2009 Doug Wright Awards winners announced

This year’s 2009 Doug Wright Awards for the “best and brightest English-language comics and graphic novels” go to:

• Best Book: Skim, by Jillian & Mariko Tamaki (Publisher: Groundwood Books)
• Best Emerging Talent: Kate Beaton for History Comics
• The Pigskin Peters Award: Matthew Forsythe for Ojingogo, (Publisher Drawn & Quarterly)
• James Llewellyn Frise was also inducted posthumously into the Giants of the North: Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame.

Also announced is the release of the first of two volumes entitled “The Collected Doug Wright: Canada’s Master Cartoonist.”

Volume One follows the artistic development of the British-born cartoonist from his earliest unpublished work to the first days of his most enduring comic strip, Nipper. First published in 1949, a full year before the debut of Peanuts, this wordless strip perfectly captured the humorous and frustrating side of parenting for several generations of both young and old. Remembered by many for his cartoon children’s striped shirts and bald heads, Nipper quickly grew into a Canadian phenomenon.

The collection is put out by Drawn and Quarterly.