Postcards from the edge: Julie Doucet is posting her old letters online

This was a fun thing I stumbled across the other day: it's called POBox Archives, a Tumblr joint effort between Julie Doucet and Simon Bosse (a talented Quebec cartoonist). Most of them are from fans or other cartoonists, and harken back to the early 90s hey-day of Doucet's Dirty Plotte fame, which she has gone to great lengths to distance herself from in the 20 odd years since. 

 
There's a ton of fun stuff here, including postcards to Simon from Marc Bell (below), and one to Julie Doucet from cartoonist Jean-Christophe Menu from the early 90s, when he was about to establish the influential comics house L'Association.  

Then there's one from controversy-magnet Mike Diana c. 1995, which was written on the back of a form letter from Jack Daniels. Gotta check that one out. Here's the front:

It's only been up and running a couple of months, but I look forward to this weird peek into the past. 

Sing it from the rooftops! The 2013 Doug Wright Awards are here!

Well, the nominees anyway. The ceremony is May 11.

2013 Doug Wright Award for Best Book are:

·         Lose #4 by Michael DeForge (Koyama Press)

·         By This Shall You Know Him by Jesse Jacobs (Koyama Press)

·         The Song of Roland by Michel Rabagliati (Conundrum Press)

·         Pope Hats #3 by Ethan Rilly (AdHouse Books)

·         Wax Cross by Tin Can Forest (Koyama Press)

2013 Doug Wright Spotlight Award (a.k.a. “The Nipper”) which recognizes Canadian cartooning talents worthy of wider recognition are

·         Nina Bunjevac for Heartless (Conundrum Press)

·         Brandon Graham for King City (Image Comics)

·         Patrick Kyle for Black Mass, Distance Mover, Wowee Zonk #4

·         George Walker for The Mysterious Death of Tom Thomson (The Porcupine’s Quill)

·         Eric Kostiuk Williams for Hungry Bottom Comics

2013 Pigskin Peters Award, which recognizes the best in experimental or avant-garde comics

·         Hamilton Illustrated by David Collier (Wolsak & Wynn)

·         Hellberta #2 and "Sir Softly" from š! #12, by Michael Comeau

·         Michael DeForge, Larry Eisenstein, Jesse Jacobs, Mark Laliberte (editor), Marc Ngui, Ethan Rilly, Tin Can Forest and Magda Trzaski from 4PANEL, a special comics features in Carousel Magazine #28, 29

·         Ginette Lapalme for "So, what should we do with ourselves?..." from Wowee Zonk #4 and  "Little Stump" in š! #12 

·       

And the late great Albert Chartier will be our inductee into the Giants of the North Hall of Fame. He's great, and really needs to experience a Doug Wright-styled renaissance. So why not now? Oh - and the jury is going to move to Montreal this year -- more on that later.


Here's the poster done by 2012 DWA Spotlight winner, Ethan Rilly.  More event info over at the DWA blog.