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I For One Welcome Our Maple-Scented Overlords

For lo, the day long prophesied at Canadian World Domination have come to pass, as our Northern Neighbors have begun their conquest. First webcomics, comrade … then the world.

  • Where else to start but with Kate Beaton? In the ten days since the official release of Hark! A Vagrant, Beaton has debuted on the New York Times bestseller list for graphic novels (hardcover) in the top position. Somewhere, the bookish equivalent of Casey Kasem is noting that Beaton is Number one … with a bullet. The bullet, naturally, will be used to enforce Canadian dominance over the unwilling careful stewardship of we poor, blighted ‘Mericans.
  • Beaton is, of course, published by Drawn and Quarterly, proud Canadian publishers of quality comics, and inhabitants of Montréal. Also found in the francophone corner of the Great White North — Blind Ferret, home of Ryan Sohmer’s various reaches into comics — webcomics, animation, and even an actual brick-and-mortar comic shop. Never content to rest on his laurels, The 4th Wall is expanding to a second location. 4th Wall East (so named by Sohmer in his twitterfeed) would presumably be closer to the the center portion of Montréal, given that the original is to the west of downtown. Thus, he continues his march on the heart of the seventh-largest city on the continent, the better to seize power.
  • A bit south of the border (way south, as far from Canadian as you can get, mostly), Randy Milholland occupies a corner of Texas. It seems a bit obvious in retrospect, but as near as I can tell, today was when he made it official on Twitter:

    When I get home, I’ll post pictures of the final prototype for the Choo-Choo Bear plush – which is in production now.

    Excitement! And a promise of quality!

    They’re being made by the same company that makes @dcorsetto’s McPedro plushes

    Here’s where I was going to do a bunch of investigation and fact-checking to confirm my hunch, but Milholland went and spilled the beans in a later tweet, so screw it — all this ties into Canada because Corsetto’s merch (including the McPedro plush)is handled by the aforementioned Blind Ferret, so that’s where Choo-Choo Bear will be coming from, too. Aw, who am I kidding? Huggable pudding cats are enough to even make me forget to be terrified that Sohmer’s reach now extends across the entire United States to the very borders of Mexico. “World’s only superpower” my ass — if he’s conquered Texas, Sohmer is on his way to his very own Bond villain style volcano lair.

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