It’s been a busy 4 days!
Personally in a novel way too, I taught the first classes of the new course I designed for Syn Studio, it was an auspicious start i think.
Though slept most of the third day to fully recover. 🙂
Item: The big story since our last post has to be the The Nelvana of the Northern Lights: Canada’s First Superheroine kickstarter hitting its goal the night of their big party at the Snail. Check their FB page here for photos and things. One of the first campaigns started post launch of full access for Canadian based campaigns, Hope and Rachel have ensured a spot in crowd fundraising history whilst helping to bring a major part of our comic book heritage back to the masses! The drive has even boosted interest in the original series.
486 backers have pledged $28,265 over a $25,000 goal and, there are still 23 days to go! That’s fantastic, I’m personally looking froward to reading my copy a lot, like since the late ’70’s.
I have a long personal connection to both the Nelvana studios in Toronto [named after the character and whose owners control the reprint rights.] and via that to the iconography of Andy Dingle’s comics, via a few pages hung in the studio, and a few more published by Patrick Clive and Michelle, the founders of Nelvana studios in The Great Canadian Comic Books. My mother stated working at the studio when I was quite young on their epic cult feature Rock and Rule, and continued to be a core member of the staff well into my twenties, when i also worked there off and on as a designer for three years in the ’90s. From before I was born Clive had been a friend of my parents, and I recall one summer a few times reading comics from Michel’s personal collection in his office with his son. I kind of went’ from summer camp to first full-time studio job there. I was always curious about the stories but didn’t have easy accesses to them, chuffed to soon own my own copy finally!
A note on the status of the copy right and rumors: Contrary to what some may have thought Nelvana is not in public domain until 2024. She was last published in May 1947. Adrian Dingle died on 22 December 1974 (age 63). Canadian copyright is currently Life + 50 yrs, or in the case of anonymously published works, 50 years from publication or 75 years from creation, whichever is shorter.
So had Adrian been anonymous, copyright would have lapsed in 1997, But he was known, well-known in fact. So we count from his death in 1974, + 50 = 2024! Also good to know: I have come to understand that chorus retains only the rights to existing works? New story creation rights remains with the Dingle family for the next 11 years? And we hear some people are asking them nicely in the hopes they might say yes.
We were going to try to talk to Hope and Rachel last week, but could not sync up. We’ll try to find some time in the coming weeks.
Item: Likely to be good for foot traffic, 211 Bernard was featured on Only in Montreal, with a visit by Béatrice Martin aka Cœur de pirate.
Item: The Comics Reporter’s Tom Spurgeon helped kick off the release of Diana Tamblyn’s newest book, From the Earth to Babylon: Gerald Bull and the Supergun, which has a limited run of 200 copies up for sale directly for the artist here.
Item: Joe Ollmann posted that he’s starting work on a 300 page biography comic about Explorer William Seabrook today!
Item: Andy B posted “One goes in the other! N1 NYCC!” on instagram. contents of book, unknown! Same 45 lp format as his self published Black Church series.
Item: Elaine Will shared a peek at something new she’s working on here on twitter.
Item: Kelly Tindall’s latest pirate escapades for kids, ongoing adventures in fatherhood,
Item: Aardvark fans get ready for Cerebus Re-read. An online event in which A Moment of Cerebus will attempt to read (and discuss) all 300 issues of Cerebus between the dates of October 7th and March 10th, which is the 10th anniversary of the release of the ground-breaking 300th and final issue of the series.
Item: Fiona Smyth is teaching Comics and Graphic Novels at OCADU this fall.
Item: Comic Book Resources talked with Constantine writer Ray Fawkes about how the con man mage figures into DC Comics’ 18-issue “Forever Evil: Blight” crossover. He also gave his thoughts on the character’s recently announced NBC television series.
Item: David Lester let us know that The Listener graphic novel will be presented by Karen Jacobson at a conference, October 24th, 2013, at the University of Alberta (Edmonton) in a session called “Promoting Social Justice and Belonging in the Classroom with Canadian Literature” [pdf of conference schedule here].
Item: Kristopher Waddell of Mirror Comics invites anyone in the vicinity to come to the Mayfair Theatre October 27th at 8pm, for the release party of Josh Stafford’s B Movie homage ZOMKEYS at the MAYFAIR Theatre. And to The Comic Book Shoppe all day the 26th for ZOMKEYS Pre-Release Party on Bank St!
Item: Nina Bunjevac shared this cool shot of an Art Gallery of Ontario staffer installing Chester Brown’s Louis Riel portrait in Ridley Salon. Read more about the exhibit here – And you can catch Chester giving a talk about his work here!
Item: Studio Lounak posted that we can now pre-order Assassin’s Creed Brahman, by Brenden Fletcher, Karl Kerschl and Cameron Stewart here.
And that’s it for today! For your final pic, here’s some inking I’m working on for Dracula posted to my instagram. See you later with inky fingers.
