Vancouver to host new comic arts festival

Vancouver will play host to a new festival celebrating Canadian comics and graphic novels. The Vancouver Comic Arts Festival has been in the works for about a year, and last week organizers announced the event will take place May 22–27, 2012.

In an interview with Canadian comics news website Sequential, VanCAF organizer Shannon Campbell says the goal is to create a free event that provides a unique experience for local comics fans and artists from Vancouver and elsewhere. Though VanCAF has confirmed some guests (including Joey Comeau, Emily Horne, and Jeph Jacques), and has scheduled an exhibition at Roundhouse Mews to take place over the last two days of the festival, most details are still being worked out.

From Sequential:

We’re looking into booking a wide array of events in the downtown area, including readings, workshops, and panels. We’re still ironing out the details on where everything will be; the Vancouver Public Library is one confirmed venue, and more will be announced as time goes on. What we do know for sure is that every event will be 100 per cent free to attend.

The event is modelled after the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (May 5–6, 2012) and the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo (2012 date TBA), but claims no affiliation with either. Exhibitor applications are now being accepted.

Drawn & Quarterly, Koyama Press recognized at Doug Wright Awards

The seventh annual Doug Wright Awards, which celebrate the best in Canadian comics and graphic novels, were handed out at a ceremony in Toronto on Saturday evening in conjunction with the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Best book went to Pascal Girard’s Bigfoot, published by Drawn & Quarterly (read Q&Q‘s review of Bigfoot from our June 2011 issue), while the Pigskin Peters Award for experimental and abstract comics went to Michael DeForge’s Spotting Deer, published by Koyama Press, a Toronto-based incubator for emerging comics artists.

The night’s winners were:

• Best book: Bigfoot by Pascal Girard (Drawn & Quarterly)
• Best emerging talent: Alex Fellows, Spain & Morocco (self-published web comic)
• Pigskin Peters Award: Spotting Deer by Michael DeForge (Koyama Press)
• The Giants of the North, Canadian Cartoonists Hall of Fame inductee: David Boswell
  

The judging panel was made up of author Michael Redhill, National Post books editor Mark Medley, illustrator Anita Kunz, artist Marc Bell, and musician Sara Quin. Each winner receives a special hardcover edition of their winning work and a trophy by DWA co-founder, Seth.

Hark! A new Kate Beaton book

Drawn + Quarterly has acquired North American rights to Hark! A Vagrant by Canadian comics artist Kate Beaton. The book will be a hardcover collection of new comics, as well as old favourites from Beaton’s popular website of the same name.

According to D+Q, Hark! A Vagrant will highlight Beaton’s (seemingly) simple and irreverent ink drawings of famous historical and literary figures. The title will be published by D+Q in fall 2011, and distributed by Raincoast Books in Canada, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the U.S.

Bam! Pow! Whazamo!

Open Book: Toronto has launched a new online event this month to celebrate Canadian comics and graphic novels. Whazamo! Ontario Graphic Novel Month intends to showcase both well-known and newbie Canadian graphic novelists and illustrators through daily videos, blogs, profiles, and, of course, comics. Whazamo! curator (and occasional Q&Q contributor) Ian Daffern gives the lowdown:

Whazamo! is a cavalcade of all that is excellent in Canadian comics and graphic novels, inspired by the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Throughout May we will showcase comics by Ontario’s independent book publishers, as well as present unique video and interview profiles of the best Canadian cartoonists in bookstores and on the web. Why comics for Open Book: Toronto? Why not! Toronto is a comic-book town.

Highlights on the site this month will include interviews and contributions from Mariko Tamaki (Skim) and Jeff Lemire (Essex County), a mini-doc on the making of popular web photo comic A Softer World, and coverage of this weekend’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival.

The perils of comics publishing

Two articles in Publishers Weekly highlight the challenges faced by today’s comic book publishers when seeking an audience.

First, distribution giant Diamond’s new minimum wholesale order ($2,500, up from $1,500) is creating hardship for smaller independent houses. Last month, Hollywood-based Asylum Press received 1200 orders for Fearless Dawn (which PW describes as a “tongue-in-cheek adventure comic”) – a significant number for an independent comic, but one that failed to meet Diamond’s minimum, says PW.

So… the press is offering the issue ($2.95 cover price) directly to retailers at a 60% discount ($1.18). Asylum pays for shipping and offers a 30 day payment schedule and no minimum order.

Second, in a reversal of the recent (and increasingly commonplace) practice of acquiring webcomics and turning them into print books, Hachette’s graphic novel imprint, Yen Press, plans on serializing its upcoming translation of French cartoonist David Ratte’s Toxic Planet online.

Hassler said the book was created in a comic strip style – short full-color 4-panel comics strips that lampoon a future-society so awash in pollution that people take wearing a gas mask for granted – and will work well as an online serial. And Hassler said that the book is perfect for the web – a funny and unusual comics [sic] strip by an author that is being published in English for the first time.

Capes and tights save publishing

Spider-Man has already saved incoming president Barack Obama; he’s now poised to save the entire publishing industry. In the midst of the gigantic economic clusterfuck global financial meltdown at the end of 2008, one segment of the publishing industry not only remained solvent, but actually grew: comic books.

The graphic novel industry saw a growth in sales of 5% in 2008, according to an article in USA Today.

Marvel Comics’ Secret Invasion #1 was the best-selling comic book of 2008. The eight-issue miniseries about the takeover of superheroes by shape-shifting Skrulls took the first six spots. Only Uncanny X-Men #500 (No. 7) and DC Comics’ Final Crisis #1 (No. 9) also cracked the top 10. Diamond did not release actual sales figures, but best-selling comic books (priced at $2.99 or $3.99) normally sell more than 100,000 copies.

Another title that sold well in 2008 was DC’s reprint of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel Watchmen, which has seen a spike in interest in advance of the March 6 release of the film adaptation.

Watching Watchmen

Earlier this week, in New York, filmmaker Zack Snyder presented the first lengthy sneak preview of Watchmen, his adaptation of Alan Moore’s landmark graphic novel. The preview was organized for a select group of media and internet geeks, and Guardian blogger Ben Walters was one of them.  Here’s part of his lengthy account:

After the screening, Snyder and Gibbons took questions. The first was from a large, balding man in the fourth row. “On behalf of the obese, obsessive geek community,” he began, “does the ending puss out?” The story’s conclusion is both cataclysmic and morally muddy. “The ending does not puss out,” Snyder replied, “To me that’s the point of the graphic novel.” Gibbons noted that the movie’s production is “very timely. It stands in relation to the [recent cycle of] superhero movies as the graphic novel did to comic books at the time.” And Snyder reported that he’d suggested the studio use a line of dialogue about Dr Manhattan – “God exists, and he’s American” – as the movie’s tagline. “They weren’t into that, by the way.”

When asked to describe the specific benefits of turning the story into a movie, however, Snyder offered a Sarah Palin-esque free association ramble. He concluded, defensively, that “there’s a rabid and vocal fan base for the graphic novel that support the graphic novel and are maybe against the movie. No Country for Old Men changed [its source material, the novel by Cormac McCarthy] three times as much as we have but I guarantee you there’s no rabid fan base who are going to kill the Coens!”

The boy who would be Tintin

It looks as if Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s planned series of Tintin films is one step closer to reaching fruition. According to the Guardian, a young man named Thomas Sangster has been selected to play the lead.

For those who remember, he was the young boy who gets the girl in the film Love Actually. For those who don’t, Thomas Sangster may yet become a household name. The sixth-former from south London, the Guardian can reveal, has been chosen by Steven Spielberg to be his Tintin for a three-movie adaptation of the boy reporter’s adventures. The trilogy is likely to give the 17-year-old the same profile as Daniel Radcliffe, aka Harry Potter, or Elijah Wood, who shot to international stardom as Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings series.

[...]

Sangster’s agent originally sent a tape to Spielberg as part of an audition for a mini-series of Stephen King’s The Talisman, which never got off the ground. Spielberg saw the tape and realised he had found his Tintin.

Holy rumours, Batman!

Gawker, a favourite website of the chattering classes, is reporting the imminent demise of one of the great characters in modern literature. (That is, of course, if you consider comic books to be part of the canon.)

Say it ain’t so – according to Gawker, industry rumours suggest that none other than the classic masked-and-caped superhero Batman is due to meet his maker this summer in the Robin comics series. (Do note the synchronicity with the July opening of the latest Batman flick, The Dark Knight.)

Posits Gawker:

Batman’s death in another medium would make front-page news, especially since Captain America’s death made the New York Times front page last spring.

Incidentally, this sort of stunt may feel like a cheap grab for readership in a dying industry, and it is, but it’s also part of a long tradition in superhero comics of violating all traditional rules of literature. Superheroes have always died, resurrected, and revealed their identities without consequence. Why doesn’t this ruin the brand? Well, when’s the last time you bought a comic book? Modern film audiences don’t need to actually read the comic to get the Batman brand, so DC can do what they like with comic-book Batman while film Batman keeps raking in money.

Thou shalt not kill (except on Earth 2 and Earth 5-C)

The comics world is abuzz with rumours that current Astonishing X-Men writer Joss Whedon plans to kill off fan favourite character Kitty Pryde at the end of his run. This has got Brian Cronin, a regular blogger for the fanboy website Comic Book Resources, thinking about the subject of death in superhero titles, and he’s come up with an exhaustive set of rules to help writers determine when it is appropriate – and not appropriate – to kill off major characters.

Our favourite rule is #4:

If you need to kill off a minor supervillain, imagine someone else is putting together a new Masters of Evil/Injustice League in a few years. If the character you’re thinking of killing would be seriously considered for such a group – don’t kill him/her. There is a bit of a shortage amongst villains on the lower tier, like Absorbing Man, the Wrecking Crew and Tiger Shark. Don’t kill them off.

Cronin also has a shortlist of the supporting players who can never, ever be killed off. Ever. They are:

Alfred, Foggy Nelson, Commissioner Gordon, Mary Jane Watson, Aunt May, Perry White, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, J. Jonah Jameson, Robbie Robertson, Betty Brant. These characters should be considered practically parts of their respective comics by now. Do not kill them off – unless, of course, you have a darned good reason to do so.

Consider yourselves on notice, comic book scribes.