It’s finally snowing here in Southern Ontario so I thought I’d dump a big one on you this time. Lots of news about Canadian comics.

Item: Writer Brad Mackay blogs about George Feyer’s Stamp Book, a lost classic of Canadian cartooning. Recommended.

Item: Sequential is still collecting your Holiday Wish Lists. Please let us know your suggested comics buys for the holidays.

Item: The latest issue of Marvel Mollusk is now out, illustrated by Nicolas Plamondon. (Not really, but check it out!)

Item: Udon has announced a new series of books based on the popular superhero videogame MegaMan. Chris Butcher follows-up.

Item: Video of cartoonist, scripter and comics teacher Ty Templeton explaining “talent”.

Item: Related: A list of winter courses available from the Toronto Cartoonists Workshop is now online.

Item: Two books by Canadians, Michel Rabagliati’s Paul a Quebec, and Seth’s George Sprott, are among this year’s “Essentials” as selected by France’s Angouleme Festival.

Item: Speaking of George Sprott, the book was among a select list of comics reviewed by Douglas Wolk for the New York Times on Sunday.

Item: According to the Google homepage, today (yesterday) is E.C. Segar’s birthday. Segar’s Popeye strip was one of the top 10 strips ever.

Item: Halifax superhero cartooning demigod Darwyn Cooke has illo’d an issue of DC western character Jonah Hex (yes, they still publish it). He talks about his influences and the process of creating the art at his blog. Besides the great John Severin, do I also see a bit of Carlos Ezquerra?

Item: Toronto comics collective and zine Ganglion is coming up to the deadline for its 3rd issue. Potential contributors should submit now!

Item: The Comics Journal’s daily newsblog, Journalista, is back online as a (temporary) part of the main TCJ group blog. Journalista editor Dirk Deppey says that the regular Journalista blog, with its own url and “rss feed” (don’t ask me), will resume shortly after the Journal reorganization concludes. It’s a good thing too, for how else would I have learned about the important Alpha Flight-related news that Northstar, the professional ski-jumper-turned-super-powered-Canadian-secret-agent-turned-token-homosexual will soon have sex after 15 years of abstinence.

Item: Policart Yardley Jones has a gallery show.

Item: Jay Stephen’s cartoon show, The Secret Saturday’s, has a new comics collection tie-in.

Item: A profile of Haida manga artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas.

Item: Montreal art gallery Monastiraki is having an art sale this Friday, December 11. Show items include art by Marc Bell, Rick Trembles, Matt Forsythe, and many others.

Item: Allison Covey presents some photos of the 2009 Shuster Awards and related events. We know it was back in September, but since some of the photos have Sequential contributors in them, they are well worth checking out (see if you can spot Sequential publisher Salgood Sam in the crowd scene of the Shusters afterparty).

Item: D+Q is having a holiday sale.

(top image: drawing comics with eyes wide shut by Nicolas Plamondon)