Kicking off the Toronto Comic Arts Festival last night was the third annual Doug Wright Awards, which celebrates excellence in Canadian artistic or alternative comics.
Walking away with Best Book was Joe Ollman, for his work, This Will All End in Tears.
CBCnews.ca covered the event.
Ollman’s work explores people’s everyday obligations and turmoil.
“What contradictions, what energy, what tension, what struggle, what humour, what characters!” said writer Judy MacDonald, speaking on behalf of the five-member Wright Award jury.
Ollman’s collection transport readers “into cramped and messy living rooms where we discard ourselves and want to stay,” she said.
“These stories and characters aren’t tidy. The ends aren’t tidy. Life, fear isn’t tidy,” she said. “Art doesn’t have to be tidy either.”
The Best Emerging Talent winner was Rebecca Kraatz, creator of House of Sugar.
Jury member Lorenz Peter, one of the 2006 Wright Award-winners, described Kraatz’s strips as “little four-square bursts of uncontrolled, uncontrived imagination linked perfectly together.”
“Tales of lightning storms, old men and deep lakes are created with a childlike glee and playfulness that makes one want to explore their own memories and the realm of imagination that is the true essence of comics,” Peter said.
Inducted into the Giants of the North Hall of Fame was Rand Holmes. Holmes was best known for Harold Hedd, which originally appeared in the pages of Georgia Straight, a Vancouver alternative newspaper. Holmes passed away in 2002. Receiving the award on behalf of Rand Holmes was his son Ron.
