Hellberta: Exit Interview with Michael Comeau

Michael Comeau is a Canadian cartoonist and artist living in Toronto. If you've ever been to Toronto's comic shop by excellence The Beguilling, you're familiar with his work as he's done the window art for as long as I can recall. Over the course of the past 8 years, Michael Comeau has worked on a comics called Hellberta, a political exploration of Canada's troubled relationship with the Oil industry, but also with culture and the dreaded "Canadian Identity" (whatever that means). I've had the chance to meet Michael at TCAF in 2014 and 2015 and we've been able to chat about his comics and his work. His latest comic Leather Vest has been nominated for a Doug Wright Award. 

Michael has agreed to discuss with me about the release of the collected edition his comic Hellberta published by Colour Code Printing. While normally, a collection of comics simply contain the same material, this collection contain additional material and re-orders the content. The first issue published in 2008 has been included as the final element of the collection while the third issue is now placed second. This changes slightly the way the text is read. It is much more focused in its approach as it splits the two main elements (meandering drawings of Canadian landscape and a reflection of what  Wolverine would mean in Canada) and separates them. I've edited things for flow.

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Philippe Leblanc: I believe that the original comics had quite a limited run and that the collected edition has been published recently.

Michael Comeau: We had a few hundred or so of printed copies per issue. The collected edition was ready for CAB in November and we launched it here in Toronto in December. So it's been out for a little while and it's starting to make it's way out. I don't know how quickly, but, it's out!

PL: Do you like the end product you came up with? Is that final edition satisfactory?

MC: Yeah, in general I guess, but that's a weird question. I never know how to answer it. It's mixed feelings really. I don't have feelings of self-satisfaction. I'm already wanting to move on to the next thing you know. I'm glad to have gotten it done, I'm glad to get it out, but there's still and always will be something you could have done differently, or better, or faster, or...or anything you know. Whatever. I'm onto the next project. We launched it in Toronto and a few weeks later my band (New Horizzzons) launched a new record and already these songs feel old. I'm also in the midst of new comics, so it's mixed feelings. I'm as happy as I need to be, how's that?

PL: That's all you need to be. Before I go into questions about the comics, I wanted to ask, was there a demand for a collected edition of Hellberta? I guess I discovered it through Koyama Press's website and found it at the Beguiling and I've only ever seen one write-up about it by Tucker Stone. I know I was interested in it, but at large?

MC: A little bit, but I mean demand seems like too strong a word. It was more like "inquiries". But you know comics are weird. There's not a big demand for most of them. There was somewhat of an interest if I could quantify it. It's one of those things where I want to have it out to those who'd want it. My readership I suppose, but I don't want to overstate what that means. It's there for those that would seek it, but I don't want to assume much more. And working with small publishers also means that a big questions is "Can we get rid of the small print run we have in a timely manner"? And for the most part, this seemed feasible.

PL: Can you tell us about Hellberta? What was your initial motivation in creating it? What were you trying to accomplish with Hellberta?

MC: I have a background in screenprinting and I used to do a lot of zines. I edited an anthology called Regal Beasts of which there are three issues. I always worked in the language of comics, but never released comics proper, or enough to fill a book. Around 2006, my marriage had broken up and I moved into a punk house filled with anarchist activists that were younger than me. That started a lot of things. I started playing music in my thirties and stuff like that. I lived with Calgarian ex-pats. Talking with them, I discovered that there was a real distinct Calgary activist culture that can be traced around the country. And living with queer & trans folks from this place that was experiencing a major economic boom, but also had a palpable sense of intolerance, was interesting. We ended up travelling to the West Coast to meet friends and I was going to do an art show in Vancouver. So Hunter, Nagata and a dog named Felony did a road-trip across the country and we were going to drive back afterwards. This prompted me to keep a "Cahier de voyage" as we were driving across. We were talking about Alberta and what it was like there. I mean there was a lot of money going around, but it was coming from environmentally-unfriendly business and that radicalized a lot of people where they were either for the oil companies or they opposed it. 

I was involved with Punch Clock, an anarchist print shop and we threw these events and parties informed by this queer activist spirit these people brought. It was interesting to hear folks tell us about all these interesting concepts and ideas like "the Calgary return", for example, a certain generation of activists returning to Calgary to change things. It was fascinating to be in that space and hanging out with these people and hearing about the Albertan hospitality, which is warm and welcoming for a short period, but if you overstay your welcome (however long it is), then that same hospitality makes way for intolerance quickly. There was a lot of different dynamics and traumas unfolding and the sketchbook was a way to parse through all of this stuff. The idea of going across Canada, what that's like and our Canadian identity which is stretching across Canada. At the same time, I was thinking about the Tar Sands and thinking about how you can quantify what it means to Canada, how can you quantify this draw of people from across Canada trying to go there, at Fort Mac, work in the Tar sands and make money there. And while there are statistics and schools of thought that talk about that, I didn't feel qualified. How do you speak about a road trip and those ideas and concepts we discussed the whole way without being didactic or anything? So as an afterthought, I wanted to finish the book with a Wolverine comic. We were talking a lot about land rights and native rights, and people being cut off from it and what it all means. I thought a good way to talk about this was to take a popular archetype from that area, reappropriate Wolverine and say "What would Wolverine do?" 

It allowed me to deal in more broad strokes so I don't need to be so specific. The band "One Hundred Dollars" had a song called Black Gold and in the verses it went "The ring on my finger is made with Black Gold" and that was very inspirational in how to go about being broad and addressing topics at the same time. So instead of doing the 88 page carnet de voyage first and the Wolverine comic afterward, I thought to invert them and put out the Wolverine comic out first and the second issue of Hellberta is the material that technically was done before that. For the collection, I've reordered it. The first issue comes last, the second issue comes first and the third issue is kind of in between. 

Hellberta was really an excuse to learn how to do comics. I grew up reading X-Men so I knew Wolverine. I wasn't really active in my reading of superhero comics, but I found it really annoying that his story was retconned to the point where it wasn't clear that he and his family were originally from Canada. When I grew up, his main origin was "Logan was found wandering the woods in the Rockies, his past is shrouded in mystery". He's a character who's torn between the present and the mystery of his past. But when his name is James Howlett and his family comes from England, it's like, no, no that's not Wolverine. But, much like there's different denomination of Christianity, there is with fandom attachment to cultural elements, especially in comics, I thought I'd reclaim a version, my version of the Wolverine as a way to easily to talk about Canada through a mythological figure.

PL: Reclaiming the Chris Claremont/ Len Wein original archetype to talk about Canada in a way.

MC: I find it interesting how the Wolverine character has evolved over the years. It gets you thinking about Canadian stoicism, and what that really means. I think of someone like Neil Young, when he released Le Noise, he was doing interviews and you saw him and thought "what a crotchety old hoser." It's hilarious, and he's got that heavy Canadian accent; he takes no shit. He's still doing what he wants and he's vicious. I found that interesting. I was also never a big Rush fan, but I remember Neil Peart leaving a big impression in that Rush documentary. He has that very aggressive humility of Canadians. He's very proper and tight lipped and is seen as one of the greatest drummers out there, but won't let anyone tell that to him. The way he is, is a very Canadian thing but is rarely displayed in media. You see it displayed all around you in Canada, that sort of aggressive meekness is really interesting. Perhaps, if he was more gregarious and able to say "well I guess I am the best drummer". His mannerism seems so Canadian to me. I know talking with Americans, when you say aggressive meekness, it sounds contradictory, but I'm so used to undermining the idea of Canadian "nice". We're not nice, politeness is not nice. As we were driving across Canada, we met all sorts of people, in big and small places. It was weird how people would treat us in different places, like those tight-knit proper places in the mountains. Close to the natural beauty there are a lot of white people, but away from that, it's more diverse. When we were in Vancouver, I had an art show in East Hastings and it was such a sketchy area, with people falling asleep standing up and just squalor everywhere. But then you walk a few blocks to West Hastings and Boom! Money! No one sleeping on the streets here. It's a different thing, if you want to be close to the water, that's money. If you want to be close to the mountains, also money, but in between, poverty and misery. As you're experiencing beauty, you also see that divide. In Toronto, of course there's racism, but it's so diverse, you don't really see the more definite Red/White divide that is in Canada. There's a lot of that identity of being nice that people project to the world, but when you dig ever so slightly under the surface, we're not nice. Just with the environment, we weren't fulfilling our Kyoto accords, slowing down progress in environmental causes, but we like to think we're nice and doing the right thing, merely because we're meek. And that's not necessarily so. It's just variations on the imperialism and colonialism.

PL: I find it interesting that this road trip is what pushed you toward making comics and Hellberta in particular. I was able to travel across Canada a lot more than ever before as part of my work. And being in Calgary, or Vancouver, you do see those sharp contrasts of going from the seedier parts of town and into the lush, expensive areas and these happen within a few blocks.

MC: I had an art show there and it was really funny, I was hanging out with friends, and I had the show, and I was going to DF at the afterparty afterwards. There was a mix of meetings with these Vancouver stoners who were freaking out I was going to DJ. They would say things like "what, you're doing what? you can do that?" Well yeah, I can do that, I called ahead, you can plan things. A couple bands played the art opening and then across the street was a practice space/venue for concerts, which I don't think is there anymore, the Regency Room. People came over and it was amazing; great bands played, we were having fun and I was DJ-ing. A friend brought some of his local native friends there and Hunter was getting weird vibes from someone and couldn't tell if it was racism, or just a drunk jerk in general. Eventually they left, and towards the end of the night, I started playing slower stuff to bring the energy level down. At some point, the owner in a panic asked me to turn off the music. So I did and I heard these screams outside. They locked the gates to prevent people from barging in and also locking us in and we saw these flashing lights outside.  I thought it was a raid, so I gathered my stuff nervously. When I caught up with my friends, I asked them what was going on.What began as a punk and art show devolved into a weird fight outside with a weirdo white woman screaming "this ain't your land you savages, this is our land!" It was just a conflict between a bunch of people who couldn't get along. I could hardly imagine this in Toronto, but in BC, that conflict seems so ripe because of the treaties signed for land with the natives were more blatantly violated and so there's this tension and conflict that's palpable there. Days before we got there, there was a protest and a 3-year old girl got pepper sprayed. So some of the people we were with told that woman that what she was saying was wrong and eventually, someone got punched in the face and a race fight broke out. Everyone's fighting outside until someone's head got smashed on the ground. The ambulance showed up and I'm shocked from having such a good time in "cool" Vancouver. The native woman we were with told us "What did you expect? Welcome to Vancouver". And the very next day, I had a very different attitude about Canada. You really see how attitudes collides. I didn't quite know how to express these types of anecdotes, but I allude to it in the book but it's seems vague. And it seems so long ago now. At the time I didn't know how to specifically address that, so I just thought I'd bring Wolverine into it.

The James Howlett Affair

PL: I find it interesting in the way you're talking about it. In part a political awakening, but a sense that things aren't as rosy as Canadians like to pretend that they are. I saw Hellberta as a political text from the beginning that borrowed these elements of pop culture to articulate your points. I find it hard to divorce the political nature of the comic in spite of the pop culture elements. Maybe it's because I'm in Ottawa and I see everything as political. Why did you want to bring Wolverine as a strong cultural element of comics to parse through all of your ideas.

MC: I found that the drawings coming out of the sketchbook being collaged together didn't mesh well enough. That anecdote I just said, I didn't know how to write that out. It didn't sit well with me: "Here's this story about a street fight I missed because I was DJ-ing". It was hard to start talking about a conflict that's been going on for a long time. In a nutshell, you can kind of know about this, I mean you have an idea of what it looks like, but to feel and to see it is different. My shock and upset about the proximity of someone saying "What did you expect?" was hard to articulate. In wanting to learn more how to do proper comics, I felt back on the language I knew, which were those of Wolverine comics. At the time, I didn't want to reference the Frank Miller or Chris Claremont comics, that's their thing. But then you realize that those are the languages everyone else references from Barry Windsor-Smith to whoever else. And then you realize that there is this classic archetype and I can string that along to experiment in narrative. That was a little bit more involved than a sketchbook with some drawings and a little bit of drawing to go with it. It was allowing me to plot a comic strip, or a comic book.

It was also about the ease of form as much as it happened to bridge the gap between what my understanding and power of expression in comics is.

PL: Was there anything you held back when you wrote Hellberta? Anything you wanted to tell and didn't or felt you couldn't include?

MC: Yes and no. There always is, but that doesn't really matter. I don't feel it hampered anything. If I go to The Beguiling and look at comic covers, there's this whole Wolverine and Sabretooth conflict and sort of "Violence as Sex" as a big element for me. If you derive violence for how people interact with each other, their violent feud is their love affair. I thought of what their love affair would look like and I mean, gosh, just get a room already. Them stab-fucking each other is something I left out. I definitely had some drawings of them stabbing each other as eroticism in my sketchbook, which I didn't include.

PL: Did Hellberta help you made sense of the world, or at least more of it than you did before?

MC: Sense of the world is hard to say. I do subscribe to the idea of creating work to understand something. Put the cart before the horse to feel like you can understand something. I think that the answer is yes in the way that it helped me understand the nature of narrative and how everything is a narrative. In the course of a day, we construct narratives for ourselves. We have about 3 hours of blind spots. You're blinking, you're unfocused, stuff like that. But if I ask you how your day was, you'd be able to string together what you thought the events of your day were. For so long, I'd do a poster, or a single image, but it's different to draw for something that's going to be pasted to a wall, as opposed to something that's going to be in a book. There is that universal thing of being able to create a collage of images on a page in the same way you can with words and sentences on the page of a book. They're both narratives. I don't have to be a great writer, I'm not, but I can string together images to create a narrative and that's less of a daunting thing now, but it's still a discipline that I struggle with. It's a different dimension in creating meaning in what you already do. I can do drawings, but if I order them in a narrative way, that creates a different dimension of value for whatever effort of drawing there is.

PL: That's interesting. One of the reasons I read your text as political was obviously the inclusion of Stephen Harper as the main antagonist, the defender of Big Oil businesses and pipelines.

MC: Yeah, every time an election would come, I'd think about it. It's like 1984 punk rocker. I remember Ian McKay saying he never wanted to put Ronald Reagan in the lyrics because it wouldn't be universal anymore. And that was in my mind when I included him, because that's the way people around me saw him, as such a villain and so sinister. It was a little bit hack and it's going against the grain of universality, but it was a funny way to tether that into a real world. And I'd always wondered if I should vote for him to make my book still relevant.

PL: I think you wrote Hellberta before 2011 right?

MC: Well it's a bit all over the map in terms of timeline, but I started it in 2007 and ended in 2014, so around that.

PL: As far as I can remember, Harper wasn't as hated or vilified across the board until the start of his third term in 2011. I certainly saw a shift around me of people who disliked him before, but really hated him afterward.

MC: It's interesting you see the work as so political, because I never saw it as all that. It's weird being around the activist culture I was with and never self-identifying as an activist because there's an attitude with it. I want more artistic freedom than that, but at the same time, that's the kind of what I know, the people I hang out with. It also makes me realize I'm not responsible for the gut reaction I had when I saw Harper. I heard terrible things about him and I didn't care to investigate more. Canadian politics, well all politics really, just seem appalling to me. It's Hollywood for ugly people, just uncharismatic people with naked ambition and that's just not attractive to me. I don't have the discipline to stay involved and that's why I think there's that broad kind of archetypal thinking in Hellberta. I can't give you an articulate argument about Canadian environmental policy or the real impact on Calgary and Alberta. But I can make broader points about the culture around this. It's easier to talk about it in broad terms because to me, Harper always was a villain.

PL: Do you feel that, now that it's a few years later and the Canadian political landscape has changed - we have a new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, the price of oil has crashed, the NDP is the Alberta provincial government - do you feel you could tell the same story today?

MC: I don't know, I don't really care. I don't invest too much hope in politicians. Maybe I should. I think at the time, I was reading about the Christian right in Canadian politics and it was mirroring what was happening in the US. Like if you think of George W. Bush coming from Texas, though I'm not sure he particularly was, culturally, he was representing Texas and this kind of Christian right. It spoke to an idea of spirituality and abusing ideas of spirituality, like promoting the concepts of Heaven and Hell, while at the same time, preaching denial of self to attain Heaven and undermining what it is that supports us here in this world. That irony is always very present in politics regardless of the spectrum. These fake hopes and morals being flaunted about and then desecrating what we have here on earth.

I heard someone talk about my art as a way to feed my soul. I just shrugged. When people talk to me about soul, it sounds like trying to sell real estate in a place that doesn't exist. You hear a lot of this fakeness like "your eternal soul is important" meanwhile those same people are totally trying to exploit your actual body, your work, what you need to survive, but hey, thanks for thinking about my soul. These things are always very present, although the language surrounding them tends to change every now and then. At the time, that was some of what was coming out more and more in Alberta, that Tar Sands are a bust and hyper polluting. There's all kinds of things that go with this. I mean when the United States, our closest neighbor and a kind of immoral drunk uncle, isn't interested in our gross Canadian dirty oil, you go "Oh no, our oil is so dirty you're right!" The players change, but Justin Trudeau isn't going to solve all our problems. Not that I even have the awareness to properly articulate what those problems might be.

PL: Switching gears from politics, let's talk about the character of Wolverine. There is a certain analysis of the character of Wolverine in your work that positions him as a sort of arrogant, tortured soul and a downright bizarre and aggressive individual. I liked the way you portrayed him as someone who would be really frustrating and weird to meet in real life. Why do you think there’s such an appeal for a character like Wolverine?

MC: I don't know. I think he's always had those contradictions. In the first issue I cast him as a sort of Christ figure. He's always crucified in an X and I find that really interesting. He's constantly sacrificing himself and being born again through his healing factor. He is a sort of sacrificial lamb. When I got to the second issue, I was done with the Tar Sands metaphor and I wanted to explore Canadian identity. Both my parents come from New Brunswick, from really small towns. We moved to Ontario, where I grew up. Whenever I go to New Brunswick, it seems like people knew that's where I was from. The idea of Canada and a certain Canadian trajectory is interesting to me. I really liked the Donald Shabib movie Goin' down the Road. It's kind of like a Canadian new wave film from the 70's. SCTV did a sketch of it and, obviously I saw that first, but it's about these hosers going down the road. They're gonna go from Cape Breton to Toronto and get jobs, but it turns out Toronto isn't that different and it's not that easy. It's got this beautiful shot of them walking down on Yonge Street in the mid sixties. I saw Wolverine and Puck as part of those guys. I remember in Alpha Flight, they would always allude to Puck and Wolverine being buddies. Almost like Wolverine as Popeye and Puck as Wimpy. So I put them both in a small town setting and I chose Sackville. That served a double purpose. There was a residency program I wanted to apply to there, you could say I captured the culture of the place, but mostly, it was near where my father grew up. 

I wanted to have them play out a small time maritime stereotype bullshit. A lot of it was thinking about what it would be like for them in a small time place. What would having a world-class assassin in a down low community; he kind of fits in, but he doesn't fit in. What does it mean to have those kinds of skills and power there in a banal way. In superhero comics, there's a lot of ratcheting up of conflict: the world is at stake, all of mutantkind is at stake, the universe is at stake. It's more about these bigger scale conflict, but what would the day to day be like? What would the dumb jokes people tell be? I thought, well what if these guys were like grown up Linus and Charlie Brown sitting at the bar shooting the shit. They're not smart, they're not insightful; limiting their understanding was important. Based on what we know of the world, in that place in the 70's, what would their understanding of the world be? They're just shooting the shit like ordinary people would, but they're extraordinary human beings in a very ordinary space. I wanted to have that conflict. 

The climax of the third issue: he's on fire and goes through berserker rage and there's no escaping the conflict for him. It's internal and he'd always be having this conflict within himself, but how does that man coexists with his environment? I found growing up in rural Ontario, walking late at night can sometimes be more sketchy than it would be to do so in downtown Toronto. Small places can be violent and sketchy in a weird way and that whole idea of going to a bar, drinking, fighting and fucking is a real thing. But what would that be like for Wolverine and how would he do it? How would the locals react? Would they taunt him? I think he's got all this violence and rage and I think that people would get a thrill out of egging him on and seeing the chaos that would ensue. That's a condition of his acceptance. He's not saving the world all the time. I can see that he would externalize his own internal Hell and that would be other people's amusement.

I watch World Star Hip Hop. Initially, it was covering current and new Hip hop and rap releases. It was kind of like an aggregator of news. People would debut a new video and it would be on there. It also became an aggregate of content that was interesting to their viewer. So it wasn't necessarily music or Black America, there's a lot of that, but there's also a lot of twerking, a lot of funny dumb shit, and a lot of fights. There are a lot of fights and the name World Star became a call name. Someone shooting a video of a bar fight with his phone and screaming "World Star", cause that's where it's going. This shit is really disturbing. Real fights are gross. They're messy and the dull thud of a fist hitting a face is horrifying, but it's riveting and you can't stop watching it. A lot of people fuck themselves up in that kind of state, and why not Wolverine? 

PL: So you're addicted to World Star fight compilation?

MC: Totally. I will watch that stuff for hours.

PL: I find it interesting the idea that the character, when you dig deeper into him, is only a guy with a knife in his hands and he heals quickly. He is not a grandiose person in any way. He would fit more into a rural town than anywhere else.

MC: In a way yes. He's astounding because he has these metal bones, he has a healing power, but he also has a heightened senses. He experiences the world differently than us, almost like a dog would. Whatever antisocialism you read in that book, I feel that he just communicates on a different level. He doesn't need conversation, he doesn't care about being intellectually smart when he's nose smart. He can tell when people are lying. I assumed in the book that he can tell when a woman is in heat or not. That whole idea of relating to people on a biochemical kinda way, you can't hide much from him and it's a more base existence, but perhaps also more natural and honest. In using him against the tar sands and thinking about what he would do, it's a different level of morality. If it's destroying his environment, he'd fight against it, a sort of nature-based morality. I was asked a few times "Wolverine wouldn't kill mounties would he?" Yeah, he totally would. He was abused by the Canadian government. I don't think he would care or think twice about it. That natural morality would, I think, allow him to see past what this industry really means, and what it really does. 

Do you remember in old Claremont X-Men comics, he would always go hunting and Ororo would say "Logan, you're gonna kill that innocent deer?" and he'd go "There ain't no skill in killin'. I get close enough to a deer to touch him". I always thought that idea was hilarious, that he would constantly be out in the woods trying to touch deers like it was the thing to do. I've seen that riffed on in different ways, but that stuck with me. If there was an oil spill and that deer got covered in oil, it would really mess his hunt. He'd be pissed!

PL: I find that there is an interesting aspect to his character. His inherent sadness coming from his lost identity. He doesn't know where he's from or who is. Do you feel the same way about the so-called "Canadian identity"? That it's lost, unknown and nonexistent?

MC: My smug answer when anyone asks me what my book is about is always "Well, you know, Canadian identity", because no one really knows what that is. That's always a Canadian anxiety that we don't know ourselves. I guess I feel this way, but it's also reductive. We're in the shadow of the United States and they're so well defined and we're not as much defined by comparison, but it's not that valid. Canadian identity is really fluid. A lot of people can lay claim to it. It's such a weird thing that those arbitrary borders are supposed to define our identity. There's what we think it is and what passively it is, but we don't know what it really is. There's what it means to others who meet us. If I talk to an American, I'll get asked about hockey, but I'm not interested in hockey. I grew up near it, I know people who love hockey, but me not liking it or playing it is just as valid a Canadian trait as someone who does. I'm Canadian not to have an attitude about it. I know how much I never played it, bu other people around me do play it. 

PL: The Canadian Identity is very elastic in many ways. I'm from Quebec City, a central hub of French Canada if you will and my understanding of the Canadian identity was it's bilingualism. But when I moved to Ontario, this view changed since French is not as prevalent as in Quebec City. French Canada is different in Alberta than it is in Quebec. There are about 225,000 French speakers there, and while those Francophones tend to be invisible, they are very much present. This doesn't invalidate the fact that Canada is bilingual; it's just more fluid.

MC: In art school you learn about modernism, post modernism and now we're in the post postmodernism era. It makes you think of culture in a more pluralistic quantum sense. Like there's idea and space around the word, it's not mono-meaning. We can kind of outline these things and stalk around what it means in different ways. That initial trip going across the country from Toronto was interesting in that everyone has an idea of Toronto and what it means to them. Some people hate Toronto and I got a lot of shit just from being from there. But it didn't matter to me. Toronto doesn't seem to care much for other cities in Canada and I think that irritates people. They don't realize Toronto is the pinnacle of the Canadian inferiority complex. No matter how bad some other places may feel about themselves, Toronto feels just as bad about itself. It's a moot point and an amusing contrast when someone from Vancouver says I'm from "Ontarrible". It doesn't matter; we're all in the same boat. 

My background is French Canadian. I have lots of Francophone family. I'm from New Brunswick and, though my parents don't speak French at all, French is the closest other language that I know, though I have that shame of not knowing it. I'm not bilingual, but it's familiar. I like that familiarity, but it can also be frustrating because I don't know it enough. I remember being frustrated in French class. There's an interesting conflict in Montreal because of the language. Do you speak English? Do you speak French? That keeps this place really cloistered because you can't live there properly unless you're bilingual. Everyone wants to live there because it's so hip, but it's only hip because you can't live there. It's an interesting push and pull that I find attractive, but I've learned to negotiate those differences faster by realizing that I'm not going to be apologetic for not speaking French. They can speak English better than I can speak French, but even if they don't, we can still achieve to understand each other. Being apologetic all the time means we can't break that awkwardness to get to a point where two individuals are understanding each other. I think Francophones appreciate that a bit more even though it's a bizarre way to deal with the perceived "conflict of our nation". I've gotten a bit more ruthless at getting there and letting people know I don't speak French, but cutting quickly to trying to reach out and understand the other person and getting on with our stuff. It's interesting how things that I wouldn't claim as my identity in Toronto surface depending on where I end up in Canada. It's interesting that there are broad categories and all of these subtle differences.

It's still an ongoing shame I'm not bilingual. I have small victories when I'm in Montreal when I can understand what someone just said. But then it's gone and I get frustrated. I could get more to a cruising altitude instead of just going up and down if I was in Montreal more. 

PL: If it's any consolation, most of my friends back in Quebec are not bilingual either. Some can't say a word of English to save their lives.  They'll understand very basic stuff like maybe "yes", "no" and possibly "toaster". My wife is from the GTA and when we got married, both our families and friends were together in one room. People still managed to converse. Bilingual people would translate stuff, but the Francophones and Anglophones were able to chat and hack their way through a conversation with each other just fine.

MC: I love that kind of stuff. When I was young, I went to Quebec for a summer to learn French. I was in Lennoxville. At 11 years old, I was the most proficient I ever was in French because of that immersion. You can read people and understand them for sure. I hang out with francophone artists and even though there is a sense of what English and French means, the divide is a nice contrast. I like it. It may breed an idea of conflict, but I'm not so sure, we can all get along. I'd be happy if there were even more prominent languages in this country.

PL: Now that Hellberta is complete and you can turn the page, what will you be working on now?

MC: Well my band New Horizzzons put out a record. We have a 36 page booklet that has a download in it for the record. I'm working on a series of flyers for a hotel and a sci-fi comic for Koyama Press. That last one is a pretty long project and it's my first time making something over 100 pages. I have a couple of other small projects on the go, but I don't know when those'll be ready. I work in a storm of various activity and I end up reining it in. I'll try to have something ready for TCAF, possibly a sketchbook, or impose narrative on top of existing drawings. The Sci-fi stuff should be ready next year hopefully. Annie wanted to do another book so this has been getting traction. I'll try to use various styles in that comic and play with the idea of the media the people are consuming in that universe.

--

• Visit the shop of Colour Code Printing to get a copy of Hellberta Collected Edition
• You can follow Michael Comeau on Tumblr and on Twitter

All images from Hellberta and Michael Comeau

Laura Ķeniņš: She Wants to Tell Me: Uncertainty and Speechlessness

In social interactions, there are constant and overt reminders of the underlying power structure. Someone who holds the power, a boss or a coach, can speak; you do not have that power, therefore you must ask permission and they may (or may not) grant you permission to speak. As if your opinion doesn't matter, your status isn't high enough or perceived to be too low, and you can't speak "above your station". When it comes to personal interaction, a similar but less rigid structure exists. It is a challenge to determine what one can or cannot say, especially when you're in love. There is an uncertainty to attraction and love as you seek to not only form a bond with a person, but a lasting bond with someone that extends beyond friendship and into intimacy. So there is a huge amount of uncertainty to wade through before you can forge an intimate relationship. Communication is key to get to this point.

In Laura Ķeniņš What She Wants to Tell Me, the protagonists are caught in a situation where that uncertainty can never be properly dispersed. The book opens with our protagonists, finding a severed human ear on the ground of the park. Daina, one of our protagonists, stands over it silently until Monta, our second protagonist, arrives and enquires about the situation. Monta wants to go to the police, but Daina advice against it. Despite this initial disagreement, they are clearly shaken by the discovery and decide to go for to go for drinks to talk and forget about this nasty business. They eventually kiss and Monta falls in love with Daina.

Hovever, despite this attraction and their eventual relationship, they can never talk freely to each other. Monta is uncertain of her own feelings and whether or not she can love another woman, but decides to commit to the relationship anyway. This uncertainty pervades their every interaction. She doesn't know how to express her feelings properly, so she keeps quiet. She expresses her doubt, but never to her partner, the one person who should be able to listen. Daina, however, seems to have a problem with expressing herself altogether. Although she seems more confident in her sexuality, she also appears to have secrets. Whatever they may be, be it related to how the ear got on the ground or not, she never says.

The ear doesn't really matter in the end. It is their inability to express themselves that dooms their relationship. Monta wants to tell Daina her feelings. Daina wants to share her secret. Whatever has been left unsaid will remain so.

Laura Ķeniņš art is phenomenal. Everything is done with colored pencils. I had recently read Everywhere Antennas by Julie Delporte, who also uses colored pencils and the contrast between the two artists` styles is quite interesting. Where Delporte used color sparingly, leaving plenty of empty spaces, Keninš fills each pages with vibrant colors. In Keninš book, there is a loose panel structure and each panel is filled with colors. The various colors used throughout are applied with varying levels of opacity to allow her to create lighting and shadow effects everywhere.

Her style also complements the story nicely. The pencils aren't used to add color to a black pencil drawing, but rather they are the basis of the drawing itself. This reduced the clarity of the forms and structures in some instances, but it contributes to the story in that it casts a haze over everything, reducing clarity and adding a small yet efficient layer of uncertainty over everything. Truly well done.

I was not familiar with Keninš' work before and it is a mistake I will correct shortly. Her meaningful examination of communication was stellar and I am looking forward to more thoughtful pieces from her.

Liam McKenna's Termination Shock: Almost There

Liam McKenna's Termination Shock is a science fiction comic about following the rules so relentlessly that its leads to blindness; the consequences of not questionning your own actions; and the loss of free will that accompanies "blindly" following orders.

Termination Shock tells the story of an officer on board a small freight ship who messes up a shipment by accepting to do an "off the book" favor for a friend. As the small freight ship is loading equipment from a remote unmanned space station, she takes in a load of cargo, but it registers as stolen from the space station and they are shot. They are almost gunned down, but manage to escape. Unfortunately for the officer, the rules and regulations for jeopardizing a mission are clear. The penalty is death and the captain of the ship intends on following the rules. The captain forces the officer to step into a spacesuit and exit the ship to suffocate for her mistake. We follow the aftermath as the remaining crew members realizes the gravity of what happened and the toll this will take on them.

It is unclear what the captain's motivations were for doing what she did. There is no clear sense of who these people are before the incident. All we know is the captain was going to follow the rules, regardless of the objections of her second officer, who warned against so harsh a punishment for such a minor infraction. I was led to believe that she felt it would have jeopardized her authority and her credibility if she had let the mistake slide from her attitude throughout the execution and her discussion with the crew that a life of being a "cold hard captain" got her the rank she desired. Again, this is what I assumed based on the text. If this is really part of the story, or if I simply assumed as much based on the subtextual undertone, I'll let you be the judge of this. In any case, the story struck me as solid, if slightly underdevelopped. I would have preferred to see more of the incident and the aftermath; this is where the drama truly lies, not so much in building up the momentum to it. The story is also constructed in a non-linear manner which I felt removed some of the momentum. 

There are also a few moments where I was unable to tell the tone and story elements based on the visuals. For example, in the third panel on the second page, the doctor is walking nonchalantly towards the captain and they make small talk about beers. He leans casually in the doorway, arms crossed with half a smile. He makes a joke and they laugh. I understood that this was to establish their relationship, but knowing that this takes place after the execution made this sequence feel really odd. On page three, Bird, the officer who was adamantly opposing the captain's decision, is screaming at her that it was all her fault as she made the final call. His fists are raised, but his facial expression is over-emoting and I couldn't tell the tone. I know the character is upset, but it's a bit too over the top, to the point where I thought this comic was going to be a dark comedy. It happens randomly throughout the book where I'm just unsure of what the expressions the characters are trying to convey. 

This being said, apart from these few instances where the images fall short, it's actually well done. The stripped background fit perfectly with the setting of a spaceship. The characters are placed in a grey or dark grey environment, which constantly reinforces the theme (no black or white solutions) of the book. So with all of this said, I can forgive some of the small issues when looking at the comic as a whole. And based on what I've seen from McKenna's Tumblr page, his attention to facial details has improved.

I'll keep an eye on this creator's work. A "P.E.I."....P.E.Eye....He's from Charlottetown...Ok, I'll stop

The Hellberta Trilogy: Wolverine, Canadian Identity & Subversiveness

The Hellberta Trilogy

One of the constant struggle in Canada's history has been to define its identity. It's been debated long before I was born and will probably still be debated after I die. Canada is so vast, that to clearly define a single identity is ludicrous and impossible. We constantly struggle to determine this "Canadian-ness" because of our history and because we are so close to the Unites States of America. When standing next to their clearly defined symbols and defining traits, it is understandable that we may be unsure. I won't try to define what they are, we all know and have a pretty accurate picture. Yet when it comes to Canada, the answers aren't simple. 

Alberta

I come from the province of Quebec, where language and history play very important roles. Because of it's French heritage, Quebec`s culture is different from other provinces. Montreal, for example, is a multicultural, multilingual environment with a combination of centuries old history and modern day metropolis. Yet Quebec as a province is quite different from Alberta, or Prince Edward Island. Different geography, language and many other factors makes all of Canada's provinces unique. From coast to coast, from North to South, we struggle to define exactly who we are. Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian communication scholar and intellectual once said that Canada is one of the only countries in the world that knows how to live without an identity. I'm not sure we're entirely without an identity. We can boast some broad traits: inclusiveness, welcoming, a tendency toward compromises, politeness, Tim Horton's coffee (though I never understood that one, it's not that great). Defining our identity is important, possibly unachievable and a constant struggle.  

Our Canadian "heroes" emanate from history and politics, not really from culture, and especially not from a pop culture perspective. Terry Fox, Romeo Dallaire, Chris Hadfield, Pierre Trudeau, David Suzuki, those are all recognizable names for us Canadians. When it comes to fictional superheroes, most of us know that the creator of Superman, Joe Shuster was Canadian (Superman has been on our stamps and money!). We know Wolverine is Canadian, some people may know Alpha Flight, but that's about it. Talk about Captain Canuck, Nelvana of the Northern Lights, Reid Fleming, Atomic Betty, Scott Pilgrim, Johnny Canuck and the number of people who know who these are goes down drastically. Our Canadian superheroes, those that are instantly recognized by the public, are surprisingly American-born (except Superman, you can argue about Superman). 

Canadian Messiah

I met Michael Comeau at TCAF 2014 and it has taken me 6 months to come to properly articulate what I wanted to say about Hellberta. Talking with Michael, you could sense the artist`s struggle to reconcile many aspects of Canadian identity, his conception of Wolverine as a "Canadian" hero in spite of its American corporate owners. Additionally, he explained that the current atmosphere in Alberta has changed drastically over the past several years. The development or the Oil Sands (or Tar Sands) has created a huge rift in the province. It's difficult to extract the oil, requires a lot of water and emits a high quantity of CO2. Its destructive, and most likely irreversible. The economical benefits for Alberta are immense, but so is the fallout of the operation. Michael moved out of Alberta years ago and has been questioning Canada, it's identity and politics ever since. Hellberta is a thoughtful exploration of these themes. It doesn't offer any answer, but plenty of questions and avenues for discussion.

Wolverine VS Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Crucivixens

First of all, Hellberta is one of the most meaningful and interesting Wolverine comics I`ve ever come across. There's really only four important texts about the character anyways, Chris Claremont's early run of Uncanny X-Men (which I define as Giant Size X-Men #1 to Uncanny X-Men #150 though you might not share my opinion), Claremont and Frank Miller's version in Japan, Weapon X and Origin. Everything else has just been filler. Do you remember when Wolverine went to Hell? Or the countless times he fought people he didn't want to but kept pushing him in a bar (like in every other Wolverine story it seems)? Or when he was not a mutant but from a race Lupine or controlled by Roulus? Who cares, all of it is garbage anyhow and doesn't add anything meaningful to this character. Hellberta, however, adds something more to the character. Comeau recasts Wolverine in the first issue as a sort of Canadian Messiah. No longer able to idly stand by as the destruction of the environment caused by the Tar Sands continues, Wolverine decides to stop the polluters by going berserk against an extraction plant. His plans are thwarted by none other than Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada, and his Crucivixens. Wolverine is crucified and the pain and destructions are stopped by the cleansing of Jean Grey, the Phoenix. Wolverine comes back from the dead to lead the survivors to a brighter future of enlightenment. Michael Comeau turns his political indignation into art. It is impactful, it is subversive, it is sublime.

Holy Cleanse

Hellberta #2 changes gears dramatically and puts Wolverine on the backburner in favour of Michael Comeau's Canadian road trip. He still explores themes of identity, but this time, he also tackles the dichotomy between rural and urban landscapes, and he is also exploring the struggle between the profane and the holy. Canadian landscapes are beautiful and strangely perfect for introspection. It takes forever to get anywhere and this gives you a lot of time to think about life and the issues that affect you. Comeau contrasts the seemingly endless landscape of mountain range with angelic battles and city streets littered with the monstrosities. Comeau's first page perfectly demonstrates what he`s attempting to do: "This book mirrors the plodding march into the gaping mouth of Hell we created for ourselves". He also adds that "The Oil Boom radicalized a generation. Those who embraced the grotesque entitlement contrast those who would not or could not in an environment intolerant to the queer and weird. Family values and hospitality quickly changes to contempt. Never before have I witnessed such a quick change from "Hey Bro!" to "What's yer fucking problem".

A Typical Canadian Landscape

Comeau's struggle in this issue is to reconcile what it means to be Canadian amidst drastic change. As someone from Quebec, I can understand what he goes through. Our province has gone through multiple exercises of sovereignty referendums since the 1970's. This has broken families, destroyed lives and effectively reshaped the entire political landscape. It created a new axis in the typical "Left-Right" political sides. To separate or not to separate from Canada. This is the "Up-Down" axis and all must play in this new arena. But it is not all inclusive and many are not satisfied with this (myself included) and must find a way to reconcile this new landscape amidst conflict, increasingly polarized public opinion and friends and family. I can see how difficult it must be to be from Alberta as a skirmish is occuring because of the Tar Sands. There is no clear way of handling this issue, but Michael Comeau just throws it on the page for you to react.

Downtown Core

But it is not all gloomy reflections on Canadian Existential Dread, there is a glimmer of fun when Wolverine and Puck are going out to drink at a bar. Puck hopes there won't be any trouble as Logan spent a drunken night with Big Brianna, and her seven brothers may not be happy about it. There is a bit of excitement, but Wolverine, being the best at what he does, just tells these guys to fuck off otherwise he'll just kill all of them. Mercy is not one of his virtues. Oh and also, Wolverine is actually Neil Young!

The third issue of Hellberta is yet another different beast. Not a comic, nor a road trip diary, this issue tackles the underlying issue in idolizing a character such as Wolverine. He's portrayed as an exaggeration of his normal self, a wise-cracking irreverent loner. His love for drinking, which is portrayed mildly in the comics, is now expanded to see the underlying current of alcoholism running through him. The first part  of Hellberta #3 is a photo comic where Kitty Pride and Jubilee talk about their relationships with Logan. They discuss his rough maneurism and complete lack of empathy and it is remarkably accurate. He marks his territory, he's inappropriate even during ninja fights and he has a bizarre sexual relationship with Yukio. Everyone, this is your idol. Seven movies have been made about Wolverine and it's important to look back  at the text and the subtext to understand the appeal of the character.

What's the appeal?

The second half of the comic deals with his berserker rage and alcohol abuse. The tone shifts as we see him and Puck drink at a bar and the other patrons encourage his behavior. They all like to see his decadence and how low he can sink. No one understands the cry for help that this represents as they all leave him to regenerate after his self immolation. As he wakes up and wards off the wolves eating his flesh in the woods, he contemplates his own condition. "My resurrection gets cheaper each morn". "Is the monster you know better than the one you don't? Is my humiliation a condition of my acceptance? A profanity of nature".

Drunken Mess

The series is also wonderful to look at on paper. All the issues are risographed. I had to look into this since I didn't really know what this was. It prints on unwaxed paper one layer/one colour at a time and must pass through the machine a few times for each colour and layer. It uses soy-based ink and natural fiber stencils. I found that PEOW!Studio have a very good explanation of the process. The end results for those comics is just wonderful. The palette of colour is limited, but used effectively. I'm not quite sure what the proper term is in English, the pages ends up with what I could describe as a radial gradient, but it's more of an "Aplat".  The pages have a single colour with varying levels of density and sometimes multiple colours with various densities to create varying effects. Regardless of the proper terms, it looks phenomenal. (I`ve since learned the correct term and it`s monochromatic).

Moving on

Sadly, this series has had such a limited print, it is almost nonexistant and extremely difficult to find a copy. I was lucky enought to find a copy of the first two issues at The Beguiling last year and got the third issue at TCAF this year. I've shared them amongst friends and will continue to do so. Hopefully, it will be reprinted at some point and will be more widely available. Hellberta is a wonder of Canadian culture.

You can read the first issue here on Michael Comeau's Tumblr

*EDIT

Michael Comeau informed me that he is not from Alberta, but from Ontario. He lived (live) and travelled with ex-Calgarians.

A collected Hellberta is coming soon

Book Club Report: A Discussion with Pascal Girard on Petty Theft

The Comic book book club we belong to is an interesting group. We all like reading, but for each member, reading the same book brings a multitude of different interpretations, especially with regards to the subtlety imbued by the particular language of the book. We’re located in Ottawa, Canada’s national capital, and live in a bilingual environment. Almost 40% of the city’s inhabitants are bilingual. English isn’t even my first language, it’s French. Most of us are working, living and reading in both languages.

The book club met to discuss Petty Theft, as we normally do every month. There usually is a sense of fun and anticipation before the meetings. We’ve had a month with our book, we`ve each read it and have had an appropriate amount of time to think about it. This month our discussions proved to be especially significant as it was a special event for the Ottawa Comic Book Book Club: we had the pleasure of welcoming Pascal Girard to discuss his newest graphic novel Petty Theft. He gracefully accepted to join us for an evening to talk about his book, his characters, his process, language, family and construction work.

Pascal is a French-Canadian cartoonist. His Tumblr bio informs us that he was born in Jonquière, in Saguenay (the town with one of the weirdest mayors in Canada, Jean Tremblay). He loves drawing and running and he's in love. This biography relates to the themes of his newest English book Petty Theft. Pascal has written more books in French such as Conventum, Jimmy et le bigfoot, Paresse, as well as some other collaboration work and children's books. Three of his French books have been published in English through Drawn & Quarterly.

Language

Language was at the forefront of our minds when we met with Pascal. We were all very eager to discuss how Pascal's writing may be influenced by language. He mentioned that while he didn't think it affected his first translated book, as he hadn't even considered it, it certainly had while writing this book. It may not have been a conscious consideration, but more as a result of integration and internalizing the idea of a second language and a wider audience for his books.

The title is also quite surprising as Petty Theft is actually called La collectioneuse in French. We noticed it did affect our reading of the book. The English title immediately frames the girl as a thief. It leaves little doubt to interpret her actions. She steals, and therefore is a thief. However, the French title leaves room for more ambiguity. She is a collector. Her actions, although criminal, are somewhat more justifiable as she is not framed as a thief from the get go. Pascal did explain that there was a long process with Drawn & Quarterly to determine the best translation for the title. Choosing to translate word for word "collector" wasn't as close to "collectioneuse" and therefore wasn't as meaningful. In the end, Petty Theft was selected and only those few who know the two titles can determine how this affects them.

Pascal & Kids

Fatherhood is also an underlying theme in this book, not by showing exactly what it meant for the protagonist, but by providing clues into his thoughts. The main protagonist panics and is uncomfortable in the presence of children. Although this doesn't reflect the values of the author, it does affect how we can interpret his character. We have a man who, underneath the pretense of finding his way and true love, doesn't really see a relationship evolving to the stage of parenthood. Now this could be a choice, but when we add the facts that he aims to right the wrongs of the thief, it reveal a very selfish character.

Mental VS Physical labour

The book begins when the main character falls and gets injured while he is out for a run. Forbidden from running, down on his luck and with a broken heart (his girlfriend and him having just broken up), he ends up also reinventing his career. He stops drawing and goes back to construction work. This created an interesting parallel between the physical labour of construction and the mental (and creative) labour typically associated with art. The protagonist`s body having changed, so must his psyche. This created yet another layer in a seemingly easy-to-classify character.

By the end of our meeting, we gained perspective on a multitude of topics: language, fatherhood, characterization, etc. Pascal Girard helped us gain some perspective on Petty Theft and unlock elements which revealed further interpretations and depth to the story. There was so much more to discuss and some of my fellow book club members may wish to add to this in the comments, but we all felt tremendously satisfied reading this book. We'd highly recommend it. 

Reflections on Guy Delisle's Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City

Magnificient city

I brought Guy Delisle's Jerusalem: Chronicle from the Holy City along for my summer vacation in San Francisco. This book was my first exposure to Quebec cartoonist and travelogue master Guy Delisle. I like the style and musings of Delisle who seems interested in writing about dangerous or controversial locations (Pyongyang in Korea, Shenzhen). It makes for riveting literature. 

The basic premise of Jerusalem is that Delisle's wife works for Médecins sans frontières (Doctors Without Borders), which is referred throughout the book as MSF. She gets posted in Jerusalem for a year and Guy, her husband, can keep his career as a cartoonist there as well. They are bringing the kids with them and will build their life there for one year. Delisle chronicles through his book the contrast between the Holy and the Secular, the modern and the traditional and also, the private and the political. 

Delisle uses a "Slice of life"  as an easy way to explain the woes of modern day life in Jerusalem. He manages to simply explain the complex environment by relating his experiences there on a very personal level while trying to stay open minded and objective. A profound respect for the city and its inhabitant is found on every single panel (except maybe when he have some petty issues with some residents). 

His presence in Jerusalem manages to raise some interesting questions, such as how to balance family life and career. We see the multiple schedules he has to keep, the distances, and the issues that arise from trying to keep it all going. Traveling in the city on a day-to-day basis becomes the source of many headaches with the blockades always in the back of one`s mind, so are traffic jams and which neighbourhood to visit and when. 

Delisle also forces you to think about how to find compromises when everyone seemingly holds the truth. Jerusalem is a city of many faiths and many beliefs. It is a challenge to determine common grounds, yet Jerusalem`s inhabitants manage to do so every day, which is exceptional. 

Delisle's art remains simple throughout the book. This appears to be his regular style and it works perfectly with the subject of the book. Jerusalem is such a complex city; it's geography, politics and culture are so rich, so dense, that the simple art style creates a welcoming contrast. 

Although this book appears intimidating for both its length and subject matter, I would recommend it in a heartbeat. Delisle crafts a riveting tale of life amidst an incredible, if somewhat complicated, city. Regardless of your faith and opinion on the conflict, everyone can appreciate the author's account.