Pack Mentality #1: Arresting Visual Imagery, Colour & the Strength of Risography

Art by Dmitry Bondareko

I received a copy of Pack Mentality #1 over the holidays from my Brother-in-law with no explanation as to what it was. "You'll see when you open it" he said, "You won't be disappointed". It's been over a month now and I forgot how many hours I've spent with this comic. Pack Mentality is an anthology regrouping several artists contributing pieces of various length loosely related to the theme of "pack mentality". What we get in this comic are interesting stories, arresting visual imagery and a solid look at the wonders one can achieve with risography printing.

Art by Gillian Goerz

This anthology includes tales from Gillian Goerz, Dmitry Bondarenko, Alëna Skarina, Erin Rei, Tad Michalak, and some amazing illustrations by Hugh Langis, Jenn Liv, Nat Jenin & Sean Lewis. The stories are varied: we have a trigger-happy parking enforcement cop in Toronto; a botanist creating cabbage people; high-schoolers with dry skin problems; and an art band questioning their place in the art scene. In a way, they all explore the way we are influenced by our environment and think as a group. The cop we follow is a naive officer, but based on his thoughts, we can understand he's been influenced by what the media depicts as law enforcement. He believes it to be exciting, somewhat dangerous and honorable. He doesn't care that his job is that of a parking enforcement officer. He carries a gun and a badge; he has authority and he'll use it. The high school girl we follow is feeling isolated because of her problem and wants to hide it until she finds that others are experiencing the same problems. They form a community to help each other to get rid of their common problem. These are all explorations of how we act together without necessarily being coordinated ahead of time; we do things instinctively. 

Art by Alëna Skarina

I was very impressed by the comic by Alëna Skarina named Kidney beans (pictured above). It was an incredible throwback to 70's sci-fi comics with a nice modern sensibility. An astronaut lands on a planet to observe it's lifeforms as she herself is being spied on by its inhabitants. Her mission, however, is a violent one and she refuses to see it through. It's got a nice ecological, anti-violence message in there as well that was quite refreshing. It's use of color, though not extremely bold, was interesting for the contrast it presented with the other pieces in the issue. Black & white works very well for Skarina's style. Her lines are fluid and the white comes up in sharp contrast against the black ink. Her alien fauna and flora looks very nice too. 

While each of the artist`s styles vary greatly, what is most impressive is the use of color in their individual pieces. Erin Rei's piece on the cabbage people is exclusively blue and green, while Gillian Goerz`s piece on the high-schoolers is purple, blue and yellow. I particularly liked how the comic is interspersed with all these amazing risograph prints. Perhaps the most arresting piece of the issue is the whale hunting double page spread by Sean Lewis. It is dynamic and awe-inspiring. It manages to convey both the atrocities of killing a whale while capturing the fear and apprehension of the hunter. He manages to include the pack mentality as the whales are travelling together. The colors are otherworldly and Lewis captures the insanity of having these two beings come into contact with each other. I highly recommend that you follow this link (Sean Lewis Draws for Pack Mentality), not only will you see a larger image of the preview you'll see below, but you'll also see the process through which the colors are applied/printed on a risograph. Basically, riso printing is a print on unwaxed paper that is done one layer at a time and must pass through the risograph printer for each layer of colour your want to apply. This adds a level of difficulty in getting the results you want when using multiple colours. Lewis` piece is flawless and looks absolutely phenomenal. It's incredible. It was also an interesting comparison to another risographed comic I really liked, Hellberta by Michael Comeau in which he uses a single color with varying level of density. Here Lewis uses layer upon layer of colour to great effect.

A section of Sean Lewis's incredible piece

While I believe this illustration is worthy of a museum, I doubt it will ever be presented there. I'll just have to keep my copy of Pack mentality at home for now and share this mythic piece. I will however recommend that people take a look at that fantastic Jenn Liv contribution to the anthology. Now that is something I'd put up on a wall!

After all this time, I still don't know the genesis of this anthology. I'll keep my eyes peeled for a second issue ,though. If it's anything like this one, it should be a beautiful homage to risograph and contain a array of phenomenal artists.

Pack Mentality

The Best Comics of 2015 & Other Musings

It’s been a tough year on so many levels. I got a new job in December 2014 and things have been getting gradually more busy since. I haven’t read as much as I wanted once things kicked into place in June as a result of that and I suspect life will get busier next year as my wife and I are expecting our first child. It’s a wild and overwhelming experience. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that I’ll have even less time come May to waste talking at the vast emptiness of the Internet about comic books. We’ll see what happens. It's not time to throw the towel down just yet.

So, self-congratulations are in order, I think I improved my writing (slightly). Here are some of my best pieces from 2015 according to a panel consisting of only myself:

• Strangebeard: An interview with Kelly Tindall
• Structures 12-23: Vincent Stall on Decay, Environmental Destruction and Temporary Solutions
• Believed Behavior Season One: Poetry, Experiments & Distribution Methods
• Book Club Report: A Discussion with Julie Delporte on Everywhere Antennas
• Liam McKenna's Termination Shock
• Dogs & Ad Astra Comix: An Interview with Nicole Marie Burton
• Laura Ķeniņš: She Wants to Tell Me: Uncertainty and Speechlessness
• Book Club Report: A Discussion with Marjorie Liu on Astonishing X-men
• Farewell Silver Snail
• Malachi Ward's Ritual Three: Vile Decay: The Erosion of Democracy
• Steph Hill's: A Brief, Accurate Graphic History of the Environmental Movement (Mostly in Canada): A Key to History

Not too bad, I'm proud of the political stuff I wrote. «the piece on Malachi Ward's Ritual Three and Steph Hill's A Brief, Accurate Graphic History of the Environmental Movement (Mostly in Canada) were some of my best I believe. This year also marked the first time I wrote for an external website. I wrote something for the Hooded Utilitarian roundtable on Joss Whedon. I'm not sure if it was any good, but some people commented, so that's more than I can say about this blog. That's gotta amount to something.
Anyways, without further ado, here is my selection for the best of 2015 in various categories

Best single issues

Copra #21 by Michel Fiffe

Frontier #7 by Jillian Tamaki

I wanted to include a single issue here, but I had to stretch it to two and I’ll explain why. I wanted an issue that could be read and enjoyed on its own terms, a stand-alone comic if you will, and of those, I feel as though the only comic that met that definition was Frontier #7 by Jillian Tamaki. The story follows the rise and fall of a mysterious cult. It charts the way an internet viral phenomenon affected millions until the hype died down and all that was left was a few people following it through to the very end. It was one of the most memorable things I've read all year. A very immersive done-in-one story that was wonderfully illustrated. The shades of blue gave the whole issue this eery, otherwordly vibe and made it a fantastic read.

But at the same time, it’s hard to overlook the experience I had reading the showdown issue of Copra. From the beginning of the series, this one character wants to avenge his family and find their killers. He does confront that man once in issue #13, but it’s only a part of that issue. In #21, it’s the whole issue. The violence is explicit. It’s raw, visceral, and there’s this energy to it that`s just incredible. The action sequences are well-done and there’s a sense that the characters are getting tired as the fight goes on. It’s incredible. One of the best issues so far. That first page is a thing to behold. It’s interesting too, since I’d place #14 in the best comics of 2014 and this issue works well but for completely different reasons. #14 is slow, deliberately showing WIR’s sense of alienation and withdrawal from his previous life after seeing the violence of the first arcs. It all builds to one very personal confrontation that is resolved quickly, methodically, as if violence was a no-brainer to end conflicts. Issue #21 is all about action. There’s no slow-building; it’s two characters with a history methodically pounding on each other using everything they have in a very innovative way. This goes to show the storytelling strength of Michel Fiffe. This made it all the more personal with his monthly letter at the back where he talks about the loss of his father.

Best reprint project

Melody by Sylvie Rancourt

It could be that I'm from Quebec, but I've rarely seen comic work capture the zeitgeist of Montreal as clearly as this work does. Melody collects the works of Sylvie Rancourt that came out in the 80's and unfortunately, didn't have much success. I'm glad to see this in such an extensive collection by Drawn & Quarterly. Rancourt's work is interesting for its unapolegetic way in which it depicts the work and the environment in which it takes place. It's often contradictory, while Melody is exploited by her work, she is also exploiting the work she's doing for her comics. Her husband is a terrible piece of shit, but it's not particularly about him either. It's politics are hard to pin down as well and the lack of a regular narration means we have to rely on what we read and see and infer the rest, for better or worse. For example, as a reader, I often wanted to see her leave her jerk of a husband, but the story isn't about that and doesn't lead to that. It's about a woman working in a seedy environment and telling her story as it happened. It's simple style is also quite interesting.

While it doesn't contain all the work Rancourt has done with those characters, it is a wonderful introduction to her comics and I hope that more Canadians will give this thing a shot. It's worth it.

Best Graphic Novel

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson

Not Funny Ha-Ha by Leah Hayes

For as long as it rains by Zviane

Exquisite Corpse by Penelope Bagieu

These are the books I enjoyed the most this year in no particular order. I talked about For as long as it rains last year when I read it in French. The translation is excellent and I'm glad it will reach a wider audience. Nimona was a fantastic fantasy story that played with the conventions of the genre and gave us a truly impressive and touching story. Not Funny Ha-Ha was a great documentary comic (is that a thing?) that managed to take a touchy subject like abortion and explain it in a very sober, informative, restrained way, devoid of politics and religion with great art on top of it. Exquisite Corpse is charming. I don't know why these four books in particular spoke to me this year. Maybe it's because the year was so bleak I fell back on some lighter books for entertainment. I did follow the elections coverage daily, which is enough to drive many insane on a short election period, but this one was the second longest in Canadian history so you can only imagine my frustration.

Honourable mention

Leather Vest by Michael Comeau

Soppy by Philippa Rice

First Year Healthy by Michael Deforge

Lydian by Sam Alden

Mowgli’s Mirror by Oliver Schrauwen

All good comics I wanted to showcase here. Leather Vest is Michael Comeau's comic exploring race and gender in fiction as a creator by looking specifically at Storm from the X-Men. I've been meaning to do a longer piece on it since May. Soppy is the one comic my wife read this year and it's charming and poignant. First Year Healthy was a great and troubling read as well. my second favourite Deforge comic this year. Sam Alden's Lydian was such a departure from the stuff I've seen him do before that it was refreshing to see such a turn towards exploration and changes. I highly recommend it. And finally, I'd be silly not to mention how wonderful Mowgli's Mirror looked. Although it wasn't my favourite publication by Retrofit Comics this year (that honor would go to Laura Knetzger's Sea Urchin and Yumi Sakugaya's Ikenaba) I still felt it needed to be showcased for it's bold use of space and color.

Best comic website

Comics and Cola

Hands down the best source on comics at the moments. Zainab Akthar provides in depth interviews, thoughtful analyses and a generally great voice to the world of comics criticism and reporting. It's refreshing to see someone write as easily about alternative manga, European comics and more mainstream work. I'm happy to see she's being supported by folks on Patreon, I'm glad her voice is being recognized. 

Honourable mention to J. Caleb Mozzocco, over at Everyday is like Wednesday. If only he could stop reading garbagey cape comics and talk about more interesting comics, his output would be so much better.

Best prose comic

All Dogs are Dogs by Michael Deforge

I'm not sure how I'd characterize prose comics, except in "words with some illustration". I don't think I'd have this category again, but felt this mini comic by Michael Deforge needed some recognition. This came out as part of the All Dogs are Dogs exhibit at the Ottawa SAW Gallery and was pretty amazing. It is essentially a bizarre tale in which our dogs evolved (or were genetically enhanced) and we follow the story from three points of view: a human's relation with those advanced dogs, a regular dog and an advanced dog. It is curious, kind of ridiculous, but troubling and affecting. I wasn't expecting so much depth from such a short piece. 

Best Canadian political work

Dogs by Ad Astra comix

Uneducation: A Residential School story

2015 was a very political year in Canada. The federal election brought some much needed change to Canadian politics and was obviously a big part of it, but there's been so much other stuff. From the Mike Duffy scandal, to the Syrian refugee crisis, there's been a ton of stuff to keep the interest of the politically aware. Perhaps the strongest, most heartfelt story was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report. Landing in everyone's table with a bang, the TRC exposed terrifying facts about the way white settlers treated the first nation tribes in Canada and it exposed the mistreatment of children taken from their home to be taught the "modern" ways of life in white families. It was horrible to hear those affected by it speak out, and near impossible for those that listened to not cry. It was too loud to ignore and we're trying to collectively find ways to move forward. Already, the new liberal government appears to be making progress, but only time will tell if we'll be able to turn the page on this grim and bleak chapter of Canadian history. In the midst of this, I've had the chance to read two comics tackling this in one way or another. Dogs tells of another tale of first nations mistreatment, Dogs is a story based on the finding of another commission which reported that the RCMP slaughtered hundreds of dogs in Inuit settlements. I'm cheating a bit for the second one since it technically came out in 2014 (or even prior to that online), but I discovered it in 2015, so bear with me. The second is Uneducation: A Residential School Story, a sort of mix between zines, comics and political literature in which Jason Eaglespeaker uses those mediums to tell the story of abuse endured by children and parents alike by the Canadian residential program. 

Now I didn't buy this book, the library of Ottawa ordered it in 2015 because it was an important work. Progress it would seem, can come from a variety of different places. I hope you will all seek out these works.

Best anthology

Ley Lines

Ley Lines

This anthology basically asks of comics artist to explore their relationship with an artist, whomever it may be. It’s a simple concept, but the ways in which these stories are told are incredibly interesting. This year gave us Cathy G. Johnson exploring Vincent Van Gogh's work and Erin Curry on Cy Twombly. Comics aren’t insular, it can reference itself ad nauseam (that’s what the 2 mainstream publishers are doing), but comics are essentially works of art and I’m glad to see this explored in a more formal way. The results are quite impressive.

Best mini-series

We stand on guard by Brian K. Vaughan & Matt Hollisworth

As a French-Canadian man living in Ottawa, that first splash page where the national capital gets obliterated was surreal. Using Canada as a way to talk about how the US behaves with its oppressive foreign policies is brilliant. Our countries` histories are intertwined and we are, for the most part, quite similar. This is an effective satire, a sort of gory sci-fi Canadian Bacon and though I have yet to read the final issue, I can attest to the strength of that comic.

Best ongoing series

Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConninck

Ody-C by Matt Fraction & Nathan Ward

Two phenomenal comics I enjoyed reading this year. I talked about Bitch Planet earlier this year. The analysis still stands: it's a great comic and one that deserves to be read. Ody-C is a different thing all together. A gender-bent riff on the Odyssey in space with psychedelic art by Nathan Ward. It's completely insane in it's depiction of what is essentially a story that's been told a million times. And yet, it works so well. Kudos to the creative team for attempting something like this.

That's a wrap folks! I'm retooling the Book Club Reports section and I may write our final discussion (on the spiteful Habibi by Craig Thompson). See you in 2016!

Illiterature v. Graphic Novel: A Meaningless Cacophony

Illiterature issue v. the graphic novel

I’ve had the pleasure to attend the recent Ottawa Small Press Book Fair in November. I wanted to see if anyone there had any comic books, but I was sadly disappointed. It was mostly poetry and some novels. The event itself was great and most people attending were in good spirits and quite friendly. I managed to find the one and only graphic novel there was from a small publisher in Kingston named Puddles of Sky Press. I learned about the collaborative aspect of the book, and noticed Mark Laliberté’s name in the collaborator’s page, of which I read and greatly enjoyed Grey Supreme from Koyama Press. I bought the book on a whim and was immensely disappointed. I’ve tried to articulate my disappointment and tried to find an interesting approach to discussing the underlying issues with it and thought it would be good to compare Illiterature issue v. graphic novel with the first issue of the poetry comic anthology Inkbrick.  

Illiterature issue v. graphic novel doesn’t operate like a comic book or a graphic novel despite it's title. It shares very little resemblance to a graphic novel. It is much more in line with what you’d expect from poetry. Note that I said poetry and not poetry comics. Puddles of Sky Press publishes mostly poetry, so it seems closer to what they might normally publish. Poetry is about rhythm, style and substance. It has a certain intensity as thoughts and ideas are condensed and distilled in a stylistic form. You can say a lot with very few words. I expect a level of experimentation when I see poetry, but I normally expect the piece to have a certain cohesion. Poetry is a way of seeing and of understanding. There are meanings to what you say and to what the reader sees. It's a magnificent art form. I remember fondly discovering Louis Aragon’s post-war poetry and reading each one of his pieces slowly, combing through every line, finding meanings and new interpretations for each verse.

What we have in Illiterature issue v. graphic novel is a clash between the form of a comic book and the form of poetry. I scratched my head figuring out what this was until reading the editorial note in the back which reads as follow: Some pieces were submitted as single frames, others were submitted as full-page comics. The full-pages were dissected and broken down into individual frames and spaced throughout the novel to allow for a more seamless and cohesive collaboration. While I can understand the urge to use a new approach like this, it unfortunately renders the work meaningless. I can endeavour to make cognitive efforts to determine what the artists are trying to say, but the pieces are so fragmented that they are nearly impossible to reassemble. As a reader, particularly of poetry, I don't mind a puzzle, but this feels like someone threw several puzzles on the ground, shuffled them around and asked me to put them back together without telling me how many there are and how many pieces each puzzles have. The book seems too preoccupied by adhering to this experimental aesthetic, much to the detriment of cohesion. The experiment of the book includes splicing bits and pieces from pages from contributors and stitching them back together, like Dick Briefer’s Frankenstein Monster. The pieces don’t work because as a reader, you see 1/12^th of a page. mashed up with other unrelated pages. The meanings are muffled and, although I’d like to say cryptic, I believe the proper term would be absent.

Five different artists, five different tones

The list of contributing artist for each page

It's quite disappointing. Some of the artists do seem to have an interesting take on comics as poetry. In particular, Dale Tracy's use of a panel that, in essence, explains what you'd be seeing if it were drawn was actually quite clever. "In this frame, the tree is carved into hundreds of startled wooden mice" is brilliant. It's ironic that the pieces that were left untouched, those that weren't spliced or divided, are the ones that work best. A few pages by Mark Laliberté, Mark Laba and Faye Harnest in particular are the most interesting. In those, the reader is allowed to look at a full piece from an artist and have some breathing room to analyze, understand and appreciate it.

A second disappointment is the fact that most of these pages are merely random letters stretched out and recombined, most of which are not drawn in a conventional sense, but rather through graphic design. Yes, letters create words which creates meaning. We get it. But illustrations also have meaning. Poetry as comics doesn't simply mean illustrated words (or literally illustrated letters). Here are some examples from the comic book world.

Lulu, Femme nue by Etienne Davodeau
A lone woman is looking amused at the pedestrian by a beach. Her look denotes contentment. She seems care-free, which is also reinforced by the fact that she's the only one in color. 

The Man that Dances in the Meadows by Sam Alden
A man, facing away from us is dancing. He stands in what seems like an open field, but it is hard to tell exactly where he is. His movements are otherworldly, which is reinforced by both the location and his duplication. We see the movement, of the man and it looks surreal. 

Copra #18 by Michel Fiffe
A woman, most likely named Xenia, declares that she hates Copra. Without even knowing what that means, we see that her silhouette is divided, almost broken. Her hatred of Copra left deep scars and left her broken. It hides a trauma. Her speech bubbles are broken up, there is anger, but also a difficulty in articulating that anger properly.

It's disheartening to see that so many of the collaborators of this collection seem to have failed to grasp that the fusion of graphic novel and poetry doesn't lie in the words. Combining words and images can be truly evocative and powerful but this isn't the way to do it. Now the examples above are all from character drawings, not a lot of text there, but you can see many things, just from the illustration, without knowing anything from the context.

The difficulty in reconciling this is that there are a ton of examples of poetry comics done well. I'll take just one, the first issue of Ink Brick, a journal dedicated to comics poetry. The description of the first issue online tells us that "the first issue features work by 8 creators using the visual language of comics to make poetry". The comic has a table of contents right at the front. The collaborators are given a few pages for their pieces and they're able to create some pretty powerful stuff. The first short from Alexander Rothman about a person's memory of waiting for his parent in a hot car in the summer while bees are flying towards a used soda can is interesting. He is able to convey both the memory and show the heat his protagonist is feeling. The pieces included in Ink Brick are not just illustrated poems; they each carry their own poetic narrative visually and through the words. Another equally interesting piece in the book is the one from Bianca Stone, her art is visceral. She uses colors and whites to add layers. We recognize the settings she's depicting, though they all feel slightly off. Her final page for example, we recognize a tent, but we're not quite sure where it is. It seems cold, a woman is wearing a winter coat with fur around the neck, but the ground is green, and she's not the one talking, but the bear is "My capacity for recovery is functional but not entirely - Half the sky distends above me in plummages... of gray nighties taken off. I see the faces of the people I love ... falling apart". It's a clash between the expectations of what you're supposed to feel when seeing those elements. This creates an interesting sense of engagement as we try to reassemble the pieces that were scrambled. Those are interesting examples of comics poetry where the reader comes out with a understanding of the piece, of the artist and of the art itself.

Poetry comics done well

Now all of these issues doesn’t make Illiterature v. Graphic Novel something to avoid. It’s an interesting and valuable experiment to try. You can see the answer to the question of whether a book that is simply spliced from panels cut and placed on random pages would still work as it’s own piece. The answer is negative, but it doesn’t reduce the effort in the least. There is much more that can be done with poetry comics. I'm not normally this harsh, especially for something with a print run so low it's almost non-existent. I guess I wanted it to be good and I felt betrayed with what I received. I expected comics and I expected poetry. I got neither, simply a meaningless cacophony. I hope this group keeps experimenting, I'll be back for a second round, but I hope a different approach is taken that time.

The Abyss Stares Back #1: Teenage Profanity, Comedic Spirit & Nietzsche

Art is the supreme task and the truly metaphysical activity in this life -
Friedrich Nietzsche

The Abyss Stares Back is an odd comic. It`s immature. It's low brow. It's raw. It's crude. It needs refinement. It's the beginning of something great. I've had the pleasure to find a copy of The Abyss Stares Back, an odd short comic, at a comic book store in London (Ontario). I even accidentally met the artist, albeit quite awkwardly, during that short visit. The comic says it's by Patty O. Fernitür, which I'll have to assume is not a real name. I've done some research, but I've come up empty (the link to a wordpress has been removed or is not available), with only a handful of fake names for this artist, maybe it's Jillian Clair, Jay Clair. Or maybe her name really is Patty O. Fernitür, in which case, I apologize for the previous comment. Awesome name, not weird at all...

The Abyss Stares Back has an unapologetic punk attitude. A sort of "fuck the world", laissez-faire  attitude, relentlessly asking of the world "why are you doing what you're doing" and begging the world to be self-reflective. That is quite appealing to me for some reason. I've browsed through a copy of Punks: The Comic and it had nowhere near the amount of energy that this short comic had. The reader senses immediately that the artist has some angst and that this is their way to express it. A short warning for the crude nature of the material contained in the comic is prominently displayed on the cover, most likely making it even more enticing to the youth through it's defiant anti-authoritarian label. The comic opens with a comic about why women shave their pubes, followed by a fake history of poo, a reflection of couples holding things for each other, and commentary on scarves and beards. The fake history of poo is actually quite hilarious; a sort of absurd and surreal historical account of poo throughout history. It betrays a deeply comedic voice under all of this angst. 

The comic title uses a quote from Nietzsche which is slightly misleading. He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you. If you study something for too long, you risk becoming it. When reading this comic, I see an artist who intends to fight against conformity and for whom the resistance method of choice has been derision. I understand that move; I chose to laugh at everything when I was younger. Comedy being the best way to ensure nothing ever gets to you. It's a shield; a shelter. By laughing at something, you rob it of it's power. I'm not entirely sure that this relates to Nietzsche in this context. Perhaps a fear of becoming like the majority and the inevitability of eventually becoming domesticated, like "the rest of them". I've always felt as though some aspects of my life were defined by a desperate need to not be like my parents, to not inherit their worst traits. Perhaps it is a fear shared by this creator. 

I hope that this artist finds her calling, whatever it may be. There's great promise in this short comic. The art appears quite rudimentary, but it's efficient. It's not polished, nor does it seem like it`s meant to be, but it could be, and this is all I wanted to see.

Malachi Ward's Ritual Three: Vile Decay: The Erosion of Democracy

The Canadian government recently signed the Trans Pacific Partnership, a massive trade agreement hailed by the current (until October 19^th) Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Hailed by the PM and his party as a milestone of Canadian trade, the focus of the press has been mostly on the impact of the TPP on the Canadian Dairy industry and the Auto Manufacturing industry (and with reason as this appears to be the final nail in the Canadian car industry’s coffin). But little has been said about the massive loss of privacy provisions that are included in the TPP. I didn't think anyone would ever include privacy provisions in a trade deal, but here it is. The TPP features many anti-privacy measures and limits the ability of governments to prevent the safekeeping of sensitive information within their own borders. This means that shortly our provincial and federal governments will no longer be able to require sensitive data to be stored locally (i.e. within it's boundaries and therefore, within it's jurisdiction). Adding to this the Mickey Mouse clause of copyright extension to prevent Disney from losing Mickey Mouse for another 20 years and thus also preventing countless works from being made available costing hundreds of millions more to the public, and you have a strange agreement where the winners are not the Canadian public as mentioned, but a handful of multi-billion dollar companies. 

In addition to this, Canada has recently passed a law that is eerily similar to the U.S Patriot Act in the form of Bill C-51, effectively creating a mass surveillance state with little oversight over what the government is doing with our information. I fear many do not understand the surveillance apparatus being installed around them. We all have this idea of George Orwell's 1984 where the repressive conditions laid out by the State can be seen with cameras everywhere. But the system didn’t place cameras around their house, they’ve placed them directly in their pockets through our smartphones, in our living rooms with our laptops. And we didn't stop it from happening. 

Whenever I think of this destruction of privacy, I think of Malachi Ward’s Ritual #3: Vile Decay. Even more so nowadays with the Canadian federal elections just hours away. In Ritual Three: Vile Decay an older woman recalls to her grandchildren the moment she felt the world went wrong. Using a virtual environment, she recalls her memories of protest, and ultimately how pointless it all felt. I feel like this in many ways; one day I’ll explain to my children that, when these moments happened, we were powerless to stop the slide because we failed to comprehend the severity of what was happening in front of us.

Brilliant rioting scene

The colours used by Ward in Ritual is stunning, his pacing is extraordinary. As the woman recalls her involvement with the riots (in a great crowd seen, rarely seen in comics due to the complexity of staging such panels), she also remembers the aftermath. As she and her friends are talking about what just happened, the conversation drifts towards the mundanity of everyday life. They too are unable to comprehend what is transpiring ahead of them. As they walk back towards their house, the group disperses under the sunrise of a new day. A darker day, where the spark of revolution has failed and the surveillance State prevailed. The brightness of the colours contrast immensely with the grim reality laid out by the world on the page. There are countless imageries of constructions and crumbling, both physical, societal and digital. It's exceptional. A remarkable work of speculative fiction. Much like Ritual Two: The Reverie, Ward finds inspiration in our troubling realities, the loss of a loved one, the loss of our privacy, and he crafts a relevant and affecting comic. I bought this in 2014 and I remember it vividly to this day.

I’m writing this, days before the 2015 Canadian election where the three major parties are fairly close in the polls and we’re unable to predict a clear winner. The only party who seems to understand the brutality of those repressive measures and who's willing to tackle them (The NDP) will be coming in third. It seems that the party who leads the charge on C-51 and caved in on internet surveillance through the TPP (the Conservatives) might win again, or that the party who doesn’t care about the implications of any of those two issues (the Liberals) might also win. I don’t think Canada will be a different country on Monday, but it will certainly be a less open and free country. One teetering ever closer to the dark and gloomy world presented in Ritual Three: Vile Decay. 

Endlessly staring into that abyss

Steph Hill's: A Brief, Accurate Graphic History of the Environmental Movement (Mostly in Canada): A Key to History

I picked up Steph Hill's A Brief, Accurate, Graphic History of the Environmental Movement (mostly in Canada) while in Vancouver last April. I was intrigued by how such a small comic would convey the history of the environmental movement. It is a movement born out of necessity to counter the changes affected by the modern development of our planet. Canada's economy relies on natural resources, so if we look at the example of forestry and the lumber industry, the past centuries have affected massive changes on the way wood is cut and sold. Mechanization of wood cutting and transport has allowed for a greater capacity to harvest wood. Globalization meant that the market was no longer limited to it's geographic boundaries, but could expand beyond it's borders. The response, and opposition to these changes, have also adapted to reflect the larger scope of the issues being faced by the environment and Canadian citizen. S.A. Hill (or Steph Hil) tries as best she can to summarize decades of social changes that brought about the rise of the environmental movements and the specifics of Canada's place in this history. She succeeds in some ways, but falls short of explaining all that one needs to know about the topic, partly due to the nature of the topic and the short length of the comic.

Hill appropriately intersperses her comic with bits of trivia about her subject. It was quite jarring that her opening tidbit was about the US (Cuyagoha River in Ohio) and not Canada. I had to look at the cover a couple of times, to make sure I had the right comic in hand. Notice the parentheses "mostly in Canada", which allows a fluidity of examples to come into play. Hill does use some examples and trivia that isn't specific to Canada, but I think it works to the comic`s advantage. Besides, the reader quickly adapts.

Hill manages to convey a lot of information in a short time. Although her focus is broadly on the environmental movement, how it started and how it took shape from the 1960's up to 2014, she is able to bring into focus both organizations and individuals that were important to the history of the movement. This humane approach is quite interesting and complements the subject nicely. She is able to balance the constraint of history and the personal aspects of the subject really well. She starts be defining the historical context, then focuses narrowly on some specific aspects of it before bringing it back to the larger context. My main complaint may be that some elements are brought up without much detail on why they may be relevant. It was a bit jarring when I didn't recognize the name of an event being described (I had to look up what Silent Spring was for example), but I guess this was inevitable given the shortness of the comic. 

There is a lot of information in this comic, none of that "infotainment" nonsense. Hill wants you to learn. She uses her art to make history interesting and aesthetically pleasing, but never trivializes her subject. You'll come out with a better understanding of both the movement and the issues at stake. 

Although her art might appear simple, her page composition is not. Hill doesn't adhere to a standard page layout, she uses a free flowing approach and this allows the information to be displayed innovatively. I feel the topic may have been too dry otherwise. A rigid panel page would have tied it down too much, encasing it in a rigid structure that would have limited the flow of the comic. Her approach allows the reader to follow the comic organically and absorb the information much faster. 

Hill's drawing is simplistic, but efficient. Her figures and characters are consistent, but I feel that she may have a harder time with facial expressions and differentiating facial features. I could hardly tell if stand-in characters were supposed to be the same from one page to the next. This hardly matters though, the comic isn't a narrative about characters, but about history.

Although I do recommend this comic, I feel it would be an incomplete recommendation without additional reading material. The comic is good, but left me wanting for more. I guess it reached it's objectives in trying to teach me about the environmental movement; now I want to know more. A good companion book might be Climate Changed: A Personal Journey Through the Science by Philippe Squarzoni or Oil & Water by Steve Duin and Shannon Wheeler. And for those of you who may prefer comics without drawings (also known as books) here are some other suggestions: Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why we Need a Green Revolution, by Thomas Friedman and Moral Grounds: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril, a collection edited by Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson. The NASA also has some resources, though mostly focusing on climate change HERE. You can read A Brief, Accurate, Graphic History of the Environmental Movement (mostly in Canada) in it's entirety online. 

All images taken from S.A. Hill's A Brief, Accurate, Graphic History of the Environmental Movement (mostly in Canada)

Update from Barbed Comics

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure to talk with Tatyana Gerbasi from Centretown News concerning the unfortunate closure of the Ottawa Silver Snail. I had published an article in early September (Farewell Silver Snail) and she contacted me via the blog. Here's the article that was published afterward: Comic Book Store's Final Chapter.

In other news, I'm happy to report that Comet Comics, the new comic book store by former Silver Snail employee Heather MacDonald, is open! Located in Old Ottawa South, the new shop looks fantastic. Final touches are being given to the shop after a lot of renovations and it looks incredible. Kin is still involved there in some capacity and they were hard at work at installing new custom shelves when I visited. Take a look at their Facebook page or follow them on Twitter; you can also see their website (still in construction at the time of publishing this article). I was quite happy to see they expanded the kids comics section and they still have an impressive alternative section (read non superhero crap) on the wall.

Congrats to the team at Comet Comics!