Preview
CHESTER BROWN
HO CHE ANDERSON
WordFest: Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival
Thursday, October 16
The Club (The Banff Centre)
Saturday, October 18
Art Gallery of Calgary
Martin Luther King and Louis Riel make posthumous appearances at this year’s WordFest, thanks to two new graphic novels by Canadian comic artists.
Ho Che Anderson is the author-artist of a three-volume graphic biography entitled King, while Chester Brown has just released Louis Riel: A Comic Strip Biography, published in a handsome hardcover edition.
"I think comics can tell any kind of story," says Brown, over the phone from Toronto. His short comic strip, My Mom Was a Schizophrenic, opened a door that eventually led to Riel. "It was the desire to research," he explains, "and there was the question of mental illness connected to Riel."
Brown’s comic-strip biography of the controversial Métis leader is a crisp page-turner. One midnight reading gave me a better understanding of Canadian political history than all those lost afternoons in junior high school heaped together. It also comes with 20-odd pages of notes and a bibliography that would make a grad student proud. In fact, if it hasn’t already happened, the graphic novelist may soon be a hot prospect on university curricula.
Like Brown, Anderson has put a lot of research and effort into his King series, which he began at age 19 and was 10 years in the making. He finished the first draft just after the L.A. riots a decade ago. In his introduction, he writes, "It came in at a cool 150 pages, lean and mean, my interpretation of the man, Martin Luther King. Not the media-created demigod among mortals, not the superhuman orator with a Dream, but the man, no bullshit, no hype, straight, no chaser." If Anderson sounded cocksure back in ’93, perhaps it was just the approach needed to serialize the life of an American icon.
In Anderson’s work, splashes of colour burst from amidst the black-and-white panels. King I is prefaced with scenes drawn from St. Denis in Montreal and Regent’s Park in Toronto, culminating in South Central Los Angeles. It immediately establishes a contemporary context for the retelling of King’s story.
The three volumes of King are published separately by Seattle-based Fantagraphics Books. Louis Riel: A Comic Strip Biography is published by Montreal’s Drawn & Quarterly.
Ho Che Anderson and Chester Brown appear together for Get the Picture, October 16 at 7 p.m. in Banff, and Graffic Jam, October 18 at 3 p.m. in Calgary. |
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