He explains he was not committed to the conspiracy theory he presented, but included it in order to present Macdonald in a certain light: "[V]illains are fun in a story", he said, and he was "trying to tell this tale in an engaging manner". He also included a "Major-General Thomas Bland Strange" in an 1885 meeting at which the general was not actually present. Brown explains that he included Strange because he was amused by the Major-General's name. Publication history Brown originally meant Louis Riel to be published in book form, but his publisher, Chris Oliveros, convinced him to serialize it first. Drawn & Quarterly published the ten comic-book instalments from 1999 until 2003. Brown was granted CA$6000 by the Canadian Council for the Arts in 2001 to assist in its completion. The full volume appeared in hardcover in 2003 and softcover in 2006. The book sold out its first printing in two months, went through multiple printings, and had sold fifty thousand copies by the beginning of 2011. The original serialization sold poorly, which made the book's success a surprise. The comic book and the collection both came with an extensive appendix, and the collection came with a bibliography and an index, all hand-lettered by Brown. The collection's appendix came to 22 pages. In the original serialization, as the series progressed the influence of Harold Gray became stronger. The characters' heads became smaller while their bodies and hands grew larger, with Riel appearing "like the Hulk in a wool suit" after his hilltop religious revelation. Brown redrew many of the earlier drawings to make them consistent with the later ones in the collected edition. He added backgrounds, redrew, added or deleted panels to improve page rhythms or make chapter divisions cleaner, and reshaped or relettered word ballons. Dialogue remained intact for the most part, although the slur "frog" for the French-speaking Métis was replaced with "half-breed". In 2012, Drawn & Quarterly first began offering comics in e-book format, prompted in part by Brown. His Louis Riel and Paying for It were the first two books made available, though Brown is a print-lover who professes little interest in e-books, or computers in general. The non-exclusive deal was made with Toronto-based Kobo Inc. A tenth-anniversary edition in 2013 included sketches and other supplemental material. French and Italian editions appeared in 2004—the Italian from Coconino Press and the French from the Belgian