The Official First Day Cover features a stamp celebrating the award-winning graphic novel Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography, by Chester Brown.

One of four stamps in the Graphic Novelists 2024 set, the stamp is cancelled in Toronto, Ontario – Brown’s place of residence.

Good to know

The Graphic Novelists issue celebrates the work of some of Canada’s most talented and influential graphic novelists:

Chester Brown: Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography
Michel Rabagliati: Paul à Québec
Seth: Clyde Fans
Mariko Tamaki, Jillian Tamaki: This One Summer

The four stamps highlight acclaimed novels by each author, who created original illustrations for their stamp designs that show the main characters engrossed in their own stories.

About the Graphic Novelists issue

Among Canada’s most talented and influential graphic novelists, Chester Brown, Michel Rabagliati, Seth, and Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki deftly interweave words and illustrations in their award-winning works.

These stamps – featuring an acclaimed novel by each author – show the main characters engrossed in their own stories through original illustrations created by the novelists themselves.

About Chester Brown

Fascinated by cartooning as a child, Chester Brown (b. 1960 in Montréal, Quebec) set his sights on a career as a comic book artist when he was in his teens. The pioneering and influential cartoonist began self-publishing in 1983 and soon attracted a cult following for his deeply personal comic strips. Brown received the first Canada Council for the Arts grant awarded to his genre, for Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography (2003). Critically and commercially acclaimed for its powerful, minimalist style, the story of the enigmatic Métis leader became the first graphic novel on a Canadian non-fiction best-seller list.

About the design

The front of the Official First Day Cover features a photograph of the cover of Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography, which shows Riel standing on a rocky hilltop. The background of the envelope shows slats of wood.

The front also includes the text “Graphic Novelists” and the Chester Brown stamp, cancelled in Toronto, Ontario – Brown’s place of residence.

The stamp is an original drawing by Brown of Louis Riel – the lead character in the novel – reading his own story. The cancel image is of an open graphic novel.

The back features a photograph of a page from the novel, along with a short text on Brown and Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography.

The stamp was cancelled on May 10, in advance of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (May 11-12).

Product # 414232131

Graphic Novelists – Chester Brown: Official First Day Cover