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Canadian Splendour: D&Q Profile

d+q-bookbag-designVenerable Canadian Graphic Novel Publisher Drawn & Quarterly has just received a glowing company profile from Canadian Business Magazine, and writer Jason McBride. The business beat is pretty far outside my normal reading, but I enjoyed reading this take on the publisher. Essentially, McBride comes to the conclusion that D&Q’s unprecedented creator control, absolute creative freedom, and extravagant book design all add up to a winning formula for publishing in a down economy—and an economy growing increasingly hostile to books.

The whole thing is peppered with quotes from Beguiling boss-man Peter Birkemoe, author and academic Jeet Heer, and even “The Chief”, Publisher Chris Oliveros himself. It also—being a business article—even has some hard sales numbers:

“D&Q’s fastest bestseller, Chester Brown’s Louis Riel, an improbable “comic strip biography” of the controversial 19th-century Métis leader, sold 10,000 copies in its first season, and to date has sold more than 36,000, more than most bestselling books in Canada. Publishers Weekly called it a “major achievement.” ” – Jason McBride, Canadian Business

Congrats on such a glowing profile to the fine folks at Drawn & Quarterly!

– Chris

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Meanwhile, in the Hall of Justice!

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TCAF's set-up at last week's SpeakEasy art show, a plethora of posters and promotional art by talented artists!
TCAF's set-up at last week's SpeakEasy art show, a plethora of posters and promotional art by talented artists!

Just a quick reminder that the deadline to apply to exhibit at The 2010 Toronto Comic Arts Festival is this Sunday, November 15th. If you or a talented comics person you know might want to exhibit, get your application in at http://torontocomics.com a.s.a.p.!

– Christopher

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Fucking South Park, Why They Gotta Start This Shit

I’m so glad we have two straight white republicans like Trey Parker and Matt Stone to tell us when we should or shouldn’t be offended by something. People calling each other “fags” because it means annoying or terrible or fem or whatever? Yeah, that’s done now, because our straight white republican friends told us ‘that isn’t what it means anymore, because that’s not how 12 year old straight white kids use it.”

Thanks for letting us know ‘the score’ you two giant douchebags, we appreciate the education.

Make sure to let the bashers know too though, wouldn’t want them kept out of the loop.

Fuckers.

– Chris

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More Little Nothings from Lewis Trondheim

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With the end-of-season BEST OF lists already cropping up, NBM’s announcement that a third volume of Lewis Trondheim’s diary comic LITTLE NOTHINGS would be dropping in January reminded me that I never did get around to posting that “best of 2008” list I’d meant to. I did a short review of the second volume in March of this year–losing myself in Trondheim’s world for a little while was a glorious respite from hectic TCAF planning–and mentioned how fortunate I felt we were to get books like these released with some regularity. A third volume less than a year after the second is a treat.

To prime the pump for the release of the new book, NBM has started running excerpts on their blog at http://nbmpub.com/blog/. It’s fitting, as I believe these short strips originally ran on Trondheim’s blog en Français much to the consternation of myself and all of Trondheim’s anglophone readers. Actually, checking his blog right now, the current diary strips appear to be from time spent in Quebec! Maybe I’ll try and puzzle through them with my highschool French after all. 🙂

– Chris