Item! Cartoonist Caitlin Black has just finished up her fourth graphic novel, a fable about industrial pig farming. The book, titled Mary of Mud Creek, is being previewed through the blog of Toronto PigSave, an animal rights organization. According to Black, the comic “is a fictional story about a little girl growing up on a modern-day industrial pig farm in rural Ontario. In this sense it is a modern day ‘Charlotte’s Web’ of sorts.” Black was nominated in the Doug Wright Awards’ Best Emerging Talent category for her first book, Maids in the Mist.
Item! In case you missed it yesterday, Jeff Lemire’s Essex County was voted out in the first episode of Canada Reads. The National Post’s Mark Medley notes, “In the end, form trumped content.” Lemire has the last word and thanks everybody on his blog.
Item! Jay Stephens talks Oddville and Oh, Brother! with Comic Book Resources in a fact-packed interview.
Item! Dave Sim and Joe McCulloch have a contretemps over at the Comics Comics blog (comments section). Some interesting background on Sim’s Judenhaus project and the matter of tracing.
Item! Tom Spurgeon interviews Joe Ollman about his new Mid-Life graphic novel. Some good and meaty process discussions: “Being published by a publisher of the stature of D&Q made me want to make the best-looking book I could and I redrew a lot of pages and panels before I submitted it and then after Tom Devlin mercilessly critiqued what was left, he guilted me into redrawing a shitload more, God bless him.”
Item! A look at the library of Inkstuds’ Robin McConnell.
Item! We reported on the corporate death of Canadian book distributor H.B. Fenn last week. The Globe and Mail’s John Barber has a follow-up on what the news means for the Canadian book industry, especially in terms of an erosion in government support for publishing and changes in the way books are distributed vis a vis the U.S. industry: “The demise of H.B. Fenn, which put upward of 125 employees out of work, marks the end of a business model in which Canadian publishers were able to support domestic programs with revenue derived from the distribution of foreign titles.”
Item! Max the Mutt animation school in Toronto has just announced a new 4 year program.
Item! The ever-reliable Jason Truong files a report on this past Sunday’s Toronto ComiCON.
Item! You can see a huge panoramic view of the recent Sketchkrieg group comics show in Toronto here.
Item! The latest international TCAF guest to be announced is Usamaru Furuya, whose 300-page Vertical manga Lychee Light Club will debut at the festival.