whazamo
WHAZAMO! Ontario Graphic Novel Month is an online comics celebration curated by Vepo Studios for Open Book: Toronto, created to showcase the talented graphic novelists and illustrators published by the Ontario publishers, as well as draw attention to the new stars of the Canadian graphic novel and comic book scene.
Whazamo! will feature weekly video content covering graphic novels, comics for younger-readers and web-comics; profiles of creators; and a Cartoonist-In-Residence, the incredible Clayton Hanmer (you can find his page here).
Whazamo! is presented in collaboration with the Organization of Book Publishers of Ontario and the Toronto Comic Arts Festival and it welcomes you.
Submitted by CTON on February 5, 2010 - 3:20pm.
Submitted by CTON on February 1, 2010 - 9:21am.
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Submitted by CTON on December 4, 2009 - 7:05pm.
Submitted by CTON on December 4, 2009 - 7:05pm.
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Submitted by CTON on November 13, 2009 - 10:25am.
For more info on kei cars in Toronto check out Right Drive Inc., where I bought mine. -cton
Submitted by CTON on November 8, 2009 - 12:34pm.
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Submitted by CTON on October 23, 2009 - 5:58pm.
Submitted by CTON on October 17, 2009 - 10:35am.
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Submitted by CTON on October 2, 2009 - 6:10pm.
For more info on kei trucks in Toronto check out Right Drive Inc., where I bought mine. -cton
Submitted by CTON on September 29, 2009 - 2:46pm.
(Sorry for the delay on this folks... should have been posted Sept.25/09 - CTON)
Submitted by CTON on September 18, 2009 - 4:47pm.
Submitted by CTON on September 11, 2009 - 8:54am.
Submitted by CTON on September 8, 2009 - 10:58am.
Submitted by Rebecca on September 1, 2009 - 8:47am.
When Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - 8:00pm Details
Submitted by CTON on August 28, 2009 - 3:52pm.
Submitted by CTON on August 21, 2009 - 9:34am.
Submitted by CTON on August 14, 2009 - 9:53am.
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Submitted by CTON on July 31, 2009 - 2:47pm.
Submitted by CTON on July 24, 2009 - 12:49pm.
Submitted by Rebecca on July 21, 2009 - 12:23pm.
When Saturday, October 3, 2009 - 10:00am Details
Submitted by CTON on July 17, 2009 - 5:17pm.
Submitted by CTON on July 10, 2009 - 12:30pm.
Submitted by Vepo Studios on July 6, 2009 - 10:38am.
When Whazamo was getting ready to launch, one of the first artists to get back to us was Jeff Lemire, an amazing Toronto cartoonist best known for Essex County, a haunting graphic novel series about life on a small town Ontario farm. Now he’s back with a whole slew of new projects, including The Nobody , an update on the Invisible Man, the trailer for which you can find here. Though we missed it during May, we knew we had to share it with you now—think of it as the Whazamo bonus track!
Name: Jeff Lemire
Hometown: Woodslee, Ontario
Website: http://jefflemire.blogspot.com...
Role: Cartoonist
Submitted by CTON on July 3, 2009 - 10:40am.
Welcome to Rodeo Magic, my new webcomic for Open Book Toronto. It will be running once a week, usually posted on fridays, and will follow the adventures & observations of a comic-loving hick who has relocated to the Big Smoke to pursue his dream of working as a professional creative person. Enjoy!
Submitted by Vepo Studios on May 29, 2009 - 1:27pm.
Artist and writer Lorenz Peter takes to the tracks to explain what the phenomenon of Dark Adaptation means, and why he named his seminal full-length graphic novel after it. Between bizarro animation and a strange encounter on the railways, Peter walks us through his creative process, a hardscrabble upbringing in a Northern Alberta oil town, and the oft painful affair of transmuting personal experience into art.
Submitted by CTON on May 29, 2009 - 12:41pm.
 Two years ago at TCAF, I met a comic artist from the UK named Tom Humberstone. Somehow he was invited to Pen Club (more on this later) where he quickly became a welcomed guest during his short visit. Over the past couple years, he kept in touch with some of the other Pen Club members including Anne Koyama of Koyama Press, and also produced an entire library of comics (a few obtaining critical success in the UK...winning an Eagle Award in '08 for best B&W UK comic). During this time, he also produced a blog inspired comic book about a road trip he took across the States during their Democratic Primaries, called My Fellow Americans. You may wonder, what does a Brit comic dude have anything to do with Canadian comics? Well two things: a very small Canadian publisher, Koyama Press helped Tom out on some of these projects, AND he is thinking about moving to Toronto soon (which would make him a 'Landed Canadian Comic Artist'). Anyways, besides all of this, Tom is a total dude and deserves some press over here in Canada (a place he might be calling home soon).
Submitted by Vepo Studios on May 27, 2009 - 11:20pm.
Name: George A. Walker
Hometown: Brantford Ont. Although I’ve lived in Toronto since 1979. Toronto.
Web site: www.george-walker.com
Role: Illustrator, graphic novelist (Book of Hours); writer (Woodcut Artists Handbook , Graphic Witness ,pub. Firefly Books)(Inverted Line and Images from the Neocerebellum, pub. Porcupine’s Quill); Acquisitions editor of the Graphic Novel Series at The Porcupine’s Quill
Latest Work: Name of Book, Press, Graphic Witness ,Firefly Books, Images from the Neocerebellum, Porcupine’s Quill and an upcoming trade edition of Book of Hours 2011 Porcupine’s Quill
What’s It About in a Nutshell: Visual narratives : the image as text.
Submitted by CTON on May 26, 2009 - 3:02pm.
Here's a little ditty showing my ritual for creating a comic for Owl Magazine, a great Canadian children's magazine. I do a regular column called 'CTON's Corner' whith this little orange dude and a green blob, named 'Blob'. Its a ton of fun, and allows me a lot of freedom to create. (This comic first appeared in Craig Battle's blog - he is the editor of Owl Magazine).
One of the biggest questions I get asked by people is 'how do you think of a comic'? Well thats a good question.
Submitted by Vepo Studios on May 25, 2009 - 12:26pm.
Name: Brian McLachlan
Hometown: Toronto
Website: www.theprincessplanet.com
Role: Cartoonist
Latest Work:
Ticket To Space , Scholastic Canada
What’s It About in a Nutshell:
After a clerical error, a 13 year old girl gains a chance to go aboard the space shuttle. The space agency tries to make the pre-flight training ridiculously hard that she'll give up and they won't have to put a child into a dangerous situation. Ha! Good luck, space agency!
What first inspired you to create comics or graphic novels?
Submitted by CTON on May 23, 2009 - 10:23am.
Way back at the beginning of May I visited a great local Toronto comic book launch of some young, new Canadian creators here in the city. I was so impressed with their work, along with the massive amount of their work, that I thought it would be interesting to hear a bit about them, what drives them, and how they got into Canadian comics.
Generally I'm under the opinion that one shouldn't be interviewed until they're well into their career with much experience under their belt. It is theoretically only at that more senior point in one's creative life that their words & ideas might hold the most value to readers, younger creatives, and humanity in general. In the case of the Wowee Zonk crew, they are all very young and very new, but I felt it was an excellent opportunity to find out what makes new artists like themselves tick, as well as showcase an extremely talented group of (relative) newbies to comics. Hopefully their words, and already massive piles of work, will inspire other Canadian comic makers to get off their collective asses and do some work! I know they've lit a bit of a fire under my butt.
Submitted by Vepo Studios on May 21, 2009 - 11:45am.
No Girls Allowed! Willow Dawson and Susan Hughes spin historical yarns in their graphic novel about women that dressed as men for fortune, fame and love. Follow the lives of women vikings, doctors, generals and soldiers from the age of Pharaohs to the Civil War.
Submitted by Vepo Studios on May 20, 2009 - 7:52am.
Name: John Bell
Hometown: Montreal-born Haligonian living in Ottawa
Website: http://www.collectionscanada.g...
Role: Comics Historian
Latest Work: Invaders from the North: How Canada Conquered the Comic Book Universe (Dundurn, 2006)
What’s It About in a Nutshell:The history of comics and graphic narrative in English Canada, with emphasis on comic books.
What first inspired you to write about comics? I grew up in the 1950s, when comics were a mass medium – and a kid’s salvation.
Submitted by CTON on May 19, 2009 - 1:41pm.
I'm an unlikely comic-book nerd. I've played rugby. I've driven tractors. I've renovated houses. I've worked on cars. I love beer and eating steak. Plus, I've stopped a run-away team of horses. You might wonder, why am I writing a comic blog for Open Book Toronto then? What the hell does this hick know about comics? Well good question.
Submitted by Vepo Studios on May 17, 2009 - 7:54pm.
Name: Kate Beaton
Hometown: Mabou, Nova Scotia
Website: www.harkavagrant.com
Role: comic artist
Latest Work: Never Learn Anything From History, self published
What’s It About in a Nutshell:A collection of comics, mostly poking fun at historical events and people.
What first inspired you to create comics or graphic novels? It's just been something I've done for myself for a long time, and now for an audience.
What for you makes a comic or graphic novel AWESOME!? Ah that is a hard question, I think it is different for every example.
Submitted by Vepo Studios on May 14, 2009 - 12:06pm.
Name: Marta Chudolinska
Hometown: Toronto, ON (as well as St. John's, NL; Vancouver, BC; Mississauga, ON; Warsaw, Poland)
Website: www.backandforthbook.wordpress...
Role: artist
Latest Work:Back + Forth, The Porcupine's Quill
available at http://www.mcnallyrobinson.com...
What’s It About in a Nutshell:
Submitted by Vepo Studios on May 13, 2009 - 10:13am.
Submitted by CTON on May 12, 2009 - 7:00pm.
This past weekend was the comic event of the year in Toronto in terms of the type of comics I prefer. The Toronto Comic Arts Festival (also known as TCAF to comic nerds) happens every two years and is put on by the Beguiling (mentioned before). For 2009, the venue was at the Toronto Reference Library which is huge and sprawling with all sorts of nooks'n' crannies to get lost and hide comics in & around. I had the opportunity to share a table with my artist collective, Trio Magnus, and my first publisher, Koyama Press. We had all sorts of goodies for sale, including a whole wack of great books.
Submitted by Vepo Studios on May 12, 2009 - 9:52am.
Name: Evan Munday
Hometown: Toronto? (Originally Ramsey, NJ, or Oakville, ON)
Website: www.idontlikemundays.com and www.sketchkrieg.blogspot.com
Role: Sometimes illustrator, sometimes cartoonist
Latest Work: Stripmalling (written by Jon Paul Fiorentino), ECW Press
Submitted by Vepo Studios on May 8, 2009 - 5:20pm.
Emily Horne and Joey Comeau, creators of A Softer World, demonstrate how their highly popular web comic is made, and discuss how it came to be. Dinosaur Comics creator Ryan North guest stars. Look for all 3 creators at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival! And you can find
A Softer World at: http://www.asofterworld.com
and Dinosaur Comics at: http://www.quantz.com
Submitted by amy on May 8, 2009 - 3:32pm.
This Saturday night at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto the annual Doug Wright Awards, which recognize excellence in Canadian cartooning, will be handed out as part of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. The free event will also serve as the launch of The Collected Doug Wright, the first of two volumes that will collect the works of the late cartoonist Doug Wright, whose comic strips “Nipper” and “Doug Wright’s Family” appeared in Canadian newspapers in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
Submitted by CTON on May 8, 2009 - 1:12pm.
For those of you who don't know me or are too lazy to read my bio, I'm an illustrator by trade which is a great job, but (sometimes) it can be daunting when I'm asked to draw very mundane or structured images. So when I see younger illustrators & comic creators drawing whatever the hell they want, it really gets me excited... especially when they're based here in Toronto!
This past wednesday night, I had the absolute pleasure to see such a group of illustrators at Keep 6 Contemporary Gallery here in the city (of Tdot). This group of seven (cheezy Canadian Art joke here) are producing some really wacky'n'weird comics and artwork which, in my opinion, might be some of the most exciting and creative stuff to be seen around these parts recently.
Submitted by Vepo Studios on May 8, 2009 - 10:34am.
Name: Ashley Spires
Hometown: Tsawwassen, BC
Website: www.ashleyspires.com and www.chickentika.com
Role: writer/illustrator
Latest Work: Binky the Space Cat, Kids Can Press (Coming August, 2009)
What’s It About in a Nutshell: A delusional house cat entertains notions of exploring outerspace (which is anything outside of his house) and fighting aliens (all flying insects) while secretly building a rocket ship in his litter box.
Submitted by Vepo Studios on May 7, 2009 - 10:13am.
Whazamo! Profiles looks at Kid Koala, who kicks off the TCAF celebrations tonight with his Loud Party.
He's also about to release Space Cadet, a graphic novel told through 120 white-on-black etchings, about a a girl who was raised by a guardian robot, to become a famous space explorer. Find out more about Kid Koala's latest comics below!
Name: Eric San
Hometown: Montreal, Quebec
Website: www.kidkoala.com
Role: illustrator, scratch dj, diaper changer
Latest Work: Space Cadet
What’s It About in a Nutshell: Parenthood and space travel
Submitted by Open Book Toronto Guest on May 7, 2009 - 6:40am.
Flight (Never wait for a bus or streetcar again). 38% Invisibility (Hey, what you do with it is up to you). 22% Super-Speed Reading. (Finally a way to get through all those books!) 19% Mind-Bullets. 22%
Submitted by CTON on May 6, 2009 - 9:51am.
Last weekend on Saturday it was Free Comic Book Day around the world (as described in my previous post). I had the honour of sitting my butt down & signing comics in front of the Beguiling with a whole wack of amazing Canadian comic creators including Brian McLachlan, Chip Zdarsky, Kate Beaton, Willow Dawson, Ryan North, and Ramon Perez to name a few. Not that I'm a big name dropper, but I was pretty excited to be amongst such talent!
Submitted by Vepo Studios on May 5, 2009 - 11:06am.
Name: Troy Little
Hometown: Summerside, PEI but spent many years living in Ottawa.
Website: www.meanwhilestudios.com
Role: writer / artist (sometimes publisher).
Latest Work: Angora Napkin, IDW Publishing
What’s It About in a Nutshell:
Submitted by Vepo Studios on May 4, 2009 - 3:44pm.
Emily Horne and Joey Comeau, creators of A Softer World get stuck up a tree discussing what their highly popular web comic is all about. Ryan North guest stars in this preview for the full story of "The Making of A Softer World", coming later this week on Whazamo! Look for all 3 creators at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this weekend.
Submitted by CTON on May 1, 2009 - 11:25am.
Free Comic Book Day is this saturday! Yep, free. Just head to your local participating comic book shop, and they'll have a bunch of free comics available from awesome publishers like Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics, Marvel, and DC. These are specially produced editions or collections of comics specifically for the Free Comic Book Day event held around the world. It's a great way of promoting comics and getting folks (including kids) out and into the wonderful world of comics!
Submitted by Vepo Studios on May 1, 2009 - 12:05am.
Whazamo! is a cavalcade of all that is excellent in Canadian comics and graphic novels, inspired by the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Throughout May we will showcase comics by Ontario's independent book publishers, as well as present unique video and interview profiles of the best Canadian cartoonists in bookstores and on the web. Why comics for Open Book: Toronto? Why not! Toronto is a comic-book town.
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Whazamo Writer in Residence Whazamo! May 1 to May 31, 2009Clayton Hanmer (aka CTON) is a Toronto-based illustrator, author and graphic artist. He is the creator of CTON's Corner, a popular feature in OWL Magazine, as well as the author/illustrator of CTON's Super A-Maze-ing Year of Crazy Comics.
Rodeo Magic, by CTON
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Coming Next MonthPaul Vermeersch
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About Whazamo WHAZAMO! is curated by Ian Daffern and produced by Ian Daffern and Tate Young from Vepo Studios.
VEPO STUDIOS
Vepo Studios is an independent production company that develops and produces short films, videos for the arts, culture and publishing industries. You can see more of our work at www.vepostudios.com.
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