KRAMPUS!
KRAMPUS.
– Chris
Quick Linkblogging
Here’s a few things that you might want to take a look at.
– Are you a frustrated writer? Jim Munroe, author of numerous novels as well as the excellent 2007 graphic novel Therefore, Repent! offers up 10 Ways To Get Your Writing Out There at his blog. The post comes out of a talk that I sort-of commissioned from Munroe from this fall’s The Word On The Street festival. Accompanying each “way” is an illustration by Ramon Perez, author of the webcomic Kukuburi amongst other works.
– Lynda Barry was just as lovely in person as she seems in all of these wonderful interviews that keep popping up. I got to meet her in Toronto at The International Festival of Authors this past fall. The most recent Barry interview comes courtesy of Canadian lit-mag The Walrus. Check out Part One and Part Two.
– I’ve started contributing to the group-blog at Tor.com. I’ll be sticking mainly to the subject of comic books, and even then only stuff of interest to the sci-fi and fantasy readers that visit the site. My first post is a wrap-up/overview of the cancellation of Blue Beetle from DC Comics, and all of the responses to it. It’ll be published sometime tomorrow, so bookmark Tor.com and subscribe to their feed reader in anticipation. Please?
Edit: And it’s up. http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=9514. I’d love a bit of feedback on this actually, if you’ve got any.
– Christopher
Comics Events In Toronto Over The Next Few Weeks
In Toronto? Like comics, art, or design? There’s a lot of cool stuff going down… Most of it presented by my erstwhile employer, The Beguiling, but other folks hold events too. Here’s what’s happening, and you can click on any of the images for the full-size version:
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NOVEMBER 25: TONIGHT
Maurice Vellekoop’s PIN-UPS Book Launch
Featuring Maurice Vellekoop!
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 @ 6:30PM
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
http://facebook.com/event.php?eid=30596127854
FREE, 18+
The Beguiling is teaming up with the fierce folks at Green Candy Press to present Maurice Vellekoop’s PIN-UPS! It’s a cross between his most recent collection, “A Nut At The Opera,†and his most infamous collection, “ABC: A Homoerotic Primer,†featuring tributes to hundreds of years of gay imagery from film to fashion to fantasy, all rendered in Maurice’s lush trademark style.
The event will feature a gallery show, presentation from the book, and some fantastic music courtesy of DJ Johnny Wacker… Maurice himself will be on hand to sign copies of the work, and in addition to book sales we’ll have a selection of original art, prints, and more, on hand.
If you’ve ever thought about coming out to one of our events, this one guarantees to be the most fabulous.
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DECEMBER 3
Dave Lapp’s DROP-IN Book Launch
Featuring Dave Lapp in conversation with Chester Brown
Wednesday, December 3rd 2008 @ 7PM
The Central, 603 Markham Street (Next to The Beguiling)
http://facebook.com/event.php?eid=36387779614
FREE
The Beguiling is proud to present the official launch for cartoonist Dave Lapp’s new graphic novel, DROP-IN. A surprising, insightful look at some of Toronto’s most economically disadvantaged communities, DROP-IN chronicles Lapp’s experiences as a teacher at a drop-in art centre, and the children he meets there.
The book launch event will see Dave Lapp perform a multimedia reading from DROP-IN, and following that Lapp will be interviewed on stage by long time friend and colleague Chester Brown (Louis Riel) about his career in comics, and the specific challenges of creating DROP-IN. A signing will follow.
DROP-IN is currently available for sale at The Beguiling, and will be available for sale at the event.
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LAUNCH! TeaTime 2 and Brick Literary Journal 82
high literature, visual oddities, and gratuitous drinking
at Mitzi’s Sister (1554 Queen Street West)
on Wednesday the 3rd December (doors at 7.30)
http://steflenk.com
There will be readings and excellent company and drinks and books for sale too. As always, friends, strangers, and those appreciative of oddities are all welcome.
Join our friend Steflenk for the launch of the second issue of her new comic series TeaTime, alongside the official launch for Brick Literary Journal #82. Yes, we know this conflicts with Dave Lapp’s launch. We’re really sorry to all involved: December is a very busy month. Hope you can make it out to one—or both!
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DECEMBER 4
Clayton Hamner’s Christmas Party & Book Launch!
Featuring C-Ton’s Super A-Maze-Ing Year Of Crazy Comics, from Owlkids.
Thursday December 4, 6pm-9:30pm
@ Reactor Art & Design, 51 Camden St., Main Floor
http://cton.ca
Join Toronto Illustrator Clayton Hamner for the launch of his new all-ages book and Christmas Party, “C-Ton’s Super A-Maze-Ing Year Of Crazy Comics”. Clayton will be joined by his friends at Reactor, Owlkids, and many more to meet and greet, launch the book, and celebrate the season.
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DECEMBER 7
Comics to Watch Out For
Featuring Mariko Tamaki, Douglas Davey, Jen Stewart and Amy Chop
Sunday December 7th, 2008 2pm-4pm
Ebar, 41 Quebec St., Guelph Ontario
$5-$10 suggested donation
The Dragon comic book store in Guelph and ‘Out On The Shelf’ Queer Library and Resource Centre are proud to present “Comics to Watch Out Forâ€. This day-long fundraiser for Out On The Shelf will feature:
Author Mariko Tamaki, reading from her graphic novels SKIM and EMIKO SUPERSTAR.
Librarian Douglas Davey, presenting on The History of Queer Comics and Graphic Novels Comics Retailers Jen Stewart and Amy Chop, presenting on Women And Comic Books
Tickets are available at the door.
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DECEMBER 10
HERO INITIATIVE FUNDRAISER
Wednesday, December 10 2008, 3pm-7pm
Paradise Comics, 3278 Yonge Street, Toronto
http://facebook.com/event.php?eid=33959769554
FREE
Paradise Comics and The Hero Initiative are pleased to announce a special in-store signing of the brand new The Hulk 100 Project, featuring special comics guests including Dale Keown, Leonard Kirk, Agnes Garbowska, and Francis Manapaul.The Hulk 100 Project features more than 100 original cover illustrations for the recent HULK #1 courtesy of superhero artist greats, with all proceeds going to benefit The Hero Initiative.
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DECEMBER 11
KRAMERS ERGOT 7 TOURS TORONTO
Presented by The Beguiling Books & Art
Featuring Shary Boyle, Sammy Harkham, Kevin Huizenga, John Pham, Ron Rege Jr., Souther Salazar, and Seth!
Thursday December 11th, 2008, 7PM-10PM
918 Bathurst Street (Former Buddhist Temple)
1 Block North of Bathurst TTC
http://facebook.com/event.php?eid=30811628299
FREE
Kramers Ergot is the name of the groundbreaking comix anthology that has taken up the tradition of Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly’s RAW MAGAZINE in bringing the most innovative, challenging, and beautiful comics work to the masses… and volume 7 is the greatest yet! This massive new tome includes brand new comics from some of the world’s greatest living graphic novelists, and this December several of the contributors will be in Toronto to officially launch the new book!
Kramers Ergot Volume 7 is sure to top many critics’ Best Comics Of 2008 Lists, thanks to its all-star line-up of contributors including Seth, Chris Ware, Shary Boyle, Andrian Tomine, Dan Clowes, Ivan Brunetti, and Gabrielle Bell to name just a few. But equally as stunning is the book’s presentation: Kramers Ergot Volume 7 is a massive 16 inches by 21 inches in hardcover, with each contributor offering up an original double-page spread of brand new work for the book. Kramers Ergot Volume 7 will make its official debut at this launch event, and will not be available in stores before then. It is sure to be in short supply this holiday season.
“People are focusing on the enormous size of this book, and with good reason,†says Peter Birkemoe of The Beguiling. “But the sheer talent assembled into this volume, from established names and friends of The Beguiling like Seth and Shary Boyle, to relative newcomers including John Pham, that’s what will have people lining up for this one.â€
The Kramers Ergot Volume 7 Tour will feature appearances by series Editor and contributor Sammy Harkham, as well as Shary Boyle (Otherworld Uprising), Kevin Huizenga (Ganges, Curses), John Pham (Sublife), Ron Regé Jr. (Skibber Bee Bye), Souther Salazar (Destined for Dizziness), and Seth (Palookaville, Clyde Fans) and publisher Alvin Buenaventura. At 7:30PM the contributors will be interviewed on stage by The Beguiling’s Peter Birkemoe, and a signing will follow. Doors open at 7PM.
The event will be held at the beautiful new event space ‘918’ located at 918 Bathurst. A former Buddhist Temple, the space is a classic A-frame building located just a block north of Bathurst Subway station and 3 blocks from The Beguiling. Sponsored by Steam Whistle Brewing.
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So, you can see why I’ve been busy.
– Chris
Orson Welles Japanese Whiskey Ads.
The Elsewhere Chronicles Begin This Spring…
Congratulations to my friend Bannister, as it seems the young readers Bande Desinee series he’s co-created, “Les Enfants D’Ailleurs” will be translated into English. The series’ English title is “The ElseWhere Chronicles,” and it will come to North America courtesy of Lerner Publishing Group. I can’t recall, off the top of my head, another graphic novel that Lerner has published, so this seems like a new venture for them.
A new website has just been launched for the series at http://elsewherechronicles.com/, and it seems like copies of the first volume of The ElseWhere Chronicles will be debuting at The New York Comic Con this February.
You might be familiar with Bannister’s work from the various volumes of the Flight anthology. It’s good stuff, and the French edition has been a strong seller for us at The Beguiling.
Congrats, Bannister!
– Chris
How many things are wrong with this picture?
Kagan McLeod’s History Of Rap: Big With Rappers
What do The RZA, Jay Z, Busta Rhymes, and ICE MUTHAFUCKIN T have in common? They’re all over Kagan McLeod’s completely, completely awesome HISTORY OF RAP poster, and Kagan’s been getting pics with all of them and the poster over at his Facebook page.
ICE T with Kagan McLeod’s History of Rap print. Photo by X-man from Disconnexions.com
RZA with Kagan’s History of Rap. Photo by X-man from Disconnexions.
There are another 20+ pics over at Kagan’s site…
I know I’ve blogged about this print before, but? Local boy makes very good, you know? We’ve sold a ton of these at the store and a ton more through the website (they’re only 20 bucks), I’m super happy for Kagan getting to live the dream and meet all these incredibly talented artists.
– Chris
Top Photo of Kagan McLeod at the Source magazine offices, by X-Man of Disconnexions.com.
UDON at the forefront of Holiday Video Gaming
In addition to featuring a bitch’n soundtrack, this new video trailer for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix also features a very prominently placed logo for UDON, the publisher and creative studio headquartered right here in Toronto. UDON slapped a fresh coat of digital paint on the game, completely re-drawing all of the character animations, backgrounds, character art and ending sequences to bring the 20 year old classic screaming into the High-Def age. The game looks fantastic.
Pleasing die-hard Street Fighter fans is about as difficult as pleasing Trekkies, but this game is expected to make fans of the series happy. It’s a downloadable game for the Xbox360 and PS3 that features online competitive play, tournaments, and I’m pretty jealous that I don’t get to play, seeing as I’ve only got a Wii… Still, for those of you with the proper systems, you can thrill to getting your ass handed you by some random 12 year old kid anywhere in the world, rather than the random 12 year old kid standing next to you at the arcade machine.
This is a pretty major feather in Udon’s cap, as the game is expected to be one of the most popular titles of the holiday season, and it looks like the studio is going to be front and center in the promotions. I’m friends with the guys at Udon, so I know how hard they worked to pull this together, and I’m glad to see them getting their due… Likewise, I’m glad to be sitting on a few dozen copies of the currently-between-printings Street Fighter Graphic Novels, which should move quite nicely any day now thanks to the continuing build-up in interest in the series
Oh, and while I’m shilling, the second issue of the new SF2 comic drops in stores this Wednesday.
– Chris
Oh Evan, you always know just what to say.
“On the one hand, though, I haven’t ranted in quite some time to this degree, and for that, I guess, I have to thank this god-forsaken convention. But, anyway, what did any of you think, if you attended this thing? Am I crazy? Exaggerating far too much? Just being a dick? Was this a barrel o’ fun? Are you unable to sleep because it’s a year away from the next one? Or are you at this very moment seeking therapy after a day or two of squeezing through the soul-deadening habitrails of a show that invites folks like David Lloyd and Bryan Talbot and leaves them high and dry on the Isle of Blight?” – Evan Dorkin
– Chris
Skim, Graphic Novels, and The Governor General’s Literary Awards
So this has been bubbling under for a little while. The Canadian graphic novel (and Doug Wright Special Award Winner) Skim has been nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Awards here in Canada, which is excellent. Unfortunately, however, only Mariko Tamaki has been nominated, as she is the book’s “author” whilst Jillian Tamaki has been ignored as the book’s “illustrator.” Anyone with a functioning understanding of the medium knows that, particularly outside of genre work, the distinction between “writer” and “illustrator” is not nearly so easy to make in the world of graphic novels… Graphic Novels are a medium where both the words and pictures are equally important, and frequently entirely indivisible.
And so two of Canada’s most prominent graphic novelists have written an open letter to the administrators of the Governor General’s Literary Awards, in the hope of getting co-creator Jillian Tamaki her due in the acclaim for this fine book. Take it away, Seth and Chester Brown:
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE GOVERNOR GENERAL’S LITERARY AWARDS
November 12, 2008
As individuals involved in the art form of comics and graphic novels, we are glad to see that a graphic novel has made the short-list for this year’s Governor General’s Literary Awards. Â Â SKIM (by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki) Â is a wonderful book and deserves the attention. Â But we’re troubled by the fact that only one of its co-creators is receiving credit for the creation of the book’s text. Â We understand that an award-category exists for illustration, but to have nominated Jillian in that category would not have rectified the problem. Â Indeed, that would have highlighted how our medium is misunderstood.
We’re guessing that the jury who read SKIM saw it as an illustrated novel. Â It’s not; Â it’s a graphic novel. Â In illustrated novels, the words carry the burden of telling the story, and the illustrations serve as a form of visual reinforcement. But in graphic novels, the words and pictures BOTH tell the story, and there are often sequences (sometimes whole graphic novels) where the images alone convey the narrative. Â The text of a graphic novel cannot be separated from its illustrations because the words and the pictures together ARE the text. Â Try to imagine evaluating SKIM if you couldn’t see the drawings. Â Jillian’s contribution to the book goes beyond mere illustration: Â she was as responsible for telling the story as Mariko was.
In an October 21st article for the CBC website, one of your jurors, Teresa Toten, was interviewed: Â “Toten praised SKIM for using the graphic novel format to tell a sophisticated story about what life is like for teenaged girls. Â The work is remarkable in part because of how the words and pictures both contribute to the literary quality, she said.” Â And that is the point of this letter. Â “[T]he words and pictures both contribute to [SKIM’s] literary quality”.
A new category does not need to be created to properly address the graphic novel. Â In fact, it is best to see graphic novels appear in literary awards only when they deserve to compete equally against prose on their literary merit alone.
In writing this letter, we don’t mean to slight Mariko. Â Â One of the reasons this collaboration works so well is because she understood how to write for this medium. Â But we feel that as things now stand, Jillian is being slighted. We want both of the enormously talented creators of this book to be honoured together for their achievement.
Yours,
Chester Brown (Author of Louis Riel)
Seth (Author of It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken)NAMES IN SUPPORT OF THIS LETTER
Lynda Barry (Author of What It Is)
Peter Birkemoe (Owner of The Beguiling)
Dan Clowes (Author of Ghost World)
David Collier (Author of The Frank Ritza Papers)
Julie Doucet (Author of 365 Days)
Chris Oliveros (Publisher of Drawn and Quarterly)
Joe Ollmann (Author of This Will All End in Tears)
Bryan Lee O’Malley (author of Scott Pilgrim)
Michel Rabagliati (Author of Paul Moves Out)
Art Spiegelman (Pulitzer Prize winning author of Maus)
Adrian Tomine (Author of Shortcomings)
Chris Ware (Author of Jimmy Corrigan, Smartest Kid on Earth)
I imagine this will create something of a stir within staid Canadian literary circles.
– Christopher
Edit: I missed the ‘names in support’ somehow. Sorry!