Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography
Encyclopedia
Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography is a highly acclaimed comic book
biography
of the Métis
rebel
leader, Louis Riel
, by Chester Brown
and published by Drawn and Quarterly
. Time Magazine included it in its annual Best Comix list in 2003.
installments from 1999 until 2003 simply as Louis Riel. Brown was granted CAD
$6,000 by the Canadian Council for the Arts
in 2001 to assist in the completion of the book, and the full volume was published in hardcover as Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography in 2003. A softcover version was released in 2006. The book sold out its first printing in two months, went through multiple printings and had sold 50,000 copies by the beginning of 2011.
The comic book and the collection both came with copious amounts of footnotes (23 pages in the collection), and the collection came with a bibliography
and an index
. The footnotes, bibliography and index were all hand-lettered by Brown.
A lot of the artwork in the book collection was altered from that of the serial comic book, mainly in the earlier portions. Some panels were alteredadding hatching
or redrawing headswhile in other places entire panels were redrawn or added between existing panels.
fame as the primary influence on the drawing style of Louis Riel. He also says he referred to Jack Hamm
's How to Draw Animals when drawing the horse
s that appear frequently throughout the book.
Over the course of the serial, the Gray influence became stronger and Brown gradually ended up using more hatching
and drawing characters with smaller heads and larger bodies. For the book release, Brown went back to the pages from the earlier issues and touched up a lot of the artwork in order to give the book more consistency. The touch-ups included adding hatching to panels, redrawing portions of panels (especially to make characters heads smaller and bodies bigger), redrawing entire panels and adding new panels between finished panels.
Brown drew the art on watercolour
paper, using both both a thin ink brush
(no larger than size 0) and dip pen
with a Hunt
102 nib
and black ink
.
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of the Métis
Métis people (Canada)
The Métis are one of the Aboriginal peoples in Canada who trace their descent to mixed First Nations parentage. The term was historically a catch-all describing the offspring of any such union, but within generations the culture syncretised into what is today a distinct aboriginal group, with...
rebel
Rebellion
Rebellion, uprising or insurrection, is a refusal of obedience or order. It may, therefore, be seen as encompassing a range of behaviors aimed at destroying or replacing an established authority such as a government or a head of state...
leader, Louis Riel
Louis Riel
Louis David Riel was a Canadian politician, a founder of the province of Manitoba, and a political and spiritual leader of the Métis people of the Canadian prairies. He led two resistance movements against the Canadian government and its first post-Confederation Prime Minister, Sir John A....
, by Chester Brown
Chester Brown
Chester William David Brown , is an award-winning, best-selling Canadian alternative cartoonist and, since 2008, the Libertarian Party of Canada's candidate for the riding of Trinity-Spadina in Toronto, Canada....
and published by Drawn and Quarterly
Drawn and Quarterly
Drawn and Quarterly is a Canadian comic book publishing company, headed by Chris Oliveros, and based in Montreal, Quebec. Its focus is on graphic novels and underground or alternative comics. Drawn and Quarterly was also the title of the company's flagship quarterly anthology during the 1990s...
. Time Magazine included it in its annual Best Comix list in 2003.
Overview
The novel, drawn entirely using a six-panel grid, gives a somewhat sympathetic chronicling of Riel's resistance to the Canadian government's mistreatment of the Métis community, in both 1869-70 and 1885, which resulted in the Métis' military defeat, and Riel's trial and execution. Brown eschews defining exactly what Riel, the most debated figure in Canadian history, should mean to a contemporary audience. His ambivalence about Riel's status in Canadian history is revealed in the novel's very large appendix, which serves in part as a running commentary on the novel's action. In some instances, Brown wonders why he depicted certain scenes in the way he has, suggesting perhaps a postmodern approach to his subject, in that precise meaning is deliberately confused or left vague, thereby enjoining the audience to "fill in the gaps," as it were.Publication History
Louis Riel was originally published in ten comic bookComic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
installments from 1999 until 2003 simply as Louis Riel. Brown was granted CAD
Canadian dollar
The Canadian dollar is the currency of Canada. As of 2007, the Canadian dollar is the 7th most traded currency in the world. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or C$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies...
$6,000 by the Canadian Council for the Arts
Canada Council
The Canada Council for the Arts, commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown Corporation established in 1957 to act as an arts council of the government of Canada, created to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts. It funds Canadian artists and...
in 2001 to assist in the completion of the book, and the full volume was published in hardcover as Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography in 2003. A softcover version was released in 2006. The book sold out its first printing in two months, went through multiple printings and had sold 50,000 copies by the beginning of 2011.
The comic book and the collection both came with copious amounts of footnotes (23 pages in the collection), and the collection came with a bibliography
Bibliography
Bibliography , as a practice, is the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology...
and an index
Index (publishing)
An index is a list of words or phrases and associated pointers to where useful material relating to that heading can be found in a document...
. The footnotes, bibliography and index were all hand-lettered by Brown.
A lot of the artwork in the book collection was altered from that of the serial comic book, mainly in the earlier portions. Some panels were alteredadding hatching
Hatching
Hatching is an artistic technique used to create tonal or shading effects by drawing closely spaced parallel lines...
or redrawing headswhile in other places entire panels were redrawn or added between existing panels.
Style
Brown has frequently cited Harold Gray of Little Orphan AnnieLittle Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie was a daily American comic strip created by Harold Gray and syndicated by Tribune Media Services. The strip took its name from the 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, and made its debut on August 5, 1924 in the New York Daily News...
fame as the primary influence on the drawing style of Louis Riel. He also says he referred to Jack Hamm
Jack Hamm
Jack B. Hamm was an American artist from Wichita, Kansas who is recognized both for his Christian-themed artwork and editorial cartoons, and for his books on drawing technique. He both studied and taught at the Frederic Mizen Academy of Art...
's How to Draw Animals when drawing the horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
s that appear frequently throughout the book.
Over the course of the serial, the Gray influence became stronger and Brown gradually ended up using more hatching
Hatching
Hatching is an artistic technique used to create tonal or shading effects by drawing closely spaced parallel lines...
and drawing characters with smaller heads and larger bodies. For the book release, Brown went back to the pages from the earlier issues and touched up a lot of the artwork in order to give the book more consistency. The touch-ups included adding hatching to panels, redrawing portions of panels (especially to make characters heads smaller and bodies bigger), redrawing entire panels and adding new panels between finished panels.
Brown drew the art on watercolour
Watercolor painting
Watercolor or watercolour , also aquarelle from French, is a painting method. A watercolor is the medium or the resulting artwork in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle...
paper, using both both a thin ink brush
Ink brush
Ink brushes are used in Chinese calligraphy. They are also used in Chinese painting and descendant brush painting styles. The ink brush was invented in China, believed to be around 300BCE...
(no larger than size 0) and dip pen
Dip pen
A dip pen or nib pen usually consists of a metal nib with capillary channels like those of fountain pen nibs, mounted on a handle or holder, often made of wood. Other materials can be used for the holder, including bone, metal and plastic, while some pens are made entirely of glass...
with a Hunt
Speedball (art products)
Speedball is an American company that manufactures art materials and other stationery items. The company, first famous by its dip pens, has expanded its range of products to other art areas such us painting, sculpture and printing press. -History:...
102 nib
Nib (pen)
A nib is the part of a quill, dip pen or fountain pen which comes into contact with the writing surface in order to deposit ink. Different types of nibs vary in their purpose, shape and size, as well as the material they are made from.-Quill:...
and black ink
Ink
Ink is a liquid or paste that contains pigments and/or dyes and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing and/or writing with a pen, brush, or quill...
.
Awards
| Year | Organisation | Award | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Harvey Award Harvey Award The Harvey Awards, named for writer-artist Harvey Kurtzman and founded by Gary Groth, President of the publisher Fantagraphics, are given for achievement in comic books. The Harveys were created as part of a successor to the Kirby Awards which were discontinued after 1987.The Harvey Awards are... s |
Best New Series | |
| 2002 | Ignatz Awards | Outstanding Artist | |
| 2003 | Harvey Award Harvey Award The Harvey Awards, named for writer-artist Harvey Kurtzman and founded by Gary Groth, President of the publisher Fantagraphics, are given for achievement in comic books. The Harveys were created as part of a successor to the Kirby Awards which were discontinued after 1987.The Harvey Awards are... s |
Best Continuing or Limited Series | |
| 2004 | Best Writer | ||
| Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work | |||
| Ignatz Awards | Outstanding Graphic Novel or Collection | ||
| Outstanding Artist | |||
| Eisner Award Eisner Award The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, and sometimes referred to as the Oscar Awards of the Comics Industry, are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books. The Eisner Awards were first conferred in 1988, created in response to the... s |
Best Graphic AlbumReprint | ||
| Best Publication Design |
Foreign Editions
| Translations | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Title | Publisher | Date | Translator | ISBN |
| French French language French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts... |
Louis Riel: l'insurgé | Casterman Casterman Casterman is a publisher of Franco-Belgian comics, specializing in comic books and children's literature. The company is based in Tournai, Belgium.Founded in 1780, Casterman was originally a printing company and publishing house... |
2004-09-24 | ||
| Italian Italian language Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia... |
Louis Riel | Coconino Press Coconino Press Coconino Press is an Italian publisher of comic books, founded in 2000 in Bologna, Italy.They are notable for their translations of comic books from around the world, including the Americans Daniel Clowes, Jason Lutes and Adrian Tomine; Canadians Seth and Chester Brown; French cartoonists David B.,... /Black Velvet |
2004 | ||
| Spanish Spanish language Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the... |
Louis Riel. Un cómic biográfico | Ediciones La Cúpula | 2006-11-25 |
See also
- SchizophreniaSchizophreniaSchizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
- Franco-ManitobanFranco-ManitobanFranco-Manitobans are a community of French Canadians and other French-speaking people living in Manitoba. Most Franco-Manitobans have roots in Quebec. However, many are of Métis and Belgian ancestry while others have ancestors that came directly from France, its former colonies and other...
s
External links
- preview at Drawn and QuarterlyDrawn and QuarterlyDrawn and Quarterly is a Canadian comic book publishing company, headed by Chris Oliveros, and based in Montreal, Quebec. Its focus is on graphic novels and underground or alternative comics. Drawn and Quarterly was also the title of the company's flagship quarterly anthology during the 1990s...
's website - Excerpts
- Video clip Riel: Chester Brown's comic book hero (2005-01-25) from the CBC Digital Archives website. retrieved 2011-05-05