Detail of "2005 of the Top 3000" (2005) by Olia Mishchenko. Collection of Art Gallery of Ontario, image courtesy Paul Petro Contemporary Art.

“A bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells,” Karl Marx noted. “But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.” Born in Kiev in 1980 and based in Toronto since 1997, artist Olia Mishchenko uses a paraphrase of this passage to situate her work. Bees perform a collective algorithm larger than any individual, while architects are engaged in singular imaginative play, a poesis, that brings forth something new. The tension between the plan and the realized built form—the translation of thought into reality—is a creative crucible, like the battle between paint and canvas, ink and paper, body and field of play.

But whereas Marx falls firmly on the side of the architect and human imagination, and thus allows architects more of the Fountainhead-style self-congratulation that can make them so obnoxious, Mishchenko’s whimsical renderings of collective construction are just as unstable as the buildings being erected in them. Or are they even buildings? In work after work, armies of tiny cartoonish figures—running children, dogs, people on bicycles—enact coordinated but uncanny undertakings, building and playing, laughing and working, leaving behind piles of materials, tools, ramps, walkways, and rickety towers as they venture across sometimes long horizontal vistas of creation. The details offer ambiguous and sometimes disturbing narratives. Who are the children? What are the structures for? What is the social system that calls them forth?

I have one Mishchenko drawing, untitled like all of them from this period, and in it there are no figures at all, just an apparently abandoned minaret fashioned of waterwheels, boxes, and large canisters full of clothing. Is it a dump or a supply centre, a folly or a shrine? And where are the usually busy figures, with their game boards and ladders and rope pulleys, their walking sticks and trunks of hewn wood? The absence is provocative. Mishchenko doesn’t celebrate architecture, she investigates the very idea of shared space, of public meaning, of makers and made. In their lighthearted manner, these joyous political artworks offer fresh sketches of the place where individual identity meets its collective other.

Thankfully, things have progressed and young (and not-so-young) girls now have a whole new breed of strong, smart subversive female fighters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Lara Croft, Tomb Raider.

Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Mutants, Slayers and Freaks (Sumach Press) analyzes these new pop culture superheroines and their popularity, problems and, at times, conflicting messages. Through essays, analysis, fiction, art and comics, this insightful, entertaining and empowering anthology explores the evolution of the female superhero from early characters like The Fantastic Four’s Invisible Woman to today’s fictional fighters like Xena, Warrior Princess.

Along the way, contributors, including editor Emily Pohl-Weary, explore the roles of women as both comic characters and creators, challenging the idea that all -superheroines need be skinny, young, white, heterosexual and able-bodied. Contributors dissect old female superheroes, invent new ones and teach us about the superhero lurking in all of us.

There’s Candra K. Gill’s excellent essay “’Cuz the Black Chick Always Gets It First,” exploring issues of race and diversity in Buffy. Halli Villegas introduces us to Jane Bond, Catherine Stinson takes on her childhood hero Little Orphan Annie, Lisa Rundle slays so-called feminist superheroes on the big screen and Esther Vincent seeks out the elusive female action hero to add to her collection.

And just in case you thought it was easier to leap tall buildings in a single bound than bridge the gap between average everyday gal and superhero, there are enough reminders in this anthology (check out Rose Bianchini’s story “Everyday Superhero”) that it’s the little things we do daily that grant us superpowers. Whether it’s sexism, ageism or depression, we all slay vampires and monsters each day (in whatever form they might take). And if you get hungry from a life of fighting crime there’s even an adventure comic complete with a spring roll recipe. — Lisa Whittington-Hill

LD: Mayor Louis Taylor and the Rise of Vancouver By Daniel Francis (Arsenal Pulp Press)

On the strength of his reputation as “an ordinary man representing ordinary folk,” Louis D. Taylor was elected mayor of Vancouver eight times between 1910 and 1934. But his life was closer to extraordinary: he was, at various times, wanted by the Chicago police, owner of the tallest building in the British Empire and a starving Klondike prospector. As mayor he was ahead of his time, encouraging women’s suffrage and an eight-hour workday, but he was also thoroughly of his time, declaring the need to “preserve British Columbia for the white people.” As a result, LD is both lest-we-forget history and celebration of an unsung visionary, made eminently readable by Francis’s graceful style. —Adam Lewis Schroeder

Borders Matter: Homeland Security and the Search for North America By Daniel Drache (Fernwood Publishing)

The title distills the essence of Drache. The early Canadian nationalist, critic of free trade, eminent globetrotting political economist and, once upon a time, editor and writer for This Magazine, powerfully demonstrates that borders never ceased to matter, free trade agreements notwithstanding, and are now all too much in vogue in all the wrong ways since 9/11. Goods—and so-called intelligence, mostly false—move too easily, while people, particularly those in need of a safe haven, face increasing obstacles. This book is an essential background guide to following the Maher Arar inquiry, arguably one of the most revealing political happenings in Canada in recent history. —Mel Watkins

Catch and Release: Trout Fishing and the Meaning of Life By Mark Kingwell (Viking Canada)

Perhaps his best book, Catch and Release is a memoir of sorts, built around a fishing trip to Kelowna, British Columbia that Kingwell took a few years ago with his father and two brothers. The trip begins with Mark the Skeptic declaring that “I will not fish,” and it ends a few days later with the philosopher soundly converted to the Brotherhood of the Angle. Along the way, Kingwell uses the intersection of writing, fishing and philosophy to work out familiar philosophical problems about the relationship between thought and action. Ultimately, we are left with a sort of Zen koan as written by Izaak Walton:

Q. What is the meaning of life?

A. Let’s go fishing! —Andrew Potter