by BK Munn
Emmy-winning cartoonist Jay Stephens has a new collection of comics work coming soon from the newly-revived Black Eye Books. Dejects is made up of all the never-before reprinted fugitive pieces from Stephens’ long career making comic strips and short comix for a ton of different publications. These include the complete Nod strips from Toronto’s Exclaim Magazine, all previously uncollected Captain Rightful (and the hapless Victim) strips, The Nature Show webcomic, Jungle Shi-Tzu, Icky Animal, and the extremely depressing Twerp unpublished strip. These days Stephens is best known for his kid-friendly humour and adventure comics, like his superhero Arrowhead in Owl Magazine, but much of his work over the years has been decidedly in the weird/alt/indy/underground vein and consequently has not enjoyed the wider-circulation of his cute kids stuff.
This mature readers collection comes as a full-colour (some strips coloured for first time), 5.75″ x 8.25″ 136-page, trade paperback, printed on cream coloured uncoated paper with matte laminated cover. The book is available for pre-order from crowd-funding site FundRazr here.
A portion of proceeds from the direct sales of Dejects will be donated to Mental Health Research Canada. (Check perks for specific details).
This is the second new publication from Michel Vrana’s new Black Eye Books imprint after the recent Dylan Horrocks’ project. The publisher was previously responsible for a slew of classic indy comics in the 1990s, including Jay Stephens’ SIN and Atomic City Tales.