CONUNDRUMAN ANNUAL MAGAZINE OF THE COMIC ARTS 2021

1 sami alwani The Pleasure of the Text

“I love Sami Alwani’s style, his tender flat hysteria, and his naked honesty. And the way he In The Pleasure of the Text, Sami Alwani depicts queerness is so removed from cuddly weaves together themes of art induced dissociation, queer intergenerational poly- rainbow-tinged pop culture — it’s beautiful and amory, racial capitalism and esoteric mys- raw, and very very real.” — Roman Muradov tical experiences into 20 slice of life comic stories that are equal parts comedy and tragedy. These stories question society and individual identity. A talking baby philoso- phizes away his own emotions. A half-man, Sami Alwani is a and illustrator based in Toronto. His com- half-dog cartoonist’s spirit burns too bright ics have appeared in Best American Comics, on Vice and he received a when he alienates the entire alternative Award in 2018 for his story The Dead Father. His work comics industry, drunk on his own power. A was exhibited in the Canadian survey exhibition friendly ghost survives COVID quarantine “This is Serious” at the Hamilton Art Gallery in 2019. with the help of CBD pot cookies and essen- tial oil diffusers. There’s something for ev- eryone in this cheerful volume collecting all of award-winning Alwani’s previous work to date (Vice, Now) with plenty of never-be- fore-seen material.

Graphic Novel Mature Content 9781772620528 140 pages, 8x10.5 inches full colour, $20

MAY

2 3 Zoe Maeve The Gift

The Shining meets Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette in this gripping debut from an award-winning talent

The Gift opens on the snow-blanketed grounds of the Alexander Palace in Western Zoe Maeve is a comics artist originally from Tkaronto/Toronto who is now Russia where a moth has come to attend the based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. She studied visual arts at Concordia University, birth of the fourth Romanov princess, Anas- where she worked in oil painting, printmaking, and textiles before finding com- tasia. She and her siblings grow up in a gild- ics. Her work is based in her love of research and she is interested in hauntings, ed world, isolated from the society beyond archives, ecologies and other realities. In 2016 her book July was the palace walls despite their dominion over the recipient of Best English Comic at the Expozine Awards. She currently shares her home with one feisty black cat. it. After mysteriously receiving a camera on her fifteenth birthday, she begins to docu- ment her world, but the gift carries with it a weight she can’t yet see. A creature moves on the edge of her vision and stalks her dreams. As the revolution unfolds, the confines of Anastasia’s world keep closing in. Something is following her, and it might not be human.

Young Adult GN, Ages 13+ 9781772620559 96 pages, 6.25x8.5 inches duotone, $18

JUNE

4 5 cole pauls Pizza Punks

A punk-rock celebration of pizza in all its gooey glory

Dive deep into the world of cheese-loving, crust-craving, sauce-savouring punks with Dakwäkãda Warriors author Cole Pauls. Originally published in Lucky’s Comics Also Available newspaper, DUNK, Pizza Punks pushes the DAKWÄKÃDA WARRIORS limits of pizza devotion by exploring just 9781772620412 how far an extremely dedicated punk might $20 go to attain the cheesiest of pies. Backpack pizza? Sure. Couch pizza? Absolutely. Even Winner of Indigenous Voices Award Mosh pizza isn’t off-limits. Pineapple pizza, Nominated for 2 Doug Wright Awards though? That’s a little more controversial. Nominated for an Aurora Award This volume collects Pizza Punks 1-4 plus a hot’n’fresh 5th issue, drawn just for this col- lection! Plus pin-ups by Kirsten Hatfield, Joel Rich, Brian Fukushima, Owen Plummer, Kathleen Gros, Simon Roy, Walter Scott, Nathan Jones, Becca Tobin & Katie So. Cole Pauls is a Tahltan comic artist, illustrator and printmaker hailing from Haines Junction (Yukon Territory) with a BFA in Illustration from Emily Carr University. Graphic Novel Residing in Vancouver, Pauls focuses on his two comic series, the first being Pizza 9781772620535 Punks: a self contained comic strip about punks eating pizza, the other being Dak- 120 pages, 5.5x8.5 inches, wäkãda Warriors. In 2017, Pauls won Broken Pencil Magazine’s Best Comic and Best Zine of the Year Award for Dakwäkãda Warriors II. In 2020, Dakwäkãda Warriors duotone, $15 won Best Work in an Indigenous Language from the Indigenous Voices Awards and was nominated for the categories, The Egghead & The Nipper. APRIL

6 7 rick trembles Represented Immobilized

Schoolyard scuffles. Seedy matinees. Run-ins with inept riot cops. Represented Immobilized is an unflinching look through the smudged lens- es of Rick Trembles’ glasses at his early years in Montreal. Punk legend and alternative cartoon- ist Trembles was roommates with the editor of the influential zine Fish Piss where these auto- biographical strips were first published. After a midnight move from a crumbling apartment Trembles gradually started bringing all his childhood belongings back, bit by bit, which started triggering memories from his past. Wor- Rick Trembles is a Montreal-based post-underground cartoonist, writer, ried about them fading from memory as time filmmaker, and musician. Two books of his Motion Picture Purgatory comix wore on, he took the opportunity to document have been published by the UK’s FAB Press. He’s been published in interna- them before they could vanish. The book also tionally distributed books, periodicals & anthologies such as Russ Kick’s “The contains other autobio work from Trembles Graphic Canon,” Robert Crumb’s “Weirdo,” Books’ “Pictopia,” & France’s “Hopital Brut” for Le Dernier Cri. His award winning animated over his active 40 years. film “Goopy Spasms” has toured the festival circuit globally. He’s been a singer-guitarist for post-punk band The American Devices since 1980. He fre- quently archives his work at snubdom.com and his Motion Picture Purgatory comix appear monthly at canuxploitation.com.

“A famous free thinker.” ­— The L.A. Times

“Genius.” ­ — The Guardian

Graphic Novel 9781772620542 60 pages, 8.5x5.5 inches b/w, $12

APRIL

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