Links: My first Fanexpo round-up of 2009

all the links that're fit to blog

Top 10 Penis Names Based on Marvel Superheroes

All superheroes are phalluses, only some are more phallic than others. Some penises have names. Some don't. Regardless, it just so happens that many superhero names also make perfect penis names. Some names work differently than others (Invisible Girl, Puny Banner), others work eerily well. What follows is a scientific survey.

The Top Ten

10. Iron Man (alternate: Shellhead)
9. Vision
8. The Thing
7. The Human Torch
6. Mr. Fantastic (alternate: Stretcho)
5. General Thunderbolt Ross
4. Doc Samson
3. Mjolnir
2. Cyclops (alternate: Scott Summers)
1. Jarvis



This is just such a great cover, with the penis-like Jarvis brandishing a vacuum cleaner, Thor polishing his hammer, the red-faced and rock-hard Vision rears up above all, and The Beast crouching at crotch level with a knowing look in his eye: the cover fairly screams, "This comic is about penises!"

(Spider-Man villains also make great penis names, with The Vulture being a shoe-in for #1.)

Chat Noir Now Open

Update: Yes, my project for the last few months has been the opening of a new store in downtown Guelph. I am proud to say all the hard work has paid off and Chat Noir is now open. Located at 32A Wilson St, in Guelph, just around the corner from Meow!, Chat Noir is a vintage decor and antiques -slash- furniture and giftware store. Kara and I are very proud and quite enthused about the new endeavor. Perhaps the best thing, from a comics perspective, is that, as with Meow!, internationally-renowned cartoonist Seth designed our logo and sign. Thanks Seth!

Thanks to everyone for being patient. Hopefully, regular blogging will soon resume.

More on the Supergirl Underwear Controversy That is Shaking the Nation

This may finally establish who wears the pants in the Superman family.

Let There Be Bike Shorts: A Profile In Comics-Geek Courage

by Glen Weldon

Last week, we learned about a man possessed of a bold and praiseworthy vision. With a single editorial edict, this brave iconoclast dispensed with venerated tradition and blazed a new path, knowing only too well that his decision might unleash a frothing nerdstorm of outrage.

The man in question: DC Comics editor Matt Idelson. The pronouncement he issued was just eight words long, but such is its paradigm-shattering power that it will surely stand one day in the annals of comic book history, alongside "With great power comes great responsibility," "Truth, Justice and the American Way," and "Shazam!"

Thus spake Idelson:

"I never want to see Supergirl's panties again."

Most Expensive Comic Book Ever, Part III

Following hot on the heels of Taschen's massive Crumb Sex book, comes news (via Tom Spurgeon) of a signed, limited edition of Crumb's new Genesis book, available from his publisher WW Norton. The special edition retails for $390 Canadian. Even if the suggested retail price is $625, the book is still no match for the reigning champ, the $1000 slipcased Gary Panter book I wrote about earlier.

I read a preview of Crumb's Genesis in the New Yorker last week. His retelling of the Garden of Eden story was about what I expected: a gorgeous, meticulously-rendered and masterful word-for-word adaptation of the Bible story. The story has the standard Crumb sexiness (how could it not?) but doesn't seem to have that extra touch of depth that a less-literal version might have. Chester Brown's Gospel adaptations are a case in point. They are weird and off-model enough that they actually make you think about the intellectual content of the time-worn source material. Likewise, Basil Wolverton's illustrated Bible is so weird and passionate that it approaches from a distance a sort of Blakeian artistry. Of course, Genesis is a fucking weird, schizophrenic book to begin with, and Crumb's crystal translation only makes this more obvious. Crumb doesn't have to add anything. Plus, his Eve is hot.

The book comes out in October.

2009 Wright Award Winners

Winners of 5th annual Doug Wright Awards announced in Toronto ceremony


Toronto, ON, May 10, 2009 — The Doug Wright Awards are proud to announce their 2009 winners, which were handed out in a ceremony at the Art Gallery of Ontario last night:

Best Book: Skim, by Jillian & Mariko Tamaki (Published by Groundwood Books)

Best Emerging Talent: Kate Beaton (History Comics, katebeaton.com)

The Pigskin Peters Award: Ojingogo, Matthew Forsythe (Published by Drawn & Quarterly)

The annual Doug Wright Awards (DWAs) represent the best and brightest English-language comics and graphic novels, and are decided on by a five-member jury. The 2009 DWA jurists included Bob Rae, Andrew Coyne, Martin Levin, Joe Ollmann, and Diana Tamblyn.

This year's jury praised Best-Book winner Skim as "ravishingly beautiful," adding that:

"A jury far from being made up of teenage girls was won over by the elegance, sweep and detail of the art and by the unsentimental, often funny telling of this contemporary tale of young people trying to figure out who they are in a world that's often too exciting and too complex. Illustrations and story merge seamlessly as the mood and intensity of the black-and-white art vary according to the mood and intensity of the story. Unique and unforgettable."

Of Kate Beaton's work, the jury said:

"Beaton's superficially simple drawings can mask a considerable sophistication of line and expression. She also offers a very winning blend of historical literacy and range, from Diogenes to Diefenbaker, from Robin Hood to Riel; and all this in concert with a youthful insouciance, a skillful application of comic-book tropes such as superheroes to historical events and characters, and often laugh-out-loud funny dialogue.

For instance, her sketch of the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard has him obsessing over his characterization in the press as a hunchback. Or her heritage minute rewrite of Pierre Trudeau has him arguing with Margaret, who's wearing a dress with decollete a la Julie Couillard, about turning Canada from 'Boresville to Party Country.' Her work is assured, impressive, hilarious."


The DWA nominating committee, which chooses the annual Pigskin Peters Award, said of Ojingogo:

"With his lushly imagined book, Montrealer Matt Forsythe joins a distinguished tradition, that includes Winsor McCay and Art Spiegelman, of cartoonists exploring dream imagery. Like Oz or Wonderland, and equally populated with strange creatures and bizarre happenings, Forsythe's impressive debut puts forth a wonderfully imagined universe, rich with oddity and wonder. Forsythe excels in the difficult art of world-creation – creating here and imaginary landscape that is both dense with life and as unsettling as a dream."

The awards were handed out at the Art Gallery of Ontario on Saturday May 9, 2009, at a gala ceremony hosted by filmmaker Don McKellar.

The event also featured a moving tribute to cartoonist Jimmy Frise, who was posthumously inducted into the Giants of the North, the Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame, in a talk delivered by CBC Radio's Stuart McLean.

In addition, this year's event also served as the official launch of The Collected Doug Wright: Canada's Master Cartoonist, the first of two lavish books published by Drawn and Quarterly that will re-introduce Canadians to one of their country's greatest cartooning talents.

Founded in 2004 to recognize the best Canadian comics published in English, The Doug Wright Awards have grown to become one of Canada's most-anticipated comics events.

Saturday: The Doug Wright Awards!!!!!

Finally, after a long nomination process, jury selection, and tons of planning, the 2009 Wright Awards are here. They will be held at Jackman Hall at the AGO in Toronto, Saturday, May 9. 7pm to 9pm. Free Admission! Don McKellar is hosting and there will be lots of new stuff this year.

An all-star jury this year, including Joe Ollman and Diana Tamblyn (and some famous people who aren't cartoonists).

The nominees are stellar, too:

Best Book

Burma Chronicles Guy Delisle (Drawn & Quarterly)
Drop-in Dave Lapp (Conundrum Press)
Paul Goes Fishing Michel Rabagliati (Drawn & Quarterly)
Skim Jillian & Mariko Tamaki (Groundwood Books)

Best Emerging Talent

Kate Beaton (History Comics)
Caitlin Black (Maids of the Mist)
Jesse Jacobs (Blue Winter, Shapes in the Snow)
Jason Kieffer (Kieffer #2)
Nick Maandag (Jack & Mandy)

The Pigskin Peters Award

Hall of Best Knowledge Ray Fenwick (Fantagraphics)
Ojingogo Matthew Forsythe (Drawn & Quarterly)
All We Ever Do is Talk About Wood Tom Horacek (Drawn & Quarterly)
Small Victories Jesse Jacobs (self-published)

Google Street Car Spotted

I saw the Google Car at the corner of Wellington St. and Gordon St. in Guelph at 3:07 PM today. The car was going east along Wellington. I fished my camera out of my bag but was too late to get a shot and thought that it would be too ridiculous to chase it through traffic. But not too ridiculous to blog about!



No it wasn't being ticketed like this one. And it was a dark blue-grey colour.

Sequential Magazine

Sequential: the magazine!

I'm very pleased to report that the first issue of the print version of Sequential will be available for free at the Toronto Comics Art Festival this weekend.

Sequential is the daily newsblog about Canadian comics that I contribute to. It has been online since 2002 but for TCAF this year we decided to create a print edition that captures in physical, 3-dimensional form the essence of what we do on a daily basis with the blog. To this end, we enlisted the aid of several cartoonists and writers whose stories and art we have covered and linked to over the years, and the result is a 22-page magazine full of comics, reviews, interviews, and features about every aspect of comics and graphic novels in Canada.

The mag features a cover and a graphic-novel preview by Sequential editor/publisher Max Douglas (aka Salgood Sam), who also worked tirelessly recruiting and riding herd on talent, fielding story-pitches, selling advertising, dealing with the printer, writing, and laying the whole issue out solo. There are also articles by Robin Fisher, Jamie Coville, Jim Munroe, Brad Mackay, Robert Pincombe, and yours truly. As well, there are comics by John Martz, Fiona Smythe, Sean Ward, Dan Zabbal, Willow Dawson, and Mahendra Singh. We cover old strips, new strips, webcomics, bande-dessinee, and everything in-between. And I have to say, the thing looks pretty damn sharp.

Canadian comics is a dynamic culture of wonderful art, artists, writers, readers and publishers (not to mention all the various craftspeople, printers, cosplayers, retailers, and whatever-the-hell Herve St.-Louis is), and we like to think this new incarnation of Sequential captures just a little bit of that magic.

The magazine will be distributed for no charge at TCAF and hopefully will serve as something of a guide to some of the people and events of the weekend. Please drop by and check out the issue and maybe say hi to some of the contributors. I hope to see you there!

New Canadian Superhero: Polar Man

Polarman - Our Hero

Doug Wright is Punk Rock!

Thanks to SweetiePie Press, on sale at the upcoming Toronto Comic Art Festival.

Medium/Genre, Genre/Medium

So, is science fiction a medium or a genre? From a Telegraph article by the confusing Tim Martin:

"Like science fiction, this is a medium with its roots in pulp and the alternative: for every scholar who attempts to trace the history of sequential art back to pre-Columbian parchment or the Bayeux Tapestry, there will be 50 diehards who claim it all started with Superman."

and

"The central misconception around comics is the idea that they're a genre, not a medium. "

Pigskin Pete

The Wright Awards nominees were just announced. This year Jimmy Frise, creator of Birdseye Center and Pigskin Peters is being posthumously induced into the Giants of the North Hall of Fame. I don't exactly know what this video has to do with that. (thanks to Sean Craig)

Hype: Complete Peanuts, 1971-72

by BK Munn It's easy to forget that these books are coming out on a regular basis. The temptation is to take them for granted now that the initial interest over the first volumes has largely subsided. Now that two whole decades of Peanuts have been reprinted in the deluxe hardcover format published by Fantagraphics and designed by Seth, we can really get a sense of what a huge achievement this project is and will continue to be for a generation.

The latest volume is number 11 in the series. It features major appearances by Marcie, Rerun, and the ultra-obscure sportsman, juvenile delinquent and class warrior Thibault (featured on the spine). Here is the press release:

Peanuts surges into the 1970s with Schulz at the peak of his powers and influence: a few jokes about Bob Dylan, Women's Liberation and "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex" (!) aside, these two years are as timeless as Peanuts ever was.

Sally Brown -- school phobia, malapropisms, unrequited love for Linus and all — elbows her way to center stage, at least among the humans, and is thus the logical choice for cover girl... and in her honor, the introduction is provided by none other than Broadway, television and film star Kristin (Wicked) Chenoweth, who first rose to Tony-winning fame with her scene-stealing performance as Sally in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

Two long Summer-camp sequences involve Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty, who has decided that Charlie Brown is madly in love with her, much to his clueless confusion. Snoopy shows up at camp as well, as does Peppermint Patty's new permanent sidekick, the one and only Marcie.

The eternally mutable Snoopy mostly shakes off his World War I Flying Ace identity and turns into Joe Cool, college hipster extraordinaire. And in three long sequences he writes a fan letter to his favorite author, Miss Helen Sweetstory, then goes on a journey to meet her, and finally enlists Charlie Brown's help when her latest opus, "The Six Bunny-Wunnies Freak Out," falls afoul of censors.

Also, Woodstock attends worm school, falls in love with a worm (perhaps the most doomed unrequited Peanuts love story ever!), and is nearly eaten by the neighbors' cat... Peppermint Patty is put on trial for another dress code violation and makes a very ill-advised choice in terms of lawyers... Snoopy turns Linus's blanket into not one but two sportcoats... Lucy hits a home run... and the birth of one Rerun Van Pelt!

Great Caesar's Ghost

Beware the Ides of March!



read more adventures of Great Caesar's Ghost
Super-Caesar
Wonder Woman's creator on Caesar

Sex Guardian

Canadian superhero action figure discusses sex on a talk show, or something.

Craptain Canuck vs Watchmen, Part 2

3 Superhero Comics That Were Better Than the Watchmen Movie

It should come as no surprise that I felt the best part of the recent Watchmen movie was the ending. Specifically, the choice of music played over the closing credits: Leonard Cohen's "First We Take Manhattan." No other song could be so fitting. An ironic, apocalyptic song-poem droned by Cohen over a cheezy, 1980s synth-pop track, the piece perfectly sums up the contradictory impulses at work in the horrible film that preceded it. Serving as a nod both to the conspiratorial nature of the film's plot and to the centrality of the ubermensch Dr. Manhattan character, the song's opening lines, "They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom...," perfectly sum up my feelings after sitting through the seemingly interminable movie.

The best part of the recent Watchmen hoopla and hype is that it has re-opened the critical debate on the comic book source material of the movie. Stalwart soldiers for the cause of comic art, like Jeet Heer, take a stance against all superhero comics that are not straight parodies or fun kids' stuff. Others, like cartoonist-critic Frank Santoro, say you have to be a true-believer to even begin to understand where Alan Moore is coming from. Somewhere in the vast middle is Tom Spurgeon who, while he pans the film, still finds several interesting approaches to enjoying the graphic novel.

There is no denying the graphic novel is interesting, a workmanlike, well-crafted, intricately plotted story packed-full of stimulating and often funny ideas about superheroes and politics, but it is essentially a failed masterpiece the parts of which never really cohere in any significant way. A great gaudy graphically complex book, Watchmen nevertheless suffers from Dave Gibbons stiff figure drawing and Moore's shallow characterizations, unbelievable plot, and ambiguous relationship to the material.

In truth, it is extremely hard to take superhero adventures seriously, let alone craft aesthetically sophisticated versions of them for adults. The most successful contemporary examples of mass-market superhero comics seem to straddle a fine line between slick genre exercises that meld aspects of crime fiction to superhero fantasy and utter fannish dreck that would have been rejected by producers of 1970s Saturday morning cartoons. There is only so much metaphor and thematic density a rickety genre about magic boyscouts in circus costumes can support.

For your consideration, another group of superhero-related comics that attempt to do something with the genre, inspired by Sean Rogers' recent Watchmen "Corrective":

1. Trashman by Spain Rodriguez

(collected in Trashman Lives! by Fantagraphics Books)

Originally appearing in 1960s underground press forums like the East Village Other and in Spain's own Subvert comic book series, Trashman answers the question nobody asked, "What if Jack Kirby's Sgt. Fury was a horny Marxist from the future?" Spain re-imagines the traditional superhero story from the point of view of a working-class leftist militant confronted with creeping political fascism and corporate capitalism, confronting it with paranoid drug-influenced page layouts and plotting, clunky post-Kirby figure drawing, heavy black inks, and trippy sloganeering and self-referentiality, all set in a fantasy of revolutionary sex and violence. Trashman is really a prole named Harry Barnes who is recruited and trained by the Sixth International to fight the cops and defend the workers. Trashman has several paranormal senses and the ability to change his shape at will, but he mostly likes to shoot people with machine guns in the service of a disjointed narrative --sort of OMAC meets Che Guevera. The Trashman comics are beautiful and funny love letters to a revolutionary ideal.

2. Archie as Pureheart

by various

(available in 2010 as Archie: Pureheart the Powerful from IDW)

As explained here, the Archie team decided to simultaneously cash in and parody the craze in superhero comics spurred by the 1960s Stan Lee/Jack Kirby/Steve Ditko revolution at Marvel and the revitalization of Silver Age superhero products at DC by penning a series of adventures starring the Riverdale gang as a group of superheroes, with lots of tongue-in-cheek fun and beautiful fluid clean cartooning. It's a self-aware kids comics that's not afraid to take a numbskull premise and run with it, without looking back, and without making a career of it. The result reads like a combination of classic MAD superhero parodies ("Superduperman," et al), Ditko and Lee's Spider-Man, and Otto Binder and CC Beck's Captain Marvel/Shazam comics of the 40s and 50s. The sort of superhero comics that Jaime Hernandez would do, minus the sex and punk rock (but still with lots of fishnet stockings and people hitting each other with their butts).

3. Jimmy Corrigan, Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware (Fantagraphics)

Ware's searing masterpiece puts Watchmen to shame with its ironic distance, convolutions and diagrammatic precision. A reflection on mortality, failure, family, childhood, and an obsession with superheroes, Jimmy Corrigan is a graphic novel that treats the godlike nature of our heroes with a probing wit and academic artistic scalpel. The fact that both almighty god and a washed-up Steve Reeves-style actor appear as a Superman figure is just a bonus. Did any comic do more for and to the genre of superheroes than Jimmy Corrigan? As Peter Schjeldahl wrote for The New Yorker, "Reading 'Jimmy Corrigan' is like operating an intricate machine whose function is not immediately apparent. Gradually, meanings emerge and emotions crystallize. None gladden." The doom that comes to Jimmy is ultimately more banal and overpoweringly wonderful than the boredom of Dr. Manhattan's demise and resurrection.

Graphic Novel Review: Tamara Drewe

Part 1 of The Best of 2008
(see the full list here)

Tamara Drewe
by Posy Simmonds
(Jonathan Cape/Random House)

review by BK Munn


Posy Simmonds draws the best cows of any living cartoonist and her ability is ably demonstrated in this pastoral farce that reads like Leah McClaren as drawn by Frank Thorne (or maybe David Lodge meets Colleen Doran?) --and is in reality an homage to Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd (which was originally illustrated by another woman, Helen Paterson, way back in the 1800s). The book has a wonderful polyvocal narrative centred around the goings-on at a writers' retreat in the English countryside. The titular heroine, a zaftig columnist-turned-novelist, is the catalyst for a series of romantic and literary calamities that befall a small group of creative types forced into close quarters in the wide-open spaces. For a comic, Tamara Drewe has relatively large chunks of text, and the book feels very writer-ly, as befits its source, subject matter, episodic plot, and original serial publication, but it actually has a very tight structure built on a foundation of humour, beauty, and skilled storytelling.

Batwoman loves Catman

I love this cover. Sort of a Freudian dream image combining a child-like approach to lust and femininity with bold iconography. You can see why artists like Dan Clowes have made so much of Silver Age DC comics tropes. Background: Catman was a Batman villain who had a major crush on Batwoman (Kathy Kane) and fantasized about her wearing kinky costumes. Sort of a superhero (or supervillain) stalker. But he had a cool pad and liked cats, so he couldn't be all wrong. The Catman "epic" played out over a scattered trilogy of issues during the mid-60s.

Captain Canuck vs The Nihilists of Sarnia

This classic comic book adventure presents the superhero dilemma in a new light. Canada's favourite son, Capt. Canuck, superhero with a cause, fights U.S. imperialism as only he can, through meditation.