Category: General

No, seriously. How neat is this?

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Niagara Welcomes the Wine King of Dominion City!

Wine King Float in the Niagara Wine Festival Parade
Saturday 26 September

Wine King Float and Dominion on display in The Show Room Wed 30 Sept – Sat 21 Nov
Opening Reception Fri 16 Oct at 8pm

This year’s Niagara Wine Festival Parade will have twice the royalty. Since 1952, the Grape King has ruled over the festival, but in 2009 the Wine King of Dominion City will join the parade on a float of his own. The Grape King needn’t worry about a battle for supremacy, however, the Wine King character and the community of Dominion are fictional creations of renowned Canadian cartoonist Seth.

Artist members of the Niagara Artists Centre, with the support of the Brock Centre for the Arts, have teamed with Seth and RENDER* to create a parade float from far away Dominion City, the fictional setting where Seth’s stories take place. The float features the Wine King, a rotund wine lover about ten feet high, and a gathering of cartoon grape minions. Marching with the Wine King will be members of the Royal Orders of Connoisseurs and Aficionados, costumed performers of the Suitcase In Point theatre company along with students from Brock University. Among the performers will be two human-sized bottles of Megalomaniac and Henry of Pelham winesthe Good Stuff, meeting the expectations of a connoisseurs taste.

After the parade the float will be parked in The Show Room of the Niagara Artists Centre. Exhibited with it will be a scale model of Dominion City as well as historic images of the grandest days of the Grape & Wine Festival Parade. “The three things are a good fit,” says NAC Director Stephen Remus. “Dominion is a throwback to the hay days of fifty years ago. A sense of those times that escapes nostalgia is pervasive in Seth’s world. I think the Wine King offers us an opportunity to celebrate the history of our parade without being sentimental”.

Born in Clinton, Ontario, Seth began work as a cartoonist in the mid 1980s. After over twenty years of artistic output, he’s created a number of graphic novels and strips (including Clyde Fans, Wimbledon Green, and George Sprott), had his work featured three times on the cover of The New Yorker, contributed a twenty-five issue serial for the New York Times Magazine, and exhibited his Dominion City at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The exhibition component of the exhibit at NAC is being toured by RENDER and was curated by Andrew Hunter.

The Wine King Float and Dominion City will be on view in NAC’s newly renovated Show Room from Wednesday 30 September until Saturday 21 November. There will be an opening reception for the exhibition on Friday 16 October starting at 8pm.

* A program established in 2006 to shift the University of Waterloo Art Gallerys focus to innovation. render.uwaterloo.ca

More at http://www.nac.org/show-room-gallery/show-room-schedule/199-wine-king-float-and-dominion.html.

Dude, I am so behind on my reading. You have no idea. Stacks and stacks of stuff by my bedside, in the living room, in the batroom. Can’t deal. So I asked my friend Derek (who we call “Haliday” as that is his last name) to read X-MEN: MISFITS, the X-Men Shojo manga by my friends Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman (and artist Anzu), because he’s a) read a lot of manga and b) read a lot of X-Men. He’s a dude, so he’s not the target audience (necessarily, I’m sure the authors would say that the book is for everyone, more or less), but still, he understands manga and superhero comics real good-like… I knew he’d have an interesting response to the book whether he liked it or not.

Instead of telling me about the book after he read it, he wrote a review of it. It’s a really good review as a piece of writing, very direct but still nuanced without being flowery, and I feel it really tells me a lot about the execution of the book, as well as just enough of the plot. So, since I in effect commissioned this review, I feel I should link to it:

http://comikaider.blogspot.com/2009/09/x-men-misfits-marvel-shoujo-manga-rise.html

Thanks Derek, you’ve made me want to move the book to the top of my to-read stack.

– Christopher

In my capacity as the Director of TCAF, I am sending out some stuff about exhibiting at the show in 2010. Perhaps this is of interest to you? If so, there is a note about that below. If not? Dreadfully sorry, I’ll have some Japan pictures up soon.

Best,

– Christopher

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APPLY NOW TO EXHIBIT AT TCAF 2010

Hi folks! Christopher Butcher here, Director of the 2010 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, being held May 8th and 9th 2010 in Toronto, Canada. I just wanted to let you know about a pretty exciting change to TCAF for our 2010 event, and that’s our new policy of an open-application process for exhibition space. 

Previously, exhibition at TCAF was by invitation only, as we strove to bring the very best creators in the medium to exhibit in Toronto. We’re very proud of all of our previous exhibitors, and we enjoyed curating the sort of show we always wanted to attend ourselves. But quite simply, 2010 isn’t 2003, and the comics medium and industry has grown in so many interesting directions and is producing so much great work that even we’re having trouble keeping up. So we’ve opened up the process so that all creators are welcome to apply to exhibit at the 2010 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, in the hopes that we can continue to be a great home to a diverse and talented group of authors, artists, and speakers.

You can find the application info at http://www.torontocomics.com/. Please note, if you’re a full-line publisher or will require multiple tables at TCAF 2010, please instead contact us at registration@torontocomics.com. 

Unfortunately even with our increased space for 2010, there’s no way we’d ever be able to accommodate every creator who applied to exhibit at TCAF. Rather than treating the exhibitors in a “first come, first served” fashion that may exclude some great people, we’re instead keeping registration open until November 15th, 2009 and will then select our exhibitors from the total pool of applicants. The TCAF Executive Committee will choose the cartoonists we think would be the best fit for the Festival. TCAF is still (and will likely remain) a show with a juried exhibition space, but we did want to give everyone a level playing-field on which to have a chance at participating.

Applicants will be contacted beginning December 1st to let them know them know whether or not they’ve been accepted as exhibitors. TCAF 2010 is presented by Toronto Public Library and The Beguiling, and will be held May 8th and 9th 2010 at Toronto Reference Library.

So whether you’re a previous exhibitor or are hoping to exhibit for the first time, feel free to fill out the online application. Hopefully we’ll see you in 2010!

Thanks,

– Christopher Butcher, Festival Director, Toronto Comic Arts Festival

Hey folks! It’s Jim Rugg’s awesome-looking cover to ONE MODEL NATION, a new original graphic novel coming from Image in a few months. I mentioned it in the last Previews Liveblog as having a sort of… unsettling… solicit image. Considering how utterly awesome this illustration is, it was worth the wait. Check out a bigger version by clicking or visiting Jim’s livejournal if clicking doesn’t work.

– Chris

Massive DC Corporate Restructuring.

Here’s the first three things that came to mind:

1. I always wondered when Warner Brothers would figure out that they owned DC Comics. Turns out? September 9th, 2009.

2. You know, at other massive corporations when beloved  senior staff are informed that their services are no longer required, they get a golden parachutte. At DC, there’s no money but at least they let you write Legion again!

3. Good luck to all involved, I imagine the next few weeks are gonna be weird.

– Christopher

Glad everyone found the Cynical Orange post interesting. I can’t decide if I want to write the follow-up addressing all of the points in the comment section… It’ll take a lot of time I’m not sure I have.

Speaking of, we’ve been working hard on TCAF over here, and I think we’ll have a big announcement next week about the 2010 show (May 8-9). If everything goes the way it should, information and announcements will be disseminated a lot earlier and more consistently. I feel pretty good about it in general, but it’s way more work up-front to make this thing easier to run than it is to do it the way we’ve been doing it. I am learning the valuable life skill of learning to let go, and it only took me a few decades.

Alright, it’s new comics day. Let’s go sell some comics!

– Chris

I completely ran out of time to finish liveblogging, but managed to squeak the previews order under the wire. I’ll actually finish it out sometime today, but it might be later in the evening because new comics day will be nuts. SO MUCH STUFF is out.

Sorry folks, see you soon!

– Chris

Long-time readers of the blog will likely remember my infatuation with Anders Nilsen’s astounding graphic novel Dogs & Water, a gripping but dreamlike rumination on the nature of war and loss. It’s one of my favourite graphic novels, and it really opened my eyes to Nilsen’s work… I’ve been a big fan ever since, and his most recent effort is no exception.

Nilsen has organized 46 Million, a protest/fundraiser in support of developing some sort of legitimate healthcare for the 46 million American citizens without it. Currently besieged by folks who seem to believe that democracy means enforcing your views by carrying loaded weaponry to debates, Anders has collected more than 50 items to be auctioned in support of his cause–mostly original comics art and illustration from the likes of Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Ivan Brunetti, Lille Carre, Jeffrey Brown, Dan Clowes, Genevieve Castree, and Nilsen himself. There are some truly beautiful and rare pieces available, like the Anders painting up top, and bids are currently in a reasonable range. 100% of the proceeds are going to be donated to advocacy organizations working for public healthcare.

You can see all of the e-bay items up for option under username oxrius, or by searching “46 Million” at ebay.com. Or you can just click here.

– Chris