By Will Wellington
Afternoon, world! Find a vein; it’s time for your weekly hit of the bestest, freshest, newest, bluest, truest, Canuckiest Comix Newz that’s fit to print. Drip, drip!
C-List 1Item! Toronto-based artist Gary Taxali has a new show, Here and Now: The Art of Gary Taxali, at Idea Exchange’s Design at Riverside space in Cambridge. This week he appeared on Vish Khanna’s Kreative Kontrol podcast. I haven’t listened yet, but from Vish’s play-by-play, it promises to be an important, wide-ranging conversation about, among other things, growing up as part of the Indian diaspora, the ethics of artistic ownership, and political correctness.
Item! Andy Brown of Conundrum Press posted this week to Conundrum’s summertime blog, detailing the recent acquisition of a book slated for release at TCAF 2016 (The Ghosts We Know by Sean Karemaker, which looks murky and fabulous). The post also includes a few photos from the Sappyfest zine fair (photos from which zines and zinesters are conspicuously absent) and a reminder of the Dartmouth Comic Arts Festival happening this Sunday at Alderney Landing (deets here).
C-List 2Item! Gerald Lazare, a veteran of a “Golden Age for Illustration,” has been posting all week on Leif Peng’s Today’s Inspiration blog. The three posts he’s uploaded so far are a treat both for his insight into the industry’s history and for the buffet of gorgeous images. Another one is due to go up today.
Item! In a post that seems like an extension of his pseudo-fictional interview with Marc Bell, Bookshelfer Brad de Roo took on the monumental task of reviewing (or appreciating, or apprehending, or facing down) Drawn & Quarterly’s cinderblock of a 25th anniversary cornucopia with a piece in which he interviews and is interviewed (or interrogated) by the book itself.
Item! And speaking of reviews, Vermicious this week reviewed Julian Lawrence’s Drippy’s Mama, the first in a trilogy of tales from Conundrum featuring Drippy the Newsboy, an anthropomorphic water droplet, all of which are apparently based on works by Stephen Crane. John Seven puts it pretty well in the review: “When you walk the neighborhood of indie comics, you can help but blunder into a few unusual addresses that mystify you upon entry and then by the time you exit, show no more clear indication of how it got there.”
Item! Kate Beaton and D&Q have announced tour dates in support of Step Aside, Pops, the new Hark! A Vagrant collection due in September. The tour includes stops in Toronto and Montreal and a few stateside engagements throughout September and October.
C-List 3Item! Yo, if you see this by this evening and are hanging within view of ye olde CN Tower, squelch on by the Toronto Reference Library by 7pm for the launch of David H. Ross’s Freehand Figure Drawing For Illustrators. The launch will consist of a free lesson in the TRL’s Beeton Auditorium followed by a signing at Page & Panel (The TCAF Shop) across the Atrium.
That’s all, folks!
Will Wellington works in Guelph.