Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

With all that’s going on upon the American political stage, it’s almost easy to forget about the impending election up here in Canada.

Louis Riel cartoonist Chester Brown has become the Libertarian candidate in my riding of Trinity-Spadina here in Toronto. He’s interviewed comic-jam-style by my friend and Extremely Bad Advice columnist Steve Murray of the National Post, who tries to get at the heart of Chester’s forays into libertarianism using the medium they know best.

Another great online auction starts today to help raise funds for the Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning. Once again the Doug Wright Awards teams up with some of Canada’s finest to bring us some great original art up for grabs — all based on the monster comics of Jack Kirby. Seth kicks off the auction today with his take on Groot! Later this week you’ll have a chance to bid on Dave Sim’s Nip’por, a monsterized version of Doug Wright’s Nipper, as well as Chester Brown’s take on a page from Tales to Astonish #34. Each auction will be online at eBay for 7 days. Visit the Wright Awards site for more info.

Happy Thanksgiving, Canada! I’m off to get some turkey now…

I’m just heading out the door to celebrate Free Comic Book Day at Toronto’s The Beguiling (601 Markham Street) where you can get a copy of Comics Festival 2007 (previously). Visit the Comics Festival website to find out more about the great line-up of cartoonists featured in the book, and where to find the book in your city/state/province.

If you can’t make it out to Free Comic Book Day this year or your local store doesn’t carry Comics Festival 2007, fear not! Chris Butcher of the Beguiling has graciously put the entire contents (and then some) of Comics Festival 2005 online for free — the 2005 edition features the work of Seth, Dave Sim, Chester Brown, Bryan Lee O’Malley, and many more with swank a cover by James Jean (shown here).

The original pencils for the one-page Wonder Woman comic by Chester Brown auctioned off this past summer are now, themselves, up for auction on eBay as a “surprise holiday fundraising auction” for the Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning.

The eBay page is loaded with photos of the piece, showing Chester’s unique approach to creating comic panels individually and piecing them together. The auction ends December 13th.

And speaking of Seth, the interview between Seth and Chester Brown that I mentioned took place two weeks ago at the Doug Wright Awards is available online to listen. Max Douglas who blogged the event has graciously put an MP3 of the two cartoonists chatting on his blog. I won’t link directly to the MP3 here, but visit Max’s blog entry where he mentions the interview to download.

The ceremony for the Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning was held this past Thursday night in Toronto, and it was an entertaining night that kicked off with a discussion between Seth and Chester Brown about Chester’s career in comics.

This year’s winners were then announced, and for Best Emerging Talent the award went to Lorenz Peter (pictured here) for his book Dark Adaptation. Skim by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki received an honourable mention.

The award for Best Book went to Michel Rabagliati for Paul Moves Out, a book that continues the story of Michel’s semi-autobiographical character Paul.

Following their successful auction of Seth’s X-Men illustration, the organizers of the Doug Wright Awards which honours cartooning talent in Canada, have arranged another benefit auction. This time around it’s a wonderful Wonder Woman comic page rendered by Chester Brown (see the full page).

This Doug Wright Awards Fundraising Auction will go live on eBay on June 19th, 2006. All proceeds will benefit the 2006 edition of The Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning, which will be handed out this fall in Toronto.

Sam Javanrouh has some nice photos of Toronto comics author Chester Brown that he took at the city’s Word on the Street festival. Sam’s Daily Dose of Imagery photoblog is one the best out there, for those looking for more daily imagery than this site offers!