2009 was an eventful year of Canadian comic releases, major label crossover events, and comic industry developments that will have huge ramifications for years to come.

It was also the year that The Fabler, founded by Bruno Steppuhn, was birthed into existence. Which, if you were paying any attention, also meant the launch of the Fabler Blog last May.

Since, as the old adage goes, ‘to know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been’, I think it’d be an ideal time to look back at the past year in review.

At least I think that’s how I think the adage goes. I’m not very good with adages. It might alternately be, ‘forget the past and the future, live in the now’. But that works less with what I’m going for here.
Let’s start by taking a brief glance at the Canadian comic landscape in 2009.

Jeff Lemire had a fantastic year. Hey, that rhymes! 2009 saw the release of Jeff’s original graphic novel The Nobody, as well as the launch of his own Vertigo series, Sweet Tooth. As if that wasn’t enough, he also released the collected version of his much acclaimed Essex County Trilogy.

Mariko Tamaki pulled in double honours, winning the Doug Wright Award for Best Book with Skim as well as the Shuster Award for Best Writer for her work on Skim and Emiko Superstar.

Jesse Jacobs and Kate Beaton each also ‘double-dipped’ from the Canadian recognition pool, both earning accolades from each of Canada’s two top comic award organizations. Jacobs won the Gene Day Award for Canadian Self-Publishing at the Shuster Awards, and saw his book Small Victories nominated for a Doug Wright Award earlier in the year. Beaton, the more-internet-famous-every-year creator of Hark! A Vagrant, was nominated for a Best Webcomic Shuster Award and won the Doug Wright Award for Best Emerging Talent.

While new series’ featuring Canadian talent emerged regularly throughout the year, there were three in particular that I feel were especially worthy of mention.

The first was North 40, featuring art by Calgary-based Fiona Staples. This limited series launched in July and concluded in December, and featured a midwestern town overrun by supernatural forces. Aaron Williams wrote a clever story of Cowboy-Western meets Lovecraftian Horror, and Fiona did a fantastic job of bringing those elements to action-packed, panel popping life.

Second would be James Turner’s Warlord of Io. Originally slated for print by Slave Labor Graphics, Warlord of Io wound up as a digital exclusive. You can pick up the first two issues of this uniquely conceptualized space adventure via Comixology, among other places.

Third is, naturally, Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth. As one of the most hyped titles of 2009, the Vertigo-published tale of a young human/deer hybrid in a post-apocalyptic landscape certainly hasn’t disappointed. But then, Lemire isn’t an artist prone to disappointing his fans.

Unlike Jeph Loeb. But that’s another, completely unrelated conversation.

But of course, all of this just barely skims the surface of what 2009 held for the Canadian comics industry.

For all of you non-Canuck Fablers, 2009 has seen its fare share of news in the wider comic industry in general.

The year kicked off with a major announcement from Diamond Comics that some would deem controversial; they were raising their minimum purchase threshold, which would force some of the smaller-name titles out of distribution. The aforementioned Warlord of Io was one of the first comics cut as a result of this action.

Another of the year’s biggest headlines (if not the biggest headline) was Disney’s acquisition of Marvel. Certainly it was one of the most blogged about, with industry commentators putting forth banter as to whether the move would seriously impact the Marvel U, or merely improve distribution options while allowing Marvel complete creative control over its properties. Proponents of the second opinion pointed to Disney’s treatment of Pixar after it bought out the award-winning animation studio as an indicator of how Marvel would also likely be left to its own creative devices.

Both Marvel and DC ramped up the competitive status quo this year as well, each conspiring to use more event titles and ‘major title’ launches to enhance its own share of the comic market.

Marvel re-launched its fan favorite Ultimate Universe, in wake of the cataclysmic events of Ultimatum, while its 616 universe titles spent a year slowly (almost casually) dealing with Norman Osborne’s rise to power with the Dark Reign Event.

DC segued from Final Crisis into its inspired (and highly financially successful) Blackest Night crossover, and while a new Batman emerged in the form of Dick Grayson, Marvel brought the original Captain America back from the dead.

Bringing it closer to home, The Fabler launched at the Calgary Comic Convention in April of this last year. Since its launch as a service geared to help independent comic creators get their work seen on the web, it has built a small (but dedicated) community of initial artists, seen its share of major revamps, and started to find its footing as a long-term platform.

The Blog side of things attempted to establish itself as a news source for interviews with Canadian comic talent, while also providing unique perspectives into the industry and spotlighting the members of its own community whenever possible.

In case you missed any Fabler Blog interviews from the past year, collected for your handy reference below is a list of all of the artists/writers/creators/industry insiders we’ve spoken with to date:

Andrew Johnson (Kingdom, Golem: Small Town Massacre)

Eben Burgoon (Eben 007)

Alison Acton (Bear Nuts, The Faerie Path)

Jesse Jacobs (Small Victories, Blue Winter, Shapes in the Snow)

Joey Comeau (A Softer World, Overqualified)

Simon Roy (Jan’s Atomic Heart)

Jake Ekiss (of Indy Comic Book Week)

Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics)

Jordyn Bochon (The Day After V-Day)

Kate Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant)

Jason Turner (True Loves)

Michael Cho (Papercut)

Steve Rolston (Emiko Superstar, Ghost Projekt)

Doug Wheatley (Star Wars: Dark Times)

James Turner (Nil, Warlord of Io)

Lar deSouza (Looking for Group, Least I Could Do)

Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth, Essex County Trilogy)

Jay Bardyla (Owner of Happy Harbor Comics in Edmonton)

Fiona Staples (North 40, Secret History of the Authority: Hawksmoor)

Troy Little (Chiaroscuro, Angora Napkin)

Gareth Gaudin (Perogy Cat, Owner of Legends Comics in Victoria)

Richard Grzela (14u Comics)

Chris Johnston (Jet Pack Mike)

Vicious Ambitious (Calgary Indie Comic Company)

Stay tuned to the Fabler Blog for more 2010 comic goodness! (And more jabs at Boise, Idaho!)

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming

The gladiator arena of a shopping event known as Black Friday has also come to pass, marking another herald of the soon-to-be-frantic X-mas buying season.

If you’re like me and you don’t start buying your holiday gifts in June, there’s a good chance you’re still scratching your head over what to buy your rolling crew. That’s a crew that you roll with. Like friends, only with more rep. Nevermind.

Anyway, point is, if you have some presents left to buy for individuals even mildly interested in comics – don’t sweat it! The Fabler is here to help.

Presented for your X-mas shopping convenience, we’ve compiled a shortlist of some easily recommendable titles and miscellany, complete with links to their respective websites for online ordering.

I’ve arbitrarily chosen five categories to organize the following suggestions within, and – for bonus convenience – alliterated each of the category titles.

Canadian Comic Holiday Shopping Ideas

Humour

Hark! A Vagrant: Never Learn Anything from History

It is regularly unanimously agreed upon that Kate Beaton is hilarious. Her webcomic Hark! A Vagrant, which irreverently pokes fun at great moments (and people) in history, is validly difficult to read without chuckling. Try it, I dare you. Buying this collection of some of Kate’s best strips for someone as an introduction to her work has to be among the best things you could do for a person (providing they have any sense of humor at all).

Bear Nuts: Volume 1

Alison Acton writes a funny webcomic about a group of cute cartoon bears that live together in the zoo. Only the bears have personality disorders. Some have addictions, some dabble in sadomasochism, and still others regularly self-medicate. Oh, and there are actually bears named Gay Bear, Crack Bear, and Tanked Bear. I guarantee you know someone who will find Acton’s perverse imaginings a riot.

Least I Could Do: I Am Not a Credible Source

Ryan Sohmer and Lar de Souza are known for not one, but two famous webcomics. WoW fans might know them best for Looking for Group,  but Least I Could Do has to be their most consistently funny collaborative work. Whether you have a self-aware narcissist on your x-mas list that you’d like to spitefully mock, or if you just know someone who likes sex  jokes often embedded with pop cultural commentary, this collection of LICD’s sixth year of strips is a no-brainer.

Horror/Sci-Fi

Jan’s Atomic Heart

Robots, revolutionaries, and conspiracy plots abound in this future thriller set in Germany. Artist/writer Simon Roy might be new to comics, but his debut effort is a radtastic romp through an impressively fleshed-out alternate universe.  You don’t have to think robot terrorists plot are sweet to be able to appreciate receiving this book as a gift, but it probably helps.

The Nobody

Jeff Lemire appears twice on this list, and for good reason. The Nobody, a modern retelling of Orson Welles’ the Invisible Man, is a contemporary work of genius. Both poignant and faithful in tone to the original, the Nobody successfully transplants the mythos created by Welles to modern small town North America. With art perfectly matched to the book’s somber tone of isolation, the Nobody would make a swell gift for anyone with a love for classic thrillers, small town mysteries, or David Lynch films.

Heartfelt

The Complete Essex County

The second Lemire title that I mentioned, this trilogy collects all of Jeff’s individual Essex County tales (Tales from the Farm, Ghost Stories, and The Country Nurse) into one indispensable volume. Jeff has a talent for using his imagery an artfully sparse dialogue to tap into some of the most powerful emotions of the human experience; loss, loneliness, and ultimately, the sense of unspoken kinship that universally keeps families together.  I highly recommend this book for pretty well anyone, though hockey fans or individuals who grew up in rural surroundings might get a little something extra out of it.

True Loves (Vol. 2)

Jason Turner, together with his wife Manien Bothma, conspired to create the first volume of True Loves in 2006.  What resulted was an intriguing, genuine look at the beginnings of a relationship between two young residents of Vancouver, BC. Funny at times, while other times introspective and thoughtful, True Loves highlighted the ups and downs of an honest romance out on Canada’s West Coast. They released the second volume this past year, exploring the trials of the pair from the first volume as they endure the very real trials of a long-term relationship once the ‘puppy love’ phase has long since passed. Just a few panels of this comic are all it takes to be hooked. Also check out Turner’s website for samples of the fantastic art.

Hip titles for younger readers

Emiko Superstar

Written by Mariko Tamaki (of the provocatively well-worded graphic novel Skim) and illustrated by Steve Rolston, Emiko Superstar takes on teenage identity transition and self-discovery with a fresh sense of realism rarely present in young adult fiction. I don’t mean this book is filled with sex, drugs, and violence, for those reading into my previous statement – just that it doesn’t reek of the same dishonesty you might see in, say, a coming-of-age film starring some former mouseketeer (or something along those lines). More importantly though, Emiko Superstar really is a fun read.

Jellaby: Monster in the City

The second Jellaby book by Kean Soo is probably best bought together alongside the first, as Soo originally intended them to be a single, 300 page story. This Shuster Award-winning-story spins the tale of Portia, a ten year old girl who just recently moved to a new school, and her friendship with the titular character – a six foot tall purple monster named Jellaby. The story is undeniably charming, the artwork distinctive and eye-catching; really, what Jellaby represents is an instant children’s classic.

Hey, it’s a miscellaneous category!

Overqualified

The least directly comic-related item on my gift suggestion list, Overqualified qualifies as a great gift idea for fans of the webcomic A Softer World. Joey Comeau, who writes ASW, penned this collection of cringe-inducing cover letters as a project that originally started with several fake cover letters he actually made and mailed out. Through a series of these cover letters, Overqualified tells a story of a protagonist rife with human flaws as he candidly spills his guts out to strangers in desperate bids for employment.  Fans of A Softer World will immediately recognize Joey’s trademark dark witticism present in the letters.

Topatoco’s Collection of Holiday Greeting Cards

While Topatoco is an international purveyor of webcomic-related goodies and not a dedicated source of Canadian content, I would be remiss not to point out the excellent selection of Holiday Greeting Cards they have available for order. Be sure to check out card designs by Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics and Kate Beaton of Hark! A Vagrant.

Abominable Charles Christopher Signed Prints

Karl Kerschl’s epic weekly webcomic has earned him a healthy helping of accolades for its skilful narration and beautiful art. While technically this isn’t something exclusively released in 2009, you can place orders for recent strips to be printed, signed, and delivered for a very reasonable price.  Who wouldn’t love an artfully illustrated print of the large, furry, loveable (and easily confused) Charles Christopher?

This week we don’t have a grand amount of news kicking around the site, and we’re between interviews with a few choice comic creators and artists that we’ll be featuring in the coming weeks.

So in this lull, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank those of you who’ve been following us to date, and give you a little update on where we’re at, both as a site and a blog.

If you’re experiencing a nagging sensation of deja vu, it’s probably because I posted something similar roughly 100 days into the Fabler Blog. Since it’s been another hundred and some-odd days since that, this is somewhat appropriate.

Though we’ve been around since last April, in a lot of ways the Fabler is still just getting its bearings. Like a newborn in its first year of life, we’re still all puky and uncomfortably soft on the back of our head. That is to say, we’re working on building a solid direction.

The main portion of the Fabler is still in Beta development, though it has undergone some radical aesthetic changes and as we speak is being improved with yet more fine tuning. We’ve had a handful of talented artists share some of their creative material, and we anticipate seeing more and more stream onto the site as we go into ‘010.

As always, Bruno Steppuhn is the go-to person for news about developments with the Fabler itself. I know he has some interesting ideas that we’ll see rolled out in the near future, so keep your eyelids peeled for that.

We’ve had some super fantastic artists and writers agree to let me barrage them with questions over the last few months, including the pleasantly quirky Jesse Jacobs, A Softer World writer Joey Comeau, and soon to be high profile up-and-comer Simon Roy.

We also threw our hat in to the pool of organizations and individuals supporting Indy Comic Book Week. Which, by the way, is coming up fast! Aspiring creators and indy mainstays alike, you should probably check out the ICBW website, if you haven’t already. Increased exposure + helping local comic shops increase revenue on a Diamond Comics no-ship week = an eruption of awesome.

Interview-wise, I’ve tried to retain a focus on Canadians operating in the field, but we’re very open to featuring the creative talents of anyone anywhere on the globe.

Except for Boise, Idaho. We don’t showcase artists from Boise.*

We’re looking in the coming months to profile some of the contributors we’ve had on the Fabler. So if you’re a contributor and you’re looking to have your brain publicly poked, drop me a holler at kevin (at) thefabler.com. Or if you’re not yet a contributor, signing up is as easy as clicking here right now.

You could also use that address if you’d like to let us know what you’ve thought of the Fabler Blog so far. In the interviews I’ve featured here, I’ve tried to strike a balance between summarizing featured talent to those potentially unfamiliar with the interviewees, and keeping it interesting for those who’ve heard artists X’s backstory fifty-odd times already.

The focus is generally the same: who this person is, why you should (or shouldn’t) care about them, why they do what they do, and what they consider ‘good’ to mean in terms of comics or comic industry developments. The results I’ve gotten from this interview starting point have been consistently positive.

No one ‘falls in’ to comics; everyone I’ve talked to that’s operating in the medium in one way or another is extremely passionate about what they do, and everyone has a different take on what a comic can be or what it can mean to different people.

In this sense I’m pretty fortunate to have such a diverse base of creative individuals to pull opinions and perspectives from.

In any case, to avoid rambling further, I should probably wrap up by saying thanks again for reading the posts and checking out the art on the main site.

Rock.

-Kevin de Vlaming

*The Fabler, The Fabler Blog, and myself actually have no problem showcasing artists from Boise. This line was facetious and intended in no way as a slight against Idaho’s proudest gem.

Joey Comeau sees more than most people.

At least, this an easy impression to receive after reading any of his work. Whether it’s three lines of text he’s penned for the popular webcomic A Softer World, or six paragraphs he wrote as part of a bogus job application for Overqualified, it becomes apparent pretty quickly that Joey has a gift for reading between the lines.

For those unfamiliar with Comeau’s work, he first gained widespread attention as co-creator and writer of A Softer World – a webcomic in which Joey’s captions provide fictional context to the photographs of Emily Horne.  Joey’s captions vary from subtle insights into the quirks of human relationships to darkly witty cracks about obsession, depravity, and shamelessly egocentric behaviour in general. It’s awesome, and you should read it (if you don’t already).

From A Softer World, the Ontario-based Comeau launched into the realm of short fiction, producing stories and essays for a number of magazines (some of those are here, while others can be found collected in his book, It’s Too Late To Say I’m Sorry). He also wrote a book called Lockpick Pornography, which he has referred to as “a gender-queer adventure story”, that was originally published online and later serialized through Loose Teeth Press.

Comeau has recently been touring select cities along the West Coast of Canada and the US to promote his latest book, Overqualified.

Overqualified, which was released last April through ECW Press,  presents a collection of cover letters sent as job applications by a particularly candid individual who happens to be named ‘Joey Comeau’.

Said character (and he is a character, at least as far as we know – Joey is tight-lipped about the exact amount of fiction present in his letters) is in the midst of experiencing some life-altering events, and consequently, any conscious filter that would usually prevent him from, say, disclosing his sexual fantasies in a cover letter, is notably absent.

As the cover letters pour out to corporation after corporation, a narrative weaves itself through the subtext which is alternatingly heart-wrenching and hilarious, obscene yet familiar.

Where Overqualified succeeds most is in Comeau’s ability to isolate and express those commonalities of the human experience which often go uncommented upon  – to read what’s between the lines, and then take that message and put it into the mouth of a character who is no longer capable of keeping it from spilling out everywhere.

I  caught up with Joey just a few days after he returned from his recent tour, and he was friendly enough to answer a few questions I had about Overqualified. He even had the patience to field several questions about A Softer World, which was just plain decent of him.

The transcript is below:

KD: For starters, tell me about the tour. How was it, and how long were you gone for?

JC: It was three and a half weeks,  and it was good! It was pretty successful, and we sold a lot of books. The turn outs were good even in some of the smaller venues.

KD: That’s great to hear.

Let’s get into a few questions about A Softer World, and then go from there to Overqualified.

You and Emily have been working on A Softer World for over six years now. How do you go about keeping the content fresh, not just for your fans, but also for yourself?

JC: Well, by not limited myself in terms of subject. It’s a matter of writing about things that are of interest to us at the time – so, hopefully, we never run out of things that interest us in our lives. Then we’ve got more troubles than just writing the comic.

KD: When you’re coming up with captions for A Softer World, do you try to consciously maintain a balance between your more introspective, thoughtful comics and the more straight-up humorous ones?

JC: Sometimes we’ll hold off a comic. Like if we come up with a really good, serious one but the last few have been kind of downers, we’ll say, let’s save this one and use it later and instead use one that’s a bit more upbeat.

KD: You recently referred to a collaboration you had in the works with Chris Hemsworth in a post on your blog. Is that something you can talk about at all?

JC: Yeah, we worked on it for a bit but then he just recently was moving, so we had to put it on hold. I hope to get back to it, though.

It’s sort of a more traditional comic, with nine panels  on a page and about seven pages per story. We’ve got a couple of stories already written, it’s just a matter of illustrating them and refining the script.

KD: Is doing a second regular webcomic something that you’ve ever seriously considered?

JC: I haven’t considered really doing a second continuing webcomic. And with Chris it was more a matter of finding a project to work on, and the web just being a good way to display it before making books.

KD: Let’s talk about Overqualified.

As I understand it, Overqualified started as a few job cover letters that you actually sent out to employers, which then became the inspiration for the letters that appeared in the book.

Where do the Overqualified Letters that you have archived on the Softer World website fit into this?

JC: The ones on the Softer World website are the ones that I actually sent. It was sort of an ongoing project. It started off being once a week, and then it became whenever I came up with one. The idea was originally to make a collection of those, but then I had the idea of making a novel that sort of collected them but also told a story through them.

So that involved modifying some of them, and writing whole new ones, and sort of putting it together like that.

KD: I’ve seen a few different things posted about the fact versus fiction content in your letters. Can you comment on how much of the book is purely fictional, and how much is taken directly from your own experiences?

JC: Not too specifically, without ruining the fun of it.

There’s a fair amount of fiction, and a fair amount of fact in it. Some of the events are ones that actually happened, some are ones that match the truth of the book in terms of tone – they’re sort of true in spirit, even though they didn’t actually happen – and some of them are just are funnier, and are there for the joke and not there because they’re true.

KD: To what degree do you feel your internet fame from A Softer World carries over into your success as a novelist-slash-writer of short stories?

JC: Well, it’s good to have people who are interested in reading the things that you do. So you have a book come out, and you already have people who are interested to see it.

They won’t necessarily like it just because they like the webcomic, but it’s definitely nice to have that audience willing to give it a chance.

KD: Can you shed any light on what we can expect from you next?

JC: Well I’ve got a novel coming out in the spring that’s based on a horror project I did with Emily called One Bloody Thing After Another. Originally it was a zine released in chapters, with Emily taking a photo to illustrate each chapter.

It’s part horror, and part weird/sad/funny lesbian story.

Thanks go to Mr. Comeau for chatting with me! If you’re interested in seeing more from Joey, you can check out his Livejournal, Twitter feed, and of course, his stuff over on A Softer World.