I found out…somehow or other…that Chester Brown would be having a couple of talks as part of the Vancouver International Writer’s Festival. Brown wrote a comic strip biography of Louis Riel. He got a government grant to publish the book. I am interested in grants for comic books, as you might expect. I biked down to the Revue Theatre on Granville Island and there were throngs…THRONGS…of tweens. I didn’t like it, no sir. The thought “these kids better not be here for the same thing I’m here” immediately popped into my head. Turns out they were. Oh they were so. But the good news is that because some kids didn’t show up one of the teacher-ladies had extra tickets, one of which she sold me for $6 instead of the $12 I expected to pay. Yeah! Literary scalpers! So after having to suffer these semi-pubescent fools not gladly but at least quietly, I got into the theater and took a seat.
I saw a girl who works at Raincoast (you’ll recall I worked in the warehouse there for about a year) and, having seen her at the Joe Sacco event at Word on the Street, formulated an idea that she is in the publicity department. I went and introduced myself to her (funny how I don’t do these sorts of things when I’m actually working with people and see them on a daily basis) and it turns out that she knows The Thickets. Small world but I wouldn’t want to paint it. Anyhoo the event was interesting – I learned a lot about both Louis Riel and Don Quixote (the other panelist wrote such books), which is good because I didn’t really know anything about them, and neither did the fool throng.
As a result I am invited to a Raincoast party on Friday night. Coming, Taytay? I get to practice my schmoozing.
But … did you learn anything about government grants for comic art?
Not what I needed to know. He was already nearly done the comic series when he applied to get the grant to put it all in a hardcover. Nothing like my current situation.
Still … draw up a few issues and send off to independents. Put in some social satire and you’ve an independent winner. Independents eat up good action and humour along with current social satire. Relevance within the comic form, people eat that shit up, because adult comic book lovers like to showoff comics as literarily relevant when they can.