Three Thieves, Two Generals, SJCAF

The third Three Thieves book, 2012's The Captive Prince, is back in print and in stores TODAY, thanks to my friends at Papercutz.

Dessa and her friends are still on the run, but she’s also growing up…is there time to indulge her first crush? I wrote this story years before the term “romantasy” was coined, but it’s definitely of that genre. And the last bit of childhood fun before the series takes a decidedly darker turn.

This new edition also contains part 3 of an exhaustive interview with comics editor/scholar/critic Irene Velentzas about the creation of the series, as well as behind-the-scenes sketchbook images, etc. Get one for the young fantasy lover in your life, and one for yourself. If you can support a local indie bookstore or comics shop at the same time, all the better.

TWO GENERALS 15th ANNIVERSARY

Speaking of my older books, October 26th was the 15th anniversary of Two Generals, my 2010 graphic biography of my grandfather Law Chantler, the Battle of Normandy, and its aftermath.

Still in print after all these years, still taught in universities and high schools all over the country, still making complete strangers tell me how much it wrecked them. It launched me out of the relatively niche comic book market and into the wider literary world, which is probably what’s allowed me to still have a career after all this time. My profound thanks to everyone who’s ever supported it over the years, and to every reader it’s touched.

We've pretty well lost the WWII generation at this point, so books that keep their voices and experiences alive are going to be more important than ever. Can we do another fifteen years? Let's try it.

ST. JOHN'S COMIC ARTS FESTIVAL

As the final leg of my recent Wayward Travelers Tour of eastern Canada, I was honoured to help kick off the inaugural St. John's Comic Arts Festival on September 6th-7th. I did a couple of talks and signings, including a September 5th nighttime kick-off event at St. John's impressive combined gallery/museum/archive/event space The Rooms, where I enjoyed a great on-stage conversation with the festival's director, cartoonist Georgia Webber.

While it's not the easiest to get to, Newfoundland has a passionate local comics scene and a number of really talented creators live there (Mike Feehan! Paul Tucker!) so it seems like a good place for its own artist-driven festival. I'm eager to see where the show goes in the future. Thanks to Georgia and all of the other organizers and volunteers for bringing me out, and for an inspiring and fun weekend.

Tour Report - Wayward Travelers 2025

For reasons that should be obvious, I cancelled a couple of planned promotional appearances in the U.S. for this year, and decided to replace them with a driving tour across eastern Canada. It began with an invitation to appear at the Dartmouth Comic Arts Festival, with the idea that simply getting there would take me through a lot of other cities with many supportive bookshops and comics stores. With the help of Erika Medina, my excellent publicist at Raincoast Books (who are the Canadian distributor for First Second/Macmillan), a plan was hatched.

The Beguiling in Toronto, Ontario

DAY 1

Starting on August 4th, we (meaning me and my better half, kick-ass comics editor/journalist/scholar Irene Velentzas) loaded up my Jeep Renegade and struck out for Toronto, a mere two hour drive from our home in Stratford, Ontario. The plan hit the first of its very few wrinkles in that short stretch: the first store we planned to visit, Another Story, decided spontaneously that morning to close for the Civic Holiday, despite previous assurances that they'd be open. No problem! That just gave us more time at The Beguiling, one of North America's most renowned comics shops, and a store with which I've enjoyed an association going back nearly 25 years, to the very beginnings of my comics career.

Toronto's Book City in the Beach

After signing an impressive stack of books and chatting with The Beguiling's owner Peter Birkemoe for a while, it was off to Book City in

the Beach. Book City is one of Toronto's great indie bookstore chains. I don't think I'd ever been to the Beach location, but its staff was enthusiastic, friendly, and welcoming. I signed a number of copies of the Squire & Knight and Three Thieves books they had in stock. An old friend from university days, Chris Scholey, who lives in the area, was able to pop in for a quick visit while we were there, which was a nice bonus. I also bought a copy of a book I'd been looking all over for, Christopher Buehlman's Between Two Fires, my only purchase of the trip (Irene, though, was different story...)

Then it was back into the Jeep for the rest of the afternoon as we made our way to the nation's capital, Ottawa, Ontario. We checked into a cheap motel and managed to connect with an longtime industry pal, writer Jack Briglio, for dinner and a few drinks to wind down Day 1.

Perfect Books in Ottawa, Ontario

DAY 2

In the morning we headed to our only Ottawa store visit, at Perfect Books. A really nice little shop with a friendly staff who greeted us warmly. (This, I'm happy to report, will be a recurring theme. Book people are, generally, kind of the best.) They had a handful of copies each of the two Squire & Knight books, which I proceeded to scribble my name in.

We allowed ourselves a couple of hours to look around some the city's historic sites, many of which are very near the store: the Parliament Buildings, the National War Memorial, the statue of jazz legend Oscar Peterson, and the Ukrainian Embassy (which is currently emblazoned with a large banner urging Canadians, movingly, to "Be Brave Like Ukraine.") But we couldn't linger too long. There was a lot of ground to cover, so it soon it was back on the road, headed for Montreal.

Librairie Bertrand in Montreal, Quebec

Somewhere along the route, it occurred to me that I'd never confirmed with the Montreal store that I was coming that day. In fact, I wasn't sure there'd been any communication with the store since they'd first expressed interest to my publicist. Whoops! A quick email to Librairie Bertrand confirmed that there would be someone there, and a copy of each of the Squire & Knight books for me to sign. It's a very classy shop up a short flight of stairs in the heart of historic Old Montreal, a great location that we were sad we had to leave so quickly.

We were similarly bummed to miss out on a planned visit with another industry friend, writer Cecil Castellucci, with whom I was nominated for an Eisner Award in 2018 (for our short story "Ethel Byrne" in the anthology

Mine!: A Celebration of Liberty and Freedom for All Benefiting Planned Parenthood.) Our schedules just didn't quite mesh.

La Maison Anglaise in Quebec City

So there wasn't much else to do except get back in the Jeep and make our way to the next stop of the tour: Quebec City.

DAYs 3-5

We spent a few days in Old Quebec as a mini-vacation, something we'd been meaning to do since I found out Irene had never been (if you haven't, either, you really should...it's the closest thing to Europe you can get in North America.)

But first, we got business out of the way by stopping in at La Maison Anglaise, an English-language bookstore in a mall not far from the hotel where we were staying. I was happy to find they had a variety of my books, including older ones like Two Generals and deep cuts like Bix.

After wearing our tourist hats for the next two days, taking in a bunch of history and more than a little booze and French food, a long, full day of driving took us all the way to Nova Scotia for...

Strange Adventures in Halifax, Nova Scotia

DAYs 6-8

The tour's ultimate goal, you may recall, was to get us to the Dartmouth Comic Arts Festival, and get there we did. Cal Johnston of Strange Adventures put us up in one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed at: Muir in downtown Halifax, which is conveniently right across the street from the store (and also next door to The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, a tourist attraction we wanted to hit while we were there...and did!)

The first day of the festival is for panels, workshops, and other programming. Irene did portfolio reviews in her position as incoming editor for Conundrum Press's Emanata imprint, and for her own fledgling publishing house, Tunnel Vision Press. At the same time, I was on a panel with fellow creators Brenda Hickey (Don't Call Me Sidekick!) and Alexander Forbes (Hobtown Mystery Stories) about world-building in comics. It was a strange subject for me, because I kind of dislike world-building and find it to be nearly always overdone, particularly in the fantasy genre. But it kind of worked for the panel, which led us into a discussion of how much world-building is too much. It was a good, fun conversation. Brenda is a friend, and always a delight. I was meeting Alex for the first time, but he also seems rad.

The second day of the festival is the exhibition day. A big part of the idea behind CAFs (comics arts festivals) is that they have free admission in a high-traffic area where as wide an audience as possible can just sort of stumble into the show (as opposed to old-fashioned comic book conventions, which are very much corporate trade shows that cost an arm and a leg to get into.) DCAF takes place at Alderney Landing, which fits the bill quite nicely. It's where the ferry docks in Dartmouth, but also a farmer's market, galley, theatre and event space, and the public library is also right there. A very smart location.

I spent the day next to the Strange Adventures table, signing and chatting with fans, and generally having a great time. I hadn't been to Halifax since 2007, so it was well past time for a return.

The Monday after the festival was our "off" day to hang around Halifax and be tourists again for a day, which we did. We took in the previously-mentioned Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, as well as one of the three graveyards where victims of the Titanic disaster are buried. We also enjoyed many of Halifax's fine restaurants and drinking establishments, including a lunch with Cal after a visit to the store to sign the shipment of books that didn't quite arrive in time for the festival (whoops!) He gave Irene some advice for Tunnel Vision Press which she really took to heart (maybe more on that in an upcoming blog post.) She also left the store with an armload of books.

DAYs 9-10

Strange Adventures in Fredericton, New Brunswick

Sadly, it was time to start heading home, even though tearing ourselves away from Muir was painful. The two-day trek home was kind of a slog, though the weather mostly cooperated (as it had throughout the whole tour, really) and we did break things up with a stop at the last store of the tour: Strange Adventures Federiction, which was actually the original store before Cal moved to Halifax and made that newer location the flagship of his comics retail empire. We hung out in the store for a while (as we did with all the shops along the way) but were pretty tired by this point and mostly wanted to get back to Ontario and our own bed. Which, of course, we eventually did.

So that was it. Our all-out assault on Canada's east coast would eventually continue with an appearance at the inaugural St. John's Comic Arts Festival, but that's another trip, another story, and another post.

Thanks again to Cal for bringing us out and for giving us rockstar treatment when we got there. And thanks to all the stores who participated in the tour. I love independent bookstores and comics shops, and you should, too. We're living in frighteningly conservative and reactionary times, and while Canada hasn't seen the kind of extremism that's mounting daily across the border in the U.S., it feels like that fire could spread here easily and at any minute (and may already be doing so.) The more that right-wing billionaires and wanna-be authoritarians attempt to control what we're allowed read -- and, by extension, what we're allowed to think -- through social media algorithms and massive, online retail outlets designed to price brick-and-mortar stores out of existence, the worse it's going to be. A society where people aren't free to read what they choose can't be said to be free at all, and the more ignorant and uninformed our culture is, the faster it will fall to the forces bent on its destruction.

Like librarians, independent bookstores are on the front lines of this fight. Let's help them out. Please support the stores I've mentioned here, or your own local favourites. Shout them out in the comments, here and everywhere. Buy Canadian when you can. And don't let anyone tell you what you can or can't read, think, say, do, or be.

Drawing From Life

I'm fond of saying that drawing skills aren't particularly necessary for making comics. It's a narrative medium, not an illustrative one the traditional sense. Some of its best practitioners draw simply, even crudely, but are so skilled at organizing and conveying information that it hardly matters. That's the job. I myself occasionally give a lecture titled "WHAT to Draw, Not HOW to Draw."

That said, drawing skills are certainly a nice bonus if you draw in a way that's even a little bit representational, as most of us do. It might start with childhood tracing of art you've seen and liked. Then you move on to trying to imitate your favourite artists. Eventually -- hopefully -- you absorb those influences, gaining the trained eye and the muscle memory required to develop a style of your own. An essential part that process is drawing from life.

A one-minute gesture drawing

I was lucky to have a high school art teacher (shout out to Linda Maskell-Pereira, formerly of Central Elgin Collegiate Institute in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada) who really emphasised drawing skills. We didn't do nudes at that age, of course, but she would routinely pick a student from the class to sit or stand on a table and pose for the rest of us to draw. We learned about gesture drawings -- quick, expressive sketches that capture the lines and basic forms of a pose in a simple, efficient way -- and "blind" drawing, where you don't look at your paper at all, forcing you to really look at the model in detail. Both teach you that drawing is about seeing. It's something you do with your eyes and brain, not your hand. It's hard to imagine anyone learning to draw well without at least some experience at this.

30-second gesture drawings

Later, I did a year of Fine Arts at university (before switching my major to Film Studies because I knew visual storytelling was where my heart really was.) The program included a lot of nude figure drawing, of course. But once I left school and eventually embarked on a career -- first in illustration, then in comics -- I stopped doing it. As much as you may enjoy it, when you draw all day (and I do mean all day -- I'm typically at the desk around ten or twelve hours on weekdays) sometimes the last thing you want to do at the end of it is even more drawing. Eventually my two kids came along and life got even busier. Plus, I figured I'd done the life drawing thing and learned everything I needed from it.

However.

The thing about drawing professionally is that you're working quickly. Especially in comics, which require an astonishing amount of drawing. There's rarely time to reference things outside of shooting some awkward photos of yourself on your phone. So you end up drawing out of your head a lot, and developing shortcuts that inevitably become the things people recognize as your "style." Which is perfectly natural, and part of the game. But drawing effectively, even in a simplified, stylized way, requires you to understand what you're leaving out. And drawing from memory requires your memory banks to be full of gestures, forms, surfaces. Poses. See where I'm going with this?

By 2017, about twenty years into my art career, my memory banks were feeling empty. My drawing style was starting to reference itself more than it was referencing the people and objects it was meant to represent. And the more experienced I got, the more I wanted my "style" to just be good drawing. The solution was obvious: I needed to start drawing from life again. Fill those memory banks. Remember what I was leaving out.

Luckily, I still lived close to my old university, where the Fine Art department still held life drawing sessions, which were free for alumni. So I started going to that every week or so to get back on my game. Other sessions began popping up all over town; like axe throwing or brewing your own beer, life drawing was briefly hip in the late 2010s. I tried out many of them. It was nice to draw for fun again, with no deadlines or fan expectations, in a social setting. When the Covid lockdowns in 2020 eventually shut those sessions all down, I fell off the wagon again. But I've recently gone back, and for the same reasons: to prevent my professional work from becoming too reflexive, and to give me an excuse to get out of the house on Wednesday nights.

This model's day job was as a house painter. She brought some of her tools of the trade to the session, which resulted in some refreshing (and practical!) poses.

Gesture drawings of a model who was six months pregnant.

Is it weird being room in a room with a nude stranger? Sure, for about two minutes. But once you start drawing -- start seeing -- you might as well be sketching a bowl of fruit. It's lines and forms, textures and lighting, proportion and weight. In that respect, it's good to draw as many types of bodies as you can. It keeps things interesting, and also makes sure your memory banks are as diverse as possible so that you don't end up drawing the same two or three "ideal" bodies over and over again. A good life drawing session will vary their models week to week for this reason. Over the years I've drawn people who were tall, short, fit, unfit, male, female, trans, pregnant. I've drawn amputees. I once drew a woman with a colostomy bag. Depending on the venue, there's also been any number of costumes and props. Everyone has different proportions, carries their weight in a different place, and poses themselves in a way that's them. You learn very quickly that bodies are unique, and uniquely interesting.

It's valuable to see that, even just on a person level. But if you draw human beings in your work, even in a "cartoon" style, it's vital.