So, I wrote about what I'd be bringing to this year's Calgary Expo, but I saved my favourite thing for last. Every year the Expo produces a limited edition Artbook filled with work by a whole bunch of awesome contributors. Most people draw (beautiful) splash pages, but you know me, I just can't draw pictures unless there's a story. So I'm the one who always draws those weird autobiographical text-filled strips about my real-life adventures.

Last year, the Artbook theme was "Fairy Tales and Classic Monsters," which inspired me to write a strip about my experience with post-partum depression. I felt like that was going to be a tricky subject to follow up. Imagine my surprise when, this year, the theme was (again!??) ""Fairy Tales and Classic Monters!" (Why, Calgary Expo??) Anyway, this year I took that theme and picked a new focus.

It's Canada's sesquicentennial - our 150th birthday! That's the theme I'm excited about this year! So, I decided to draw some storytellers who are shaping the fairy tales, stories, and legends of this country. This was a random sampling of people I ran into in my neighbourhood, along with a few famous folks and a couple of tall tale tellers into the mix.

- Stuart McLean, revered Canadian storyteller;

- Northrop Frye, revered Canadian unscrambler of what stories are and how they're told;

- Ken Cameron, local storyteller whom I (luckily) ran into at Caffe Rosso just before I wrote this, and who gave me some ideas about what to write! (Another local storyteller, Barb Pederson, was there too, actually. Sorry Barb, I didn't draw you, but I appreciated hearing your ideas!)

- Pat Kelly and Peter Oldring, Canadian story-distorters (and yes, Pat really lived 3 doors down from me, long ago)

- The iconic Baba, CKUA's master storyteller, whose friendly voice has been spinning tales for so many Albertans through the radio waves for many years...

- Polarman, a recently-retired real-life superhero whom I met in Iqaluit long ago, and who's the recent subject of SESQUI, another sesquicentennial project.

- I'm honoured that my neighbour Nolene, whose inspiring story I recently wrote about in my Ramsay comic strip, gave me permission to include her on this list of storytellers. It's been a privilege for me to hear from her a little bit about her experience of discovering her Indigenous roots. The stories she's been telling me, and the ancient learnings she's been absorbing from her cultural community, are by no means "fairy tales," or "tall tales," by the way. These are real stories that are a necessary part of the story of Canada's 150th, despite the fact that some of them are sad stories. I wanted to include Nolene in here, because learning about stories like hers has been important to me in understanding what Canada really means, and could mean in the future.

Ok, that's all for now - time to go!
I'm going to post this without any links because I'm out of time, but I'll add them in soon! See you at the Expo!

Well, folks, it's time for another Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, that behemoth of pop culture that descends upon Calgary at the end of April every year. You can find me in Artist Alley at table R12!

This will be my sixth year as an exhibitor, but you can't really count last year. A few days before the Expo, I bumped my head and ended up with a concussion. I missed the Expo, but at least I wrote a comic about getting a concussion (which you can get from me at the Expo, this year!)

What else am I bringing to the Expo this year?

I organized a panel on contemporary Canadian indie comics, featuring this amazing lineup of panelists:

Julia Smith & Sean Carleton of the Graphic History Collective (and it's their first time at the Expo, so be nice to them); Eric Dyck from Lethbridge; and Hope Nicholson, all the way from Winnipeg!

This is happening on Saturday, April 29th at 1:15, so please come and talk to us about the local comics scene where you live.

That brings me to my next NEW thing.

I'm working on a little comics strip about the Calgary/Alberta indie comics scene for the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (which is pretty darn exciting for me, for a few reasons).

This project is the reason I decided to organize the panel mentioned above. I mean, I could write about my actual experience of the Calgary indie comics scene since I got involved, and this would be it:

I am really looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts on this subject. Even if you can't make it to the panel, if you have some great insights about the evolving indie comics scene in this town (or around Alberta), please come and talk to me at the Expo or send me a tweet @calgaryhester! I'd love to hear what you think.

I'm also bringing ONE OTHER new thing to the Calgary Expo, and that's my contribution to this year's Expo Artbook. But I'll have to keep you in suspense just a little bit longer before I post that out. Stay tuned! And if you are coming to the show, remember... wear comfy shoes and bring water!

So here's the 1st of my 3 Things for Canada: I pitched a panel about independent Canadian comics to the Calgary Comics Expo, and it's happening!

I'm really interested in comics that are being created and published right here in Canada, and even more if they're about Canadian stories. Right here in Calgary, there's a growing independent scene, ranging from old-timers like Damian Willcox (sorry, Damian! Guess I should probably say "creators of long-standing status" or something more dignified...) to new movements like Panel One, an independent creators' collective established in 2016.

I've been thinking a lot about contemporary comics in Canada (and in Calgary in particular), since I read back in 2016 that the Canadian Society for the Study of Comics had put out a call for papers on "The Young Canadians." They were asking, "What's happened in Canadian comics in recent years?"

I'm definitely not an expert on this subject, but I'm interested in how my own local scene has been evolving. And I thought the Calgary Expo seemed like the perfect place to have a discussion about this. So, that's part of the reason why I thought this panel might be a good idea. I am looking forward to listening and learning!

If you're coming to the Expo this year, I really hope you'll come out to hear this conversation. Right now, the Expo website still hasn't posted its programming info, but when it does, this is where you'll be able to find it. In the meantime, here's some information about our panel!

Comics scholars Sean Carleton & Julia Smith, Winnipeg-based Bedside Press publisher and Prairie Comics Festival organizer Hope Nicholson, and indie comics creators Sam Hester & Eric Dyck, will discuss comics about real life historical & contemporary Canadian stories.

Why should you come and listen to this panel? Well, obviously, if you’re one of those few people who’s interested in the Canadian independent comics scene, you’ll know there are only a handful of opportunities every year to find people from the field congregating to talk about this cool subject. so you won’t want to miss this.

And if you’re in the category of folks who had no idea that this was even a thing, well, then clearly this is the place you need to be, to find out more! Either way, we hope you’ll come!

And now remember: putting this panel together has been the first of my 3 Things for Canada. Stay tuned for the next two, coming soon!

Well, here's the answer: The Drawing Book, Volume 2!  I don't know why it never occurred to me to do this, but I think I'll post it here on my blog, a few pages at a time. This will be fun (I hope)!!! But first - a bit of background about the Drawing Book  in case you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Basically, at the beginning of the story I was a gloomy art student in Toronto, reading books, working at the Trinity College Library and turning down offers from knights in shining armour (as seen in this sad tale):

By the way, the above link to the Trin Library takes you to a whole new, beautiful, renovated facility, which seems to bear little resemblance to the low-ceilinged basement in which I spent about four years of late-night shifts as a student! (I loved that midnight shift. There was hardly anybody there!)

Anyway, by the end of the first volume I was back in my home town of Calgary, working as a flight attendant, with no shining knights in sight. Instead, I was learning about how messy relationships can be (see below). Blech!

E. M. Forster (in his novel, on which the movie is based), writes that Lucy nearly "joined the vast armies of the benighted," which is pretty much what I was doing back in Ontario, as depicted above. I still have that purple blanket though - it's on my son's bed! But that's a digression within a digression. Back to the facts!

But, for this second volume, I'll just work with what's there. This is the whole truth and nothing but the truth (for now, at least). Of course, though, if you see yourself in there and you'd rather I take you out, please send me a note and I will be more than happy to do so! Otherwise, here goes!

1. The coffee from that machine was really amazing.

2. Marlene: She didn't really forget she was married. It was just that she had only recently gotten married and so she still wasn't used to saying, "my husband," instead of "my boyfriend."

3. Heidi: Her daughter had been engaged (or maybe even married?) to a really famous rock star! But that's another story.

4. I note that there were eleven of us cabin crew members to look after (if memory serves) 232 passengers. Ah. Those were the golden days of flight!! You won't find such large crew complements on many airlines in these penny-pinching days. Alas.

5. In my late teens and early twenties, I didn't see a lot of my mom. She was working a lot and I was away from Calgary a lot. So, when I returned to Calgary in 1997, it took a long time before I got used to the idea that I could just hang out with her anytime I wanted! It was so much fun! Hence my feeling that I was missing out on an opportunity to spend time with her.

6. "Cryptic" reference to the guy I was pining after!

I couldn't find a clip of the part in which he actually asks this suspicious question, but here's what happens after the cocky young ballroom dancer hanging out with his daughter answers: "Pasadoble." 

After our long stay in Mainz, my crew was flown home safe and sound via Manchester. And while in that city, we stayed at the amazing Palace Hotel. Lucky thing I wrote down that name in the book, or I'd never have remembered it. It looks as though it's still in business though, despite having first opened its doors in 1890!

As for my representatives of all things English, I've got: The Who's Roger Daltrey, quoting (for some reason) "Pictures of Lily" and Sara Dylan - who, as far as I know, isn't British at all! Oh well, two out of three ain't bad. Egg on toast sounds pretty British to me.

Speaking of Sara Dylan, I just happened to glance at the Twitter profile of Calgary filmmaker J. S. Johnson a couple of days ago, and here's what he wrote about himself: "People often describe in detail how impossible I am to define, but so very beautiful to look at." Seems like an echo of a line in Dylan's song "Sara" - "So easy to look at, so hard to define."  Hooray for Dylan fans and obscure Dylan references everywhere!

That was the end of that adventure. The next page is about shoes.

What is there to say about that? I still have the Salzburg shoes (I'm still waiting for an occasion to wear them!!) and I still have the silver slippers from Le Lavandou. As for the "ugly shoes" stolen at a gas station in Slave Lake, Alberta... I actually did start writing a comic strip about that story, but I have no idea where it is, so that'll have to wait for another day, too.

That's all for now, but when/if I have some free time again, I'll post the next installment. What do you think?

I had a blast attending the  2014 Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo and drawing sketchy little comic strips about what was going on there. Unfortunately, I won't be able to come for the last day, because I have another drawing project coming up (watch this space!). But, my table will still be there, with a friend of mine to look after things, in case you'd still like to come by (and buy one of the original tweeted pictures, if you feel like it!).

Of course, it may also have been the powerful presence of Max von Sydow's Ming (whom I painted, nearly life-sized, on the wall of my bedroom as a teenager. I'm not making this up. But I'm too sleepy to go and hunt down a photograph of that just now).

"Gordon's alive!??!!" "Get your toothbrush and whatever! He's at the Expo!!!"

"Long live Flash. Have a nice day!"

Here's a quick post to say that it's the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo this weekend!

I've been busy writing quick sketchy comics about what's going on around me on the Expo grounds. I'm posting these on Twitter (and the Calgary Herald is re-tweeting them... I feel like a real comics journalist!). I did this last year, too, and you can see some of those pictures here. I'll put this year's pictures up here when I have a chance (i.e. after I've had some sleep... and I have the feeling that isn't going to happen much during the next few days!).

If you're coming out to the Expo, please come and say hi - I'm at table G 10 in Artist Alley. Just so you know, I won't be able to come on Sunday (although a friend of mine will be at my table) - so I hope I'll get to see you before then!

As I write this, he's on his way back to his home in Toronto from a trip to California. So you can see he's still just as active as ever. And that's not all.

He's recently published a book, entitled "A Broader Vision." It's a memoir of his life growing up in Canada, raising a family, and working as a scientist and entrepreneur. (You can check out his book - and buy it online - here.)

The book is full of fascinating tales and anecdotes about his very eventful life (and it's also full of his wise and witty commentary on all those events. I always knew my grandfather was a successful businessman and scientist. But the more I read his books  - he's got another one, too, and it's called "Applying the Scientific Method to the Understanding of Existence" (!) - the more I'm impressed by his great writing, as well! For the 2013 Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo Artbook (which featured the theme "Weird Tales", I wrote a strip based on one of the anecdotes from "A Broader Vision." Here it is! Happy birthday!

The 2014 Calgary Comics Expo is fast approaching (it's at the end of April) - so I'll let you know if I'll have a page in the Artbook for this year, when I find out. Stay tuned!