Our regular link round-up from the world of Canadian comics:
Item! In Situ 2 is the second and latest collection of Sophie Yanow’s diary comics available from Colosse. Under their “Export” imprint, Colosse is publishing quite a few wordless and English books, which makes work from francophone Quebec cartoonists maybe a little more accessible to readers of this blog? So far the five titles include work from Yanow, Pascal Girard, David Turgeon, Alexandre Fontaine Rousseau & François Samson-Dunlop. I picked up a couple at TCAF and they are beautiful.
Item! Writing for Torontoist, Kevin Plummer presents the second part of his great feature history of iconic Toronto cartoonist Jimmie Frise:

“Having matured as an artist at the Toronto Star, doing photo touch-ups and spot illustrations after returning from the First World War—as seen in part one—Frise would help build the Star Weekly into a magazine with national readership on the way to becoming a celebrity and the most important cartoonist of his age…”

Item! Brother-sister team create graphic novel about 1919 Winnipeg General Strike:

“With the increasing popularity of graphic novels, bringing the Winnipeg General Strike to life in this medium seemed like a perfect fit,” said Adam Campbell, a recent Red River College graduate who wrote the 24-page book as part of an independent project for the college’s Creative Communications program.
Campbell’s sister, Carly Campbell, illustrated the book.
Bloody Saturday creates a fictional backstory for the circumstances leading to the death of Ukrainian immigrant Mike Sokolowski on June 21, 1919, the actual Bloody Saturday, the violent culmination of the strike when thousands of strikers marched on Main Street, the author said.
To mark the launch and the anniversary, the book will be available as a free digital download from June 19 to June 23 on the Amazon Kindle platform.

Item! Dave Sim talks about his High Society Kickstarter fundraiser, to which 800 people have pledged over $40,000. He has some funny comments on the history of some of the premiums pledgers have been offered as well as some actual publishing news about his next project, the graphic novel he has been serializing in Glamourpuss (via CR):

“The next Kickstarter project will be THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND which I hope is getting close to completion (i.e. a year or two away). John and I have had VERY preliminary discussions, but the way we want to structure it is that the format will be dictated by the level of support (i.e. if we raise $12,000 it would be done as a trade paperback on white newsprint, like the CEREBUS trades. If we raise $20,000 it will be a hardcover. If we raise $50,000 it will be an oversized hardcover on the same slick paper glamourpuss is printed on, the same size as the original artwork, etc.). ”

Item! Today is the day that a media event about the marriage of two Canadian character owned by a giant U.S. company takes place but everyone should really be talking about this and this instead. Not sure if it is the coolest thing ever or the lamest.
Item! I missed it, but the Saskatoon Comic Con doubled in size this year from one Stormtrooper to two:

“Though they may have varying tastes, organizer Laura Patrishen-Ha said they do all have one thing in common – nerdiness.”