http://www.kevincolden.com/

- Chris

So here’s a cool thing! To celebrate The Louvre (the renowned Museum in France), the Louvre and a French Publisher co-published a series of graphic novels with The Louvre as the subject. Comics / bande desinee / graphic novels / manga, calll them what you will, these works have been fascinating to read and enjoy and have to date included Nicolas DeCrecy’s Glacial Period, Marc-Antonie Matthieu’s The Museum Vaults, Yslaire’s Sky Over the Louvre, abd Liberge’s On the Odd Hours.

Now NBM brings us the first Japanese co-production, and it’s got a hell of a pedigree. Created by Hirohiko Araki, author of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, comes Rohan at the Louvre, featuring ‘Rohan,’ a super-powered manga creator from the Jojo’s series in a stand-alone, spin-off volume. Araki is known across Japan and Europe for the Jojo’s series as well as for his fashion and art works, including a 2011 collaboration with Gucci to celebrate the brand’s 90th Anniversary this year.

This is kind of a big deal! The solicitation text for the book, as well as a preview of the volume, follows.

More at http://nbmpub.com/

–

ROHAN AT THE LOUVRE
Hirohiko Araki

After Glacial Period and The Sky Over the Louvre comes another completely original story with stunning art by a leading mangaka. Rohan, a young mangaka, meets a beautiful mysterious young woman with a dramatic story. Seeing him draw, she tells him of a cursed 200 year old painting using the blackest ink ever known from a 1000 year old tree the painter had brought down without approval from the Emperor who had him executed for doing so. The painting meanwhile had been saved from destruction by a curator of the Louvre. Rohan forgets this story as he becomes famous but ten years later, visiting Paris, he takes the occasion to try and locate the painting. Little does he know how violently powerful the curse of it is until he has the museum unearth it from deep within its archival bowels?

7 ¼ x 10 3/8, 128pp. full color hardcover, $19.99 ISBN 978-1-56163-615-0

–

Preview Page One (read right-to-left):

Preview Page Two:

See the complete 4-page preview at http://www.nbmpub.com/comicslit/rohan/pre1.html.

- Chris @ The Beguiling

Happy Holidays from NBM & Papercutz, and the Smurfs too.

http://www.nbmpub.com/

http://www.papercutz.com/

- Chris

Happy Holidays from Owlkids, and all of the children of the world!

http://www.owlkids.com/

- Chris

Some Lovely Carla Speed McNeil art to celebrate Dark Horse reprinting FINDER in 2011.

There was a slightly different version of this here earlier but I took it down, as it was apparently  joke that didn’t quite translate. Merry Christmas, Dark Horse. :)

http://www.darkhorse.com/

http://www.lightspeedpress.com/

- Christopher

It’s an interesting thing to see Courtney re-released, mostly because if successful, there are a host of graphic novels from just before the ‘boom’ that would likely find a much more favourable audience now. Here’s hoping.

I don’t usually do this, but I quite like this series and creator Ted Naifeh is a lovely gentleman, and so I invite you to thrill to the 5 page preview of the first volume and press release, immediately below. Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things, the first volume, will be out in April; I highly recommend picking it up for yourself or for the kid who appreciates ‘spooky’ things in your life.

- Chris

PR: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 12.20.2011

COURTNEY CRUMRIN IN COLOR FOR THE FIRST TIME IN NEW SPECIAL EDITION HARDCOVER REPRINTS

Ten years ago Oni Press brought fans the magical world of Ted Naifeh’s Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things. The series quickly became a favorite amongst fans, enticing new readers to comics while giving existing comic book aficionados something new and fresh to get excited about. Spending a decade amongst the goblins and ghouls is a tall order for any girl, but one that Courtney is more than equipped to handle. To celebrate her 10th anniversary, Oni Press will be reprinting Naifeh’s perennial series as special edition prestige hardcovers. And, for the first time in Courtney’s history, fans will get to see their favorite spell slinger in full color!

Courtney Crumrin, Volume 1: The Night Things, Special Edition will be on store shelves April, 2012. Volume 1 kickstarts a full reprint program with new colored special edition hardcovers of all the original Courtney Crumrin books to follow. Naifeh has returned to his beloved series to remaster the material, working closely with colorist Warren Wucinich (Rascal Raccoon’s Raging Revenge, Jam!) to create a spooky palette that accentuates what everyone loved about the original black-and-white art while providing a completely different way of seeing Naifeh’s fully realized world.

“Readers love Courtney Crumrin for how vividly Ted renders the magical world he has dreamed up,” said Oni Press editor Jill Beaton. “The original versions were wonderful and Ted is one of those cartoonists who really understands how to use black ink on a white page. Despite the level of detail, he avoided over-rendering his drawings, meaning that the work is still open and has room to breathe. It also means there is space for color. Warren is highlighting what is already there, filling in an extra dimension that previously was left to the reader.”

In addition to the color treatment, Oni Press’ art director, Keith Wood, is pulling out all the stops to make the Courtney Crumrin, Volume 1: The Night Things, Special Edition truly special. “In talking with Ted about what we wanted to do with the hardcover,” Wood said, “he told me that it should look like a book you’d find on Uncle Aloysius’ bookshelf, something Courtney might stumble on when snooping around his office. It’s going to be a cool object as well as a good read.”

“I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished with Courtney Crumrin,” concluded Ted Naifeh. “It’s been ten wonderful, creative years, and I’m happy to have done it at Oni Press. The fans have shown us tremendous support, and I hope they will enjoy the chance to relive these adventures with a brand-new hue.”

Courtney Crumrin, Volume 1: The Night Things, Special Edition features a special silver ink, embossed cover, and an old-fashioned ribbon bookmark placed in the sewn spine. The 136-page, 6” x 9”, graphic novel will retail for $19.99 and debuts April 2012.

- Chris

I received this adorable little Christmas Card from Sonny Liew, creator of Malinky Robot, this morning. What better time to remind you to all rush out and pick up a copy of this book for someone on your Christmas list?

For the uninitiated, It’s a bit like TekkonKinkreet without the ultra-violence, or the FLIGHT anthologies before there were FLIGHT anthologies. Gorgeous sprawling cityscapes and small stories about big things, the detritus of childhood writ large, it’s fun stuff.

Malinky Robot: Collected Stories & Other Bits
Created by Sonny Liew
Full Colour, 128 Pages, $16.95
Published by Image Comics

I’ll try and run all of the comics-related Christmas Cards I get this year up here on the blog… it’s the least I can do during this very low ebb of content.

- Chris

More info at the website, http://graphicmedicine.org

You can click the “continue reading” link at the bottom to see the whole PR.

PR:

Comics & Medicine: Navigating the Margins
22-24 July 2012
Toronto, Canada
Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Biomedical Communications Program, University of Toronto
Office of the Vice-Principal, Research, University of Toronto Mississauga

The third international interdisciplinary conference* on comics and medicine will continue to explore the intersection of sequential visual arts and medicine. This year we will highlight perspectives that are often under-represented in graphic narratives, such as depictions of the Outsider or Other in the context of issues such as barriers to healthcare, the stigma of mental illness and disability, and the silent burden of caretaking.

The conference will feature keynote presentations by comics creators Joyce Brabner and Joyce Farmer. Brabner, a comics artist and social activist, collaborated with her late husband Harvey Pekar on the graphic novel Our Cancer Year (1994), which won a Harvey Award for best graphic novel. Farmer is a veteran of the underground comics scene who nursed her elderly parents through dementia and decline as shown in her graphic memoir Special Exits (2010), which won the National Cartoonists Society award for graphic novels.

We invite proposals for scholarly papers (20 minutes) or panel discussions (60 minutes) focusing on medicine and comics in any form (e.g., graphic novels, comic strips, graphic pathographies, manga, and/or web comics). In particular, we seek presentations on the following—and related—topics:

• Graphic pathographies of illness and disability
• The use of comics in medical education
• The use of comics in patient care
• Depictions of the illness experience from the perspective of loved ones and family caregivers
• The interface of graphic medicine and other visual arts in popular culture
• Ethical implications of using comics to educate the public
• Ethical implications of patient representation in comics by healthcare providers
• Trends in international use of comics in healthcare settings
• The role of comics in provider/patient communication
• Comics as virtual support groups for patients and caregivers
• The use of comics in bioethics discussions and education

We also welcome workshops (120 minutes) by creators of comics on the process, rationale, methods, and general theories behind the use of comics to explore medical themes. These are intended to be “hands-on” interactive workshops for participants who wish to obtain particular skills with regard to the creation or teaching about comics in the medical context.

We envision this gathering as a collaboration among humanities scholars, comics scholars, comics creators, healthcare professionals, and comics enthusiasts.

300-word proposals should be submitted by Friday, 28 February 2012 to submissions@graphicmedicine.org.

Proposals may be in Word, PDF, or RTF formats with the following information in this order:

author(s)
affiliation
email address
title of abstract
body of abstract
Please identify your presentation preference:

oral presentation
panel discussion
workshop

While we cannot guarantee that presenters will receive their first choice of presentation format, we will attempt to honor people’s preferences, and we will acknowledge the receipt of all proposals submitted. Abstracts will be peer-reviewed by an interdisciplinary selection committee. Notification of acceptance or rejection will be completed by 14 March 2012.

Please note: Presenters are responsible for session expenses (e.g. handouts) and personal expenses (travel, hotel, and meeting registration fees). All presenters must register for at least the day on which they are scheduled to present.

*Information about the 2010 conference, “Comics and Medicine: Medical Narrative in Graphic Novels,” in London, England, and the 2011 conference, “Comics and Medicine: The Sequential Art of Illness,” in Chicago, Illinois, USA, can be found at www.graphicmedicine.org.

VIZ MEDIA TO RELEASE ART FOR HOPE DIGITAL ART ANTHOLOGY IN DECEMBER

Innovative Art Book Created In Partnership With Autodesk To Benefit Japanese Disaster Recovery; Exhibit Of Artwork Also Takes Place In Las Vegas At Autodesk University

VIZ Media has announced the upcoming debut of ART FOR HOPE, a limited edition digital art book anthology created in partnership with Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) to benefit Architecture for Humanity. The anthology will be available for a limited time, from December 1, 2011 to May 31, 2012, for $4.99 through VIZManga.com and the VIZ Manga App for iPad®, iPhone® and iPod® touch. 100% of VIZ Media’s net proceeds will support Architecture for Humanity’s ongoing disaster reconstruction efforts in Japan. To learn more about these rebuilding projects, please visit: www.ArchitectureForHumanity.org.

Each of the 40 artists participating in the ART FOR HOPE anthology used Autodesk® SketchBook® digital paint and drawing software applications in some way to create original pieces for the anthology. The artists, both professional and amateur, hail from around the world and from diverse fields, and range in style from the realistic to the fantastic, each illustrating the theme of “Hope.” Notable contributors include Eisner Award and Harvey Award winner Rob Guillory, Harvey Award winner Lark Pien, muralist Sirron Norris, and MAMESHIBA artists Jorge Monlongo and Gemma Corell.

Selections from ART FOR HOPE will also be exhibited at the Autodesk annual user conference, Autodesk University, taking place at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, NV from November 29th to December 1st. Access to the exhibit is free to the public within the Creative Studio a unique hands-on space to celebrate the creative spirit and showcasing a variety of Autodesk software and products. More information on the exhibit and conference is available at: http://www.sketchbooknews.com/news/creative-studio-art-exhibit.html.

VIZ Media and Autodesk are very proud of and grateful to the following artists for their contributions to the ART FOR HOPE digital art anthology:

Janet Alvarado, Don’t Lose Hope
Asuka 111 (Patipat Asavasena), Hope
Azure, Untitled
Greg Baldwin of CreatureBox, Sheltered
Alan Bay, A Little Piece of Hope
Drew Blom, Calvin Hedge and the Iron Golem
Steve Boura, Bright Future
Carsten Bradley, A Wish for You
Matthew Britton, Regrowth
Veronica Casson, The Guest Room
Geikou Chen, Rainbow Bridge to Tomorrow
Gemma Correll, Pierre, le Chat Français
Kalii Delarosa, The Rainbow in the Rain
Conrado Hernan, Villa Gil Untitled
Dave Guertin, First Flight
Rob Guillory, Hope
Rodolpho Langhi, A New Sunrise
C. Lijewski, Light Side of Dark
Chris Lui, Birds of a Feather
Holly Mongi, Good Morning, Friend
Jorge Monlongo, The Sprout and the Bean
Brian Muelhaupt, Ojizo-sama
Shaun Mullen, Kodama (Tree Spirits)
Susan Murtaugh, Enduring Beauty
Ray N., Deliverance
Joe Ng, Rise Above the Storm
Sirron Norris, Kibou
Jacques Pena, Love
Luis Peso, Gathering Hope
Lark Pien, Wishes, Dreams
Kyle Runciman, Ready to Roll
Francesco Salvati, DEAR HOPE
Janet Shaw, The Hope of Japan
Brad Silverman, Dancing Dragon
Joseph Strachan, Flight of the Phoenix
James Turner, Never Give Up
Colie Wertz, Sea Turtle
Pinar Yalcin, Beam of Light
John Yandall, One Little Sign
Jim Zub, Seed Starter

For more information on the ART FOR HOPE project, please visit www.VIZ.com/artforhope.

Art Credits:

Love © 2011 Jacques Pena
First Flight © 2011 Dave Guertin

So my answer there was a sort of a glib place-holder, intended to be expanded upon after a few people had had their say on the topic because, frankly, The Beguiling has probably the best reputation in the industry for stocking and supporting “non-superhero” comics. And then I got caught up in heading to Japan and I didn’t have time to respond and everyone ended up looking more eloquent and nuanced than me. My fault for trying to be funny.

So, briefly: The “non-superhero market” is alive and well from my perspective, yes. At any given time there are 10-15 ongoing monthly or nearly-monthly series that I could recommend to readers that don’t fit the ‘superhero’ mold, but are clearly genre-based or genre-inspired works. I think Image is going through something of a renascence right now in terms of the creator-owned work they’re publishing, and Icon, IDW, SLG, Dynamite, Boom, and Oni have all usually got at least one monthly comic worth following, and sometimes two or three. We even got a new issue of Optic Nerve this year!

And that’s before you get into the graphic novels. On a given week, we’re getting 40+ new graphic novels in, and only 25-33% of that is superhero related. Classic comic strips, art-comix collections, mainstream-bookstore stuff. It’s good. One side-effect of Marvel and DC’s “Throw it at the wall to see what sticks, and make sure everything gets collected in trade” business model is that their sales are so diffused among so many products that it’s next to impossible for them to have a ‘hit’ on any title. No one comes in asking for a specific “Green Lantern” or “Avengers” trade, because there are dozens and dozens of books featuring those characters, and it’s impossible to market them or promote them individually… but if someone comes in asking for Buffy, The Walking Dead, Scott Pilgrim, Skullkickers, Criminal, Chew, Locke & Key, etc.? We start them at v1, they read til there’s no more to read in that line, and we start making recommendations from there.  That definitely affects how we order.

And hell, manga. MANGA.

Realistically, the superhero material we stock at The Beguiling (and make no mistake, we stock all of the superhero material, every comic and ever trade) makes up a minority of our comics sales. We like some of it, we’re glad people like it, and we like its dependability, bringing customers into the shop every week that will buy a variety of stuff. While the last couple months have been very strong for superhero material, thanks to the DC relaunch and some high-profile Marvel books, realistically “non-superhero” works are still our bread and butter and I don’t really see that changing any time soon.

I have thought and continue to think, though, that defining the comics industry between superhero and non-superhero works is false and bizarre. Even asking that question and having me respond with a phrase like “actually, non-superhero works as a grouping do better for us,” is exactly the sort of statement that gets die-hard cape fans’ dander up, and I don’t think it’s either necessary or helpful for anyone. So, just to reassure the superhero fans reading this: I don’t and we don’t hate superheroes, it’s okay, and we’re happy to serve you regardless of the types of comics you like to read. :)

- Christopher

The initial reports from all the sites linked-to above have settled in on cost-cutting measures rather than performance issues with those let go. This may put Marvel in the position of having to explain to some super-involved fans and the professional community… why cost-cutting had to come for what by most rational measures is a very successful publishing enterprise that serves as a powerful R&D arm for movies and licensing. Marvel saw three movies with its characters out this summer, two from Marvel proper, and has at least two major movies (one from Marvel itself) coming out in Summer 2012. All of those films anchor significant licensing campaigns, and the company in general has moved far past the more confused days of the 1980s and early 1990s with that era’s hat-in-hand licensing deals and is partnered up seemingly across the board with major players in dozens of fields. Ironically, another piece of Marvel news Thursday was that they sold a Punisher TV show, which underlines the continuing potency of Marvel’s characters in terms of securing such deals and selling related material. - Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

The current problem seems to stem from a publishing forecast that didn’t get hit when the actual numbers came in. It doesn’t matter that Marvel is still a very profitable company. This is not a matter of losing money. It just wasn’t as profitable as it thought it might be. The shortfall in the margins wasn’t huge — it was less than 5% in an economy where that’s practically considered stable. But whatever the shortfall was, instead of looking at ways to build the business or bolster areas with huge potential — books, anyone? — Ike’s only reaction is to slash, slash, slash. - Heidi MacDonald, The Comics Beat

My best wishes go out to the folks who lost their jobs yesterday. I hope you manage to land on your feet.

- Christopher

East Bay Alternative Press Book Fair
December 10, 2011, 10am-4pm
@ Berkeley City College

PRESS RELEASE:

Hello Bay Area!

As a d.i.y. kick in the ass to the holiday shopping season and a way to discover those lovely treasures to wile away the long winter nights, zinester Tomas Moniz of Rad Dad Zine, artist Brooke Appler, and others are organizing a one day event to celebrate the amazing quality and diversity of independent writing, publishing and all around crafting of the Bay Area.

The event will take place on Saturday, December 10th in downtown Berkeley at Berkeley City College (one block from Downtown Berkeley BART) from 10 am – 4 pm. With over 60 different tablers sharing their wares, this year’s Book Fair will be cram-packed with opportunities to talk with, mingle, and support local and independent artists such as Manic D Press, 1984 Printing, PM Press, and The Littlest Elle, and so many more. We also will have a Variety Show featuring work and art the evening before the book fair at Rock Paper Scissors Collective on December 9th. Some tables still available!

For more information, give us a holler!

East Bay Alternative Press – ebapbookfair@gmail.com
Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/event.php?eid=235581366488296
Review from last year: http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/12/09/cartoons-and-comics-ondisplay-at-berkeley-fair/

The first issue of Shonen Jump in North America.

I like Viz a lot and so this totally pains me to say, but I’m actually pretty bummed about the move to digital-only on Shonen Jump [ref].

Yes, I absolutely think it is a good move to combat piracy. Yes, I think it will significantly improve the reading experience of thousands of die hard fans. I think it being successful will pave the way for other digital partnerships and initiatives at Viz, another good thing. There are a lot of up-sides to this move, and I don’t want to take away from them, but there’s a huge downside to this move that I haven’t seen discussed yet.

The move to digital pulls cheap, accessible comics off of the newsstands of huge parts of North America, where there might not otherwise be comics or manga. Shonen Jump sold in Walmart. It sold in corner stores, it sold (probably terribly but still) in comic stores, it sold to people without Very Expensive pieces of digital technology. It’s read by kids–and teens, and adults too–but it’s $5 and 300 pages of action, adventure, and even romance, and it has all sorts of articles, free Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and more, it is perfect for kids. I know kids read it, and I’m going to come right out and say that it is the single best way that the medium of comics reaches younger readers–100-200,000 copies of Shonen Jump available on magazine racks across North America.

Some kids don’t have credit cards or Apple digital devices or much more than $5 to spend on a comic, and Shonen Jump is how we as a medium get that $5.  $5 at Marvel buys you about 1.25 issues of Ultimate Spider-Man. It’ll get you 1.66 issues of Teen Titans over at DC. But at Viz $5 gets you 300 pages of new comics every month. There’s just nothing else like Shonen Jump.

The folks at Viz are smart and passionate people and they love manga, I have no doubt they’ve explored every angle and come to the conclusion that this is the best move on a number of levels. I’m not second-guessing them here. They published this anthology, aimed at kids and tweens and teens, this wonderful ambassador of manga and of comics, of visual storytelling, and they’ve done so for round-about 10 years now. That is a longer and more sustained commitment to comics outreach than Marvel or DC have managed, combined, since Crisis. Viz deserve a huge round of applause for that, and I hope those last few print issues of Shonen Jump will be appropriately celebratory for their fantastic accomplishment.

I just wish it didn’t have to end, because frankly, comics needs Shonen Jump in print every month.

- Christopher

First up, Brian Wood rejoins with Kristian Donaldson (the team previously paired on Supermarket from IDW and DMZ from Vertigo) for THE MASSIVE, a new ongoing series from Dark Horse debuting in June. As the graphic says there’ll be a 3-part prequel running in Dark Horse Presents magazine starting in January. The news has been somewhat overshadowed by the announcement that Wood will be re-teaming with another frequent collaborator, Becky Cloonan, on a new Conan series all for DH. I’m all for that too, Becky told me a little about their plans for the character and they sound… Metal.

Next, it’s FATALE, the new collaboration between Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (Criminal, Incognito), coming from Image Comics. CBR has an interview and 4-page preview of the work here, and I really think the mix of the teams’ noir stylings with near-Lovecraftian levels of horror has the potential to hit with contemporary comics audiences. Despite my best efforts the duo’s Incognito was always an easier sell than Criminal–I think the sorts of comics audiences likely to pick up monthly comics these days want a supernatural ‘hook’, and this is poised to deliver. The first issue of Fatale, currently scheduled to run at least 12 issues, will drop in January.

Speaking as someone who enjoyed the previous collaborations of both of these creative teams, and is always happy to see new monthly comic books on the stands? This was a great day for comics announcements.

EDIT: Whoops! Guess I shoulda kept reading my email. Look what was buried in there:

Here is the complete press release; there is almost no information in it other than “3 issues” and “2012″. But If I don’t post that here I will get a dozen people asking for more info.

GEOF DARROW’S SHAOLIN COWBOY RETURNS IN AN ALL-NEW THREE ISSUE SERIES FROM DARK HORSE!

NEW YORK, NY, OCTOBER 14– Five years after it’s initial run ended, Geof Darrow’s (Hard Boiled, Big Guy and Rusty) returns in 2012!
Originally published by Burlyman Entertainment, Shaolin Cowboy is a loaf of wry in a wonder bread world, a nicotine patch in a ten pack-a-day universe. He wonders as he wanders through a world where yesterday, today and tomorrow exist in a collage of carnage of his own making!

“Geof Darrow’s relationship with Dark Horse goes back to the early days of the company. I can’t tell you how excited I am to again be publishing his amazing work” said Dark Horse president, Mike Richardson. “Geof’s art literally stopped me in my tracks when I first met him more than two decades ago and his work is every bit as stunning today. Geof has influenced a generation of artists and I am proud and excited to have him back partnered with Dark Horse.”

Shaolin Cowboy returns with all-new stories in 2012!

That is very good news indeed! It’s a great book, and one that’s been absent for far too long. Hopefully an announcement of a collection of the first series will follow soon.

- Chris

Air Canada, who I booked my flight to NYC with, was scheduled to have their flight attendants walk off the job 6 hours before my flight. Today we hear the strike may or may not be blocked by the Federal government, or they might be legislated back to work, or something.

Oh, and, the airport I fly out of? The security people are currently on a work-to-rule campaign which is slowing things down so much that Air Canada “is advising customers travelling from/to Toronto Pearson that some flights might be delayed or cancelled today.”

What I’m saying is, fuck Air Canada, fuck the stress of flying, and while I am sad to be missing my first NYCC, I’m not going to stand in what may or may not be an infinite line for a flight that may or may not be cancelled, and may or may not be staffed and therefore may or may not be cancelled again. Fuck all y’all and the horses you rode in on.

I’m staying home.

Have fun at the show guys and gals.

- Christopher
P.S. Yes, I should’ve flown Porter.

Students from Carlton University at the Manga Wall we donated from The Beguiling. Photo from here.

The time has really, really flown by. It’s already October 7th, and that means just 3 days left for the exhibit JAPAN/JAPON at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa (actually, in Gatineau, just across the river from Ottawa).

I spent a few years going back and forth with Alan Elder and Claire Champ from the Museum, and they were delightful, passionate people, interested in painting a broad and varied picture of Japanese culture, past and present. I was delighted to provide curatorial assistance to this project, and to work with The Beguiling to help provide this fantastic wall of manga, both showcasing contemporary Japanese culture and encouraging visitors to interact with it themselves.

It was just about a year ago that I was in Japan, scouting and sourcing some of the material–manga, anime cels, books, scripts, etc.–that would eventually make its way into the exhibition. It was such a great trip, and I have to say I learned a lot about the early days of manga through the dedicated acquisition of time-period specific works. I’ve been hit with a wave of nostalgia for that trip, now that I’m just a few weeks away from taking my next one.

Anyhow, if you’re in the area this weekend, I hope you’ll give one last look at the exhibition before it disappears. I’m also hoping that it proved popular enough to warrant touring, as there are a number of fantastic pieces of art and design history in that collection that should be seen by Japanophiles everywhere.

Thanks again to Alan, Claire, and everyone at the CMC of the opportunity.

- Chris

Consumers want graphic novels available on their digital devices for download. They don’t (generally) download novels a chapter at a time, so downloading a graphic novel an issue at a time (and for $0.99-$3.99 a go) is stupid. I can see that, I guess, and customers should vote with their wallets. They probably have been, digital sales numbers are reportedly quite low, despite near-ubiquitous availability.

Then there are the class-action lawsuits over the pricing of books, which I honestly cannot wrap my head around at all. How can a consumer legislate the price of a consumable? Particularly when we’re not talking basic-survival-goods-in-a-crisis scenario. [Ref: Graeme McMillan].

Does that mean Canadian book-buyers can launch a class-action lawsuit against Canadian distributors who tack-on 20% or more to the cost of a book even though our currencies are more-or-less at par? Because, frankly, I am down for that. Someone show me where to sign.

Really, the whole thing is kind of aggrivating from a business standpoint. I’m a firm believer in consumers voting with their wallets. If you don’t like paying $3.99 for a digital comic book because you feel there should be an inexpensive all-in-one graphic novel version, don’t, and tell them why. And if you don’t like how the material is presented, you’re mad at the company, whatever, then just don’t buy their product. Take a stand. Like Barnes & Noble did. [Ref: Publisher's Weekly]

For those of you that don’t click on links, here’s what PW has to say:

“In what looks like the first shots of a new tablet content war, Barnes & Noble has instructed its stores to stop selling and remove the physical copies of the 100 graphic novels DC Comics plans to sell [digital versions of] exclusively through the new Amazon Kindle Fire tablet. “ - Publisher’s Weekly

You dig? That’s the last remaining bookstore chain telling a publisher “If you’re not going to play fair with us, we are not going to work with you.” That is a very big deal, and I wonder how DC will respond to that.

As for me? Well I’m writing something longer about this for an outlet (to be named at a later date), but the long and the short of it is that I don’t have a horse in the race as a retailer. Comic book retailers have either been entirely excluded from digital comics downloads or treated to abhorrent terms in order to participate (looking at you and your incredibly shitty setup, Comixology), so these two corporations fighting it out over a format we don’t/won’t get access to is amusing, depressing, and ultimately out of my hands.

I will take a moment to remind you though that these books will remain on the shelves of thousands of comic book stores nation-wide, and across the world. Like The Beguiling, in Toronto, Canada, for example (plug). To find the comic book store nearest you, visit http://www.comicshoplocator.com/.

- Chris

Today is voting day all across the Province, where we decide who will govern us for the next 4 years, give-or-take.

Now, I know it’s not an easy choice this year, what with the incumbent administration having allowed the horror of the G20 on their watch… The tax thing doesn’t bother me as much because the previous administration spent us into a horrorshow of a deficit, all through tax cuts for big business, and what were they gonna do? At least they were reasonably upfront about it.

I generally like the NDP, although I am not terribly inspired by them this election. Their politics–socially, economically–are generally the closest to my own, inasmuch as that matters to you reading. They are probably who I am going to vote for in my riding, which I believe is a reasonably close race between them and the Liberals.

(I don’t care for the Green platform.)

Which brings us to the Conservatives. If there was any chance that the conservatives might take my riding, and the next closest candidate was a Liberal one, you can be sure that my vote would go to that Liberal because Tim Hudak is, by his own account, a terrible human being. He has run an anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-intelligence campaign. He and those running under the banner of the Conservatives have campaigned on fear and outright lies (there will be no tax cuts, there will be no increase in services), and this is for me a rare case of not just disagreeing with someone’s politics, but actively hating the man himself for what he’s trying to do to the political discourse in Ontario. I mean, he called actual Canadian citizens “foreign workers” because of where they used to live. Look it up.

What I’m saying is, please go out and vote against the Conservatives this election. I don’t care who you vote for, but if there’s a chance that you can reduce the hold of an American-style conservative politician over the voting public of Ontario, then please, do it. For yourselves and for the rest of us that are trying to have a civilization over here while the Conservatives do their best to tear it down.

Sincerely,

- Christopher Butcher

I’m trying something a little different.

Over at my Flickr, I’ve just posted a walk through Nakano, one of the suburbs of Tokyo. It’s 2 or 3 stops west of Shinjuku, and in addition to being a lovely little area of town, it also houses Nakano Broadway Mall, home to nearly 10 different outlets of the used nerd good chain Mandarake, which I’ve talked about before. You can see my first visit to Nakano Broadway at http://comics212.net/2008/02/06/japan-2007-nakano-broadway-mall/, if you’re curious.

On our 2010 trip, our friend Jocelyne took us to a cute little vegan/vegetarian restaurant a 10 minute walk away from Nakano Broadway and from the JR station, and I decided to catalogue the walk with my new camera.

If you’d like to check it out–and there’s a tiny little bit of comics content in there too–please head over to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/comics212/sets/72157627680799795/.

Best,

- Chris

Mom: “Do you think this Starfire is a good hero?”

7 Year Old Girl: “Not really.”

“Do you think the Starfire from the Teen Titans cartoon is a good role model?”

*immediately* “Oh yes. She’s a great role model. She tells people they can be good friends and super powerful and fight for good.”

“Do you think the Starfire in the Teen Titans comic book is a good role model?”

“Yes, too. She’s still a good guy. Pretty, but she’s helping others all the time and saving people.”

“What about this new Starfire?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s not doing anything.”

- Go read the whole brutal exchange at IO9

It’s like they took this comic by David Willis and made it real, and somehow sadder.

Look, since everyone is weighing in on this thing: Not every comic needs to be for every audience. Not every depiction of someone being slutty is a problem–even in superhero comics. I think it’d be lovely if the[second] biggest company in comics gave a damn about creating a diverse line of books that appealed to people other than straight white dudes, 24-40, which would make the occasional sexual inference and cheesecakiness less de rigeur. I would absolutely adore that–I’d sell more comics! There is an inherent weariness to this argument, to reaction to these books, and it creeps me out a little bit that a mom is putting a picture of her sleeping preteen daughter on the internet to make a larger social point about appropriateness of content. We’d all do better to engage the material we enjoy and discuss and promote it, or better still, create our own material to enjoy and ignore the rest of the shit entirely.

BUT ALL OF THAT SAID: DC Comics, Scott Lobdell, Cheesecake Artist #827, You Screwed The Pooch on this one. For all of our sakes own up to radically sexualizing a children’s character that is still in reruns for children today, admit it was a mistake, fix it. That’s it. “People did not like this new direction, we’re going a different way, we appreciate your passion.” Fix it.

Fix it.

- Christopher