Supposedly The State of the Canadian Comic Book Industry

Herve at the Bin is at it again. He’s posted an OP ED style piece on ‘The State of the Canadian Comic Book Industry’ which merits linking to, but I feel I should post a buyer beware notice.

“I’ve been covering the comic book industry for years and have always found the level of professionalism and maturity of players involved lacking. Many times, I have written and said that what passes for public discourse in this industry would get all participants fired from their respective jobs, were they in any other mature industry.” – Herve St-Louis

This to me this is ironic as it’s not how i’ve found MOST of the people in the business in my 18 or so years in it, just an annoying minority.

The piece seems to be a little light on facts for the strong opinions it presents, and is rather dubious as a National Overview given it spends 939 of the 2727 word article raging on one small part of the huge loose collection of comics communities based in Toronto and attacks the city in a very predictable conservative mid west way for essentially being big and both commercially and culturally vibrant. Meanwhile he talks about not even half the other cities in the country.

Why is it that people spend so much time bitching about Toronto, while in the same stroke so often talking about no one else very much anyway? Thus themselves only talking about Toronto for so much of their time. Herve does not even tell us anything about what is happening in his own City of Calgary other than to say “…the majority of comic book readers supported American products rather than Canadian ones”.

Me thinks he has something a little narrower to grind than the National state of anything, but I’m not going to waist my time speculating. I will however add a few facts and my own opinions to you perspective

One small definite mistake I’m sure of is that Montreal does not actually have a regular ‘Anglo’ comic jam. Rupert still hosts events from time to time, but he’s bilingual, if not trilingual. I’m not sure which was his first tongue, but today he’s more Alophone than Anglo if you want to get all uptight about it and put everyone in boxes or schools. Bottenberg is the son of a nice pair of German/American immigrants from out east. And while i’m sure he speaks with an accent to my near uni lingual clod hopper ears he’s pretty damn comfortable chatting fast and furious in French and is thoroughly integrated into his corrner of Montreals’ bilingual culture.

But then this also gets to why i find that aspect of the conversation annoying – the constant need to categorize and separate people by language – and specifically which one they spoke first, not what they speak now – seems even more subjective and discriminatory than to do so by race! [to be clear i’m not advocating for the latter but stating something about the former] And yet it’s done often by politicized francophonie wanting to claim oppression or discrimination in this country – again pretty ironic if you think about it.

Some years ago when I hosted the Monthly Montreal Comix Jams what Herve wrote would have been partly true, about it being organized by an Anglo, though the events themselves were very bilingual in attendance.

But after I stopped hosting, over time the Monthly Jams shrank and are now run and attended largely by a small group of mostly francophone cartoonists who used to always sit at a table together in my day and call themselves ‘the French Table’. They run the only regular comic jam in town today that I’m aware of. They seem to have fun still and the shrinking mostly has to do with the current core groups lack of interest in promoting the event beyond sending out usually a very short reminder of the event. Posting no posters or fliers that I’m aware of around any of the campuses or other locations in town that would bring in the new blood. Seems like since they stated a facebook group that’s been changing a little maybe but this is very recent and remains to be seen what will come of it.

The Anglo community, along with the rest of the folks in town these days do however have many ‘Drink n’ Draw’ get togethers, vernissages and signings. They seldom reflect linguistic community boundaries so much as genre and style, and are plentiful! I frankly cant keep up with it all.

There is the grand canard that the Doug Wrights Awards are discriminatory against Francophones. Not to mention he’s writing about them and in the same breath saying the site does not recognize them, quite a trick. You have to ignore them if your going to do that i think but who am i to say. I’ve said all i care to about all that here already.

Another point I’d challenge him on is the degree to which comics are supported by grants in this country, which I suspect is pretty minimal. Much of it is funding for smaller publishers that are NOT economically viable without support which includes most of the French indy press here in Montreal last time I heard.

The Canadian publishing industry as a whole gets help from grants in this country out of market driven necessity! Without it we’d not have a Canadian publishing industry in the shadow of the US and would only be able to put out the most commercial and mainstream content exclusively.

For a few years now the council has funded graphic novels under the writing program but were talking about 4 or 5 grants at the most a year and it’s reasonable to assume not all are totally successful projects in the end. Many of those works would not have been possible without the support either. As a former recipient and later juror, i think i can vouch for the fact that most of what gets funded is work generally felt to need it – in other words to merits creators who want to do something they can’t just get a publisher to fund with advances or find an easy market for.

That being said it would be totally misleading to suggest our comics publishing industry is substantially supported by such funding – most of it makes it or breaks it based on the efforts and sacrifices of a few small publishing outfits and the proximity of the huge US market, for whatever that’s worth these days.

On the other hand, not sure he meant to sound reductionist or just lacks the info readily found here on this site, but local Montreal Comic community – which is huge and decentralized – gets support and acknowledgment from many of the summer festivals and book fairs, not just Just for Laughs.

Pop Montreal, Fantasia, the Fringe Festival, the Jazz fest, the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival and Montreal’s Salon du Livre all have hosted Comics and BD related events and activities.

I’d love to see better, more imaginative stuff going on, but that’s more pie in the sky than dire need. Personally i’ve always thought we are perfectly located to set up an international event here, our own Angouleme one day maybe.

We are also quite aware of the Gatineau scene here, with a lot of new kids coming out of UQO each graduating year. Not the day to day blow by blow but there was quite a bit of excitement in Montreal when the programs at the university there started up. And the Rendez-vous international de la BD de Gatineau, which I’m attending this year as a guest, has been doing nicely as well.

I’m sure there’s some friction between Quebec city and Montreal, but i’ve not heard much about it in some time – mostly that’s between individuals, not the communities. And i kind of doubt it has much to do with any lack of involvement here in the Gatineau scene.

And the Toronto community – which is also huge, very diverse and decentralized – seems to me to be, from the conversation i have there, very aware of what goes on in the country that’s good and worth paying attention to as well. Just as in other large cities with thriving scenes, not so many feel the need to track mediocre work when there is so much great stuff going in your own neck of the woods. But on the whole they get as excited as anyone over the things people else where are up to and have long standing romantic fascination with the Montreal scene.

Not to mention how very much movement there is here in Montreal between Halifax, Quebec City, Gatineau, Toronto and Vancouver and other points. Each city has at least some comic’s community bleed over with the others. Which reminds me I owe Marc Bell a visit; he’s living in Montreal again now, after spending a long stint in BC. He also used to reside in Toronto, and hails from London Ontario originally. The man is an archetypical indy Canadian cartoonist! :)

Also found it kind of funny Herve would choose of all people to present Canadian advertising guru, Terry O’Reilly as likely to argue “awards are nothing but attempts to make the public care about a product instead of using traditional advertising means” – take the nothing out and you’d be right, but O’Reilly would himself I bet point out it’s a bit more multi faceted than that. They do that job, but they also help support the creators, raise the prestige of a community and the medium they celebrate, and raise awareness of specific books that the public may not even know about, let alone care about. The more elite and prestigious the Judges and selection process for the books, the more effective they are at that job. {see: I believe he implied something like this argument in it’s broadest terms in Season 3, episode 16 of ‘O’Reilly and the Age of Persuasion: In Defence of Advertising’ 2008-04-26 }

And since when was any of that bad for the state of the comics industry?

Once more Harvey is casting things in a much more exclusively balkanized light than they really are. I feel in truth it’s a much more fluid and vibrant national collection of communities and scenes, that has it’s spats and chatty cathys, but on the whole tends to mind it’s own business most of the time really.

That given, here’s the link again, feel free to continue the conversation in the comments.

I will say the closing sentiment is positive, in a way at least. I certainly hope he finds more time to cover local stuff, though i hope he’ll learn to differentiate his own balkanized opinions from those of the community at large.