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?

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.