Blog

Category: Graphica

Julie Morstad Toronto and Montreal Events!

by Dan
Events + Graphica / November 20, 2012

Artist Julie Morstad, author of The Wayside and Milk Teeth, is busy, busy, busy. 

Hot on the heels of her recent event in Vancouver, Julie will be in conversation with Fieldguided blogger Anabela Piersol at Toronto's TYPE Books on Queen West this Friday (November 23).

The following night (Saturday November 24), Julie will be at Librairie D+Q in Montreal for an "evening of beautiful art, good conversations, and the occasional book signing."

Julie Morstad in conversation with Anabela Piersol
Friday, November 23 2012
6PM, with Q&A at 7PM
TYPE Books, 883 Queen Street West, Toronto

Julie Morstad at Librairie D+Q
Saturday, November 24 2012, 7PM
Librairie D+Q, 211 Bernard Ouest, Montreal

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Julie Morstad at Lucky’s This Weekend!

by Dan
Events + Graphica + Vancouver / October 30, 2012

Join award-winning, Vancouver-based illustrator Julie Morstad launch The Wayside, her new book from Drawn + Quarterly, on Saturday evening at Vancouver comics store Lucky's starting at 7pm! 

Julie Morstad
Saturday November 3rd, 7pm
Lucky's Comics
3972 Main Street, Vancouver
T: 604-875-9858

PS: If you don't live in Vancouver, Julie will also have events in Toronto at TYPE, and at the Librairie D+Q in Montreal next month! (Yay!)

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Michael Cho at Type Books May 23rd

by Dan
Art & Photography + Events + Graphica / May 10, 2012

Toronto-based illustrator and hometown hero Michael Cho will be signing copies of his new book Back Alleys and Urban Landscapes 6pm–8pm on May 23rd at Type Books on Queen Street West near Trinity Bellwoods Park. TYPE will also be featuring a gallery show of selected work from the book. 

Michael began creating drawings of the back alleys near his Toronto home in 2008. Collected together in this book, the work speaks to the beauty of the urban landscape: sometimes gritty and citified, sometimes unexpectedly pastoral, but always beautifully rendered. Michael is a brilliant draftsman, and Back Alleys shines with loving attention to detail – from expletive-filled graffiti splayed across backyard fences to the graceful twists of power lines over a bend in the road. 

Last weekend, Michael joined a host of other super-talented cartoonists – including Kate Beaton, Guy Delisle and Tom Gauld to name a few – signing books at the Toronto Comics Arts Festival at the Toronto Reference Library. Unsurprisingly (in retrospect!) Backalleys was in big demand and we sold out of the book in no time at all, so make sure you come by early on the 23rd if you are want to get your hands on a copy! 

Michael Cho
Back Alleys and Urban Landscapes 
Book signing featuring a gallery show of selected work

@ TYPE Books
883 Queen Street West, Toronto
May 23rd, 6pm - 8pm
Typebooks.ca  

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Hark! A Vagrant wins Doug Wright Award

by Dan
Graphica / May 07, 2012

It was the Toronto Comics Art Festival at the weekend, and the brilliant Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton won the award for Best Book at the 8th Doug Wright Awards, hosted by Geoff Pevere, which took place on Saturday night at the Art Gallery of Ontario. 

Founded in 2004, the annual Doug Wright Awards recognize the best and brightest in English-language comics and graphic novels published in the previous year in Canada. 

This years winners were decided by a jury comprised of visual artist Shary Boyle, cartoonist John Martz and book artist and professor George Walker.

Speaking on behalf of the jury, Shary Boyle praised Kate’s book. “The world of comics can be a sequestered and dusty place,” she said. “As the comic community bemoans its shrinking readership and dying forms, Beaton rises up and throws open the doors to a whole new audience—welcoming one and all with her generous vision and sense of sophisticated, inclusive playfulness.” 

Amen to that! 

Other winners included Ethan Rilly for Pope Hats #2 (Doug Wright Spotlight Award aka "The Nipper") Michael Comeau for Hellberta (Pigskin Peters Award for experimental or avant-garde comics).

Congratulations all. 

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The Inside Scoop on Spring 2012

by Dan
Design & Typography + Fiction + Graphica / December 05, 2011

For those of you who don't know, I'm usually based in Toronto. But last week, I was out west for the Raincoast Books spring 2012 sales conference. Sadly I didn't get to see much of Vancouver (the photo above was taken less than a block from the hotel!) or catch up with half the people I meant to, but I did get to hear about a lot of great new books and so I thought I would quickly share a FEW of my personal favourites...

The strangest book on the week was surely How To Build Android: The True Story of Philip K. Dick's Robotic Resurrection by David F. Dufty which is on the Henry Holt & Co list. Spoiler alert: THEY LOST THE ROBOT!

 

Henry Holt also have a new novel by Herta Mueller, winner of the Nobel Prize in 2009, called The Hunger Angel, and the latest from John Banville's alter-ego Benjamin Black, Vengeance.

Picador are publishing a collected edition of Edward St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose trilogy in January — the first time they've all been properly available in the US & Canada I believe — to coincide with the release of his new book At Last (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux). Picador also have a collection of essays by Siri Hustvedt, Living, Thinking, Looking.

Although this season's long-awaited Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design will be hard to beat, there are several art and design titles that caught my eye. Princeton Architectural Press are publishing Woodcut, a book of beautiful prints by artist Bryan Nash Gill and Up on the Roof, a collection of photographs by Alex MacLean of New York's hidden rooftop spaces. PAPress are also publishing a paperback edition of Michael Bierut's must-read Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design, and a paperback edition of the beautiful Typography Sketchbooks by Steven Heller and Lita Talarico.

Lawrence King are publishing a new book on the history of picture books, Children's Picturebooks: The Art of Visual Storytelling by Martin Salisbury and Morag Styles, and a new edition of The End of Print by David Carson. 100 Years of Fashion by Cally Blackman also looks stunning.  

On the comics side, Drawn & Quarterly are publishing Jerusalem: Chronicle from the Holy City, the latest travelogue from Guy Delisle who previous books include The Burma Chronicles, Pyongyang and Shenzhen, and a new edition of Chester Brown's controversial, scatological and long out-of-print comic Ed The Happy Clown.

I'm also looking forward to seeing more of Baby's in Black: Astrid Kirchherr, Stuart Sutcliffe, and The Beatles in Hamburg by Arne Bellstorf which is being published by First Second in April, and to getting my hands on Darth Vader and Son by Jeffrey Brown and All My Friends Are Still Dead by Avery Monsen and Jori John from Chronicle Books.

And lastly — because I am big nerd and recently finished reading his earlier book about the Dark Knight Batman Unmasked — I'm excited about Will Brooker's Hunting the Dark Knight: Twenty-First Century Batman, which is being published by I. B. Tauris in July.

Phew! More to come...

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Guy Delisle Chronicles

by Dan
Graphica / November 14, 2011

We have our Spring 2012 sales conference later this month and details of all our new books are flooding in.

There are lots of great titles, but as a comics guy, I was particularly excited to see a new book from Guy Delisle, author of Shenzhen, Pyongyang and The Burma Chronicles. Due to be published in April next year, the new book – also a travelogue and apparently his longest work yet – is about his time in Jerusalem. 

Drawn and Quarterly have just posted a preview of the book and it looks fascinating:

There are more pages on the D+Q blog.

D+Q also revealed that there is a short documentary film about Guy coming out soon. I love watching artists at work, so I can't wait to see it in full.   

Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City will be available in April 2012, and is available for pre-order from Chapters-Indigo, Amazon, and your local independent bookstore. 

  

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Frenching with Joe Ollmann

by Dan
Graphica / November 07, 2011

Award-winning Canadian cartoonist Joe Ollmann – who was recently on CBC radio show Tapestry discussing his mid-life crisis – is now exposing his fish-out-of-water anxieties as an Anglophone in Montreal's Mile End neighbourhood in this funny video for BravoFACT!:

 

You can read a preview of Joe Ollmann's new book Mid-Life here (PDF).

(via Drawn!)

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Kate Beaton Bonanza

by Dan
Graphica / November 01, 2011

Well, after much excitement IFOA 2011 came to close this weekend in Toronto. As a parent to a pair of little monkeys I didn't make it to a lot of events this year sadly, but I was fortunate enough to meet the brilliant Seth and Dan Clowes and then tag along with superstar cartoonist and all-around charmer Kate Beaton who was speaking at the festival this past weekend. 

Having already established a dedicated audience for her comics online and with the beautiful new hardcover book Hark! A Vagrant sitting pretty on the New York Times bestseller list for Graphic Books, Kate was very much in demand. 

Not only did The National Post and NOW magazine review the book, Kate also stopped by the CBC to chat with Jian Ghomeshi and the folks from The Hour. As you can see from the photos, we had a lot of fun — even if Kate was a little disappointed not to meet Canada's Official Boyfriend in person!   

It was all a bit of a whirlwind (especially as Kate was feeling a little under the weather on Saturday), but before she jetted off, Kate managed to fit in candid interview with the Toronto Star:

“I think that anybody who inadvertently starts a blog or a comic online will give a piece of themselves because they can’t believe someone’s reading it. There’s no institution, you are just yourself. You can’t help but be a personality. I had to learn over time how much of myself I wanted to give over and how much I wanted to hold onto. Like when I changed the name of the site from my name too Hark A Vagrant. It used to be katebeaton.com but I got rid of that because I didn’t want to be the focus of the comic. I wanted the comic to be.”

And Kate is still on the road for a few more days. Tonight, she is in Montreal at Librairie D+Q (the event starts at 7pm), and tomorrow, Kate will be at Strange Adventures in Halifax (also starting from 7pm). Catch her while you can! 

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Goliath Preview

by Dan
Graphica / October 24, 2011

Based in London, England, cartoonist Tom Gauld draws comics, illustrates book covers, and draws a very funny weekly literary cartoon for The Guardian newspaper.

I LOVE Tom's work (so much so, I've even interviewed him!), so needless to say, I'm over the moon that Drawn & Quarterly are publishing a new comic book by Tom called Goliath this winter.

Drawn in Tom's trademark geometric style, the book reveals the giant's side of the David and Goliath story and, as you can see from this preview on the D+Q blog, it turns out that the ferocious Goliath is really not much of a fighter. 

Goliath is published in December and is available to pre-order from Chapters-Indigo, Amazon, and your local independent bookstore.

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Rebecca Dart at Lucky’s on Friday

by Dan
Events + Graphica + Kids / October 19, 2011

Local cartoonist Rebecca Dart will be signing copies of the wonderful Nursery Rhyme Comics anthology at Lucky's Comics in Vancouver on Friday evening! 

Nursery Rhyme Comics features 50 classic nursery rhymes illustrated and interpreted in comics form by 50 of today’s leading cartoonists and illustrators. Chock full of beautiful full-colour art and favourite characters (Jack and Jill! Old Mother Hubbard! The Owl and the Pussycat!), it's a great anthology for kids AND grown-ups!

Rebecca Dart 
Nursery Rhyme Comics Launch
October 21st, 7pm - 9pm
Lucky's Comics
3972 Main Street, Vancouver, BC

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