Katherine Shannon Collins is a Canadian-born cartoonist,[1] writer, media personality, stage performer, and composer.

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Biography

Early works

In 1965, Katherine (then known as Arn Saba) attended the University of British Columbia on a creative writing scholarship but devoted almost all her time at UBC to the campus twice-weekly paper, The Ubyssey, where she created her first comic strip, Moralman (1965–1968). She also wrote and illustrated several articles.

In 1977, she moved to Toronto to try for success in a larger arena. She immediately began appearing on, and eventually producing, segments of the popular national CBC Radio program Morningside. She was usually paired with host Don Harron for free-wheeling discussions of favorite old comic strips and other pop culture. She also wrote, produced and acted in scores of comedy skits. Collins made similar appearances on CBC Television, on the Don McLean show. In her appearances, Saba demonstrated her enthusiasm and knowledge of cartooning, comics history, theatre and music.

In 1979, she wrote and produced a five-part radio documentary on CBC, The Continuous Art, exploring the cultural position of comics. It featured interviews with some of cartooning's greatest names, including Milton Caniff, Hal Foster (his last interview), Floyd Gottfredson, Hugo Pratt, Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer, and Russ Manning. Collins spent several years in the late 1970s and early 1980s travelling throughout North America, interviewing famous cartoonists, many of them at that point quite old. (Many of these lengthy interviews were later published in The Comics Journal in the 1980s and 1990s.)

In 1982, Collins moved to California, ceasing all other media activity in favor of cartooning.

Neil the Horse

Collins' most notable creation is Neil the Horse. The series ran in Canadian newspapers from 1975-1982 via the Great Lakes Publishing syndicate located in Toronto. It subsequently appeared in fifteen comic book issues from 1983–1988, published by Aardvark-Vanaheim/Renegade Press.[1][2]

The drawing style is based on Disney comics, as well as early-20th Century Sunday pages. The motto for the series was "Making the World Safe for Musical Comedy," and many issues of the comic book feature the characters singing and dancing. When the characters are shown dancing, it is to original choreography.

Collins took a vaudevillian approach to the work, emulating early twentieth-century hardbound children's annuals', changing the storytelling approach repeatedly within each issue. The work morphed from comic strip, comic book, and illustrated prose, and contained sheet music, crossword puzzles, joke pages, and more. In the letters columns, the characters "answered" the mail. The book also featured paper dolls and fashion pages, in the tradition of Katy Keene.

Collins's efforts to continue the project in print were unsuccessful. It was optioned for film and television in cooperation with Zorro Productions, but the work did not make it to the screen.[3]

In 1982 Collins wrote the book, music, and lyrics for a two-and-a-half-hour radio musical called Neil and the Big Banana that was twice broadcast in five episodes, in Canada on CBC Radio. Collins also played the part of Neil.

Personal life

Born in Vancouver, British Columbia as Arnold Alexander Saba, Jr. and was known as Arn Saba. Collins transitioned, identifying as a transgender woman since 1993.[1][4]

In 2005, after fifteen years in San Francisco, Collins was deported under the USA PATRIOT Act for "crimes of moral turpitude."[4] After her return to Vancouver, Collins was diagnosed with leukemia. In 2008, she announced she was recovering.[4]

In 2013, Collins was inducted into the Joe Shuster Award Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame,[5] and sent an acceptance video to the ceremony. In 2017, Collins was inducted into the "Giants of the North" hall of fame by the Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning.[6]

References

External links

• Hall of Fame Biography, Joe Shuster Awards
• Katherine Collins at Prism Comics
• "Introducing Arn Saba's Neil The Horse," CBC Digital Archives (Broadcast date: April 26, 1977)
• Saba radio and TV appearances, CBC Digital Archives
• "Now You See Me," at the Wayback Machine (archived May 9, 2008) The Comics Journal #255 (Sept. 2003).