One of the comics works I am most looking forward to this spring is Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City, coming from D&Q in the US and Canada and Cape in the UK. I love the unassuming and unpretentious way in which Delisle actually lets himself live in the other culture that he is writing about, not judging, just taking it in and then reproducing it in a lovely, deceptively simple but very effective art style that makes those other lands, peoples and cultures very accessible and understandable. His previous comics-as-travel-lit works like Pyongyang and especially his Burma Chronicles are among my favourite comics works and I am excited to see what he makes of the Holy City that has been a crossroads of history, culture, trade and faith for centuries. Our chums at D&Q have dropped us a line to say that Guy is embarking on his first ever North American tour, from NYC to Boston to Los Angeles and north of the border to lovely Toronto. I am quite jealous – if you are in one of these cities do yourself a favour, get the book and go see Delisle.

NYC Tuesday, April 24th 7PM Housing Works with Desert Island

BOSTON Wednesday, April 25th 7PM Harvard Bookstore (Cambridge)

WASHINGTON DC Thursday, April 26th DC 7:30PM Politics & Prose

LOS ANGELES Saturday, April 28th LA 5:30PM Skylight Books

IOWA CITY Monday, April 30th 7PM Prairie Lights

MINNEAPOLIS Tuesday, May 1st 7:30PM Magers & Quinn

CHICAGO Wednesday, May 2nd 7PM At the Oak Park Library with Book Table

TORONTO Thursday, May 3rd 7PM Carlton Cinema with TCAF

TORONTO Saturday, May 5th & Sunday May 6th Toronto Comics Art Festival

And in the meantime you can always check out Guy’s website, which is also available in English, here, and Foreign Policy has a substantial set of preview pages from Jerusalem online to whet our appetites, have a look.

Written by Jose-Louis Bocquet and Jen-Luc Fromental, illustrated by Stanislas Barthélémy

Drawn And Quarterly

Bouquet, Fromental and Barthélémy deliver a biographical graphic novel of Georges Prosper Remi, the man known the world over as Hergé. His work, his art, his creations are forever associated with his name, his books sell in their millions around the world.

Tintin and Hergé were ever present in my childhood, and possibly, probably yours. Each weekly trip to the library started with a look at the picture book section – the place I knew they put the Tintin, Asterix, and occasional Lucky Luke books.

So this looked like an excellent book – immediately full of potential, it looked so good – inside and out, with Stanislas cleverly producing art that is wonderfully familiar in style, yet not a direct copy of Hergé.

(1914: Young Hergé at work that will consume a lifetime. From The Adventures Of Hergé by Bocquet, Fromental and Barthélémy. Published by Drawn & Quarterly)

But although I’m a huge fan of the series, I’m obviously not as big a fan as many are, especially not the authors of The Adventures Of Hergé.

I would imagine that anyone completely immersed in both Hergé and Tintin would find so much in here – in fact I only have to look as far as our own Wim Lockefeer, who wrote about The Adventures Of Herge in 2011, and found it far more satisfying than I.

To be honest, I found it’s episodic nature; starting with a 7-year old Hergé; precocious and rather bratty, and finishing 62 pages later with Hergé’s death in 1983 just too inconsequential, giving me glimpses when I wanted details. I wanted The Adventures Of Hergé to be so much more than a brief primer of a life, no matter how beautifully well drawn and presented it is.

(1928: Father Norbet Wallez, publisher of the XXe Siècle, and the man who not only pushed Herge into his life’s work, but introduced him to first wife Germain, the secretary at XXe Siècle. From The Adventures Of Hergé by Bocquet, Fromental and Barthélémy. Published by Drawn & Quarterly)

All I left the book with was a desire to find out more, and a frustration that I hadn’t been provided with a more satisfying, in depth look at a life.

And from just what I already knew, and the glimpses offered here, it was a fascinating life of incident: A troublesome early childhood, struggles to find a career as a journalist, reluctance to embrace his cartooning, his meeting  and decades later reunion with Chang Chong-Jen, Hergé’s relationship with first wife Germaine, his affair and later marriage to Tintin colourist Fanny Vlamynck, the numerous artistic collaborators – including many of Europe’s greats – Jacobs, Martin, De Moore etc, the talk of collaboration during WWII, the problems working in post war Belgium, the importance of Robert Casterman in restarting Hergé’s post-war career, and his later life struggling with pressures of his failing marriage, the expectations for his work, continued desire from all sides to see him produce more, an ongoing battle with depression and always fearful of the terrible whiteness.

That, and much more, is glimpsed, hinted at, teased…. but never enough, never enough.

(Facing the whiteness…. From The Adventures Of Hergé by Bocquet, Fromental and Barthélémy. Published by Drawn & Quarterly)

There’s just not enough on any of that here. And there’s precious little background detail to the books themselves, again just glimpses, a taster of what I wanted to read – this fascinating little glimpse into the research for Red Sea Sharks in 1956 (below) for example with Hergé and his team setting sail across the North Sea from Sweden.

Yet based on just a couple of pages I imagine there are countless stories that could have been used from Hergé’s research travels. If only….

(Research at sea in ’56 – with Hergé and one of his many unsung collaborators – Bob De Moor. From The Adventures Of Hergé by Bocquet, Fromental and Barthélémy. Published by Drawn & Quarterly)

Nor do we go into much depth regarding the influences and references that Hergé took from his own life – again, a fascinating aspect of the man and his works that is briefly, tantalisingly touched upon.

In the end I found it fascinating, yet utterly frustrating – a biography that simply skates over Hergé’s life, dropping in every so often to key events, never dallying, never really taking enough time over anything to satisfy.

Yes, it looks lovely, yes, the packaging, all dressed up to mimic the famous works of the man himself, is absolutely perfect, and there’s obviously something very fitting about having it come in at the same sort of page count as a regular Tintin album. But I’d have given that up in a moment for something twice the length, more even, just to get all the detail, all the story, that this biography really needs.

As it is, it’s beautifully done, lovingly illustrated, yet ultimately empty of the rich promise the packaging and art would have you believe, did have me believe on first look. Aficionados will love it, regular Tintin fans like me, maybe not so much.

By Joe Ollmann

Drawn & Quarterly

Midlife is a sort of, maybe, possibly kind of autobiography by Ollmann. He says it himself – “This is largely a work of fiction. Except where it isn’t”

How much is autobiog and how much fiction he leaves open to us. But it certainly feels like the sort of ridiculous midlife behaviour we’ve all seen in others (but never in ourselves, oh no, never in ourselves. We’re far too smart to fall into those cliches).

Whatever the proportion though, this is Ollmann’s story, with the central character of John Olsen taking Ollmann’s role. Here he is, on the first page, dealing (not too well) with all the shit life is throwing at him:

(…. but hands up those of you who don’t think he had all that much of a “text book hipster life” to start with.)

And that’s the basis for everything that happens in the subsequent 172 pages of Midlife; Olsen’s spent far too much time imagining a life he’s lost that he never truly had. Married at 17, dad twice over soon after that, and now, after a nasty divorce, married and a dad all over again at 40, his daughters from his first marriage now 19 and 23…. the hipster life he angrily looks back on only really ever existed in his mind.

Meanwhile, he’s hit 40 hard. The continual, multiple assaults of new baby, sleep deprivation, energetic young wife, stressful design job all take their toll.

A look in the mirror shows a man he doesn’t recognise, and he’s falling headlong into the classic mid-life crisis, complete with that stereotypical, ridiculous infatiation….  a popular, attractive childrens entertainer from his son’s video shelf  triggers a silly flight of fancy, a stupid infatuation becomes something potentially far more damaging and dangerous.

Sherri Smalls is the other strand of Ollmann’s story. Her life has taken a strange, financially rewarding turn, her rock star dreams have crashed and burned and now she finds herself a successful childrens performer, star of “Sherri Smalls and her Big Band” on the brink of a major TV deal.

But her life is spinning out of control just like Olsens; her on again off again boyfriend / bandmate / costar in a monkey suit needs firing, the religious right TV network is promising complete creative control but seem to have funny ideas of what that really means, and most of all Sherri’s own feelings of being a complete sell-out could be the thing that sabotages her life.

On top of all that, she’s got a heap of issues around her love-life, and a habit for preferring older men leaves her wide open to doing something really stupid. In this, she’s the perfect foil for Olsen’s mid-life crisis. Olsen develops a spectacularly rapid obsession with the singer, and she starts imagining that there’s something going on, something more than simple email flirting. These are not two rational, right thinking people.

One thing leads to another, circumstances conspire to bring about a potential meeting in New York when Olsen finds himself on a salvage mission for a photo-shoot he screwed up for the magazine. And off he goes, with the chance to fix his screw-up at the magazine and royally screw-up his marriage and life.

The main storylines keep Olsen and Sherri apart for just under three-quarters of the book, and concentrate on building up a picture of two people unhappy with their lives. Of course, the sensible conclusion would be that both realise before something stupid happens that what they actually have isn’t all that bad, what they actually have is worth working at, worth perservering with. But that would be the course of action for two far more settled, secure, reasonable people.

And all it takes to trigger something potentially really, really stupid is one email from Olsen to Sherri:

The biggest problem here is Ollmann’s pacing - it’s three quarters over by the time Olsen and Sherri meet up, and that final quarter races by far too quickly, Ollmann far too interested in getting to a resolution much too quickly.

The thing is, Ollmann could have easily told this perfectly in 150 pages, if he’d haave been a little more judicious with his editing. There are far too many repeated ideas and moments in the book – we get that Olsen’s life is a mess, we got it the first time, and the second, and the third. The fourth, fifth and sixth times really overdo it. And with Sherri it’s just the same.

And that’s a shame as Ollmann’s cartooning, all tightly sticking to the 9 panel grid format he’s obviously a is a devotee of, is tight, controlled and funny. His characters come across as sympathetic and realised, until he gets to Olsen himself. Then he really goes for an over the top grotesque – the lines on his face, the bad posture, the mid-life spread, the liver-spots, the unkempt hair, the perpetually stressed look on his face – this isn’t a man accostomed to being kind to himself. In his story, in words and art, he’s never more damning than when looking at his own failings. But his continual self-flagellation does mean we spend most of the story just about coming down on his side in things. Sure, we know he’s being an impossible dick, we know he’s being an idiot, we know he’s being cruel and taking out all his stresses and neuroses on those closest to him…. but we know that he knows it as well, and that’s just about enough to keep us on his side in all this.

So it’s a funny, involving book, but it could have been so much more. The problem of pacing, and the overemphasis on the whining doesn’t ruin the book, but it does limit your enjoyment of it. What had great potential to be very funny, very revealing, and very true to life becomes overwrought, overly long, and eventually, just a little too much.

By Brain Ralph

Drawn & Quarterly

Brian Ralph’s Daybreak is described on the back cover as “an art-house take on the zombie genre”.

And you can read that in one of two ways….. a subtle, clever reworking of the genre, utilising stereotypical aspects and touchstones that we’ll all be familiar with to create something smaller in scale and more personal. Or you can take the view that it’s a zombie book without much of what makes the whole zombie thing work.

Depends where you sit on the idea of art-house really. Me, I liked it for what it was rather than what it wasn’t. But even although the style and beauty of Ralph’s artwork and story impressed, I was still left with a sense of yeah, but okay, and…?

Waking up in rubble, the first person a survivor sees is a harried, intense, eager to help, one armed man making preparations for nightfall.

If it wasn’t for that beaut of a cover and the blurb on the back, you’d be left guessing exactly what he’s preparing for and what is going on amongst the ruins of a civilisation until the first, fleeting glimpse of spindly arms flailing against a door some 10 pages in….

Everything is viewed through the survivor’s eyes, and yes, you do get the impression of first person shooter here, but don’t get the wrong impression, there’s a lot more here than some daft Doom scenario, or rather a lot less, and it’s the minimalism, the sense of what’s not shown that creates the feeling of tension and creeping paranoia all the way through.

This is a zombie tale through the eyes and actions of a survivor, and for the most part, a shell-shocked observer, never really involved in what’s going on, merely a way for us to see the wreckage of the world about him/her.

Although much to his credit in a book such as this Ralph does preface that zombie attack scene with a beautifully funny moment:

Is that hilarious? The look on his face, straight out to the audience, so wonderfully knowing. Okay, on with the serious zombie stuff….

This being a zombie book, you’re constantly on edge, continually expecting an attack, always trying to peer around the narrow, and paranoia inducing peripheral vision Ralph’s point of view artwork provides. Through these eyes you’ll follow your one-armed protector, through zombies, through the threat of other survivors, until you reach an end, just the two of you, holed up in yet another small room, waiting for the end.

So what you do get here is a mounting sense of dread, of a threat that’s forever coming but never quite materialises. The zombies are never central to the artwork, never directly in our field of view, forever just beyond our experience, and the horror of the world is somethin we build within our own heads. And in the end, with one subtle twist, we see the real human cost of something this horrific, as always through our viewer’s eyes.

Craft Ralph has got in spades, the layouts, he transitions, the way it just flows seamlessly without all that maany words…. that’s magnificent. And the actual art itself is similarly delightful, with a simple line in a fittingly dirty brown that follows a survivor of some apocalypse or other through the course of a couple of days of surviving the zombie threat.

But as interesting, involving and impressively illustrated as Daybreak is, there’s also something akin to a feeling of anti-climax about it. But that’s merely as Ralph questions our expectations of this most cliched of genre pieces, with a story that focuses on the small-scale everyday issue of basic survival, avoiding the obvious big zombie battle and instead ends with a whimper.

Part of me loved it, enjoyed the new twist on the old format, whilst simultaneously wishing there had been something a little meatier to the tale.

Hayley at fine London comics emporium Gosh! tells us they have the quite excellent Anders Nilsen paying them a visit on Saturday October 15th from 6 to 7pm in their shiny, new Soho lair (1 Berwick Street) to celebrate the massive collection of his long-running Big Numbers which has been published by the good folks at Canada’s Drawn & Quarterly (one of our favourite comics publishers).

By Pascal Girard

Drawn & Quarterly

So far the score with Pascal Girard’s work is something like won one, lost one. I adored Nicolas when it arrived, a debut fully formed, packed with raw, intense emotion. Yet the follow up; Bigfoot, although technically brilliant, and full of all the things that should have hooked me in, just didn’t do it for me.

Well, this third graphic novel, an autobiographical tale of the twenty something Girard having a minor meltdown at the prospect of attending his ten-year high school reunion, is at least something of a return to form. Still not absolutely hitting me like Nicolas did, but I found it far more enjoyable and just as well observed as Bigfoot.

(Pascal imagines his ideal reunion, a dream of his past life as a winner, but it’s oh so obviously not the case. From Reunion by Pascal Girard, published by Drawn & Quarterly)

Poor Pascal is settling into a good life. A burgeoning career as a cartoonist, settled and happy relationship, his own place… but all it takes is the ten-year reunion announcement to throw everything up in the air. Although he’s quick to point out he was one of the popular kids, he’s plagued by a feeling that his life since high school has yet to live up to his own expectations, nevermind those of his former classmates. And everything gets far worse when he gets an email from the lovely Lucie Côte, his major high-school crush.

Completely unsettled, he starts fretting, starts dieting, starts Facebook stalking, starts a bizarre fantasy life, convinced the weight loss will put him firmly into the winner category he failed to achieve throughout high school.

(Dieting, fantasising, obsessing – oh, it’s all going to go horribly wrong. From Reunion by Pascal Girard, published by Drawn & Quarterly)

And all the while his poor partner has to put up with it all, watching as Girard’s nerves, already a source of problems, become more and more shredded as the big day approaches.

Of course, once he actually makes it to the reunion everything he’s carefully imagined, all the ways he’s about to reclaim some coolness, it all fails to pieces as he spectacularly, comedically, fails to impress. Worse, he actually manages, through clumsiness and awkwardness, to offend and insult almost everyone he intended to impress.

(At the reunion. It’s not going as Pascal expected. But it is going just like we expected. From Reunion by Pascal Girard, published by Drawn & Quarterly)

As autobiography it’s a delightfully observed tale, full of painful comedy moments, with Girard really going to town on himself, painting a portrait of the artist as a neurotic mess, and encouraging us to laugh at his ridiculous behaviour. Sure, it’s obviously only semi-autobiographical, but it’s always painfully impressive to see someone willing to flagellate themselves in print for their art.

And his art, back to simplistic black and white after the rather disappointing colour of Bigfoot is back to it’s best – bereft of either captions or panel borders the whole thing has an impressive mix of simplicity and chaotic, twitchy lines (a perfect match for the artist’s chaotic, twitchy nervous state I imagine).

Girard still hasn’t attained the heights he reached with Nicolas, but here, in his third graphic novel, he’s back on good form. I can only hope, only expect, his next to be even better.

By Chester Brown

Drawn & Quarterly

Chester Brown has always been an artist who takes his own, rather unique route. His debut; “Yummy Fur” was one of my first introductions to a world of alternative comics, and I absolutely loved it for its surreality and invention.

A switch to the pure autobiography of “The Playboy” worked even better. Brown’s unashamedly no holds barred ability to look at his own life, warts and all, had an honesty that meant it was incredibly readable. And his simple yet beautifully constructed artwork combined with this readability makes anything he turns his hand to; Bible stories, autobiography, the crusading, polemical ”Louis Riel” (a biographical retelling of the 19th Century Canadian politician and leader of the Métis people), absolutely essential reading.

And Paying For It is every bit the Chester Brown work. Essential certainly, intensely personal, unflinchingly honest but also somewhat difficult and flawed. Not in its execution, which is every bit as good as I expected from Brown, but because it’s determined to function as two things – autobiography and manifesto. And it’s a manifesto that a near evangelical Brown pushes just a little too far.

Paying For It, if you hadn’t already heard, details Chester Brown’s experiences with prostitution upon deciding he no longer wants all the emotional trouble of having relationships:

(No, that’s not what it means at all, and in Paying For It we’ll find out all about Brown’s way of working out these relationship problems. From Chester Brown’s Paying For It, published by Drawn & Quarterly)

Brown begins the book in a relationship that’s amicably, if rather unconventionally, fizzling out. And this ending serves as a trigger to something he’s obviously been thinking a lot about over the years. Like he points out above, relationships really aren’t the be all and end all for Brown, and his logic points him simply, clearly in the direction of prostitution.

So this rational, intelligent, logical man takes the next step. And finally gets around to Paying For It. Although, Brown would certainly point out that, in emotional and psychological terms, he’d been paying for it in different ways for years before this.

A note on that title though – Brown admits to disliking it in the notes section at the end of the book. He feels it’s laden with double meaning and is at pains to point out that the only meaning of the title he accepts is that yes, he’s paying for sex. But not paying for his use of prostitutes in any negative way at all, not emotionally or socially, he’s healthy, never been arrested and still in work – all of the things  he feels may be associated with that title.

(“Uh, I’d…like to have vaginal intercourse with you”. “Yes, that’s what I really said,” he comments in the extensive “Notes” section at the back of Paying For It.)

And so it begins, in 1996, with Brown detailing every detail of his encounters with prostitutes, chapter by chapter, girl by girl. Never glamourising the events, the sex is absolutely functional, clinical and devoid of feeling. But that suits Brown, after all his entire argument here is about the dissociation of sex from emotions and ridding himself of the necessity of the latter in order to gain the former.

As the book goes on, Brown settles into comfortable and regular pattern, becoming increasingly confident in the details, yet finding each encounter slightly numbing, and almost finds himself distracted during the sex, analysing and comparing the girls, even going as far as contributing reviews to an online site.

And although he’s determinedly not looking for a relationship, he does have a tendancy to develop relationships of a kind with these women, especially those he revisits and becomes a regular for. Events later in the book will develop this even further, in a game changing end chapter that rather throws his entire ideas on prostitution into question. It’s not something I’ll go into here, as it would be a huge spoiler, but it does make me convinced that the story of what happened from 2004 to now, something he briefly, but shockingly reveals in the final chapter of Paying For It, is a book in itself that I’d really like to see Brown tackle next.

Above all else, Paying For It is brilliant Chester Brown autobiography, absolutely, completely honest. And in that honesty comes a great deal of humour. Brown is tentative, nervous and so completely socially inept that it’s actually funny.

Brown’s ability to portray himself so honestly brings to the fore all the ridiculousness, all the paranoia, all the surreality of the situation – this is a man who cycles to his prostitutes for heaven’s sake. There’s comedy for you.

All along his actions and his evangelical mission is chronicled and analysed by Brown using a series of conversations with friends including fellow cartoonists Seth and Joe Matt.

Their incredulity, distaste, disapproval and questioning allows Brown the soapbox he requires to shoehorn his viewpoint into his story. But Brown’s storytelling is so masterful that these talky bits in between the sex, where Brown is analysing and questioning his behaviour, either internally or at the prompting of others, are the real heart of the book. The actual sex is there to illustrate the point, to give details to Brown’s thinking.

Personally, I think Paying For It, faults and all, is a staggeringly good book in the autobiographical genre. But although this may be autobiographical, it’s also Brown presenting an idea. This is more than autobiography, this is manifesto autobiography.

And that manifesto is organised around the idea that not only is prostitution a valid alternative, it’s something that should be utilised by more people. Indeed he goes much further and develops an argument that prostitution is a far more satisfying and valid idea than emotional love – something he’s utterly convinced of, something he spends much of the book attempting to convince his readers of, at least the parts where he’s not giving us a no holds barred, near catalogue of every prostitute, every sexual encounter he conducts during the fourteen years this book covers.

The  manifesto aspect is what creates the flaw in this otherwise brilliant book. Too often it feels like being bludgeoned by an idea, and although it’s always well argued and thought out it’s also too localised on Brown’s own experiences, and he lets these preclude any questioning voices.

In one way I have to concede this is perfectly reasonable, after all Brown makes no claims that this is a meticulously researched position paper on prostitution, it’s always presented as his views. This is Brown’s story and if he’s found that his experiences with prostitution are almost completely positive and fulfilling for himself and simple, safe and easy business for the women, then we have to believe him.

But like anyone with an evangelical crusade, Brown goes on a little too long, a little too much and a little too single-mindedly. Despite arguing his case exceptionally well, in both comic form and the (extensive) notes and appendices, there’s a feeling that he’s rather skirting around the problematic issues of sex slavery, drug addiction, pimps, exploitation, abuse and so much else in his desire to state his case.

He’s presenting his limited experiences, backed up with a notes and appendices section weighted heavily in support of his argument, as the truth rather than his truth.

And where he eventually takes his argument, that we’d all be a damn sight better off if we all gave up on the stupid notion of romantic love and instead followed his lead – that really does seem a stretch – the evangelist over stating his case.

So, as a work of autobiography, Paying For It is quite wonderful, a resounding success. As a manifesto though, it’s a flawed and one sided thing, too personal, too evangelical. But wasn’t that always going to be the issue here?

In the end your enjoyment of Paying For It will depend upon your willingness to trade the genius of his autobiographical execution with the flaws of his personal argument. I found myself torn between the two, but I’m coming down on the autobiographical enjoyment. It’s a brilliant, yet flawed book, one that you should read, but do bring along an open mind.

This Saturday and Sunday is the annual TCAF, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival in the Toronto Reference Library, a bash that everyone we know who has been before has absolutely loved, so we are jealous of anyone who is heading there over this weekend, of course. And among the people who will be juggling selling and looking at comics with trying to consume vast amount of pancakes with proper Canadian maple leaf syrup drizzled all over them is FPI’s very own Kenny Penman, who will be present wearing his Blank Slate Books hat (a tricorn hat, with Blank, Slate and Books emblazoned on each of the three sides. Okay, no, it’s a metaphorical hat, sadly, I’m sure he’d look great in a real one as he proclaimed the fineness of his wares to the citizens of Toronto). Before heading for Canada Kenny was telling me that a whole bunch of new Blank Slate titles had arrived fresh from the printer just in time, so Canadian comics folks, you will be among the first to see them anywhere. And it is also a good chance for North American comics readers to see why BSB has been generating a lot of good word of mouth among those of us on this side of the Atlantic, so if you are going to be at TCAF please take advantage of it to check out some of their titles and give them some fine Canadian support.

(above: German creator Mawil’s Home and Away, one of the Blank Slate Books title making its debut at TCAF this weekend; below: Joe Decie’s Accidental Salad, the first of Blank Slate’s new Chalk Mark series of shorter comics works, also debuting at TCAF)

A glance down the list of other exhibitors is making me even more jealous that I won’t be there myself. A parcel of Blighty’s own will be there too, including Sean Azzopardi, Adam Cadwell, Joe Decie (Joe’s Accidental Salad, the first of Blank Slate’s new Ignatz-like Chalk Marks titles, should be available too, all being well; fellow Blank Slater Mawil will be there too and his new BSB titles – Home and Away and The Band should be with him), Howard Hardiman, Nobrow, Kayla Marie Hiller, Fanfare/Ponent Mon, Tom Humberstone, Jamie McKelvie and more. And look at some of the others who will be at TCAF: Lorenzo Mattotti, James O’Barr, Paul Pope, John Porcellino, Seth, Zak Sally, Adrian Tomine, Maurice Vellekoop, Chris Ware, Top Shelf, Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, Adrian Alphona, Kate Beaton, Box Brown, Becky Cloonan, Abby Denson, Brecht Evans (that noise you just heard was our own Wim fainting with pleasure at the mere mention of Brecht’s name), Kathryn and Stuart Immonen, Matt Kindt, Jeff Lemire… Okay, I’m going to stop now, I’m making myself more jealous at not being there and anwyay, you get the picture – this is a real comics lovers comics festival. All the best to everyone exhibiting or visiting TCAF over this weekend, sure you will all have a blast and we look forward to hearing your TCAF reports when you get home.

(Also making their debuts at TCAF this weekend – above, Lucille by Ludovic Debeurme, published Top Shelf, below: Paying For it by Chester Brown, published Drawn & Quarterly)

By Adrian Tomine

Drawn & Quarterly

Created as a wedding favour at the request of his fiancée, Scenes From An Impending Marriage is a far more lightweight and altogether happier comic than you’d expect from something with Tomine’s name on it.

But just because the tone is lighter doesn’t mean it’s any less perfectly put together. Throughout this slight, but practically perfect little book (56 pages, in a cd cover sized hardback, consisting of tight 9 panels grids and single page illustrations) Tomine expertly cartoons his way through so many familiar hiccups along the way to organising that perfect wedding; the guest list questions, the DJ, flowers, registering a list, booking the venue and all the other sent to drive you insane little details along the route to wedded bliss.

Anyone who’s ever gone through a wedding will be able to see something of their own personal wedding nightmare in here.

(That’s just the book’s frontispiece – a perfect distillation of the Tomine wedding and the division of labour!)

This is a simple, yet perfectly done, lightweight treat of a book, it tells, with a smile, and some very funny observational comedy, a tale of the madness and obsession that goes hand in hand with wedding planning. Tomine documents every step as the plans take over his and Sarah’s life.

And throughout, Tomine’s expertly timed comedy will leave you smiling from ear to ear – not something you’d have imagined from the man who brought us the brilliance of Optic Nerve. But he’s taken every bit of brilliant characterisation that he usually delivers in his comics to give us some rather unpleasant people and turned it on himself and (to an understandably lesser degree) Sarah. And he perfectly captures the ridiculousness of the situation they find themselves in.

Take this beautiful example, when his fiancée makes the mistake of talking about getting the invitations professionally printed:

It’s witty, it’s out and out funny, it’s so true to life and it’s unashamedly sweet and sentimental.

And the cartooning is just perfection. Tomine has long been held up as a master of his artform, and although the panels may be small, the quality is huge. There’s almost a Schulz like minimalist perfection to it at times. He does so much, so perfectly, with so much economy that it’s hard to see any fault in any panel.

(Tomine gets his Schulz on. And then, with that “nuptial narcissism” line is right back in his own voice.)

But you didn’t need me to tell you that did you? Just look.

Scenes From An Impending Marriage has 56 pages and they’re all as good as the three examples on this page. As a wedding favour it’s better than any gift. And now we get to share as well.

Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant webcomic has long been something a lot of us have been enjoying, particularly in it’s collected highlights package from 2009 that is Never Learn Anything From History.

She’s slowly been making her name, building up fans, from in and outside comics and we all knew it wouldn’t, shouldn’t be long before she landed her first book deal, something to raise her profile even more than her self published works have managed to do.

So this week it wasn’t that surprising to hear from Drawn & Quarterly (Via The Comics Reporter) that they’ve signed Beaton to a deal for the publication of a new Hark! A Vagrant book collecting strips from the webcomic together with new material. I’d expect this one to be featuring on next years Best Of lists.

The Hark! A Vagrant book comes out in autumn 2011 from D&Q in the US and Jonathan Cape in the UK.