Little Nemo in Comicsland
Jeet Heer, editor of Arguing Comics, will present on the influence of early comic artist Winsor McCay--particularly on Art Spiegelman. A retrospective of Spiegelman's print work will be on display on the exhibit hall outside the auditorium. (Virginia Quarterly Review, UVa Harrison Institute)

You too can draw like this!
Vanessa Farquharson, National Post
Monday, March 20, 2006
Two of Canada's most celebrated cartoonists will soon draw even more attention as they step out of their dark studios and into the public eye -- breakfasting with fans and holding public workshops on how to draw comics...

Toca Loca
@The Music Gallery - Friday, March 24, 2006, 8pm
They will never wear three-piece seventeen-button
suits with matching ascots, and will never fill tour
buses full of eager artistic consumers from Buffalo or
Detroit, but Toca Loca continues to defy gravity and
the musical elite as they bring you their latest,
ONE-TIME ONLY project.

A partial list of things you may never get a chance to
experience again:

Frederic "the Mozart to Steve Reich's Salieri"
Rzewski - Coming Together
Vinko (those who don't know his music are a little
less complete) Globokar - Toucher
Rick "Darmstadt Prodigy" Burkhardt - Great Hymn of
Thanksgiving
"Lyrical Pitbull" Wakefield Brewster
Dan Yashinsky, ace storyteller, reads Star Child
Melanie Manos does Off With Her Head - Marie
Antoinette Presents the Cyberfeminist Manifesto and
AKA (Also Known As)
Receive a free, limited-edition, brand new comic from
Diana Tamblyn.
The Toca Loca Postal Outreach Program.

With Aiyun Huang (percussion), Wallace Halladay
(saxophone), Gregory Oh (piano), "Friendly" Rich
Marsella (fankicks), Quinsin Nachoff (saxophone),
Darren Sigesmund (trombone), Elissa Lee (violin),
Sebastian Krunnies (viola), Andrew Staniland (electric
guitar) and Dallas Bergen (baton).

The Music Gallery is located at 197 John St, north of
Queen. TTC to Osgoode Station. www.musicgallery.org.
(416) 204-1080. Tickets are $20 reg, $15 arts wkr,
$10 stu.

Daniel Gallina, team leader for Transcontinental's comics and RPG marketing team, says the printer formed the comics marketing team about two years ago to target the market; since then, the printer's U.S. comics business has grown 200%. Transcontinental has four plants (out of its 60) devoted to printing graphic novels and comics periodicals.

Gallina cited the growth of graphic novels and the shift from periodical publishing to book publishing in the comics industry. "We see this a chance for us to become an important player in the U.S. market," says Gallina. "We're really focused on this industry, and analyzed the market," he says. "Comics and games look good for growth. We want to partner with publishers and show what Transcontinental can do."

In the end I felt it all matters little though, this is after all a tempest in tea pot folks, a debate over the correct history of events now long past, by people who are at best small to mid sized fish like myself, in an otherwise very big pond that will happily not care about our communication issues and old vendettas.

"The ousted editor of the University of Saskatchewan's campus newspaper, the Sheaf, apologized Thursday for the "unintentional" publication of a cartoon depicting Jesus Christ performing a sex act on a pig.

But cartoonist Jeff MacDonald remained unrepentant when contacted Thursday by a Saskatchewan News Network, and in a letter to the Sheaf."

This fall, he'll share hard-won wisdom with about 30 students as Mohawk College launches Canada's first and only program in Comic Design and Scripting.

The one-year postgraduate program for art and design majors fills an industry need for artists who can draw in an era of mouse-driven computer animation, says program co-ordinator Daniel MacQueen.

The program covers areas such as art history, figure drawing, narrative, character design and self-publishing, and aims to fill more than your local comic store. Graduates may also do TV storyboarding, court drawing, editorial cartooning or even design worlds for video games.

"It's about using this art form, pictures, to tell a story," MacQueen said. He plans to lure local artists who draw for Marvel and DC comics to be teachers. So the realm of heroes in spandex will play a big role in the program. It will be based at Mohawk's graphics centre in Brantford. Comely is designing a comic-style brochure for it.