http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs Fearless. Thoughtful. Witty. Canadian. And Opinionated. Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:09:15 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Lynda Barry visited Toronto recently to speak at a book festival, and to teach her class on creative writing, "Writing the Unthinkable." In her lively festival talks — which felt more like happenings than your typical button-down, staid author's reading — she presented excerpts from her latest book, What It ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/11/17/a-conversation-with-lynda-barry/ To celebrate the second-best holiday (Thanksgiving's got it beat), Four-Colour Words presents to you a lazy post full of, uh, singular images from horror manga! This one's from Yusaku Hanakuma's Tokyo Zombie! Don't click for more if you hate fun or are easily grossed out or something! --- Another one from Tokyo ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/10/30/japanese-comics-wish-you-a-happy-halloween/ Every fall the various colleges at the University of Toronto hold massive, weekend-long book sales, letting donated books go at bargain prices, with proceeds supporting the college libraries. In the prologue to Seth’s book-nerd pamphlet, 40 Cartoon Books of Interest, he celebrates these sales as one of the vanishing IRL ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/10/23/in-praise-of-university-book-sales/ Shary Boyle isn't a comics artist, though comics readers are happy to claim her as one of their own. I first started paying attention to her work when it appeared in the 2006 volume of Kramers Ergot, a comics anthology that scrambles divisions between comics and other visual arts. Boyle's ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/10/08/otherworld-uprising-by-shary-boyle/ I hate zombies. I loathe the marketing of "culture." But I admire Chester Brown. And I think I love Chester Brown's comic strip about zombies attending cultural events. For those of you who don't live in Toronto (and, believe it or not Torontonians, these people do exist), for the past several ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/09/22/chester-browns-zombie-romance/ A survey of Stephen King's brief (and grisly) foray into horror comic books The end days are upon us—Marvel Comics will begin serializing an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand beginning this Wednesday. Jared Bland and I intend to weigh in regularly on this, but for now, a quick look back ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/09/10/king-and-comics/ I'll leave the Doug Wright Awards alone soon enough, I promise, but first I wanted to briefly consider each of this year's winners, since winning an award is supposed to heighten a book's profile, right? And I try to play into people's expectations whenever possible. Today we'll look at Southern ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/08/28/southern-cross-and-the-magical-life-of-long-tack-sam/ Seth draws back the curtain on the "solitary pursuit" that is cartooning In the September issue of The Walrus, Seth draws back the curtain on the "solitary pursuit" that is cartooning. In the process, he also manages to speak to how we experience our own daily routines, and what it's ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/08/21/an-interview-with-seth-part-one/ Last Friday, I attended the Doug Wright Awards for Canadian cartooning at the Toronto Reference Library. Rather than inaugurating this blog with a post detailing a vague statement of intent I probably won't stick to, I figure dishing about the Wright Awards will serve that introductory purpose just as well. ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/08/14/the-doug-wright-awards-2008-2/