Essays by Von Allan

This area collects a lot of the writing I’ve done over the past couple of years. Most of these touch on some aspect of the world of comic books, graphic novels, and webcomics, but a few are entirely unrelated. I’ve tried to keep it organized so that navigating it is, hopefully, fairly intuitive. No promises, though!

1. Remembering Dave Foohey - This is one of the hardest pieces I've ever had to write. It deals with the death of my oldest and, aside from my wife, my dearest friend. Dave was only 49 years old when he died and that is very hard to deal with and place.

2. Learning by Failing - Colour Theory and Comics - Where I discuss my constant and never-ending exploration of colour, especially regarding how it's applied to comics (or at least how I apply it to my comics!), and how much fun (and challenging!) it is to learn.

3. On Getting Stronger - Being involved in a documentary on the children of parents with a mental illness ("COPMI") gave me an opportunity to revisit my artwork from my very first graphic novel the road to god knows... This essay details my art progression from 2009 to 2017 with side by side examples from road.

4. On my Mom - Written in 2014 on the 20th anniversary of her death. There's also a follow-up on this with some more recent thoughts, including winning the 2019 CBC Trailblazer Award, here. And because time never stops moving, there is a new essay that delves more fully into her struggles with schizophrenia that was written for the 30th anniversary of her death.

5. Guerrillas in the Mist - the effectiveness of exhibiting at comic book and graphic novel conventions. Why do artists and writers exhibit at them? Do they really stand to gain anything? Especially if you're new and unknown? I based this on a lot of my own experiences but I still stand by my conclusions.

6. Robert Kirkman and Invincible - a few years back I took a look at the rapid rise of Invincible and tried to determine why such a rise occured in the first place. I'll never know if this anaylsis is correct, but it certainly was interesting to look at. And I think it does shed some light on what factors lead to a comic's success or failure.

7. A comparison between the historical prices of mainstream comics and the United States Federal Minimum Wage: For those wondering why comics seem so expensive nowadays, this is an attempt to show that there has been a very real inflation in comic book prices since the 1970s and the amount of comics one can buy on a minimum wage job is now very small compared to what it once was.

8. On my relationship with Diamond Comic Distributors. Written in early 2025, this essay details my experiences with a change in my sales rep (aka Purchasing Brand Manager) at Diamond (from Jay Spence to Leigh Tyberg) and how, with that simple change, I was gaslighted by the company.

9. Rowen -  On a very special dog.