Drop-in
Dave Lapp

October 2008
978-1-894994-33-0
Graphic Novel
6x9 inches, 160 pages

Similar in tone to the legendary comic series Duplex Planet, Lapp’s first graphic novel is a collection of stories about his work as an art teacher in an inner city Toronto youth drop-in centre. His students are full of stories which they are eager to share. These include a family who picks worms at night on their knees, Vietnamese refugees, rope-jumping girls, Venus flytraps, bullies and tamagotchis. With a warmth of line and a uniquely charming storytelling style, Lapp’s comics evoke the work of Chester Brown, and his black humour that of Joe Ollmann.

“There’s tension in these small slice of life pieces but also a dream like quality, and that combination somehow captures life’s oddness. An impressive debut.”
— Chester Brown (author of Louis Riel and I Never Liked You)

“At every zine fair, you will see someone whose work is miles ahead of the others and you think: Baby, what are you doin’ in a place like this? Dave Lapp is that kind of find. His stories don’t  tell you everything, and yet somehow you still know. Unflinchingly honest regarding the cruelty and the softness of the human animal, Lapp’s work expertly reveals the absurdity and beauty of life. You may laugh, you may cry.”
— Joe Ollmann  (winner of the 2007 Doug Wright Award and author of The Big Book of Wag!)

Dave Lapp is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and the University of Western Ontario. He has been teaching art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Avenue Road Arts School, and Regent Park for over ten years. As an extension of his work with underpriveleged kids in Regent Park, Lapp began the Jet Fuel Coffee Shop art show which allows young artists to show and sell their art. The 12th annual show will be in 2008. Lapp’s weekly strip, Children of the Atom, a comic which reads like a Beckett play, was serialized in Vancouver’s Georgia Straight from 1996-2001. Some of these strips can still be seen at www.childrenoftheatom.com. Lapp also co-produced the Toronto comics anthology Don’t Touch Me from 2002-2007. His work can currently be seen in Taddle Creek magazine, and the Annex Gleaner. Lapp, his partner, and her son currently reside near Toronto’s Wellsley village.