A few days later than I had hoped, but eh, still pretty good so far. Here’s a list of small press and indie comics links you should check out this week.
PLUGS
Help Birdcage Bottom books go over their fundraising goals. There is still 6 days left for them to make it. Their line-ups are always solid. I’m not caught up with their latest publications, but I’m always happy to see more work from November Garcia:
Application for CXC is open until March 15. Apply now, it’s a great show.
MONEY
§ So this might be a little weird, but comics isn’t a particularly lucrative business. I’m going to try to highlight some opportunities for funding or grants when I see them. Some might be Canadians (it’s what I know after all), but I’m happy to add anything people consider relevant from whatever country, city, province, states or what have you.
§ You should probably know about the Creators for Creators grant. You can apply until May 11 and find the details over at their website. It’s a substantial grant of $30,000 USD, don’t sleep on it.
§ More generally in Canada, you can look at the funding opportunities available from the Canada Council for the Arts. They have a specific section on visual arts that would presumably include comics. It’s a bit more requirement extensive than the grant listed above and it’s limited to Canadian citizens, but it’s worth perusing the grants they’re offering. They have grants for professional development, research and creation, concept to realization, some to support artistic practice, or even to engage the community and public through outreach efforts. There’s even some grants for travel.
§ On a smaller scale, you can find similar kind of opportunities for residents of Ontario. The Arts Council of Ontario, under the purview of the Ministry of Heritage, Sport, Tourism and Culture Industries, have some very interesting grants available for visual arts.
§ On an even smaller scale, Toronto also have it’s own Arts Council with it’s own grants.
§ If you’re living in the province of Quebec, the Quebec Arts Council offer it’s own grants for various projects including visual arts.
§ I guess what I’m trying to say is that art is vital, and there are opportunities to obtain support somehow. I’ll try to highlight those opportunities moving forward.
NEWS
§ Jay Odjick announced two awesome news and a bad one. Bears for Breakfast, his children’s comics written by Robert Munsch will be released as an audio book in French, English and Algonquin. This is huge. He’s also working on a new graphic novel for Scholastic. I can’t wait to see it, my son too. As for bad news, he’s said he’s had some health issues. The team at The Comics Beat and I wish him the best on his recovery.
§ Michael Comeau was the latest artist to be featured on the Cartoonist Diary on TCJ.
§ Francois Vigneault’s fantastic Titan will be released in English in it’s entirety by Oni Press this September. Originally serialized on Study Group comics and collected in French by Pow Pow Press in May 2017, Titan is finally seeing a final complete release this September. My colleague Samantha Puc has some more details at the link.
§ Speaking of François Vigneault, he’s having a good year. In addition to the English release of Titan mentioned above, he also won the “Prix jeunesse des libraires du Québec 2020” (the Youth literature awards from the Quebec bookstores) for his graphic novel 13e Avenue, written by Geneviève Pettersen and illustrated by Vigneault.
§ Lynda Barry spoke with Tom Power on CBC’s Q back in November.
§ Chris Wares was a guest on CBC’s radio show Writers & Company. It’s a very lengthy discussion (55 minutes!) and, like Eleanor Wachtel’s regular interview, is very insightful.
§ Alenka Figa selects some highlights of Hourly Comics Day 2020
§ Wendy Browne interviewed Rosemary Valero-O’Connell
§ Sean Kleefeld remembers the X-Men character Storm
§ Cartoonist Sarah Glidden speaks with Sacha Mardou
§ I found this pretty great resource over at the Joe Shuster Awards website, a long alphabetized list of Canadian webcomics.
§ Radio-Canada (The French CBC) has put together a list of ten young authors to look for in 2020. One cartoonist is included, Cathon, the cartoonist behind the excellent Vampire Cousins and more recently, The Pineapples of Wrath.
§ And finally, an old joke from The Onion resurfaced on Twitter and made me laugh a lot
EVENTS
§ There’s a book launch event with Victor Martins for his issue of Ley Lines over at the Beguiling on March 19th
§ There’s a Riso art print show on March 5th (that’s TODAY) over at Floating World Comics.
§ There’s a workshop on mini-comics on March 14th at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.
COMICS
§ A new comic series debuted over at Study Group Comics, Soggy Landing by Ian Densford and the Brothers McGovern.
REVIEWS AND OTHER THINGS OF NOTE
§ Kayleigh Hearn on 2000AD’s Third World War.
§ It feels like it’s been a while since I read anything from Tegan O’Neil. Here she is with a review of The Visitor #1, the latest Valiant thing.
§ Osvaldo Oyola took a long look at Hazel Newlevant’s No Ivy League back in November and I completely missed it.
§ Lisa Fernandes on Archie Vs. Predator II.
§ And finally, Kayleigh Hearn on The Poe Clan Volume One, by Mato Hagio.
§ If you see something I should know about, tell me about it. You can email me, tell me in the comments or tweet at me @Leblanc_Phil. I’ll be back in two weeks with more updates.
