Reeling Back

Since its online debut in October 2013, Reeling Back has celebrated the opening day of VCON, Vancouver’s annual science fiction & fantasy convention, as our “official” birthday. Today (October 11), scheduled to be Day One of VCON 43, thus marks this website’s sixth year in cyberspace. Just four weeks ago, the West Coast Science Fiction Association (WCSFA), VCON’s organizing body, announced that it had cancelled the 2019 event “and work to rebuild . . . for a 2021 launch.” Needless to say, the convention’s unexpected demise disappointed a lot of people. For me, a minor program participant, it meant that I would not have the opportunity to sit down for a public interview with Hope Nicholson, the con’s Pop Culture Guest of Honour. A force to be reckoned with in Canada’s comic arts community, Nicholson is the founder of Winnipeg’s Bedside Press, an independent publisher of new works and classic comics reprints. I had looked forward to chatting with her about her multi-tasking as an editor, publisher, historian — her 2017 book The Spectacular Sisterhood of Superwomen is a must read for any serious graphic arts fan — and advocate for indigenous comic creators. To let everyone know how seriously I take the chronicling of comics history, I was going to post a feature story that I wrote back in 1967, an opinion piece that was published under the headline The Crusade that Cleaned-up (sic) Comics. Oh, wait. I can still share it in celebration of Reeling Back’s continued survival.