Cerebrus and the fiery pit....

[felis_ultharus]

The Montreal heatwave continues apace, as we Montrealers roast alive for the sins of a Greenhouse-gas producing, gasoline-devouring consumer culture and our usual urban tendency to pave over all green living things with concrete.

I only managed to write one page and a bit so far today. Typing was producing too much low-level heat, but it's gotten a little better now that the merciful night has begun to set in.

I spent much of the burning hours curled up with Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics. McCloud is the genius behind Understanding Comics, a comic book about the art, psychology, and history of the comic book. Except for his near-total disinterest in manga, it's an interesting read. Reinventing Comics delves much more into the history, the industry, and practical stuff.

I also decided it was high time I took a look at what was being produced here in Canada -- Canadian Lit is my specialty after all. Towards that end, I bought volume one of Cerebrus, the country's most famous graphic novel. I haven't read much of it -- it's a massive 600-page tome -- but it seems to be mostly in-jokes for D&D players.

Not that I'm complaining of course, but if I ever teach a course on the subject of Canadian Lit with a graphic novel component, it wouldn't be very useful as course material.

Comments

[jenjoou.livejournal.com]

Sounds interesting. But it can't possibly be all Canada has to offer. We have several of our own graphic novel companies (Drawn & Quarterly is one right here in Montreal if I remember correctly). I'll bet there's many other things for your future class to reading (and I'll be sitting in the back of said class pretending to be a student because it sounds interesting ;))

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

The funny thing about Drawn and Quarterly is the sheer volume of American work they put out. So far as I can tell, this is the only field of publishing where Americans are most likely to go through a Canadian company, rather than vice versa.

We do have a well-known writer named Julie Doucet, but it's hard to find her work. And there are apparently some well-known writers in the 1980s and 90s "autobiographical genre", though I haven't been able to get specifics.

[infinitecomplex.livejournal.com]

We'll take your heatwave! The weather here on the west coast is pretty lame at the moment, which is disappointing after that really hot spell we had recently. I miss the sun...

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Take it please! Get it away from here. It was 41 degrees Celsius yesterday, with the humidity factored in. We could hardly move :(

[jenjoou.livejournal.com]

I second that. I don't care what anyone says, heat is so much worse than cold.