• The End of the Love as a Foreign Language Summer of Love tour and the Art of the Reprint!

• Charlie Jane Anders’ “The one horrifying sci-fi trope that’s probably far too accurate”

• Films I’ve Been Watching

The End of the Summer of Love Tour and
The Art of the Reprint

August 29th signalled the end of the “Summer of Love” Tour that J. Torres and I had been running throughout the season (which you can read about in the Archives!). This last event was The Art of The Reprint, hosted by the Beguiling and featuring some Toronto Greats: Ho Che Anderson (The Most Embarrassing Things I've Ever Done, I Want to Be Your Dog), Jay Stephens (The Land of Nod, Dwellings) and Nick Craine (Line Work, The Cheese Heads). Also on hand that night were Michel Vrana from Black Eye Books and Chester Brown (Louis Riel, Paying for It)

I began the panel with talking about how Love as a Foreign Language came about, as well as how J. Torres and I began our project many (many!) moons ago. Thanks to the incredible work of editors both old and new (thanks to Grace, Azat, James and Jamie!), we were able to finish our projects and recover a lot of our old work as well. We were also very fortunate for Young’s new translations, as well as Crank’s new letters in both English and Korean, and lastly, indebted to Wai Au for her work in realizing our story in color. Like, this story was a monster, but it came out beautifully.

Anderson, Craine and Stephens graciously shared stories about their individual careers, but also, wove together a portrait of the Toronto comics scene in the 80s and 90s. For Anderson, talking about his early work from the perspective of the present, to Craine discussing how it was to complete a work that he had started as a teenager, to Stephens working out new and innovative ways to play with the theme of nostalgia while also working directly with a work that people are nostalgic for! Absolutely genius.

It was also wonderful for me to listen to everyone’s struggles and achievements with their works when they were starting them, and what’s both changed and remained the same over time. For me, the books contain more than just stories propelled by ambition — they sum up where everyone was at. They feel like Canadian dreams and thoughts indexed to paper and realized.

Anyways, it was a real honor for me to be able to sit alongside these creators and get some insight into their lives and work. I’m hugely indebted to the Beguiling for inviting me to sit alongside them, and could not have asked for a better night.

“To Serve Man”

This isn’t actually news, but it is pretty neat! A while back, Charlie Jane Anders wrote an article entitled “The one horrifying sci-fi trope that’s probably far too accurate”, writing that “…one of the most skin-crawling tropes in science fiction is also probably pretty realistic: humans eating alien life forms that later turn out to be intelligent.” Anders discusses the trope and raises how it appears in various novels, as well as her own. It’s a really fascinating idea, because it start to gently tug at that thread of “what is it that we consider intelligent behaviour?” Or maybe more bluntly, “What does something have to say in order to not become the main course?”

Anders also discusses how Jim Munroe in our book Zeroed Out complicates the trope: “The book finds Earth in a “galactic supply chain,” and one of the rules is that “the acceptability of eating meat is related to intelligence differential,” says Munroe. So in this future, humans are allowed to eat chickens and fish, but not beef or pork. But the “offworlders” who work with humans are smarter than us, so they are allowed to eat beef and pork — and these super-intelligent aliens “are nuts for bacon.”” The whole article is a fun read, and I’d encourage you to check it out (as well as our book, of course!)

And seeing as you made it all this way…

Films I’ve Been Watching

Finally back on track with these newsletters! You can look forward to the next one in thirty days where I’ll uncover a brand new illustration to go with the news. Until then!

- eric