GNG Meets to Talk About Toronto Coming-of-age Memoir
By Dan Brown SPOILER WARNING: This column contains plot details from Maurice Vellekoop’s I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together, so if you value surprise, stop reading now! Here’s the rundown on the most recent meeting of the L.A. Mood Graphic-Novel Group, which took place Saturday, May 10. The book: I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together by Toronto graphic artist Maurice Vellekoop. The discussion: The book we all read falls squarely into the Canadian school of graphic memoirs – for some reason, homegrown creators are really good at telling their own origin stories. In fact, they are the best in the world. In this particular case, Vellekoop puts the focus on his own upbringing as the son of religious Dutch immigrants who settled in Toronto. L.A. Mood Comics & Games co-owner Carol Vandenberg pitched the book in January for our 2025 reading list as she, too, is the child of a Dutch immigrant family. Carol said she recognized a bit of her experience in the book’s details, like Vellekoop’s mother making clothes for her children and his childhood home being decorated with Rembrandt and Vermeer paintings. It was the Walt Disney movie Fantasia that sparked Vellekoop’s imagination as a child. He attended a screening with his father, who is a central figure in the artist’s story. One moment his dad is spanking him, the next spoiling him. Talk about mixed messages! During our opening lightning round – everyone around the table gets two minutes to share their initial thoughts – almost every group member said they enjoyed or appreciated the book. We did talk about the graphic nature of the story – there are a number of sex scenes as Vellekoop embarks on his voyage of self-discovery. We briefly discussed how much of a creator’s personal life the reader ought to see, with some members noting how Vellekoop wanted to be transparent about his identity. One central paradox runs through the whole story: According to their religious beliefs, his parents indicate it’s fine for Vellekoop to be gay, but he can’t get into heaven if he ever acts on his sexuality. Naturally, this contradiction messes him up. Later in life, Vellekoop goes into therapy. After a number of tries, he finds a therapist who helps him make sense of his feelings about his mother and father. Vellekoop is more than up to the challenge of making the process of therapy – therapist and client sitting and talking – visually interesting for the reader. In the hands of a lesser artist, those sections of the book might not have been as compelling. One of the devices he uses is what I would call “the devil and angel on his shoulders.” Vellekoop gives the two conflicting voices in his head a physical form as clouds of emotion, and finally – at the moment of his biggest breakthrough in therapy – they dive back into his head. Another element group members mentioned liking is the memoir’s depiction of Toronto over the years. In one party scene in the 1980s, for instance, I spotted one of my former Ryerson journalism profs – Vellekoop did not skimp on any details. He got the look and feel of different eras in Toronto history right. Further reading: Check out Seth’s It’s A Good Life If You Don’t Weaken, Michel Rabagliati’s Paul Moves Out, and Jeff Lemire’s next book, which will be released on July 15, is called 10,000 Ink Stains: A Memoir. L.A. Mood’s Graphic-Novel Group meets the second Saturday of every month. Next month’s selection is Dean Motter’s Mister X: The Modern Age. We are on a roll with Canadian books in recent months! We’ll reconvene June 14 at the gaming tables in the store at 11 a.m. All are welcome to join the discussion! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Maurice Vellekoop’s Coming-of-Age Story Mirrors That of Toronto
By Dan BrownI’m So Glad We Had This Time Together is the story of one man, but also a city.The graphic memoir, released earlier this year, describes how future visual artist Maurice Vellekoop grew up closeted in a strict Dutch immigrant family in Toronto. The experience haunts him for much of his adult life.As Vellekoop comes of age, so does his hometown; his sexual awakening coincides with Toronto’s arrival on the world scene.These dual narratives make for compelling reading. It doesn’t happen often that I’m so engrossed in a graphic novel I lose track of time, but that’s the kind of hold the book had on me.It’s one of the few comics of which I can say: I wish it went on longer.As a young boy, Vellekoop’s imagination is fired when his father takes him to see Walt Disney’s Fantasia. It was “an experience that more or less set the course for the rest of my life,” he explains.Vellekoop’s drawing style reminds me of that of Seth, arguably the father of Canada’s autobiographical school of graphic storytelling. Vellekoop uses devices like giving his inner child and his inner demon actual shape and form; they flit about his head as he struggles with contradictory emotions.After years of therapy, Vellekoop absorbs both figures into himself, indicating he is overcoming the damage done by his religious parents.Music, which also looms large in Vellekoop’s life, is portrayed as lyrics dancing across several panels in the book. It’s these kinds of visual innovations that kept this reader engaged for almost 500 pages. The artist/writer devotes a big chunk of that to his childhood, and in a couple sections I wish he had taken extra time to develop aspects of his life as an adult in a more fulsome way.The parallel story here is that of Canada’s largest city, and its queer community.In at least a couple passages, I spotted figures from Toronto gay history like the late Gerald Hannon, who was an instructor of mine when I attended Ryerson University’s journalism school in the 1990s. Partway through his account, Vellekoop makes his home in a cottage on the Toronto Islands. On lonely Saturday nights, he watches movies on TV hosted by Elwy Yost. There’s a mention early in the book of “gay cancer,” indicating Vellekoop is then living under the shadow of HIV/AIDS – even before it was called that. Later on, he has an inner debate about bringing home a stranger from a bar. “What if he’s Toronto’s own Jeffrey Dahmer?” Vellekoop wonders. As we now know, there was a serial killer targeting queer men in Toronto’s gay village for several years, Bruce McArthur.Vellekoop also recounts being gay-bashed on two occasions. The first of these attacks is all the more shocking and disappointing when Vellekoop’s father declines to come check up on his son, leaving him with deep emotional scars.I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together also has the most compelling depiction of talk therapy I’ve ever read. You might think two people sitting and chatting wouldn’t be great material for a comic book, but with devices like flashbacks and the aforementioned personal avatars it becomes a dynamic scene.In Seth’s work he wields nostalgia like a weapon; over the years, he has used the fictional town of Dominion – his answer to the Marvel Universe – to evoke a Canada that never existed but which we can all remember. In Maurice Vellekoop’s new graphic memoir, he likewise uses specific details to paint a vivid portrait not of Toronto, but of a Toronto of the mind, with all its grime, glory and Gerald Hannons. That’s why it has fast become a classic of the genre.Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 31 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
