Doug Wright comic winners named

Seth, one of Canada's best-known comic book artists, took home the 2010 Doug Wright Award for Best Book on Saturday night for his graphic novel, George Sprott (1894-1975).

The Doug Wright Awards, celebrating the best in Canadian comic culture,were presented at Toronto's Bram and Bluma Appel Salon, and were part of the 2010 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, held Saturday and Sunday.

Seth is the pen name of Guelph, Ont.-based comic book creator, magazine illustrator and book designer, Gregory Gallant, whose illustrations have appeared on the cover of the New Yorker.

His George Sprott, the fictional life of an old man told in interviews, flashbacks and personal reminiscences, was originally serialized in the New York Times magazine, and selections from it were featured in Best American Comics 2009.

Gallant expanded the series into a book, which was published last year by Montreal-based Drawn & Quarterly.

'Work about memory, culture'

Speaking on behalf of the jury, Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star book critic and one of the judges, called George Sprott "a portrait of a character, of a country that is no longer with us It is a work about memory, a work about culture."

London, Ont., cartoonist Marc Bell was awarded the Pigskin Peters Award for unconventional comics for Hot Potatoe, a collection of seven years of his work, also published by Drawn & Quarterly.

And Michael DeForge scooped up the Best Emerging Talent Prize for Lose #1. The Toronto artist's first full-length comic novel, published by Koyama Press, is a comedy about character Nesbit Lemon's trip to hell and the familiar faces he meets there.

The winners were selected by a jury made up of Pevere; Globe and Mail music columnist Carl Wilson; Matt Forsythe, winner of the 2009 Pigskin Peters Award; and Toronto cartoonist Fiona Smyth.

Posthumous honour

The late graphics novel pioneer Martin Vaughn-James was also honoured at the awards ceremony hosted by Canadian actor Peter Outerbridge.

The British-born Vaughn-James, who died last year, created a number of early graphic novels in the 1970s when he lived in Toronto. He was posthumously inducted into The Giants of the North, the Canadian cartoonists' hall of fame.

Created in 2004, the Doug Wright Awards were named after the late Canadian cartoonist Doug Wright, creator of the Doug Wright's Family comic strip that ran in newspapers in Canada and elsewhere from the late 1940s until the early 1980s.