Rilly's really spiffy new site

My favourite Canadian cartoonist/policy analyst Ethan Rilly, has just unveiled a new website, Popehats.ca. Built using only "fimo and a buck knife" (it actually looks kind of pretty) the site exists primarily to promote his fine new comic Pope Hats #1 (which was nominated for a Doug Wright Award in it's earlier, self-published incarnation).

I really liked that earlier version, and I'm happy to see that he has re-drawn it and re-published it in a spiffy new format. As Seth has already commented, the story is breezy and deceptively casual in its depiction of real life. Plus there's a charming ghost in it.

If you like Dan Clowes, Seth, Adrain Tomine (or good comics) you should put $4 aside and buy a copy for yourself.

A life inside a life inside a life

I wrote a review of A Drifting Life -- Yoshihiro Tatsumi's epic, sprawling manga memoir -- for the Globe and Mail's Books section, which appeared over the weekend.

Like a lot of people I've talked with, this book was a peculiar read at first. It came on a crest of huge expectations, thanks to the fact that it arrived after three excellent (and handsome) volumes of Tatsumi's classic gegika; volumes designed and edited by cartoonist Adrian Tomine, and published by Drawn and Quarterly.

This massive memoir (also pubilshed by D+Q) promised a behind-the-scenes look at Tatsumi's emergence as a cartoonist, and the reasons behind the genesis of the ground-breaking, and grim, gegika medium (short comics stories that took on adult themes, including abortion, murder, prostitution and adultery.) Yet, Tatsumi made a couple of stylistic choices that I found challenging initially. First, he named his protagonist "Katsumi," a strange choice (a one-letter difference from his own name) that seems to imply that he's fictionalized some of the details in his tale. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

As he explained during his appearance at TCAF, Tatsumi was simply following the Japanese tradition of the "I-novel"; a genre of autobiographical manga that sees the cartoonist’s name changed as a courtesy to those depicted in the book who are still alive.

The other thing I found curious was the tone of the book, which is modelled on the classic manga tradition (ie. broadly expressed emotions, wide-eyed characters). It took me about 350 pages before it dawned on me that Tatsumi had made this choice deliberately. His story deals with his love affair with manga, so it only made sense that it should be told in a similar fashion. Well, that's my theory anyway.

Anyways, go read the piece and let me know if you agree with me. I'll leave you with a quote from Chris Ware that i used in the review that made me laugh:

“Being a cartoonist is sort of like being a businessman doodling all day. You're not an action painter throwing paint around or going out into the world; you're just sitting pathetically at this table, staring down in a kind of feedback loop.”

If all reviews were like this, I'd be a happy man

The CBC's always great Arts website has a feature up now on The Collected Doug Wright: Canada's Master Cartoonist that is fairly mind-blowing. The writer (Martin Morrow) really nails most the themes/ideas that we discussed as we were working on the this volume. Plus, there are more than a dozen images from the book and many great quotes from Seth about classic-era cartooning and Wright's significance.

(This is an enlarged Wright drawing that was embellished by Seth.)

It's definitely worth a gander.

Oh - and you can buy the book online here. Or wait a few months, and buy it here and then get is signed after this.

A challenger to the KE7 crown?

Think Kramer's Ergot #7 is big? Of course you do.The latest edition of the revered alt-comics anthology has been wow-ing fans and annoying wives everywhere since it was released to much acclaim last fall, thanks to its its All-Star lineup (Seth, Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes et al.) and it's gi-normous physical size.

But, yo! What's that on the horizon --a challenger to KE7's crown? And it's Canadian????

Maybe. Simply titled RED, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas's book of "Haida manga" (a term that the B.C. visual artist coined a couple of years ago) measures in at a jaw-dropping six feet by 14 feet! Or, 6.6 square meters for you Metric nuts. (That's a shot of it above.)

That's about 5 times larger than KE7; which weighs in at a paltry 16 x 21 inches (take that Harkham!) According to Yahgulanaas's publisher's site, RED is slated for publication this fall but I can't parse out what kind of print run they're planning. It kind of sounds like it's a one-shot gallery piece.

Regardless, they're billing it as "one of the world's largest comic books" which sounds about right to me. Seriously, though, you should check out Yahgulanaas's work; here, here and over here. He's a really talented guy, who has managed to merge native imagery and the comics form in a way that seems entirely natural.

I can't believe it's taken me so long to discover him.