Category: Comics

Comicon Uncovered

The Comicon’s back in town, a pilgrimage comicdom’s most devoted undertake each year to the steaming barrens of the Exhibition grounds, to kvetch and cavort with the rabble and ogle the overpriced relics. Last year’s event shivered gamely in the middle of November, which makes the inevitable lineup, […]

Johnny on the Spot

A few weeks ago, Guelph cartoonist Seth was giving a scripted talk on the art of comics to a worshipful crowd at the Rivoli. He accompanied himself with slides projected onto a screen behind him, ringing a bell between each slide like a performance-art concierge. Once, he rang […]

School of Toons

Sheldon Cohen is in his element. It’s half an hour after the last bell at St. Joseph’s Elementary School in Montreal has sent the kids home to eat Pizza Pops in front of the tube. But two dozen of them are sticking around, cramming the school’s slipshod art […]

Good Grief

The following Q&A first appeared, in condensed form, in my column The Panelist for Toronto’s Eye Weekly. Here’s a special, extended version of the conversation. Collecting every Peanuts strip Charles Schulz ever drew, The Complete Peanuts will take a whopping 25 volumes and more than 12 years to […]

Off the Wall

The atmosphere is unmistakable. The scratchy scrivening of a dozen people hunched over drawing boards. The acrid fumes of Staedtler nibs rubbed raw, of wet ink, sweat and concentration. A comic jam is in progress.

Straight to Helvetia

Swiss cheese. Swiss watch. Swiss bank account. Swiss army knife. Swiss comics. No less than any of these venerable archetypes, comics from Helvetia are the purple elite, pulsing beacons for cartoonists to navigate by. With its nekkid liberalism and Franco-German effulgence, Switzerland should by rights have a trail […]