Brown, Seth, Beaton, Ollmann, DeForge short-listed for 2012 Doug Wright Awards

Legendary cartoonist Terry ‘Aislin’ Mosher to be inducted into Hall of Fame during annual ceremony

March, 27, Toronto, ON — The Doug Wright Awards, Canada’s premier comics awards, are proud to announce their finalists for 2012. The 15 nominees include established heavy-weights and past winners (Chester Brown, Seth, Marc Bell, Joe Ollmann, Kate Beaton) and a slate of extraordinary younger talent that together represent the finest in Canadian comics.

The nominees for the 2012 Doug Wright Award for Best Book are:

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton (Drawn and Quarterly)
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Lose #3 by Michael Deforge (Koyama Press)

Mid-Life by Joe Ollmann (Drawn and Quarterly)

Paying for It by Chester Brown (Drawn and Quarterly)

Reunion by Pascal Girard (Drawn and Quarterly)

The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists by Seth (Drawn and Quarterly)


The nominees for the 2012 Doug Wright Spotlight Award (a.k.a. “The Nipper”) which recognizes talent deserving of wider recognition, are:

Emily Carroll for "The Seven Windows" (from The Anthology Project vol. 2), "Margot's Room" and "The Prince & the Sea" (and other comics at emcarroll.com/comic).

Patrick Kyle for Black Mass # 5 - 6

Betty Liang for Wet T-Shirt #1, "It's Only a Secret if You Don't Tell Anyone" (in š! #9), "Anna Freud's Recurring Dream" (and other comics at bettyliang.tumblr.com)

Ethan Rilly for Pope Hats #2 (AdHouse Books)

Zach Worton for The Klondike (Drawn and Quarterly)

And the nominees for the 2012 Pigskin Peters Award, which recognizes the best in avant-garde or experimental comics, are:

Hermoddities by Temple Bates (Conundrum Press)

Pure Pajamas Marc Bell (Drawn and Quarterly)

Hellberta by Michael Comeau (Koyama Press)
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‘Untitled’ by Mum Pittsburg and Jupiter Leucetius! Send Us a King. We Are So Bored (and other comics at connorwillumsen.com ) by Connor Willumsen

Founded in 2004, The Doug Wright Awards recognize the best in English-language comics (or translations of French) by Canadians living in the country and abroad. Now in their eighth year, the awards will take place on May 5, 2012 in Toronto at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Jackman Hall as a feature event of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF.)

The Doug Wright Awards and TCAF are also pleased to announce that legendary political cartoonist Terry Mosher (who works under the pen name “Aislin”) will be on hand at this year’s ceremony to be inducted into The Giants of the North: The Canadian Cartoonists Hall of Fame.

This year marks Mosher’s 40th anniversary of publishing his acerbic and often hilarious cartoons in The Montreal Gazette. The Doug Wright Awards, along with its partner TCAF, are proud to have him in-the-flesh for an on-stage discussion about his colourful career and life with writer and Toronto Star columnist Rick Salutin.

Spirited, smart, and always controversial, Mosher will also be a Featured Guest at TCAF which will be held May 5-6.

The nominees for the 2012 Doug Wright Awards were chosen by a committee from a long list of nearly 100 works and submissions published during the 2011 calendar year. This year’s nominating committee included Jerry Ciccoritti, Jeet Heer, Bryan Munn, Chris Randle and Sean Rogers.

The 2012 winners will be decided by a jury that will include: visual artist Shary Boyle, cartoonist John Martz (A Doug Wright Award Best Emerging Talent nominee in 2010 and Pigskin Peters Award nominee in 2008), book artist and professor George Walker and Julie Traves, deputy arts editor for The Globe and Mail.

Marvel Boycott Diary: The Jack Kirby Petition is a Missile Hurtled by History

"Put ya guns up, tell your crew don’t front."

Jack Kirby Petition weekly soundtrack. 1,200 signatures and growing.

5. Black Betty, by Leadbelly (traditional arrangement)



4. Armalite Rifle, Gang of Four



3. 212, Azealia Banks



2. Good Guys (Don't Wear White), Minor Threat (Standells Cover)



1. Underdog, Dirtbombs

Severin in Cracked

Mort Todd writes about John Severin

Hey, Did the Guelph Mercury Steal My Robocall Cartoon?

So today I see in the Guelph Mercury this cartoon about the Pierre Poutine Election Robocall Scandal.

Kind of really similar to the fumetti photo cartoon I posted to facebook and twitter on Wednesday. I realize that everyone is doing gags about robots, phones, and poutine these days, but a robot that looks like that, with an old rotary dial phone and clunky computer lettering? The gag wasn't even that funny...

Marvel Boycott Diary: Please Help Boycott the Avengers Movie

So here are a few links from the ongoing protest against Marvel Entertainment and Disney's treatment of Jack Kirby and his family:

ITEM! The Jack Kirby petition now has 1,200 signatures! Comics fans from all over the world have already signed the petition asking Marvel Entertainment to give credit and compensation to Jack Kirby's family for the characters and stories Kirby created and co-created during the 1960s at Marvel Comics. Please, if you haven't already, read the petition and sign it if you agree with it. Also, if it's not too much to ask, please share it with your friends online, local comic book shops, and media --help to get the word out about this issue that strikes at the heart of creator rights, the comic book industry, and Hollywood.


ITEM! The man who started all this talk of boycotting Marvel last summer, Steve Bissette, has a new post up at his blog about the basic issues of the campaign (and he's found a killer Captain America image to illustrate his argument). Now that the hype for the Avengers movie has really started to gear up, with blogs, newspapers, and networks mindlessly posting every press release and trailer about the film, it's time for those who believe in justice for Jack Kirby and his family to kick things up a notch as well. As Bissette notes, "The thought of sitting through another bloated multi-million dollar-budgeted charade about how “it’s right to fight for justice” when Marvel/Disney can’t cough up the equivalent of, say, one day’s shooting budget for catering or grips to toss a bone to Jack’s heirs—well, that act of enduring that film isn’t at all attractive or appealing to me any longer on any level." Check it out!

ITEM! Finally, the court case that really started this, involving the Kirby children's attempt to reassert copyright over the characters Jack Kirby created and co-created for Marvel, is now under appeal. Daniel Best has posted the actual legal document submitted by the Kirby lawyer here. It's a fairly long document with some legal language, but it argues some points about the original judgement and the evidence the judge ignored, in addition to introducing new arguments about the behavior of Marvel and Stan Lee. Well worth reading!