CONUNDRUM PRESS 2012 www.conundrumpress.com The Song of Roland Michel Rabagliati May 2012 / ISBN 978-1-894994-61-3 / 192 pages 7.5x10 inches / $20 BDANG Imprint Translation by Helge Dascher The Song of Roland focuses on the life and death of the father-in-law of Rabagliati’s alter-ego Paul, who has been called “the Tintin of Quebec” by Le Devoir. The French edition, Paul à Québec, was critically hailed, winning the FNAC Audience Award at France’s Angoulême festival, a Shuster Award for Outstanding Cartoonist, and was nominated for the City of Montreal’s Grand Prize, and the Audience Award at Montreal’s Salon du Livre. The film adaptation of the book is currently in production by Caramel Films. In his classic European cartooning style, Rabagliati more than capably tackles weighty, universal topics. As the family stands vigil over Roland in his hospital bed, Rabagliati weaves a story of one man’s journey through life and the legacy he leaves behind. The Song of Roland is a mid-career masterpiece from one of Quebec’s finest draftsmen. “A formidable ode to life that reminds us of the importance of knowing how to say goodbye.” — La Presse “A novel that goes straight to the heart.” — Le Soleil “His stories are personally revealing but gentle, full of kind people with common prob- lems… Rabagliati employs a light, curvy drawing style and episodic plotting that overtly recalls Herge’s Tintin adventures.” — The Onion “Paul is a comic book character who is stirring up ever more fervour in Quebec with each new book detailing his life. He has become much more popular than Asterix, than any American superhero.” — Toronto Star Michel Rabagliati was born in 1961 in Montreal, where he grew up in the Rosemont neighbourhood. Having developed an interest in typography, he studied graphic design and in 1988 moved into freelance illustration. Since 1998, his graphic novels have revolutionized the comic- book art form in Quebec. With his books, Michel Rabagliati has become an essential figure in the comics scene of Quebec. In April 2005, he was awarded the Grand Prix de la ville de Québec, care of the Festival de BD de Québec, and was selected as a Personality of the Week by the daily newspaper La Presse. In 2007, Rabagliati’s body of work to date earned a Special Mention from the Prix des libraires du Québec. 102 And suddenly, like a tape recorder unspooling, Roland Cough cough... You OK, Mr. Beau- Gimme a cigarette. My father was a no-good lieu? How about I had a started telling me the cheating bastard, and a gargl glogkof! childhood, got that? story of his youth. All the we head back to drunk and a gambler too. A the house? dates and places were still sorry son of a bitch. All Are you sure vivid in his memory. he ever did for my mother that’s a good was knock her up. Nine idea? Sorry, I kids and nothing to raise didn’t mean them on! to... No, no... Happens all the time. Just Just give me a bit of bile the ciga- coming up... rette. We were living on De La Tourelle Street back then. No boots, no coat, nothing. We ate bread One day my mother took off with another man. And she That was 1935. We were dirt poor. with lard and sugar on it, meal after left us behind. Five boys, four girls. We never saw her again. meal, and we were on “direct relief”. Simone, come take your sister Yes, so I can finish Ma’am. up here. Our grandfather wasn’t any better than his son. He had her pay him in kind, with us kids I was ten years old. We were separated and placed in different homes—the girls In the winter, since we had nothing to heat the right there in earshot. with relatives, the boys in orphanages or on farms. house with, he’d bring my mother some firewood... Hey you lil’ tykes! Hello, folks! These Here’s some wood are the Beaulieu boys for the oven! I told you about... Put it in the shed. Grandpa! 60 61 People Around Here Dave Lapp May 2012 ISBN 978-1-894994-59-0 6x9 inches / 160 pages / black and white / $17 People Around Here is a companion piece to Drop-in, Lapp’s critically-acclaimed account of working in inner city Toronto drop-in centres, but this time he takes it to the streets! Always the consummate ob- server, Lapp’s ability to crystallize everyday moments of street life and overheard conversations into short visual vignettes is remarkable. These strips are taken from Lapp’s regular column in Taddle Creek magazine and the Annex Gleaner, but many more are included. Drop-in was nominated for a Doug Wright Award, an Ignatz Award, and was excerpted in the 2010 edition of The Best American Comics. Lapp’s second book, a collection of weekly strips called Children of the Atom, received high praise: “Despite its obvious debt to other strips, it carries a highly original, singular voice. He has man- aged to hone the rhythm of strip cartooning in such a way that it feels more like poetry than narrative storytelling.” — The Comics Journal “Standing entirely on its own, Lapp’s handsome pen-and-ink art is gorgeous to behold: it’s some of the most accomplished strip artwork you’ll find, with a skill, delicacy, and subtlety that compares to the best in the format’s history….Children of the Atom is the truly distinctive cre- ation: it breathes literary quality into what has predominantly been a gag medium. And with its singular vision, it quietly moves and delights.” — See Magazine Also by Dave Lapp: Drop-in Children of the Atom October 2008 May 2010 ISBN 978-1-894994-33-0 ISBN 978-1-894994-47-7 6×9 inches / 160 pages / $17 11×4.25 inches / 240 pages / $17 Britt Wilson’s Greatest Book on Earth Britt Wilson May 2012 ISBN 978-1-894994-62-0 6×9 inches / 144 pages black and white $17 This Toronto artist’s popular mini- comics have finally been collected into her first graphic novel. Wilson has a flowing cartooning style, reminiscent of Roberta Gregory, with angry young women running around the city creating havoc. She has an innate sense of storytelling through comics panels, and an absurd, dark, yet hilarious point of view. “I was drawn to Britt Wilson’s work immediately. The liveliness, the effortless polish, the humour — there was so much appeal, I ate it up, I looked through everything I could find. I was thrilled to hear about a whole book full of those drawings. I look forward to being jealous of Britt’s work for a long time to come, because there’s no way she won’t rise to the top.” — Kate Beaton “Britt’s comics, like all great humour, are both a little sweet, and a little caustic. And she can draw like nobody’s business. I could stare at her expressive drawings all day long, and wouldn’t be surprised in the least if they actually jumped off the page and bit me in the face.” — John Martz Heartless Nina Bunjevac September 2012 ISBN 978-1-894994-64-4 7×9.25 inches 128 pages / hardcover black and white plus 16 pages colour $20 Introduction by Jay Lynch “Powered by an expressive black and white “Heartless is just amazing! I laughed out loud a drawing style, reminiscent of Robert Crumb lot. It is chock full of great stuff and I’m hard to and the meticulous pointillist technique please! Nina Bunjevac’s art is a pleasure to look of Drew Friedman, the dark undertone of at. The writing is seriously demented, but in a Bunjevac’s humour brings into light the totally brilliant, highly entertaining way. It is its range of socio-political issues her comics deal own thing, imitating no one.” — Kim Deitch with, such as gender, nationalism or urban alienation, always from an ironic feminist perspective. Her chain-smoking, slightly “The most vitally reinvigorating change in mod- alcoholic and manically depressed character ern comics is the unstoppable rise of women, as Zorka may just be today’s ultimate antihero- creators, as readers, and as characters. In her im- ine. A Balkan immigrant in the Brave New pressive debut collection, Nina Bunjevac stuns as World, working in that same meat factory a distinctive, innovative voice, adept at hyperde- for the last twenty years, tormented by family tailed cartooning and deliciously disturbing as she constraints and her own secrete desires… we probes the darkest depths of desire and despair.” simply can’t get enough of her.” — BTurn — Paul Gravett Nina BUNJEVac started her art training in Yugoslavia, at the Djordje Krstic school for applied arts. In 1997, she graduated from OCAD in the Drawing and Painting department. Formerly a painter and a sculptor, Nina found her calling in sequential arts, a form that seemed to naturally evolve out of the narrative component in her sculpture installation work. Pen and ink became the medium of choice. Nina is also an art teacher. Multiple winner of the OAC Artist in Education grant, she has taken her cartooning and zine-making projects into a number of Toronto public schools. Her strips have been published in many European and North American publications including Mineshaft, Exile, Black, Giuda, Le Dernier Cri, Komikaze, and Broken Pencil. She is also the co-editor of the forthcoming Balkan Comics: Women on the Fringe. FALL 2012 FALL 2012 Fanny & Romeo All Citizens Yves Pelletier, Pascal Girard Serena McCarroll October 2012 November 2012 978-1-894994-65-1 978-1-894994-63-7 6.5x9.25 inches / 136 pages 7.5x9.5 inches / 160 pages full colour / $20 full colour / hardcover BDANG Imprint CD included Translation by KerryAnn Cochrane $25 In 2006, two artists fled the high cost of living inV an- couver and moved to a place where they knew absolutely It’s him or the cat in this charm- nobody, Bruno, Saskatchewan, population 500.