Tangent - Canada: FUCK YEAH

AW SHIT IT'S CANADA DAY EVERYBODY.

TIME TO SHOUT OUT TO EVERYONE WHO HAS MADE THIS COUNTRY AWESOME AS HELL.

Review - Toronto Comic Arts Festival 2012

I spent this past weekend wearing out the soles of my newly-purchased shoes walking up and down the length of Yonge Street in Toronto and padding around the Toronto Reference Library just north of Bloor. The library has been playing host to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival since 2009, also the first year I attended. I’ve gone every May since then, adding more and more people to my little comic adoring posse and meeting several print and web artists I’m a big fan of, including comics theorist Scott McCloud, Ultimate Spider-Man penciller Stuart Immonen, Queen of the Webcomics Kate Beaton and my latest favourite writer, Jeff Lemire.

                                         Pictured L-R: Myself, Chris Mantil, Sam, Anjuli

So after spending a couple hours in a downtown diner, we walked over to the library and got our comics appreciation weekend underway.

Review - Ravenna Gets

Written by Tony Burgess

Published by Anvil Press

A story:

A person—who they are, what they do, what cares and woes they may have are all irrelevant—goes about their daily business, maybe slacks off, maybe quibbles with another, and is then suddenly and horribly slaughtered.

Rinse and repeat and the final product is Tony Burgess' Ravenna Gets.

Review - Fall on Your Knees

Written by Ann-Marie MacDonald
Published by Vintage Canada

If taking a Canadian literature course this year has taught me two things, here they are:

1.) The "Canadian experience" cannot be examined holistically until one rejects the notion of a homogenous culture and recognizes that it is comprised of a wide variety of diaspora and traditions.

2.) Canadian literature is fucked up.

I don't mean to bash my Home and Native Land with the second point, or suggest that those who provide Canada's literary output are themselves dysfunctional; no country ever fully works out its issues. But we Canadians seem to have a knack for piecing together narratives rich, fascinating and macabre. Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees is no exception to the rule.