Looking Back at 2024: The Year in Comics
By Dan Brown It’s time to go over the last 12 months in comics to pick out the highlights. These categories are arbitrary, the choices are mine alone, and I invite you to chime in with your own selections! Best graphic novel of year: This goes to Walter Scott’s The Wendy Award, the latest chapter in the story of everyone’s favourite anxiety-ridden, coke-snorting young artist. It ends with Wendy, an MFA graduate from the University of Hell (i.e. Guelph), possibly turning her back on the world of art. Say it ain’t so! Best debut graphic novel of the year: I give this one to Maurice Vellekoop’s I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together, his memoir of growing up gay in Toronto as the son of strict Dutch immigrants. His lines are lively, and they evoke Seth’s work for me. Best local graphic novel: You gotta love the Curly Head Ballet from Doug Rogers, the only comic I know that was inspired by London’s Original Kids Theatre. It’s a trip! Barbenheimer of my summer: Montreal cartoonist (and Western Gazette alum) Gabrielle Drolet’s rat character went on vacation in Europe in the warmer months, as Drolet herself went on a parallel journey. Daily deadlines were no obstacle for the artist, and I hope she assembles these strips into an anthology. If the folks at Montreal’s Drawn & Quarterly are as smart as I think they are, they’ll be the ones to publish it! Anniversary of the year: Goes not to a superhero, but to a giant lizard with the ability to breath nuclear fire! I’m talking about Godzilla, the kaiju who in November marked 70 years since his first movie appearance. Oh, no! They say he’s got to go! Go, go, Godzila! Comic villain of the year: I’m giving this one to a flesh-and-blood person, not a comic baddie. A big boo to sometime footballer Colin Kaeprnick for his idea to create a company, Lumi, that aims to replace the talented humans who make comics with AI-created work. Way to cheese off an entire industry! It’s about time: The winner in this category is Canada Post, which issued a series of stamps this year to recognize homegrown graphic novelists such as Chester Brown and the Tamaki cousins. Finally! Better never than late: Marvel Comics might have had a better year if they hadn’t belatedly given Roy Thomas a credit as one of the character Wolverine’s creators, a move which antagonized fans and likely made no one happy apart from the former Marvel editor himself. Least surprising plot twist of the year: Speaking of Marvel, I understand that the Krakoa phase of the X-Men’s history has ended, with our favourite band of mutants returning to mainstream society – thus confirming that as long as a comic sells, any change is temporary. Burgeoning trend of the year: Actor Elliott Page used a pop-culture con, the Calgary Expo, to speak out about the Alberta government’s policies on trans youth. Are we seeing cons become platforms for celebrities to speak out on issues? Something I’ll be watching for in 2025. Say what? of the year: Easily won by Marvel Studios, who used San Diego’s Comic-Con International to announce Robert Downey Jr. is returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a suit of specialized armour, only this time he won’t be playing Iron Man, he’ll be . . . Doctor Doom? “New mask, same task,” the popular actor enigmatically pronounced from the con’s stage. Non-news event of the year; At the same event, Marvel competitor DC had an announcement of its own: The company is changing its logo back to the one it used to slap on comics in the 1980s. Yay? Cause for concern: In snippets of footage from the upcoming Fantastic Four film, Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards still has that damn moustache. Not a good sign. Dearly departed: John Cassaday, Trina Robbins, Greg Hildebrandt and Ed Piskor are among the talented individuals who left us this year. Comic journalist of the year: Eisner Award nominee Rob Salkowitz, who writes about comics for publications like Forbes and Publishers Weekly, was a must-read in 2024. I also finally got around this year to reading Salkowitz’s book Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, which I greatly enjoyed. Person of the year in comics: It’s a tie between Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, who with their $1.3 billion-grossing Deadpool & Wolverine stopped superhero movies from their downward slide with a huge dose of fan service. We’ll find out in 2025 whether it’s a temporary pause or not. And now I wanna hear from you! What were the year’s comic highlights for you? Let me know in the comment box below. 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.
