Montreal is my favorite place in the world to visit. It’s a phenomenal walking city, plus I get to buy French comics, enjoy fresh wood-fired bagels, and eat at Damas. This year my wife and I visited during the Montreal Comics Arts Festival. It was a coincidence, really. (I’m still trying to convince her this is true.)
I was surprised that the show was outdoors, but the organizers timed the weather perfectly. The sun came out on its first morning after a few cold days of light rain, and wandering Rue Saint-Denis felt like as much of a party as it does in July.
I picked up several French books I’m going to struggle to read over the next year, but here are three books in English that I found.
The Temple of the Crazed Gods by Francois Brisson and Luc Chamberland. Les Éditions Izhaba, 2023. 9782925186014. 69pp. https://izhaba.com/en/librairie/the-temple-of-the-crazed-gods/
This lighthearted space adventure featuring Princess Izha-Ba and her friends Guy Thunder and Zarky starts with a double-cross and Izha-Ba trying to escape from bounty hunters. It morphs into a treasure hunt featuring a giant tentacled monster and a member of Izha-Ba’s adoptive family (they’re using her as a scapegoat to distract from their vast corruption). This English edition is printed on super deluxe paper that really makes the black-and-white-and-red art shine. (Brisson and Chamberland were both charming, and both sketched in my copy!)
Crimson Fall: The Shore Tower by Derek Laufman. 2024. No ISBN. https://www.dereklaufman.com/books/crimson-fall-the-shore-tower
Sir Duncross, the Slayer of Monsters, travels to Hammerwind with Father McKellen, who is recording his exploits. The Lord there has something he wants Duncross to kill, a demon on nearby Shore Tower Island. It’s straightforward, weird, and violent, and so well put together it made me cheer. It’s so beautifully drawn I wish I’d bought the larger French edition. (There are some webcomics on Laufman’s website, including a black and white Crimson Fall adventure, at the bottom of https://www.dereklaufman.com/comics )
Laufman is known most widely as the current artist of I Hate Fairyland (Image) and for his series RuinWorld, plus he has also worked on other titles.
Woven by Joshua Barkman. 2023. 9781738259113. falseknees.com
Barkman’s bird-centered webcomic False Knees is one of my favorites. Every November he does a longer story, publishing about a page a day, and this book is the collected edition of the one from 2023. At its center is an owl who has a thing for nests. It admires them, and entirely fails to understand how frightening other birds and creatures find its presence. In the loft of the barn where the owl lives, it weaves beautiful nests and more, though it’s lonely.
My favorite thing: the book appears to have been drawn using blue-ish and red pencils. Plus the end is heartwarming. You can still read the story online in the False Knees archive starting at https://falseknees.com/comics/23ink1.html
