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Book excerpt: North from Pachino
A new graphic novel, excerpted this week in the National Post, tells the story of Canada’s involvement in the Second World War.
From the book Canada At War: An Illustrated History of Canada in the Second World War © 2012, by Paul Keery. Illustrations by Michael Wyatt. Published by Douglas & McIntyre, an imprint of D&M Publishers Inc. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
Seth: The modern Canadian cartoonist
“There’s some real truth to the idea that it gives me the opportunity to do stuff that I would like to do but never will,” Seth explains, sitting rigidly in a hotel chair, wearing a three-piece wool suit like armour against a world he’s still not entirely comfortable with.
The graphic model: Daniel Clowes returns with The Death Ray
“It’s a really difficult thing to do.” Daniel Clowes is trying to describe the hard-to-name form — we’ll call it the graphic novel for the sake of convenience — of which he is one of the undisputed masters.
“You have to be able to do so many different things well, and yet the actual storytelling of cartoons is something that you can’t get from being good at any of the other fields, like drawing and writing and graphic design. It’s got to be a specific cartooning gene that you have.”
In a league of his own: The extraordinary gentleman that is writer Alan Moore
An admirer of Alan Moore has called him “the Orson Welles of comics” and the undisputed high priest of his craft. That’s not the only extravagant praise this remarkable English author has inspired. When Moore writes storylines for comic books he does it in a way that excites a passionate international fan club. People write books about him, blog about him, imitate him and idolize him.
Moore’s stories often deal with normal comic fare, such as superheroes and global conspiracies, but he brings to these familiar themes an abrasive anger and a densely complicated morality. The series called Watchmen, for instance, seems to be partly about a vigilante named Rorschach (he wears an ink blot mask) who fights evil with an ethical sense that’s not entirely clear. Mark D. White, the New York professor who edited a recent academic book, Watchmen and Philosophy, views Moore’s writing as “an embarrassment of riches to the comics-obsessed philosopher.”
Toronto Comic Arts Festival 2011 Questionaires
On May 7 and 8, an eclectic roster of cartoonists, writers, illustrators, and artists will take over the Toronto Reference Library for the 2011 edition of the beloved Toronto Comic Arts Festival. For the past two years, the National Post has previewed TCAF by running dozens of Q&As with some of the talent attending the festival; this year, we wanted to spotlight those exhibiting at the festival for the very first time. What took them so long?
Culture Club: Essex County’s exile
Last week Terry Fallis’ novel The Best Laid Plans won Canada Reads. The real buzz, however, surrounded treatment of Jeff Lemire’s graphic novel, Essex County; the first graphic novel ever to appear on CBC’s annual battle of the books, it was was unceremoniously dismissed by the panel on the first day of voting. But should we really be that surprised?
