By Will Wellington

Item! Seconds, Bryan Lee O’Malley’s new standalone graphic novel, hit shelves on Tuesday. The hotly anticipated volume is O’Malley’s first since his best-selling, Toronto-centric Scott Pilgrim series concluded in 2010, although Edgar Wright’s terrific movie and Oni Press’s full-colour, hardback deluxe editions of SP kept O’Malley fans satisfied in the interim. Published by Ballantine, Seconds tells the story of Katie, a young chef whose life falls to pieces and leaves her desperate for a second chance—which she gets with the help of a mysterious girl and some magic mushrooms. Check out the book’s first pages, featuring colours by Vancouver-based Nathan Fairbairn and lettering by Dustin Harbin, via Wired. Publisher’s Weekly also profiled O’Malley ahead of the book’s release. O’Malley will be touring to promote the book throughout the summer, making stops in Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax. For more information on the volume and the tour, click here.
Item! Last week, DC announced the new creative team that will be taking over Batgirl from Gail Simone. The team consists of newcomer artist Babs Tarr and writers Cameron Stewart and Brenden Fletcher. Images of the redesigned Batgirl met with much excitement this week as they circulated online and this article from Comics Alliance sums up the impact of the announcement nicely. Fletcher also makes up one third of the all-Montreal team tapped for DC’s new Gotham Academy series, along with Becky Cloonan and Karl Kerschl. Check out MTV’s original Batgirl announcement , which includes a conversation with all three creators on the new direction they plan to take the title and the big shoes they need to fill. Batgirl #35, featuring the new team, goes on sale October 8 and you can preorder it with the code featured in this strip from the “(un)official” Batgirl blog.
Item! Maurice Vellekoop, Toronto Islander and accomplished commercial and erotic illustrator, will present selections from his considerable body of work from August 15 to September 13 at Twenty Twenty Two in Manchester, UK, and later in Liverpool. The show, “Cockadoodle: The Erogenous Art of Maurice Vellekoop,” curated by Bren O’Callaghan, is part of Manchester Pride Fringe and comes accompanied with a fleet of supporting events. It speaks to a particularly significant moment in Vellekoop’s career as he develops a graphic memoir for Pantheon Books under the editorial auspices of master designer Chip Kidd. The most recent news regarding the show concerns a series of limited-edition erotic prints—including this fuzzy-faced fella—which will appear in full-frontal splendour during the exhibition.
Item! In another piece of “comics-as-art” news, come December 20 the Art Gallery of Ontario will play host to Art Spiegelman’s CO-MIX: A Retrospective.  The show includes “early, rarely seen works from Spiegelman’s teens and 20s,” “original drawings for In the Shadow of No Towers (2004),” as well as the delicatemanuscripts of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus. Since premiering in 2012 at the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême, France, the show has been presented in Paris, Cologne, New York, and Vancouver. Drawn & Quarterly published a companion volume in 2013. Also, until September14, the AGO will continue to show its exhibition of selected original work from Chester Brown’s monumental Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography. The Chester Brown exhibit is, just as the Spiegelman exhibit will be, included with general admission to the gallery. A recent D&Q blog post highlights these along with a myriad of other comics-related gallery shows happening stateside.
Item! The Monstrosity II Kickstarter campaign continues to march towards its $4000.00 goal. Masterminds Brian Evinou and Phil McClorey recently appeared on the Geekeon Podcast to discuss the project: give that a listen here and check out the campaign here.
And that‘s the C-List.
When he’s not busy being Sequential’s Summer Intern, Will Wellington scoops ice cream, writes plays, and skulks around Guelph.