Topp: Promoter Gary Topp Brought Us The World, when cultural history is personal
13 May 2020

by Drew Rowsome - photos courtesy of the publisher.

It's been a long time since all comic books starred superheroes. Graphic novels tackle all subjects and it is not news that the best of them are literature. With Topp: Promoter Gary Topp Brought Us the World, artist David Collier ostensibly tackles a biography of promoter Gary Topp, told in a graphic novel format. What Collier ("with Gary Topp") achieves is a multi-layered portrait of Topp, Collier, and Toronto's cultural history.

Anyone who has been part of, or who has sampled of, Toronto's cultural life, will recognize events and get a sweet rush of the nostalgia that suffuses Topp. My artistic education and delectation intersected with Gary Topp several times over the decades. From a belated immersion in film as an art form at the The Original 99¢ Roxy (first viewings of Pink Flamingos and Fellini's Satyricon particularly stick in my memory), to the hundreds of incredible acts I got to experience while bartending at The Diamond Club and The Phoenix. I also, like Collier, remember envying the meals Catherine Lalande created for the bands' riders. There was a life-changing set by Rough Trade on a drunken night at The Edge. And another drunken night at a Ramones concert where the bartender introduced me to another drunken Drew, though her last name was Barrymore.

As a journalist and blogger, I got to work with both The Garys and now Gary Topp Presents on a variety of events, the most recent being the release of Stiv: No Compromise No Regrets and a whirlwind of an interview with Michelle Shocked. In the same way that my intersections are tangled and haphazard, Collier arranges seemingly random one-page six-frame narratives, most with punchlines, that coalesce to not an incisive depiction of Topp's life, but rather a series of fragments that create a mosaic of memory and insight. Collier and Topp have worked together for decades and seem to have an amiable friendship which is also charmingly depicted.

Collier's evocation of life on the bottom rungs of the music biz - he was a busboy at The Edge and a frequent roadie and his tales of both are not only piercingly accurate but also hilarious - intersects with a few celebrity cameos. Topp and his cat's first encounter with Bryan Ferry is utterly deadpan and all the more comic for it. The loose narrative does form a biography as Collier - the narrator of each page might be Topp, might be Collier, might be someone else but, no, it is not confusing - diligently researches Topp's life story. Topp's family tree and time at camp gets as much coverage as the first Police Picnic. The fleeting nature of celebrity and fame is not the emphasis, even though Topp takes Johnny Ramone to a Blue Jays game with wry and perceptive results.

The creation of Topp: Promoter Gary Topp Brought Us the World is as much the subject of the graphic novel as is Topp himself. Collier is digging into his past as well and that leads to ruminations on aging and the enduring power of the artistic impulse. And the, in this case, indomitably of the need to create. In 1964 a very young Topp writes a letter to CHUM-FM protesting their refusal to play the Rolling Stones until "they cleaned up their act." That momentous (if futile) act of civic outrage dovetails with Topp's consistent refusal to compromise on artistry or quality, and Collier's deceptively loose structure and artwork. Two artists, in wildly disparate fields, settle into an amiable collaboration that succeeds in being so much more than a biography.

As a meta-co-star Collier's art and story shines with considerable self-deprecation. I am not familiar with his graphic novels but instantly recognized his work from the posters and flybills he created (Collier credits Topp for giving him his big break as well as ruining his knees in a ladder accident) and from frequent illustrations and graphic novellas in The Globe and Mail. Topp also includes priceless photos in a slightly satirical parody of more conventional celebrity or historical figure hagiographies. Collier and Topp aren't celebrities or stars but this biography, this cultural history, is way overdue and very welcome.

Perhaps all comic books do star superheroes.