Free Comic Book Day 2009

[posted by J. Nadiger]

Every year, the first Saturday of May is Free Comic Book Day. It's usually timed with the release of a comic book movie, this year being X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

For Free Comic Book Day, participating comic book shops across North America and around the world give away comic books absolutely FREE to anyone who comes into their stores.

IMPORTANT: It does NOT mean that all comics found in the store are free!

Rather, each publishing company creates a comic intended as a free sample for a potential new reader. Some are reprints of popular titles, but most are original stories done by talented creators, designed to woo you into the comic shop on a more regular basis.

Every store does Free Comic Book Day a little differently, but I think that my comic shop, Elfsar Comics, puts on the best FCBD in town.

For the past several years, we've combined Free Comic Book Day with a food drive for the Vancouver food bank. If you walk into the store, you automatically get to choose 5 out of the 25 different Free Comics, no questions asked.

BUT! If you bring in a non-perishable food item, or cash donation, you get 5 more comics, an entry into one of the raffles, and a photo taken with one of the costumed heroes that will be on site.

If that wasn't enough, we'll have some spectacular local artists there promoting their work and doing sketches:

• Comic creator/filmmaker KAARE ANDREWS
• Cartoonist CAMILLA D'ERRICO
• Arcana Comics publisher & EiC SEAN O'REILLY
• Digital artist DERYK MANDRYK

There will also be a massive sale on almost every item in the store: Buy 2 get 1 free on all reading material, and 20% off all non-reading material.

At the very least, it's a chance to find some cool new works of art and donate to a very worthy cause.

Free Comic Book Day happens this Saturday, May 2. We open at 11am and close at 7pm. Supplies of free comics are limited (first come, first served!), and it's always crowded, so please come early, but it's always a good time.

I hope to see you all there!

For more information, please visit Elfsar's Free Comic Book Day page.

GG Winner Jacob Scheier and Sonnet L'Abbe Read Tonight @ Main Street!

Jacob Scheier and Sonnet L'Abbe read tonight in Main Street's redesigned front room, courtesy of our friends at PRISM International magazine and the UBC Creative Writing Department. This reading is likely going to be really crowded; if you want a guaranteed seat, you might consider arriving around 6:45pm.

New Islands Discovered!

[posted by Chris Clarke]

Thought I'd pass along a new discovery (new to me, at least) for those that enjoy Latin American fiction with a touch of magical realism, along the lines of Borges, Casares, Ocampo and other faves. A copy of Maria Luisa Bombal's "New Islands and Other Stories" (Cornell University Press, 1988) wandered across the counter and caught my eye. A big fan of the short fiction of Argentine Silvina Ocampo, I had vague hopes that this might be similar in feel; the 'Preface by Jorge Luis Borges' notice led me in that direction. While quite different thematically, Bombal did not disappoint. In fact, it was a pleasure to read and, as with Ocampo, I am now in the frustrating position of finding that there is little if any more available in English translation.

Bombal, born in 1910 in Chile, studied in London and Paris, and, returned to Chile, married Elogio Sanchez. The marriage wasn't ideal; in fact, Maria shot him (apparently) and fled to Argentina (he survived...), where she met Borges, Neruda and others. She lived in the US for about thirty years with a later husband, and also returned to Chile later in life.

Bombal is known in her brief output for narrative experimentation and complex poetic imagery. The lightly surrealistic feel of her stories is well suited to the inner worlds of the female characters she inhabits. Occasionally, unusual or ambiguous details are mentioned in passing without explanation; they hover in the back of the mind while reading, but never resurface. This soft touch of magical realism is a pleasure, reminding a bit of some of Marquez' work, or again Ocampo's, yet it remains contained within the private, proto-feminist, nature-connected worlds she creates. I was particularly taken with the title story, in which the characterization and interaction takes place over the backdrop of unexplained islands emerging from the depths of a nearby lake.

According to the Latin American Fiction in Translation bibliography that we often refer to, compiled by Joao Barretto in 2004, there are three titles available in English by Bombal, "House of Mist", "New Islands", and "The Shrouded Woman", although it seems to me that these three collections overlap, each containing some of the same two novellas and short stories. The copy of "New Islands" I have doesn't contain 'The Shrouded Woman", but has the story "The Final Mist" as well as four others. Whether these other volumes contain different versions of the same stories, of which I have seen mention, or simply a few stories not available in this volume, there is unfortunately little of her small output available at this time.

As for availability, I haven't seen too many of these floating around used, but it seems that there are three editions currently in print that we could try to order for anyone interested in trying some out: "New Islands" is available in an edition from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, who have also done an edition of "House of Mist", while the University of Texas Press published an edition of "House of Mist - The Shrouded Woman" as a part of their Texas Pan American series.

Hey Kids! Comics!

Here are some preview pages from two upcoming comics taken more or less directly from great books:


First up, we have five pages of BOOM! Studios's 24-issue serialization of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This is not an adaptation, but rather the entire text of the short story laid out over comic book pages. They even kept the "he said/she said" bits.

Each issue will feature essays by various writers on how PKD influenced their own work. The first issue will feature cranky Warren Ellis, and then Matt Fraction, Ed Brubaker, and Farscape creator Rockne O'Bannon.

Click here for the preview pages as well as a bit more info about the project.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? #1 of 24 ships in June.



On the other end of the genre spectrum, Canadian comic artist Darwyn Cooke is adapting the Richard Stark (who we all know is Donald Westlake, right?) Parker series into graphic novels for IDW Publishing. First up is The Hunter.

IDW Publishing has posted 19 pages for your pre-appreciation here.

The Hunter is on sale in July.

***

Both of these fine adaptations will be available for purchase from better comic book stores in your area. For those of you in Vancouver, two such awesome stores are:

RX Comics, 2418 Main Street, 604.454.5099, Pulpfiction's Main Street neighbour

and

Elfsar Comics, 1007 Hamilton Street (in Yaletown), 604.688.5922

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I also work at Elfsar, and am a large part of what makes it so awesome. -J.N.)

Bruce Serafin's STARDUST wins Edna Staebler Award

Bruce Serafin, close friend of the shop, founder of The Vancouver Review, and one of Canada's best writers. Bruce passed away in 2007. His excellent Stardust, a collection of review essays and short prose memoirs, just won Wilfred Laurier University's 2008 Enda Staebler Award for Creative Nonfiction. This Friday, April 24th, in conjuction with WLU and Bruce's publisher, New Star Books, we're hosting an award ceremony. 7-9pm at the Main Street store. Light refreshments. A reading. & etc.

Everyone is welcome to attend.

PFB Profiled in The National Post!

Brief profile/interview in today's Post.

"Q: A reader has just finished Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. What would you recommend next?

A: Australian Garry Disher's numerous crime novels, now available in Canada through Soho Crime. Almost anything by Ross MacDonald. Charles Williams (especially A Touch of Death, recently reprinted by Hard Case Crime). Centipede Press' new David Goodis and Fredric Brown reprints. Maybe even Don Winslow's terrific California Fire and Life."

(Photo of the Main Street shop by flickr user Sashafatcat)

"Read Any Good Books Lately?"

Yes: Paul Bowles, The Spider's House (1955).

The Washington Post concurs:

"As Francine Prose suggests in her introduction to the new Ecco paperback edition, The Spider's House should be read by anyone with an interest in either Morocco or terrorism. 'It's very, very strange and disturbing, this place,' observes a lady friend of [the protagonist]'s. 'I don't quite see how you can stay in it. It would be like being constantly under the influence of some drug, to live here. I should think going out of it could be terribly painful, when you've been here a long time.' Bowles also delves into the desperation underlying jihads launched at civilians, no matter where they occur: 'It was not independence they [the terrorists] wanted, it was a satisfaction much more immediate than that: the pleasure of seeing others undergo the humiliation of suffering and dying, and the knowledge that they had at least the small amount of power necessary to bring about that humiliation.'"