When Chris Butcher takes the time out of his busy schedule to write a long invite to get you to out to an event, you really should go. The Beguiling (where Butcher works as the manager) is presenting three events over the next two weeks, and I recommend you take Butcher’s advice and try to attend all three. There’s also a few other upcoming events to take note of, and a couple of good online interviews to help you wile away away the morning.
On Thursday, September 16, the Beguiling is throwing their friends at video art house UDON a party at the Revival Bar (783 College Street) to celebrate UDON’s 10th Anniversary. There they will officially launch Vent: Volumne One, UDON’s coffee-table artbook. Doors open at 7 p.m. (FREE), and here’s a few words from their invite. It’s expected to be quite a party, with plenty of UDON alumni past and present in attendance.
The next two events are back to back on Saturday September 25 at the beautiful Innis College Town Hall, and each feature very rare appearances from figures in the comics world. The first, from 4:30 to 6 p.m., features Torontoian biographer Blake Bell discussing classic comic artist Bill Everett, with a rare appearance by Everett’s surviving daughter Wendy Everett. Bell is launching his exhaustive new critical biography of Bill Everett, entitled Fire and Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner & the Birth of Marvel Comics. You can read a sample here. Everett is credited with creating the first of the Marvel anti-heroes, in opposition to the very clean superheroes that dominated the day. Everett, like most famous early cartoonists, was both an enormously talented artist and storyteller whose influence goes far and wide, but is still largely unrecognized. The book offers a great look into the early cut-throat world of pulp fiction and comics publishing, and the artist who survived and thrived within it.
Then, at 7 p.m., prolific French cartoonist Lewis Trondheim will be in Toronto for a discussion and drawing presentation, sponsored in part by the French consulate. Born in 1964, Trondheim is the author of many many French and English language books and is one of the founders of the well-respected French publisher l’Association. He’s been nominated for many awards in the US and Europe, winning (arguably) the most prestigious comics award in the world, the Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême in 2006. This event is being billed as a very rare English-language event, not to be missed.
Oh, and Charles Burns, Dylan Horrocks, and Lynda Barry will all be speaking at Toronto’s International Festival of Authors next month. Save your pennies: there’s lots to look forward to.
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In other news, Publisher’s Weekly has a short interview with Vanessa Davis on her new book, Make Me a Woman, released by Drawn and Quarterly. Here’s a great quote:
I’d read a lot of Crumb too and admired it but it was more of a technical admiration than that it really spoke to my sensibilities. There’s something that annoys me about his perspective on things. I know intellectually that his work was really important and it’s not like I think he’s sexist and I’m offended or anything. His comics are complicated and that’s a really important thing to do in comics, be complicated and not have a simple perspective. I owe a lot to him for that.
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Publisher’s Weekly also has a great interview with one of my daughter’s favourite authors, Dav Pilkey, in which he discusses his new graphic novel series for kids, based on the main characters from his famous series with Scholastic, Captain Underpants. Here’s a quote:
Interestingly, I find it more challenging to draw in the simplified, childlike style of Harold than it is to draw in my own, more refined style. I constantly find myself having to erase and re-draw things because Harold can’t draw as well as I can. But even though Harold’s drawings are more primitive than mine, they still have to be very expressive and convey the proper emotions and actions. It’s far more difficult than it looks to draw in such a simple style, but I really love the challenge.
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Daniel Raeburn has posted all four issues of his legendary comics fanzine, The Imp, online for free download. You can find them here: http://danielraeburn.com/The Imp, by Daniel Raeburn.html
Daniel’s cheeky and very thorough comics references Dan Clowes’ work, Jack Chick’s evangelical Christian comics (which can still be found laying around places today), Chris Ware’s work, and the crazy sub-genre of Mexico’s outrageous “historietas.” Raeburn went on to write for many publications such as The New Yorker and The Baffler, but these works really helped ignite popular, intelligent criticism of comics in the 1990s and are worth looking at today. They are very relavent, and they contain some great writing.
