A lost monument to a comic strip of the past

I suppose I should have saved this post for Canada Day, but the guys over at Sequential compiled a thoroughly satisfying post today about Canadian cartoonist landmarks that roused me from my lazy blogger tendencies. Is there anything more satisfying than a statue or structure to a once-great comics character? They serve as permanent reminders of the profile these characters once enjoyed, even long after their cultural gravitas has waned. Just think of Chief Wahoo (who is based on the 1940s comic strip character Big Chief Wahoo) or,my personal favourite, Hamilton Tiger Cats mascot/booster Pigskin Pete who is the direct descendant of Jimmy Frise's boisterous Birdseye Center character Pigskin Peters.      


All of this got me thinking about a great lost monument to Birdseye Center, made by Frise's replacement on the strip, Doug Wright. On top of being a master artist, Wright was also an obsessive model-maker. During the research for The Collected Doug Wright Volume 1 I heard stories of his model plane, cars and trucks -- all made from scratch in his spare time. So it only made sense that after inheriting the popular strip from Frise, he would eventually turn his model making to the strip's fictional namesake.


At some point in the 1950s, Wright turned his obsession to Frise's great creation and built a scale model of Birdseye Center (which had become known as Juniper Junction due to copyright issues). The model (seen below) featured "Noazark" (a sightseeing ship/tourist trap), a dock building and a structure that looks to be the town hall.    

For comparison's sake, here's a Juniper Junction strip as drawn by Wright depicting the sink-prone  "Noazark".
 

I was lent the picture by Phyllis Wright, Doug's widow, who told me that he passed the model on to a neighbourhood teen after the strip came to an end in the late 1960s. That was very kind of him, if a bit foolhardy. The teen eventually grew up and grew tired on the model and threw it out years later. Egads, that shattered a little piece of my soul! But at least Wright was smart enough to take this picture, which remains the last evidence of a great comics -- if little-seen -- monument to Canadian comics history. 

John Porcellino gets animated

"The Next Day" is the latest project from Canadian multimedia upstart Pop Sandbox, the guys behind last year's graphic novel (and soon to be documentary) Kenk. That project was fortunate enough to have as its subject matter a highly controversial bike-thief/convict/urban legend, Igor Kenk, which helped it generate a truck-load of publicity.  

Their latest project tackles the somewhat weightier (and perhaps harder-to-sell) subject matter of suicide. What really caught my attention about The Next Day graphic novel is that it will feature art by  John Porcellino, the legendary minimalist cartoonist behind King-Cat Comics (which have been collected as King-Cat Classix, Map of My Heart, Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man and Perfect Example). The book itself looks great, with Porcellino's simple line-work paired nicely with the first-person accounts of depression and attempted suicide. (Here's an excerpt.)

But what really perked up my ears was a trailer I just saw for an "interactive documentary" that Porcellino has apparently worked on, that expands on the subject matter in the book. It's a blissful, haunting little clip that brings John's art to life perfectly:                 
 

The Next Day - Trailer from Pop Sandbox on Vimeo.

Looks great, no? I want to say this is the first time his art has been animated, but that just seems wrong. Surely this can't be the first time?

Michael DeForge gets animated

I don't know what it is with animation lately, but I've been stumbling over some odd stuff in the past week or so. Like this disturbo bit of animation from Toronto tour-de-force cartoonist Michael DeForge. Set to an old Elvis track, I think the characters in this have something to do with Wet Cough, his fine 2010 mini-comic. I can't get enough of this guy:   

 

Michael is doing something special for this year's Doug Wright Awards that I can't really reveal yet --but I am really excited about.

Batman Anime circa 1960 (plus "Batboy and Rubin")

No other title can really describe this inspired bit of animation from the under-appreciated kids' cartoon Batman: The Brave and the Bold. What other big-budget show would have the gumption to: 1) introduce Bat-Mite as a recurring character and 2) then use him as a way of exploring different incarnations of Batman?

In this case, that means they made an animated version of "Bat-Boy and Rubin", the classic Mad magazine parody written by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder, and -- AND --  an animated version of Jiro Kurwata's 1960s Japanese manga interpretation of the Caped Crusader (which features his Lord Death Man villain character).

It's pretty remarkable, and a lot of fun to watch (while it lasts) on YouTube: