Ivan Kocmarek
Ivan Kocmarek will be sharing selected works from his vast collection that highlight the talents of Canada's comic artists including Doris Slater, Win Mortimer, Fred Kelly and Ho Che Anderson.
In 1989 Ivan obtained a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Toronto and spent 23 years as an inner-city educator in Hamilton. He also taught evening qualification courses for the Education Department at Brock University from 1997-2007 to secondary teachers involving summer practicums in China. Upon retirement in 2012, he used his research skills to begin championing the wider knowledge of the undeservedly forgotten Canadian comic books of the Second World War. He began a well-received online column on these comic books that still runs today.
Ivan began giving presentations at comic book conventions, libraries, museums, and galleries in 2014 and has continues to do so. He has published two books on the topic: Heroes of the Home Front (North End Books 2018) and The WECA Comic Book Price Guide (North End Books 2019) on the subject. In 2022 he published a tribute comic to the Canadian comic book artists of World War II titled Trailblazers. He has curated exhibitions related to Canadian World War II comic creators at the Carnegie Gallery in Dundas and at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in 2022. He is currently working on a 2nd edition of Heroes of the Home Front and an, as yet untitled, coffee table-sized book reproducing al the covers of the Canadian war time comic books.
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