It goes without saying that whenever somebody reasonably well-known from another field of creative endeavor entirely “makes the leap” over to comics, a certain hardened, crusty rump of fandom will view said transition (however temporary) with suspicion. Less so, I’m guessing, when it’s a literary personage like, I dunno, Stephen King or something, than when it’s a musician, since there’s nothing in a musician’s background to indicate that they should be good at this sort of thing — but it’s still a tad bit unfair to automatically assume that there’s some sort of artistic “carpet-bagging” going on when that happens, simply because the standard doesn’t seem to cut both ways. Did anyone object to Alan Moore recording some albums, for example? I didn’t think so.

In that respect, then, Canadian cartoonist Nick Thorburn — best known as musical “frontman” of both The Unicorn and Islands, as well as floating in…