Shark Bite Capital of the World

Local talent Meghan Lands just dropped off her new comic, Shark Bite Capital of the World, and it's a steal at only three dollars. Get your copy now, before she's famous and the price goes up (or we run out)!

Julie Delporte & Chihoi Launch: RECAP!

This tuesday, we were delighted to be host the launch of Chihoi and Julie Delporte's books! Chihoi is a Hong Kong artist whose books have been published in Chinese, Italian and French and he travelled here to celebrate the lauch of The Library, the first English-language edition of his work, published by Conundrum Press.

Julie Delporte is a Montreal cartoonist and the author of the children's book Je suis un raton laveur and  several books published by Colosse. She was here to launch Journal, published by Koyama Press and also her first work in English.

Chihoi started off the night by showing us some of the Hong Kong comics that were popular when he was young: they were very violent, sometimes pornographic, and often associated with gangster culture, though the authors often sold millions of copies. By Chihoi's teen years, though, this style had diminished in popularity.

Chihoi also related a moving account of the relationships he formed with other artists in his youth, including a friend who passed away at an early age.

The next part of Chihoi's story was about his struggle as an aspiring comics artist -- work was hard to come by, and like many others, he had to support himself with part-time retail jobs and commercial illustration, including a gig writing children's comics, from which he says he learned a lot.

An indie comics scene did develop in Hong Kong, however, especially around the magazine Cockroach.

Finally, Chihoi took us through some scenes from his haunting, surreal new book, The Library. During the question period, he admitted that he may have a fixation on staircases.

Next, Julie Delporte took to the stage greeted by the cheers of a crowd of local friends and fans and gave us a very personal and intimate tour of her autobiographical comics.

Journal chronicles a difficult breakup, and the artist’s residency at The Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. Revisting the events of her life was an emotional experience for her as well as for the audience, who were vocal in their support. The connection between Julie and her friends and fans was a warm and moving thing to witness. Love in the room!

Come on in and get your copy!

We have plenty of Chihoi`s The Library as well, many of them signed!

We had a great crowd!

And the signing table was mobbed!

Thanks again to everyone who came out! We had a great turnout, but despite the crowd, it was one of the more personal and intimate gatherings we`ve had in a long time. You can also look forward to a new book by Julie Delporte that will be published by Drawn & Quarterly next year! Julie is also the newest addition to our staff at 211, so come on in and say hi. If you ask nicely, she might autograph her book for you!

Wednesday, May 22 at 5: Zine launch + Presentation + Planting

This May, Sprout Out Loud! would like to introduce and celebrate their newest issue #2 with the Montreal public: Occupy the Streets with Land Art & Guerilla Gardening, with Emily Rose Michaud.

Join us for a bilingual visual presentation on Guerilla Gardens and Land Art followed by hands-on planting!

Sprout Out Loud’s second issue is a collection of community submissions by engaged artists, citizens, activists and gardeners from Canada and beyond.

This zine and manifesto is a dedication to all those working to re-shape the future of our urban and rural ecologies. It offers reflections on re-membering landscape back into our lives as well as proposals for creative actions which aim to

-inspire people to dig in to the communities in which they find themselves;
-re-enchant citizens with the landscapes that surround them;
-engage with these spaces creatively;
-provoke dialogue about how these spaces are developed;
-empower others to plant similar ideas in their own environments where needed.

This second issue includes submissions by Sean Martindale, Sara Torrie, Norman Nawrocki, Anne Goldenberg, Dominique Ferraton, Andrew Mckay, Kimberley Mok, Bruce Cawdron, Kendra Besanger, Matthew Bennett, Scott Duncan.

This event is free & zines in both languages will be available for purchase.

Facebook Event

SPROUT OUT LOUD! is a project led by artist/organizer Emily Rose Michaud. You can learn more about Emily's Land Art projects, installations, academic and community outreach, classes and workshops on her website.

Brunetti's Aesthetics!

 Ok, awesome, Ivan (the Schizo series, Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice) Brunetti's Aesthetics: A Memoir has landed at 211!

This excellent retrospective features many archival drawings & sketches,  New Yorker covers,  poster and album cover designs, strips and sculptures...all with commentary from the comics giant himself.

You may recognize this from our shelves: Brunetti's design for the edition of Roald Dahl's Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.

 

Brunetti claims Ernie Bushmiller as huge influence. Check out this never-published Nancy strip of Brunetti's from back when he was trying to get a full-time Nancy gig.

A beautiful book that gives the best possible overlook of Brunetti's career thus far. A very necessary purchase for any discerning comics fan!

This Is Your Music

Just in! Mike (Yeti Magazine) McGonigal's excellent new oral and visual history of Galaxie 500:  Temperature's Rising.

One of the best bands to come out of the late-80s, Boston's Galaxie 500 has been receiving a lot of of retroactive praise in the couple of years and deservedly so. The logical next step after the Paisley Underground mini-musical-movement (similarly 60s-influenced bands like the Dream Syndicate and Rain Parade released their defining efforts only a few years before Galaxie 500's career began) and their records are ones that I still revisit on a regular basis to this day (indeed, my killer retrospective G500 mix may very well have been playing on the store`s soundsystem on one of your visits to 211 Bernard). Critical darlings during their relatively brief existence, sure,  but for awhile it seemed like singer Dean Wareham's post-G500 projects (Luna, Dean & Britta) threatened to overshadow his first (and best) band's considerable accomplishments.

Not that they were ever on their way to becoming major unit-shifters or anything  but the band seemed to be  relegated to the same status as their heroes the Velvet Underground as a band who boasted only a small fanbase who couldn`t provide much in the way of  financial security and so, instead,  ensured their place as legends by emulating them in bands of their own (Low, Flying Saucer Attack, the current 'dream pop' scene). Thankfully, some recent -and much appreciated- vinyl reissues have helped remedy this.

McGonigal's book features archival photos, gig posters, set lists and postcards as well as lots of commentary from, not only co-conspirators Wareham, Krukowski, and Yang, but also their producer Kramer and other movers and shakers who contributed to their short 'n sweet run. If you're a fan already -you gotta read it - and if you aren't, Temperature's Rising will serve as a fitting companion as you delve into their perfect trifecta of recorded classics: Today, On Fire, and This Is Our Music.

TONIGHT! The Australian Caravan of Comics is here!! 7pm

Come and say g'day to a Winnebago of Australian comics creators as they make their pilgrimage to Librairie Drawn & Quarterly. Scarlette Baccini, Gregory Mackay, Patrick Alexander, Mirranda Burton, Marijka Gooding and driver, Bruce Mutard, will give a presentation about their graphic novels, sign books and wash your feet with their hair. Also on board is Dan Hayward, director of the feature length documentary film, Graphic Novels! Melbourne! which we will screen an extended trailer of.



Melbourne based, self described 'writer with images', Bruce Mutard has had 5 books published, including the highly regarded graphic novels The Sacrifice and The Silence (Allen & Unwin), A Mind of Love (Black House Comics) and the short story collection, Stripshow (Milkshadow Books). He has had numerous short stories published in Overland, Meanjin, The Australian Book Review and the Tango anthology among many others. He is also the holder of the Australian Society of Authors comics and graphic novels portfolio. He has presented papers at Oxford, the University of Arts, London, Loughborough University, teaches, organises comics events and tours like this one, and was recently awarded an Australia Council of Arts established writers grant to work on his next graphic novel.


Since graduating from art school in South Australia, Mirranda Burton has forged pathways in independent and commercial animation, drawing, and printmaking. More recently she has devoted herself to the medium of comics, drawing upon her own life experiences. Her stories depict a myriad of moments, from the mountain peaks of Morocco to lettuce invasions, to rare meetings with caterpillar psychiatrists and vacuum cleaner genies. Her first book, Hidden, was published in 2011 by Black Pepper, for which she received an Aurealis Award for best graphic novel. Hidden is also scheduled to be published in France.



Scarlette Baccini is a comic book writer and illustrator from Melbourne, Australia. In 2007 she began writing a strip called Zombolette, about a fat, obnoxious zombie and her giant mutant guinea pig housemate. Milk Shadow Books published a 120-page anthology of this work early in 2012. Scarlette is currently working on a graphic novel as well as several shorter works, and is hoping to turn Zombolette into an animated series.







Patrick Alexander is known in Australia for his nationally published children’s comics, Pink Chickens and Tobias & Jube, and internationally for his webcomics, Raymondo Person and Hilarity Comics. Currently and irregularly he produces gag comics for the relaunched Dark Horse Presents, except for that Archie one with the weird cow sex, which he put on Tumblr instead. His work has been described as "p. funny".

Gregory Mackay is best known for his comic strip Francis Bear as well as award-winning autobiographical comics, he makes award-winning comics about a strange kind of every-day-ness that are both quietly desperate and charmingly beautiful. Gregory is a regularly featured artist in the French Turkey Comix anthology published by The Hoochie Coochie, who in 2010 released a collected Francis Bear book.

New to the Melbourne Comics scene, Marijka Gooding is a recent graduate from Monash University Visual Communications with Honours, whose thesis is the remarkable, beguiling, beautiful graphic novel, Strange Behaviour (self-published, 2012). She considers herself an expert on 'strange', considering spends a lot of her time sitting at a drawing board in a dimly lit room, surrounded by empty take-away containers and crusted-over cereal bowls, writing about the world in pictures.

Daniel Hayward graduated from Sydney Film School in 2005 where he produced and directed the award winning short TROY, which has screened all over the world. Over the past 7 years, Daniel has worked in the Australian film and television industry in various capacities on commercials, television series, music videos and feature films. He has shot and/or directed a number of Behind The Scenes documentaries for feature films and television including Shane Warne – The Musical, Men’s Group & 33 Postcards starring Guy Pearce. In 2012, Daniel released his first feature length documentary as producer/director titled This Is Roller Derby under his production company AISLE 5 PICTURES.

TONIGHT! Wednesday, May 15th! 211 Bernard Ouest!

Facebook Event 

TONIGHT! Double book launch with Julie Delporte and Chihoi! Tuesday, May 14! 7pm.

We're very excited to be hosting the launch of Chihoi and Julie Delporte's books! Join us TONIGHT at 7 pm at the bookstore. Visit the Facebook event here.

Chihoi is a Hong Kong artist whose books have been published in Chinese, Italian and French. Join us in welcoming Chihoi to Montreal and celebrating the launch of The Library, the first English-language publication of his work, published by Conundrum Press.

  
The Library is the first work in English by the active Hong Kong artist Chihoi. Reading the short stories included in this hardcover volume is like reading someone else’s dreams. They they speak to regular hurt and deprivation, strength in silence and loneliness in numbers. The Library is book of beautiful pencil lines, written to illustrate the tales we know in our heart but have never witnessed. 

 Julie Delporte is a Montreal cartoonist and the author of the children's book Je suis un raton laveur and  several books published by Colosse. Join us in celebrating the launch of her book Journal, published by Koyama Press.

Journal is the first English translation of Montreal-based artist Julie Delporte’s autobiographical diary comics. Initially appearing online in French, Journal displays Delporte’s organic and immediate drawings that utilize an uncanny sense of colour and composition to illustrate their intimate, diarist narratives. Cataloguing an emotional breakup, an artist’s residency at The Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont, and the anxieties and joys of everyday life between February 2011 and October 2012, Delporte’s elegant illuminated diary is a private life made public and poetic.



Supported by the Arts Development Fund of the Home Affairs Bureau,
Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region

TONIGHT! Lisa Hanawalt and Michael Kupperman! Monday, May 13th! 7pm.

We are delighted to welcome hilarious New York-based cartoonists Lisa Hanawalt and Michael Kupperman to the bookstore next week. This is an evening not be missed!

 

Photo: Mindy Tuckers

Lisa Hanawalt is a renowned self-publisher and illustrator living in Brooklyn, New York. Her comics work has won several awards, and she was recently nominated for a James Beard Award for Humor for her piece, "The Secret Lives of Chefs." Hanawalt’s illustration and comics clients include The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Hairpin, McSweeneys, Chronicle Books, and Vanity Fair. She lives in Brooklyn with a dog and a comedian. 

lisahanawalt.com

Praise for Hanawalt and My Dirty Dumb Eyes:

"Imagine a grown-up Richard Scarry turned absurdist social commentator."–Publishers Weekly Starred Review

"For years I've encountered Lisa Hanawalt's comics and illustrations piecemeal–in various magazines and periodicals. They're always a pleasant jolt. Now they've been assembled into one thick, blazing bludgeon. I envoy you getting walloped by them all for the first time. This is a Hanawalt assault. Succumb."–Patton Oswalt

Michael Kupperman is an American comic artist and humorist whose words and pictures have appeared everywhere from the New Yorker to Saturday Night Live. He has written four books and illustrated many more. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Muire and son Ulysses.

Fantagraphics

Praise for Kupperman and Tales to Thrizzle:

"The second funniest cartoonist worldwide, after me."–Tony Millionaire

"Imaginations come no wonkier, no dafter than Kupperman’s. His idea of a crime-fighting, daring, dynamic duo à la Bruce and Dick (Batman and Robin) is Twain and Einstein (Mark and Albert)-that is, when it's not a snake and a strip of bacon." –Ray Olson (Booklist)

TONIGHT! 211 Bernard Ouest. 7pm!

Time to brush up on your gardening and cycling knowledge!

'Tis the season of dirty hands and backpack sweat, everyone. Are you ready for it? Never fear - we have a wide swath of papery materials for you on the topics of gardening and cycling.

GARDENING

Gayla Trail's very hip book on the many facets of gardening, with projects rated for difficulty!

Prints that are both beautiful and instructive. Fruits and veg for every month!

Anxiety needn't stop you from developing a green thumb!

It's easy to be dissuaded from gardening when you live in a tiny apartment with no backyard. Vertical growing could be the answer to your space woes!

If you're too busy to garden, get your kids to grow food for you.

CYCLING

Providing cyclists the know-how to take bicycle repair into their own hands, this manual covers bike care without overly technical terms.

How to have fun on your bike, written by a "reformed racer" who promotes everyday riding.

Introduces a range of passionate cyclists who promote bicycles as a primary form of transport. Also showcases a range of current cyling aesthetics.

The latest issue of Boneshaker magazine, an ad-free quarterly publication that celebrates the wonderful things that happen when people and bikes come together.

How to navigate the joys and dangers of commuting on two wheels.

All these, and many more besides!

Mother's Day is tomorrow!

It is nearly upon us, the Day of Mothers! Don't forget to show all the mothers you know some love!

We have cards and books aplenty over here. For ideas, consult this earlier post, or just ask us!