Brad Mackay joined us for a chat about Canadian cartoonist, Doug Wright. Brad is the organizer of the Doug Wright Awards, an award that recognizes the best in Canadian cartooning. More importantly, Brad is one of the three men(along with cartoonist Seth and DQ Chief, Chris Oliveros) behind the Doug Wright collection from Drawn and Quarterly. The collection is a true testament to the passion that Seth, Chris and Brad shared in seeing this important Canadian work in print. Here is what the Doug Wright Awards, have to say about the man himself.
Doug Wright created the long-running comic strip Doug Wright’s Family.
Born in England, Doug Wright came to Canada in 1938. His cartooning career really began when he landed a job as editorial cartoonist for the Montreal Standard. In 1948 he took over the reins of Jimmy Frise‘s Birdseye Center, retitled Juniper Junction. Signing the strip “DAW”, he continued with it until its end in September, 1968. Wright created Nipper, a mostly silent comic strip, for the Standard in 1949. Wright excelled at the depiction of childhood and the daily charms and frustrations of late-20th Century domestic life. A skilled draftsman, his fluid cartoon figures whirled through meticulously-rendered backgrounds and suburban landscapes.
Nipper was rechristened Doug Wright’s Family in 1967 when Wright moved from Montreal to Ontario. The strip enjoyed a long run, entertaining a generation of Canadians on a weekly basis until Wright ended it in 1980. Wright created a number of other strips and attempted to syndicate them, with some limited success, in addition to regular work in illustration and drawing syndicated editorial cartoons for the Montreal Standard and later the Hamilton Spectator.
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I’m definitely hesitant to call the Joe Shuster Awards “mainstream superhero” comic book awards — and we certainly have no interest in embracing that dismissive distinction anytime in the future. I think that if one were to look at the nominees lists instead of simply categorizing the awards as “mainstream superhero awards” because we allow that material to be included (instead of not considering it at all and dismissing it outright as unacceptable) you would see that there were actually very few creators nominated this year who worked on superhero comics — mostly those creators were in the artist, colourist and cover art categories. Cartoonist, writer, webcomics, etc. are mostly the type of retrospective, format challenging individuals that we all agree should receive recognition for their work in comics.
Hey Kevin, sorry if it came out wrong, we were just trying to say that the shusters cast a wider net than the wright awards.