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.

“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

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

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

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

Season’s Greetings from UDON ENTERTAINMENT!

http://udonentertainment.com

- Chris

- Chris

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

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

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 liked to dance as a kid too. Weddings were my favourite, because everyone was dancing and you didn’t have to be self-conscious about the fact that you liked to dance quite a bit more than the other boys.

My parents liked music a lot, my mom’s tastes sort of calcifying around the time of late 80s radio pop, my dad’s much earlier in the late 60s and early 70s–classics but not so far ‘out there’ as Led Zeppelin or anything. Anything earlier than that and it was their parents’ music, anything later and it was ‘crap’. So the soundtrack of my youth was a steady stream of pop music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Middleschool introduced me to a slightly wider variety of mainstream popular music, as pop R&B and Rap artists of the day–Milli Vanilli, NKOTB, Boys II Men, Whitney, Mariah, Paula, Salt n Peppa, and many more were added to my musical lexicon. And that’s where I discovered R.E.M.

Pop hits like Radio Song (featuring KRS-One, of course), Losing My Religion, and Shiny Happy People were mega-successes, and while I had remembered hearing Stand on the radio, it was that triumverate of songs that caused me to remember who was singing them. It’s kind of funny, I still enjoy those songs a lot, but my favourites from Out Of Time are still Country Feedback and Half A World Away, probably my first exposure to southern gothic anything. They still resonate today.

And then when I was 15, about a month after starting grade 10, they released Automatic For The People. Someone lent me a tape of it, and I listened to it incessantly for months. The first single, Drive, had done my head in. When you’ve just broken up with someone, every song on the radio sounds like a sad love song. When you’re an alienated 15 year old, every song on R.E.M’s Automatic For The People sounds like it is about you and about your life and they are performing the songs directly in your head. I spent about 3 solid months being powerfully depressed about my life and about the world with “MAYBE YOU’RE CRAZY IN THE HEAD” echoing around thanks to Michael Stipe. Drive, and then Try Not To Breathe… how’s that for a one-two-punch to start off an album? For a depressed 15 year old? To this day, Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight still seems sad to me, sandwiched as it is between those two songs and Everybody Hurts.

Everybody Hurts. Fuck. After just months and shitty months, that song on the tv, on the radio, on my cassette player, hearing it constantly from all sides. It was catharsis, a good cry. I still didn’t really snap out of my misery until almost a year later (came out, got some gay friends outside of school), but it was a start. I made a wonderful friend named Isaac during the time, who liked R.E.M. a great deal more than I did, and shared their back-catalogue with me. Green, Out of Time, Document, and the Eponymous singles collection. Their easily-available back catalogue, I guess I should qualify that. Actually I remember Isaac loving Pretty Persuasion and a few other songs, South Central Rain, from their I.R.S. years, but I really don’t remember listening to those songs with him. Probably my fault that they didn’t stick. But Eponymous, that stuck. It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) was my favourite song for almost 10 years, after that. It’s still up there. I still know all the words. That collection of their early years was the then-perfect survey that I needed.

I was a total convert by the time Monster rolled around. My friend Franz lent me Life’s Rich Pagent, Fables of The Reconstruction, Reckoning, and Murmur. I’m still not entirely sure I’ve owned Chronic town. I was pretty well-versed in their catalogue by that point, and I welcomed Monster with open arms. Their fans… did not. I didn’t really understand at the time, I didn’t realize how anyone who liked Drive couldn’t ‘get’ Let Me In, or the clear musical transition from Everybody Hurts to Strange Currencies. And What’s The Frequency Kenneth and Star 69 just kicked ass. But the instumentation had shifted to crunchy rock-guitars that put off their earliest fans, their sexiness and specifically their queerness put off the radio-fans. They still toured to sell-out stadiums, but the show didn’t end until the encore where the hits came out to play.

I finally saw them in concert, on the tour for Monster, by the way. I was 17. It was exactly what I’d hoped for.

And then came the album they recorded on tour for Monster, and it was called New Adventures in Hi-Fi, and if people didn’t like Monster, man did they not like New Adventures in Hi-Fi. It was dark, dark dark dark. The first single, E-Bow the Letter, was the most southern-gothic thing they’d ever done, they brought Patti Smith to wail over top of it. That’s sort of the opposite of radio-friendly. Bittersweet Me had some of the old R.E.M. flavour to it, and it’s a great song, but the video aggressively confused members of my family, with its homaging to obscure italian cinema. It was a bit like a Francesca Fiore/Bruno Puntz Jones thing, but with models. Electrolite would’ve been a touching love song for the radio, if anyone knew Michael Stipe was singing about exactly. I bought the album on release day, and I listened to it over and over again, and I really did like it… But for an arena-rock album it was pretty fucking complicated. Best listened to lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

Then Bill Berry left the group, and ‘everyone’ agreed that the band should break up, and they didn’t, and their next album had a drum machine on it and that was pretty much the end of R.E.M. in the public eye. In private though, I loved Up. Just, just loved it. It represented a departure and an evolution, dovetailed nicely with my broadening musical tastes (dance, electronica, and an unhealthy fascination with the lost Beach Boys album SMILE thanks to Matt Fraction). It was a good run for them, and I was secretly quite pleased that I was a fan of one of the biggest bands in the world, but seemingly no one else I knew was. It was all the benefits of both populism AND being avant-garde and cliquey, with none of the work!

I tortured my roomates with Daysleeper. Tortured them.

Sure R.E.M managed to stay relevant and in the headlines. Mike and Peter were on tons of side-projects and events. Michael produced films and music, guest appeared on stuff. Velvet Goldmine was Stipe and friends. And then the Andy Kaufman bio came out and R.E.M. was all over that, with Imitation of Life from Reveal prompting the radio-fans to give them one more go. But Reveal revealed the band wasn’t the same as Green or Out of Time or Automatic for the People, and nor should they be… that was more than 10 years earlier. Summer Turns to High, I’ll Take The Rain, All The Way to Reno? Still make my list.

Then Around The Sun. Then Accelerate. Then a Live Album, finally, after years and years of high-quality bootlegs. And then today, they broke up.

Honestly I’m still processing it… that’s what this is. R.E.M. was not my first music, but it was probably the first music that well-and-truly spoke to me. They’ve been a constant in my life since I really started paying attention to music, and they’ve been recording almost as long as I’ve been alive. They formed when I was 3. I’m sad that there aren’t more R.E.M. albums coming. I’m happy that they made so many and gave me such good music. I’m frustrated at myself that I didn’t respond as intensely to their last few releases, I kind of feel like this is my fault somehow? I’m glad I can turn on my computer and all of their music is there. I’m going to miss them.

I didn’t come to R.E.M. early, and I didn’t recognize them right away, but they have been profoundly important to me for longer than they haven’t. Thanks to Michael, Mike, Peter, and Bill for everything.

- Chris

Art For Hope - By Jorge Monlongo

VIZ MEDIA CALLS OUT TO DIGITAL ARTISTS TO SUBMIT WORK FOR ART FOR HOPE TO BENEFIT ONGOING JAPAN DISASTER RELIEF
Unique Art Book Project In Partnership With Autodesk Will Curate Digital Artwork Created With Autodesk SketchBook^® Software

VIZ Media reaches out to visual, graphic and manga/comic-inspired artists to submit original work and participate in ART FOR HOPE, a special limited edition digital art book anthology, to be sold through VIZManga.com and the VIZ Manga App for iOS devices, with 100% of net proceeds supporting ongoing disaster relief efforts in Japan. Artists interested in submitting work to be considered for the collection can get the full details at www.viz.com/artforhope.

The unique project was launched in partnership with Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK), a leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software, and was initially announced at the 2011 Comic-Con International.  All of the artwork for the ART FOR HOPE collection will be rendered using Autodesk SketchBook^® digital paint and drawing software applications.

VIZ Media’s editors will collaborate with Autodesk to review and select works for inclusion in the digital anthology, which will be released later this fall through VIZManga.com and the free VIZ Manga App, available on iPad™, iPod Touch™ and iPhone™.

So one of my more sensitive friends had a little mini-blow-up on Twitter the Friday or Saturday of Comic-con—he wasn’t at the show but like the vast majority of the people interested in it, he was following-along online via reportage from Comic Book Resources, Newsarama, Comic Alliance, etc., In dramatic fashion he announced (paraphrasing) that he could no longer follow CBR’s coverage of Comic-Con on Twitter, because they insisted on abbreviating the show by CCI, meaning Comic Con International (the show’s official name), rather than the classic and beloved SDCC, San Diego Comic Con.

I can empathize, to a degree—a press release I wrote using the official CCI got changed by my boss because, frankly, no one uses CCI and no one outside of nerds knows what it is. But I thought it was important to play the game, try and play the game anyway. And CBR, which parks a MUTHAFUCKIN BOAT in the harbour behind the convention centre, and which had more than 40 registered reporters at the show, and is prrrrrretty tight with the Comic Con organization, they’re playing CCI’s game and so they call it CCI. If the fans don’t like it, they can go and get their own boat.

San Diego 2011 was all about playing the game, about recognizing that Comic Con isn’t gonna be what any of us wants or needs or cares about, it’s instead going to try to be a little bit of what everyone who comes there cares about. All the starfuckers just there to see someone who was on TV one time, all of the PR flacks looking for the next big thing or trying to sell us the next big thing, the toy makers, the funny t-shirt hawkers, the deep discounters, the booth-babes, and even the comics folks–this is the year we all just sucked it up and realized that we were all gonna be in this together, and it’s gonna be in the same old San Diego convention centre in the same old gaslamp, and we’re all just gonna get used to it. So we did. We’re all playing the game now.

Note: Placement of all pictures unrelated.

–

My SDCC in a nutshell:

Lots of good friends
13 energy drinks
10 different kinds of cheese
7 days
5 badges
3 different hotels
2 booths
1 panel

–

I headed to San Diego a day early to decompress from what has been the busiest spring of my entire life. From 2 months before TCAF until the day I left, I was on a rollercoaster of obligations, assignments, and my many day jobs. I thought to myself when booking the flights—I’ll go in a day early, help set up the UDON booth, and just chill. Maybe go for a swim.

What happened was I desperately needed that extra day in Toronto to get shit ready, and I didn’t have it, and so I was a total wreck by the time I got on the plane Tuesday morning. I rolled into San Diego, checked in with Erik Ko of UDON, went back to my hotel room for a nap, and woke up the next morning at 11am. This was followed by a week of hard work, and coming back to another convention I forgot I’d committed to, followed immediately by a vacation to New York, and 2 dozen things due on the same day.

That’s why this con report is 3 weeks late.

–

We confirmed a TCAF Guest on honour at the show. Announcement in early September.

–

So I wear a lot of hats, metaphorically, at a show like San Diego. I am there representing myself as a journalist/reporter/blogger with Comics212.net, I also represent The Beguiling and our original art sales (run out of  a corner of Drawn & Quarterly’s booth on the con floor). I’m also the dude in charge of TCAF, and so I end up taking a few meetings, following up with cartoonists, and planning out the next year’s show while working at this year’s San Diego. This year I added another hat, in that I booth-managed the UDON Entertainment Booth. UDON is a Toronto-area publisher entering their 11^th year, best known for their various STREET FIGHTER comics but also translating a wide range of manga and Japanese art books, and publishing original comics and art collections. They’ve been very good friends of mine for years, and I was happy to be able to help them out. They also have almost nothing to do with any of the other tasks I set myself, so hey, no conflict of interest!

Booth managing UDON meant that, out of 5 days of exhibition, I was at their booth working with artists and selling books to fans 4 of those days, meaning I spent 4 days less on the con floor doing my own thing than I have for the past few years. I love having the ability to duck behind a booth and work for a while; just getting out of the aisles and the convention centre crowds is absolutely amazing. But it’s also, heh, it’s also like working a con. I know, that seems obvious, but San Diego (and NYCC) had become a sort of a ‘macro’ working show, where I’d get things going for the year to come. The micro level, actually selling, while I do that a few times a year (most notably Anime North for The Beguiling, and Penny Arcade Expo for UDON), I hadn’t really psyched myself up for that.

It’s hard work to be on your feet hustling all day. Just a reminder.

It was a good show in that respect, I am reminded that I am good at selling things to people, but it was a little tougher than Anime North or PAX because of the sheer number of people that:

a)     Do not come to the show with any money in their pockets, they just come for the “experience”, and
b)    Are aggressively not interested in what we have to offer.

UDON produce beautiful, exceptionally high-quality books. Meticulously translated, often printed from the same files and at the same printers as the Japanese editions of their work, and with an equal amount of care and attention paid to their original creations. We were debuting 3 new works at the show; an original graphic novel, a limited-edition collection of comics material, and a fan-sourced art collection for a major international IP. I would say that for roughly ¾ of the folks coming by the booth, getting them to even look at the work we were selling was like pulling teeth.

Comic Con is a collection of niche fandoms united by a common spectacle, and particularly where we were situated amongst the video game demo booths (every one of which giving away some tchochke or another), selling a comic or an art book was a foreign—near alien—concept. Some people don’t want art books, some people don’t even want books. Some people were perfectly content to purchase a $25 art print but turned their noses up at paying $10 for a book that had that piece of art in it alongside 200 more pages of art and story.

It’s been said for years that the insane hoops that the public has to jump through for tickets, and the mega-stars that attract folks to Comic Con that have nothing to do with comics or sales or whatever, that hurts the bottom line for book sales at all pubs, and its only the sheer volume of attendees that keep the show profitable or break-even for pubs. Hearing that, and experiencing that, are two very different things.

I would say that I experienced that this year, and the vast majority of publishers I talked to were in the same boat.

In the end, I want to say that the sales were solid and UDON feels like it was a good show. But coming out of doing shows where 100% of the audience was potentially interested in 100% of what I was selling, it was a hell of a different experience.

–

I flew to Japan last year, twice. I flew to Seattle, and to New York, and to San Diego. And if you can manage all of that on the same airline, they bump you up to “Elite Status”. You can go into the short line at the airport when you’re checking in, and you don’t pay for checked bags. You’re eligible for free upgrades to business class where there is free-flowing booze, metal utensils, and a choice of braised sirloin or pan-seared mahi mahi. For breakfast.

I’m writing this on the plane on my way back from San Diego, where I ended up business class both ways, and check-in took a grand total of 7 minutes, combined.

+1 Recommended

–

After this spectacular bit of hubris, I spilled a gin and tonic narrowly missing my computer, then I ended up in coach on my connecting flight, sat on the tarmac for a little over 2 hours, and ended up landing in Toronto in a lightning storm. Today’s lesson: Never Enjoy Anything.

–

My personal book of the show.

Let’s talk about the phrase “…of the show.” When I started going to SDCC, there was a “Book of the show!” every year. One year it was Kramers Ergot, one year it was Blankets. One particularly memorable year it was Bone One Volume Edition. Books of the show, the buzz book, the the comic that everyone was talking about, that people had to get. There hasn’t been a book of the show for a few years now. There have been some great books, for sure, but nothing that has captured the buzz or imagination or… anything… like when I was first going to San Diego.

One of the pieces of press I got Monday morning after San Diego was from a publisher who started off, informally before their PR, with “I’m not sure if you heard, but we won Comic-Con.” In general, I find it hard to disagree with the sentiment of that statement–that publisher had an amazing year. They had good books debuting, they had tons of announcements, they had media buzz (both imminent and future), they had at least one contender for “Book of the show…” They had an awesome year. And yet (and yet) at ICv2 on Monday, all of the news was pretty predictably about Marvel or DC’s show offerings (mostly encapsulating things everyone knew before going into the show), or media, or whatever. That pub did get some coverage, for sure, but from their point of view they kicked ass–from the general media perspective, they contributed to an exceptionally busy show.

Now obviously I’m aware that it is the PR person for a company’s job to talk up the accomplishments of that company, but realistically, I have a pretty good bullshit detector and even 5 years ago with all they’d accomplished they would have been the talk of the internets for weeks afterwards. It didn’t happen, which is too bad. Maybe there are other PR problems there, maybe their announcements weren’t touted loudly enough, or to the right people, or who knows? But if a publisher can have a massive, 100% successful show on every front and still just be a footnote, that speaks volumes about the sort of show that San Diego Comic Con has become.

That they can still be happy with that on a Monday morning following the big event shows that they know what the game we’re all playing is.

–

I sat on the con bus headed back to my hotel. It is amazing that the con runs shuttle buses all weekend–super classy of them. I got on, and the seats were largely full, except for a family of 4 who had spread out into 4 rows of seats so that all of them could get a window seat. I sat amongst them, and over the course of the trip to the hotel watched with fascination and horror as they scanned faces in the crowd, desperate to see a famous person.

“Over there!” one shouted (shouted). “It’s Amy*! Amy from season 2!” and they all stood up and peered into the crowd of hundreds to see if they could see someone who was on season 2. Of what program, I have no idea. They leaned and stretched to watch, right over me in fact.

“Man, that was awesome! I can’t believe we saw her!”

I have never felt less like I belonged at Comic Con in my entire life.

*I cannot remember which name she said. It was a woman’s name that started with ‘A’.

–

The following folks and friends contributed enormously to my having a lovely time at San Diego this year, and I would like to thank them.

Peter & Krystle. Erik, Stacy, Matt, Ash, Koi, and the whole UDON crew. Deb, Eva, David, and Carlos. Alvin and Leyla and Gina. Jeff, Terry, Lillian, Jeff & Holly, and everyone I am forgetting.

–

Comic Con International: San Diego 2011 was the smoothest-run, easiest-to exhibit at and traverse, and busiest year of the show in 4 or 5 years. I feel like all involved truly figured out the show this year. My sincere thanks to all of the staff that made it happen, and I am looking forward to 2012.

- Christopher Butcher

“Again, it makes me think of TCAF and the effect that the show actually has on the community of Toronto. It’s educational, it promotes literacy and it’s free! It’s not about the money. It’s about creating a new audience and laying a foundation for the future.”
- Frank Santoro, The Comics Journal

Go read, it’s an interesting think-piece about where all of this comic-conning is actually taking the industry, and I’d think so even if it wasn’t incredibly complimentary of what we do at TCAF.

“Probably the single issue I’ve most enjoyed in the last little while though? I was fortunate enough to get an advance look at Casanova: Avarita #1 debuting this September from ICON. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Cass fan from before the first issue came out, so it won’t be any surprise to hear that I liked the new issue… but man, it’s great. ”
- Me, at Robot 6 / Comic Book Resources

I was the guest on this week’s “What Are You Reading” Column at Robot 6, and in addition to some much deserved love for Adachi’s CROSS GAME I talk about some recent floppies I read and enjoyed.

- Chris

Malinky Robot by Sonny Liew is a very cool indie read, about two kids getting into trouble in a nominally sci-fi, ultra dense and condensed city. It’s really beautifully drawn, and these Malinky Robot shorts range from Xeric-funded, self-published work, to stories that have appeared in the FLIGHT anthologies.

Sonny Liew is probably better-known now for his work on SLG Publishing’s WONDERLAND comics and Marvel’s EMMA adaptation, or MY FAITH IN FRANKIE and REGIFTERS for Vertigo, but he got his comics start on these books and I’ve always thought they were great fun.

Image will be publishing a collection of all of the Malinky Robot stories to date this August, called MALINKY ROBOT: COLLECTED STORIES AND OTHER BITS. Full Colour, 128 pages, $17, I’ll definitely be buying one and if you like good comics with great art, might I recommend you do the same?

More at http://sonnyliew.wordpress.com/

- Chris

But Canada’s current law goes beyond pornography that causes harm to children. It also makes some works of the imagination – stories and drawings – illegal if they depict people under the age of 18 in sexual situations. Many classic works of art might meet that definition, and the law does allow for a defence on the grounds of artistic merit. This puts the courts in the bizarre position of determining what is a work of art. Citizens cannot hope to know in advance what the law really forbids, and whether the judge will share their opinion of what is art. Policing the way you express yourself on a piece of paper or on your laptop comes awfully close to policing your thoughts.

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/Crimes+imagination/5020809/story.html#ixzz1Qg5TanaR

Very happy to see this strongly-worded editorial condemning the arrest of a U.S. Citizen for travelling into Canada with comics and manga on his laptop. Kudos to the Ottawa Citizen for taking an important stand.

- Chris

An drawing of a thing is not the thing itself.

According to a press release issued this morning and widely circulated across the social media, The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) will be joining the fight against Canada’s ridiculous child pornography laws, and against Canada Customs’ search/seizure powers at the Canadian border. More specifically, the CBLDF “ is forming a coalition to support the legal defense of an American citizen who is facing criminal charges in Canada that could result in a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in prison for comics brought into the country on his laptop.”

I’ve been aware of this case since just before I gave my talk on comics and censorship this past February, and every aspect of it makes my blood boil. That ‘manga’ is targeted as a buzzword that encourages Customs agents to do more thorough searches, that an illustration of a person or act is the same thing as the person or act under Canadian law, that Art has no legal defense in Canada anymore. It’s all awful, and I am very, very glad that the CBLDF has stepped in to provide funding and support for this case, to ensure that at the very least this man is rigourously defended, and with any luck a precedent can be set under Canadian law.

If you are a fan of any manga or anime, if you are a fan of comics, if you have even one comics page, anime clip, or “dirty” picture on your computer, tablet, or phone, this is about you. This is about you being pulled aside, searched, your electronics confiscated to be sent away for weeks and months, all because you’ve got scans of Naruto on your desktop. This isn’t about “child porn” or any variation thereof, this is about legally equating a description of a thing–written or drawn–with the real thing.

As Neil Gaiman recently wrote:

“Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you’re going to have to stand up for stuff you don’t believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don’t, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person’s obscenity is another person’s art.

“Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff youdo like, you’ve already lost.”

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-speech.html

If you can afford anything, I urge you to donate to The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. You can do so at this page, they even take PayPal amongst other avenues of payment: http://cbldf.org/contribute/

A Canadian group called The Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund will also be starting a Fundraising drive over the coming weeks and months, and as soon as their contribution information comes together I’ll be happy to pass it along as well.

So again, and in closing, this is about the government deciding what is or isn’t art, about what you can or can’t read, and very deliberately confusing the thought of a crime with the crime itself. This is something worth taking a stand about. Please do so, and if you can, contribute.

- Chris

http://www.openbooktoronto.com/magazine/summer_2011/smart_producers

–

“I just did a quick count and Marvel have about 100 ongoing series and mini-series set in the main Marvel U coming in August, give or take. Looking at the DC list, it seems the vast majority of books getting issue #1s are, in fact, being rebooted rather than exploring entirely new concepts or characters, which means that as retailers we have hard sales data on those books. We know what Action Comics #900 sold, and we know what Grant Morrison’s All Star Superman #1 sold, and we know what really big event books with real-world press coverage tend to do to sales, so we’ve got a usable metric to figure out orders on Morrison and Morales’ Action Comics #1. Again, I think we know the general ballpark of where to place our orders on almost all of these titles, and that they’re #1 issues will largely mean more copies are sold than the previous issue, not less. Compared to Marvel’s 100-title continuity, 52 books in the DCU seems almost quaint, and certainly easier to deal from an ordering perspective.”

http://www.comicbookdaily.com/wp/championing_comics/retailer-q/retailer-q-1-dc-reboot/

–

Just in case you missed me writing about the comical books on this here blog, you can go check out what I’m thinking about these days over on those other sites.

- Chris

Their lack of diversity, and DC’s recent moves especially, are really damning in the big picture, but even on a personal level, a one-to-one sort of a thing, I can’t even get Actual Gay People in comics to stop giving money to gay-hating hotel operator Doug Manchester (The Hyatt) at San Diego every year… I’m not holding my breath waiting for the superhero pubs or fandom to come around on this one. I would hope that, at some point, IDW or Image or whomever would see the obvious gap in the market and make a go, but as-of-yet they’ve shied away as well. It’s too bad.

On that note, here’s a great interview segment that I read with the creator of COMMUNITY, about how he was ‘forced’ to hire a half-female writing staff, and how that ended up being one of the best moves the show could’ve taken: http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/06/communitys_dan_harmon_talks_ab.html. The great pull-quote from that one?

“I think we have to stop thinking of it as a quota thing and think of it as a common-sense thing.”

Here’s to common sense.

- Christopher

Hah. Seriously though. If you wanna listen to something cool, there’s an MP3 of me interviewing Usamaru Furuya from last weekend at http://www.thecomicbooks.com/audio.html.

I haven’t listened to it yet, and I really want to transcribe it into English if at all possible. Maybe now that I’ve got some free time?

I missed blogging. Hopefully you’ll see more of me soon.

- Chris

Our sincere thanks to our good friend Chris Hutsul and the entire crew for putting this together, it’s phenomenal.

- Chris @ The Beguiling

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it on the blog, but this September I headed out to Seattle for PAX “Prime”, as the employee of UDON Comics. It was a fun time and it went well–record sales and all that–so they invited me out to help them run their Boston appearance too. I’m happy to do it. I really like UDON’s output, it’s extremely high quality licensed comics and the industry needs more of that. And on a personal note, UDON Publisher Erik Ko is an exceptionally fair and generous guy (let alone for a comics publisher) and I’m happy to get behind their work. And hell, I just like going to conventions, seeing how they run… and what I can steal for my own event. :)

VENT, the Udon 10th Anniversary Book

This weekend should be a hell of a lot of fun, as UDON’s got a couple of new convention exclusive books at the event and I hand-picked the selection of books we’ll be carrying. Lots of art books, lots of comics, and UDON peeps Jim Zubkavich (Street Fighter Legends: Ibuki) and Omar Dogan (Also SF Legends: Ibuki) are gonna be drawing and chatting with fans all weekend long. While I sell mad amounts of books to all y’all reading this (hopefully!). Also, I’ll be at a giant video game convention, and those tend to be pretty fun all on their own, even standing behind a booth for 12 hours a day.

Oh, and I should mention that the fine folks from Oni Press are going to be our booth-mates for the show, Booth #123/124. We’re directly across from the Show Store. All kinds of books and swag will be available!

As a final note, a very cool thing I discovered in getting ready for the show is called The Conventionist (http://conventionist.com). It’s an iphone/Android App that lets you plan convention attendances by downloading the maps, schedules, exhibitor lists, etc., for a whole whack of different shows. It is fantastically useful and highly recommended, and I sincerely hope I can work with them to put together a similar schedule for TCAF!

Alright! If you’re going to PAXEast speak up in the comments and tell me what you’re most looking forward to (especially if it is seeing me).

- Chris

- Christopher

“As evidence of this, I might point out that we have the highest sales in individual distribution. I don’t mean highest sales in comparison to comics of another type. I mean highest sales in comparison to other horror comics. The magazine is one of the few remaining ? the comic magazine is one of the few remaining pleasures that a person may buy for a dime today. Pleasure is what we sell, entertainment, reading enjoyment. Entertaining reading has never harmed anyone. Men of good will, free men should be very grateful for one sentence in the statement made by Federal Judge John M. Woolsey when he lifted the ban on Ulysses. Judge Woolsey said:

‘It is only with the normal person that the law is concerned.’

“May I repeat, he said, “It is only with the normal person that the law is concerned.” Our American children are for the most part normal children. They are bright children, but those who want to prohibit comic magazines seem to see dirty, sneaky, perverted monsters who use the comics as a blueprint for action.

“Perverted little monsters are few and far between. They don’t read comics. The chances are most of them are in schools for retarded children.

“What are we afraid of? Are we afraid of our own children? Do we forget that they are citizens, too, and entitled to select what to read or do? We think our children are so evil, simple minded, that it takes a story of murder to set them to murder, a story of robbery to set them to robbery?

“Jimmy Walker once remarked that he never knew a girl to be ruined by a book. Nobody has ever been ruined by a comic.”

- William Gaines, Testifying before the Senate on behalf of comic books.

I cannot believe I’ve never read this before. Wow.

- Chris

BlogTo.com, their close competitor, offers a full feed of many of their articles, full-sized photos, and excerpts feature articles after 2 or 3 paragraphs. Enough to get me reading, and deciding whether or not I’m enjoying the piece. Big enough pictures to make me notice. In short, it is well designed.

I don’t mean to bring this up to slam Torontoist, it’s a great site and I enjoy reading it, but I subscribe to a few hundred websites, about 600 new articles a day appear in my RSS feed, and I try to read and enjoy appreciate anything that looks interesting. And so when going through my RSS feed, the image to the right depicts a BlogTo article in my feed (top), followed by a Torontoist article in my feed (bottom).

Which one of those articles, as displayed, makes you want to keep reading? Which one of those articles would have you clicking over to the main site, which would then get the attendant ad-traffic, viewership, etc.?

Both sites have been very good to me and I hesitate to openly criticize one, but I think this is what parents call a “teachable moment.” If you are running a website, ask yourself if you’ve got a full or partial RSS feed, and how your site is displayed, and whether it’s inviting and open and promotes your message, promotes What You’re Trying To Communicate, or if it… doesn’t.

And if you don’t know? Find out!

- Christopher

Skullkickers Volume 1: Coming in March to better comic book stores everywhere.

Unfortunately I ran out of time last month to talk about some of the very good books in the Previews catalogue, available for pre-order, and coming our way in March.

One of those was the very first volume of my good friend Jim Zubkavich’s SKULLKICKERS trade paperback, entitled 1,000 Opas and a Dead Body, being published by the fine folks at Image Comics. It collects the first 5 issues and some short stories that ran in Image’s Popgun Anthology, and it’s quite a bit of fun.

Just today I’d noticed that Jim had posted up the cover of the printed book to his Facebook page, complete with little spot-varnish skulls, and I thought that was a very cool deal.

It reminded me of how excited I’d gotten, seeing my first work in print, and then finally (eventually) holding the first trade paperback to feature my work in hand. For me it was seeing that first issue of Jimmie Robinson’s Evil & Malice, which I coloured from start to stop– that was the book that really made me well-up with pride (although kudos to J. Torres for getting me my first job on Siren). My first piece of published comics writing was Put The Book Back On The Shelf, an anthology of comics adapting the music of Belle & Sebastian, a band I adore. That was a book-book, a graphic novel, and it was my writing and not my colouring seeing print and that was a different kind of pride. Funnily enough, all of those works were from Image Comics too.

I mostly work in other disciplines now, organizational creativity rather than strictly creative, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss it a little. Colouring, design, writing. I do use all of those skills in service to The Beguiling and TCAF and even occasionally the blog here. But yeah, seeing Jim talk about how happy he was to know there was a printed trade paperback of his work, a work he put a lot of effort into writing, designing, promoting, developing, even colouring and drawing a tiny a little of it, it reminded me of the thrill of seeing a new comic that I’d work on show up in the store. Kudos Jim, hope you’re enjoying it.

Skullkickers Volume 1: 1000 Opas and a Dead Body by Jim Zubkavich, Edwin Huang, and Misty Coats is 144 pages of over the top fantasy adventure retailing for the bargain-basement price of just $9.99. It will be on sale March 9th in better comic book stores everywhere.

- Christopher

Hi there! My name is Christopher Butcher and in addition to running this fine blog, I’m also the Director of the 2011 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, or TCAF as we call it. TCAF is an annual comics event held in Toronto, Canada, inside the massive Toronto Reference Library. It attracts about 12,000 people over two days, and features readings, panel discussions, interviews, gallery exhibitions, and a massive exhibition of talented cartoonists from around the world, selling and displaying their wares. The next Festival is May 7th and 8th, 2011, and you can find out more about it at http://www.torontocomics.com.

Earlier this week, it was my great pleasure to announce that TCAF will be welcoming acclaimed Japanese manga creator Usamaru Furuya to the 2011 Festival. Furuya-san will be on hand to support his brand new English-language manga Lychee Light Club, published by Vertical Inc. and which will be debuting at TCAF. Furuya-san’s series for VIZ Media‘s Shonen Jump Advanced line, Genkaku Picasso, will also be finishing its three-volume serialization in May with the third volume possibly making an early appearance at the show. We appreciate the support of Vertical Inc., VIZ Media, and Japanese publisher Ohta Books in making this appearance happen–it’s a rare and unique thing to have one manga creator at a North American event–last week we announced the fabulous Natsume Ono as a Featured Guest–but to have two such talented and Japanese cartoonists is frankly unprecedented.

I want to talk a little bit about Furuya-san’s work. First and foremost, he’s one of my personal favourite cartoonists. He’s a unique, compelling, and incredibly talented creator with a vivid back-catalogue of work. His manga is incredibly varied, first appearing in North America in the cutting edge manga magazine Pulp with the series Short Cuts, published by VIZ Media. This humourous exploration of Japanese youth culture, and where it intersects with the ‘adult’ world, moved rapidly between strips, and sometimes in the same strip, from outré to shocking to laugh-out-loud funny to bizarrely touching, and is fondly remembered amongst alt-manga fans… myself included. Quite honestly much of the deeper appreciation for Japanese culture that I’ve developed came out of Short Cuts and its serialization in Pulp, a fact which is doubtlessly horrifying several of the people who read this. It shouldn’t be so surprising though–Short Cuts engaged an emerging Japanese youth culture and also explained it to a larger Japanese audience, and to have something like that translated for a North American audience was about as ‘inside’ and ‘authentic’ as you could get. Floppy-socked Japanese school girls, taking paid dates and listening to the hottest visual rock bands, all of this is taken for granted as a staple of Japanese culture from a North American vantage point here in 2011; in 2000 it was revelatory for me. The serialization in Pulp and the two-volume collection published by VIZ Media were enormously affecting; I’ve read and lent the series out many times.

An excerpt from Short Cuts. © Usamaru Furuya

A page from Palepoli. © Usamaru Furuya. Click for full size.

His debut manga Palepoli ran in the seminal underground manga magazine Garo, and has been lightly excerpted in North America in the sadly out of print works Secret Comics Japan (an amazing anthology of alternative Japanese comcis featuring the likes of Junko Mizuno and others) and Tokyo Edge (a mostly-text guide to Japanese underground culture written by the Editors of Pulp). Furuya’s mix of surrealism, superior craft, and an unwillingness to be bound by social mores in Palepoli was instantly appealing to me, and repeated rereadings of those precious few pages have revealed even greater depth, meaning, and humour. I wish, one day, that the series would be translated into English.

And that was it for a while.

Pulp sadly folded, taking with it the majority of alt- and underground manga releases for a little while, and seriously stalled manga-for-grownups for a little while, and the industry became very focused on boys adventure comics and girls romance comics for a little while. Not a bad thing, but not generally where my interests lie. Luckily Furuya’s career continued unabated in Japan, and surprisingly, in France. Owing to our bilingual heritage we stock French comics (including manga) at The Beguiling where I work, and new works from Furuya would appear from time to time. His manga are championed by Nouvelle Manga movement originator Frederic Boilet (whose own comics have been published in English by Fanfare/Ponent-Mon), and consequently where anglophones had a 9 year gap between Furuya projects, popular series like La Musique de Marie, Le Cercle du Suicide, and the recent Tokyo Magnitude 8 have continued to impress French audiences. His work is also very popular amongst scanlators and the grey market, it must be said, though I feel like popularizing that fact will hinder future releases of his work.

On that note, it was on my trips to Japan starting in 2007 that I started picking up Japanese editions of Furuya’s manga. By Japanese language skill is still almost non-existent, but anyone who’s looked at one of Furuya’s manga will agree that you can get a lot out of the drawings. I own 10 or 11 of his works in Japanese, and I’d love for them all to be replaced one day with English editions. His 51 Ways To Save Her was one of the announced but unreleased works from the doomed CMX manga line. Will we see it one day?

Recently, surprisingly… almost bizarrely, Furuya showed up again at VIZ with Genkaku Picasso, a gloriously demented short manga series about the inner lives of teenagers, and a boy tasked by God with helping the lives of those around him using his profound artistic talent. One element of Furuya’s work I haven’t touched on is his incredible draftsmanship. His work has a clarity and skill that is above average even in Japan, and he’s an expert at the human figure (especially cute girls…). He’s also incredibly creative, drawing objects and situations that most people couldn’t conceive of… and when you’re drawing the dreamish, nightmarish inner worlds of teenagers, that is a skill that will serve you very well. The series looks great, and is hilarious and disturbing and entertaining… of much more interest to an older audience than the “Shonen Jump Advanced” tag might imply.

Which brings us to Lychee Light Club, debuting at TCAF from Vertical Inc. I’ve got the Japanese version, and while gorgeous it’s certainly bizarre–learning that the series is actually a comedy (a dark comedy), set against the beautifully rendered violence and gore of the original? Well that’s going to add a lot I feel. But really, let me say again, the book is gorgeous. I’m really looking forward to reading it in English.

It was also just announced that Vertical has picked up another 3 volume series from Furuya, debuting this September and being released every two months, so I have that to look forward to too! And quite honestly, so do you. I feel incredibly lucky to share the work of one of my favourite manga-ka with all of you, and for those of us who’ll be in Toronto this May getting to meet him will be an additional thrill. Even if you can’t come, make sure to check out Genkaku Picasso, track down the two trade paperbacks of Short Cuts, and pick up Lychee Light Club when it appears in stores this spring.

And learn French. Musique de Marie and Suicide Circle are highly unlikely to be released in English.

For more on Furuya, check out:

- Unofficial Website: http://www4.airnet.ne.jp/mikami/UsamaruFuruya/en/index.html

- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Usamaru-Furuya/204452936604

- Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usamaru_Furuya

- Lambiek (Short Cuts era): http://lambiek.net/artists/f/furuya_u.htm

- Anime News Network: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=7174

- Future Shipwreck’s Appreciation: http://futureshipwreck.com/2010/07/usamaru-furuya/

- Christopher

I just had curry for lunch so this seemed appropriate. This is the mozzarella cheese curry Andrew had in the curry-shop behind the comic book store (Nakano Shoten) in Jimbocho. Japanese curry and cheese–two great tastes that go great together! Not shown: boiled new potatoes, also delicious.

I forgot to post the MURDER CAN BE FUN strips until right now (sorry!) cuz I was out all day on Sunday, my normal “do your internet work” day. And then yesterday was an amazing, productive meeting with The Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa (Gatineau, actually) who I’m doing some consulting work for, and getting ready all of the stuff for our Natsume Ono announcement today (awesome) and then I went for ramen, had a few beers with friends, and fell asleep for 14 hours (ugh).

What I’m trying to say is, things are busy and good, and I’m apparently not as sick of talking about myself as I thought I was… :-/

For balance, here are some cool things that people I know are doing:

ITEM! A bunch of my friends were nominated for Shuster Awards, which recognize excellent Canadian contributions to the medium of comics. I personally know 95% of the nominees, so I will refrain from congratulating them individually. Instead: Congrats to all of you! Full nominees list at http://joeshusterawards.com/.

ITEM! The lovely Erika Moen and the cubby Jeff Parker have launched a new webcomic venture: Bucko. Verdict: First three pages are awesome. http://www.buckocomic.com/

ITEM! Heidi MacDonald is celebrating a year of independent blogging at The Beat today. Congratulations, Heidi! http://comicsbeat.com/

ITEM! UDON is doing an open-call for Mega Man Fan Art, for their new Mega Man Tribute art book. It’s a contest that I’d enter myself, if I had time to sit down and draw something, so I feel like all y’all should go enter it too. Seriously, it’s hype. Head over to http://www.megamantribute.com/ to see the rules and details. Contest closes February 4th at 1pm!

Peace out!

Christopher

Not every outing in Japan was life-changing, or amazing, or revelatory. In fact, some of them were just nice little walks to explore the neighbourhood we were staying in… in the daylight, for a change.

Above you can see the view from our hotel window–SHINJUKU, the “capital’ of Tokyo, location of the municipal government buildings, and the big dirty red light district, and shopping and… well, what people think of when they think of “Tokyo” can usually be found within a 15 minute walk of Shinjuku station. We were staying a 2 minute walk from that station, a little bit south west, and since none of my plans or itineraries had be going any further south than I was at that moment, I decided to go for a walk one warm May morning before the day really got going.

The first stop, as always, is the local convenience store, or “conbini”. Lawson isn’t my conbini of choice, I’m a 7-11 guy at heart, but I was starving and wasn’t willing to wait. Also with me on this trip is Jim, who is tired, cuz its early and jetlag is never kind to him.

We arrived in Japan during the hysteria for the theatrical release of Evangelion 2.0, and the ‘ultimate’ edition DVD release of Evangelion 1.11, so Eva product was everywhere. Lawson had entered into a special agreement with the Evapeople (Gainax, I assume? I can’t tell who runs that merchandising anymore) and so they had tons of unique and ‘rare’ items. Shown above are cans of coffee, boxed with an action figure on a very full display. You might be giggling to yourself, but that same coffee and action figure was SOLD OUT all over Tokyo by the end of our trip.

Also shown: Evangelion-themed cup noodles.

There were also Evangelion give-aways if you bought specific kinds of snack breads, in specific amounts. Or maybe Evangelion-themed snack breads. It was difficult to tell. Jim helpfully points them out.

Click to keep reading:

The sign outside pimping the DVD release of EVA. The wind wasn’t cooperating that day so I reversed the photo. One of the neat things about convenience stores is that you can get a lot of stuff there that you can’t really get at similar stores here. Event tickets, full meals, DVDs, toys, games. Changes of shirts, socks, and undies for when you’ve stayed out all night karaokeing and smell like a distillery. Sooooo handy.

For me though, it’s all about fried chicken, red bull, and beer. And that is what I bought, and that is what I ate and drank as we walked around.

Fried chicken.Red Bull. Beer. Breakfast. Japan.

I’m going to more-or-less shut up at a certain point and just let the architecture take over, because I find it fascinating. A combination of fire/earthquake readiness and a much milder climate creates situations like this, a massive outdoor fire-escape that adds an exciting visual diagonal to the design of this (somewhat thin) building.

Oh, yeah, you can click on any picture to get a really big version.

We decided to walk through the ‘dead spaces’ between massive office towers, the courtyards created by the vagaries of building codes and fire safety. Old and new, flashy and dull, glass and concrete, all butting up against each other in giant, beautifully maintained, and spotless areas that almost no one ever uses. All of these photos were taken, to the best of my knowledge, at around 10am on a weekday. Love that yellow building in the background.

No idea what is going on with the mushroom-inspired streetlights, but the geometric topiary is phenomenal.

Ah-ha! Garbage! Well, not exactly garbage. More like someone noticed garbage, put it in a plastic bag, and left it for the maintenance guy to pick up.

This is what it looks like when different pedestrian walkways between buildings with different owners collide.

The staff of a Book-Off that we didn’t manage to find on our walk congregate in the otherwise-empty courtyard, going through the morning plan: GANBARU! In the distance, an arch.

You can’t go 100m without hitting a convenience store. It’s some sort of mathematical formula they’ve worked out. Oh, oh the Denny’s. Wait til you see this.

DENNY’S. By the way, Denny’s in Japan is nothing at all like Denny’s in North America, there is no overlap between dishes, and frankly, the food is awful in Japan. It’s awful in America too, but at least you can get bacon and eggs if you really want it.

This Denny’s is floating over a parking lot, for your parking convenience. A model of modern architecture and technology, and actually beautiful in its way. All totally undone by the shitty laser-printer signage in the window…

Anyone who watches anime knows about ground-level train crossings, and man, it’s nostalgic and utterly PRESENT to encounter them. It’s hard to explain, but I love them. Love them.

Also note the sporting area, fenced off on top of the building on the right. Gotta make the most of your outdoor space, roof included.

So this is the space next to the building at the train crossing, and the fence next to the space is about waist high, once you stand in the bushes. Study this picture.

This is the 30+ foot drop between the building and the retaining wall next to it, that is protected by a waist-high fence. This is utterly, utterly terrifying to look at, and completely alien to how we build things in Canada.

Your humble narrator. Funny story, in the time it took to take this picture, the crossing arms went up, the cabs drove through, and then the arms went down again, trapping us on the other side for another 5 minutes.

This is where Jim is pointing out there’s a perfectly serviceable walkway over the crossing, and what the fuck is my problem? My problem is that I’m not going to climb 3 stories of stairs for him or any man when the alternative is waiting 2 minutes, fuck that. Who do you think I am, some douche who climbs stairs? This is JAPAN. Escalator or bust. Stairs are for chumps.

Had to take a picture.

Never did make it back to this toy shop. In my imagination it is fucking awesome.

Mm, this is a thing about Japan. Cafe Lolita is on the first floor, but look! There are 4 or 5 floors in that building, and each one has at least 1-2 businesses in it. The density of retail shops is incredible, you can walk 40m and pass 20 shops. It made progress slow, slow going if stores had particularly interesting signage. :)

Around this point [redacted] was a little worried that we were lost, but the road actually curved back around to drop us off in our neighbourhood, at our hotel. All in all we’d gone out for about 45 minutes and probably not gotten more than a few hundred metres away, but it was really neat seeing the neighbourhood, taking in the architecture, standing at the train crossing.

That is a thin fucking building.

And there we are, back at the hotel… Conveniently located directly adjacent to a Tokyo Metro entrance I should add. This is seriously the greatest hotel, I hope it stays as cheap and classy for my next trip.

A nice day walk in Shinjuku… I never really did go south from our hotel again, and this is the view facing north. Into the crowds, the shopping, the red light district, the JR station, and everything people think about when they think of “Tokyo”.

Next time we’ll see what the night has in store.

- Chris
Edit because my hilarious joke on Jim had run its course. :)

I’ve read about half of these at this point, mostly depending on when they hit my feed reader over the past 4 weeks or so. I plan to go back and read the rest though, as even an interview with someone whose work I was not familiar with was interesting and insightful, and I feel there’s much more to learn there.

Go check it out.

- Christopher

Hey y’all,

I’m going to do a little “welcome to Evan Dorkin” post on Monday to explain about the Fun strips, where you can buy the books/comics, how you can support Evan directly, that sorta thing, now that I’m actually up and running the strips again.

But I had a quick question: Do you want these to run 7 days a week, or just weekdays like I’ve been running them up until now? Most people aren’t around on Saturday/Sunday reading the blog, but I’m not sure if that’s a chicken & egg thing because I don’t usually update–no one usually updates–on the weekend. Does it matter? Do you have a clear preference? Let me know in the comments. I’m leaning towards 5 days, to brighten the corporate workweek.

Cheers,

- Chris