Canadian Comic Art is Better Than Ever

I am giant nerd. I feel safe saying this here though, because chances are if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably a bit of a nerd as well. Go team!

Today is the first day of Comic-Con International in San Diego. It’s a huge, annual comic book convention (the largest in the US), and its mandate is to create "awareness and appreciation for comics and related popular art forms." Some 130,000 lucky visitors are about to spend the weekend in comic art heaven.

For those of us who just can’t make it down in time we thought we’d pull together some amazing works by Canadian artists in a mini, blog post spin-off version of Comic-Con we’re going to go ahead and call Comic-Can. See what we did there?

If you already enjoy comic art and graphic novels, here’s a few you might want to add to your reading list. If you don’t, start here. The talent and diversity of Canadian artists and comic artists is astounding. 

You can’t make this stuff up, people. True Story is a collection of short, illustrated slices of life. These are weird and wonderful one-page, real-life stories that everyday people have relayed (or secretly confessed) to Halifax artist Mike Holmes. He then immortalizes the hilarious (or embarrassing or shocking or outrageous) anecdote in comic strip format. Holmes originally started creating these for his eponymously named comic strip in the Coast. 

I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw this comic strip about the iceberg. I mean what is funnier than accidentally destroying something that mother nature’s been working on for … eons? I guess there’s no "Don’t Touch the Iceberg" signs. They probably didn’t think they needed them.

If you don’t recognize the name Terry Mosher, you’ll surely recognize the Aislin signature—the pen name of the infamously outspoken Montreal Gazette cartoonist. In the political satire sketches included in Was it Good for You?, Aislin just comes right out and says what everyone else wishes they could say, and people love him for it. This collection has a fantastic foreword by Rick Mercer who happens to be a huge fan of Aislin’s work. You can check out more of his cartoons here at the Montreal Gazette website.

Here’s the greatest line from Aislin’s website: "In 1993, Mosher became the first artist to have his work denounced by a Member of Parliament (Robert Layton) in the House of Commons as ‘a crime against fundamental Canadian values of decency and mutual respect.’ He considers this to be the best day of his long career as a political cartoonist."

Mark Twain famously advised writers to "write what you know." Canadian comic artist David Collier has customized that piece of advice and instead sketches what he knows. As a resident of the gritty, blue collar community of Hamilton, Ontario since 1999, he became inspired by the humble beauty of the everyday scenes of the city. He captures it all in Hamilton Illustrated. This is truly a touching homage to the ubiquitous mid-size Canadian city … complete with street hockey scenes.

David Collier has been called the master of the "thoughtful comic essay," and this book recently won a Doug Wright award to prove it. You can read more about David at the award’s website. And, fittingly, the book was published by long-running Hamilton literary book publisher, Wolsak & Wynn.