Italy

Just back from a family trip to Italy, and here's a watercolour sketch taken from a hotel room balcony in Venice.

A new Fisher strip today...

...appears where it belongs, and where future strips will appear, on the "Fisher latest" page of my website.

1812 documentary on CBC

This is a still from the Laura Secord sequence of the new CBC documentary, The War of 1812: Been There, Won That. For the past few months I've been creating some animations for this doc, in a Monty-Pythonish mode (if Terry Gilliam had been able to use AfterEffects). The show airs this Thursday, October 4, at 8 p.m. on CBC, and repeats Saturday, October 13 at 10 p.m. on CBC News Network. (Please verify local times if you plan to watch.)

Daily doodle

Sometimes I work out character poses on scrap paper, and sometimes I even use a purple pencil crayon to do it. Here's a sketch from a couple of years back of Paul enjoying a rainy day.

I expect to post more Fisher strips next week. I've been busy working on animated segments of a CBC documentary about the War of 1812 (I'll post more about that next week too) that airs on Thursday, October 4th.

Fisher: September 19

I'll have to come up with a snappier title for these postings. Anyway, this strip is one that I prepared when it wasn't clear whether Fisher would make the cut on the new Globe comics page... that decision was made just before I had to submit my last batch.

A new Fisher strip

This is, I hope, the first of many Fisher strips created after the strip's departure from The Globe and Mail. If I can I'll post 2 or 3 times a week at regular times. We'll see. Thanks again to all who wrote expressing the wish that Fisher could continue in some way. These new strips will also find their way into the Fisher archive at philipstreet.com.

Fisher farewell

Today's strip (above) marks the last appearance of "Fisher" in The Globe and Mail. I heard from the paper on August 10 that, due to a reshuffling of the arts and life sections, the comics page would be dropped. Ultimately the paper (I am told) decided to keep a smaller comics section... but not "Fisher" (or Graham Harrop's "Back Bench", the other comic that was exclusive to the Globe). Normally I wait a week to post strips after they appear in the paper; today I'm making an exception.

These are not good times for newspapers; how could they be good times for newspaper comic strips? Whatever struggles The Globe and Mail (along with all other mass media) are going through, I do thank them for their support of "Fisher" these twenty years — and, in particular, Warren Clements, the former Globe editor who brought "Fisher" on board and was my "editor" for most of its run. (I put "editor" in quotes because he let me get away with almost anything, except for the odd spelling mistake. For more about the early days of the strip, see the second post on this blog.)

Warren is also the publisher of a projected Fisher book to be published, we hope, this fall. Please keep eyes peeled for that, and check this site for developments.

There are no plans at this time to continue Fisher elsewhere, but if that changes you can read about it here. In the meantime I hope to extend the web archive of the strips back to the beginning of the run in 1992.

I want thank family and friends for their support, especially my wife, Vanessa Grant, who has been a supporter and collaborator since the beginning. Above all I want to thank the readers of the strip. I have heard, in person or by email, enough to know that the strip has resonated with many. This has been the most satisfying part of having Tom Fisher lead a public life. Thank you.