“Again, it makes me think of TCAF and the effect that the show actually has on the community of Toronto. It’s educational, it promotes literacy and it’s free! It’s not about the money. It’s about creating a new audience and laying a foundation for the future.”
- Frank Santoro, The Comics Journal

Go read, it’s an interesting think-piece about where all of this comic-conning is actually taking the industry, and I’d think so even if it wasn’t incredibly complimentary of what we do at TCAF.

“Probably the single issue I’ve most enjoyed in the last little while though? I was fortunate enough to get an advance look at Casanova: Avarita #1 debuting this September from ICON. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Cass fan from before the first issue came out, so it won’t be any surprise to hear that I liked the new issue… but man, it’s great. ”
- Me, at Robot 6 / Comic Book Resources

I was the guest on this week’s “What Are You Reading” Column at Robot 6, and in addition to some much deserved love for Adachi’s CROSS GAME I talk about some recent floppies I read and enjoyed.

- Chris

TORONTO—Toronto’s Illustration and Artistic Community comes together on April 17th in a 12 hour art-event at Revival. The unique event will raise money to aid relief efforts in Japan following the devastating recent earthquake and tsunami there. Spearheaded by a consortium of Toronto illustration studios, the Artists Help Japan: Toronto event is the local iteration of a charity movement begun by Pixar Art Director Dice Tsutsumi. The Toronto edition will feature live art shows, a silent auction, and dozens of artists and illustrators selling commissioned drawings, with all proceeds benefiting the Canadian Red Cross.

“As artists we are tremendously inspired by Japan and Japanese culture,” says Bobby Chiu, the illustrator, teacher and founder of Toronto’s Imaginism studios behind the Artists Help Japan: Toronto event. “We were all personally affected by the quake, tsunami, and resulting damage. It is important to give back for all that Japan has given us, and we can think of no better way to do so than with our art.”

Artists Help Japan: Toronto will feature more than 24 artists and illustrators from the Greater Toronto Area creating original drawings for 12 hours! This is an unprecedented opportunity for the general public to commission an original drawing from a professional artist and watch its creation in process; the artist’s fee will be donated entirely to the Canadian Red Cross.

In addition:
- Dozens more cartoonists will donate original art, books, and other rare items to be featured in a silent-auction on-site at Revival Bar.
- Live art demonstrations from Toronto Illustrators on stage, with the final pieces to be auctioned off live at the event
- $1 from the sale of every drink at Revival Bar will be donated to the Canadian Red Cross.

Admission to the ARTISTS HELP JAPAN: TORONTO event is free, and all ages are welcome. The event will run from 12 Noon to 12 Midnight.

ABOUT:

Artists Help Japan is a charity movement initiated by Dice Tsutsumi, an art director at Pixar Animation Studios, who was also behind 2008 Totoro Forest Project to help preserve Sayama Forest in Japan and Sketchtravel Project, to gather the force of communities of artists and creative minds around the world. We believe artists have special roles to contribute to the society. http://artistshelpjapan.blogspot.com/

Artists Help Japan: Toronto is spearheaded by Imaginism Studios President and illustrator Bobby Chiu, who was contacted by Dice Tsutsumi to run the Toronto event. Working with Illustrator Alvin Lee, Udon Entertainment CEO Erik Ko, writer/artist Jim Zubkavich, and Christopher Butcher of Toronto comic book store The Beguiling and the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, the team hopes to bring together Toronto’s diverse and exciting artistic community to engage the public in an unprecedented fundraising endeavour.

All proceeds from Artists Help Japan: Toronto will be donated to the Canadian Red Cross, specifically earmarked to aid in Japanese earthquake and tsunami relief.http://www.redcross.ca/

SPONSORS:

Revival Bar has been entertaining guests, visitors and fans as a premium event space since 2002. Revival has generously donated the use of their main space for the Artists Help Japan: Toronto event, and will be donating $1 from the cost of every drink to the fundraising efforts.http://www.revivalbar.com/

Hi there! My name is Christopher Butcher and in addition to running this fine blog, I’m also the Director of the 2011 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, or TCAF as we call it. TCAF is an annual comics event held in Toronto, Canada, inside the massive Toronto Reference Library. It attracts about 12,000 people over two days, and features readings, panel discussions, interviews, gallery exhibitions, and a massive exhibition of talented cartoonists from around the world, selling and displaying their wares. The next Festival is May 7th and 8th, 2011, and you can find out more about it at http://www.torontocomics.com.

Earlier this week, it was my great pleasure to announce that TCAF will be welcoming acclaimed Japanese manga creator Usamaru Furuya to the 2011 Festival. Furuya-san will be on hand to support his brand new English-language manga Lychee Light Club, published by Vertical Inc. and which will be debuting at TCAF. Furuya-san’s series for VIZ Media‘s Shonen Jump Advanced line, Genkaku Picasso, will also be finishing its three-volume serialization in May with the third volume possibly making an early appearance at the show. We appreciate the support of Vertical Inc., VIZ Media, and Japanese publisher Ohta Books in making this appearance happen–it’s a rare and unique thing to have one manga creator at a North American event–last week we announced the fabulous Natsume Ono as a Featured Guest–but to have two such talented and Japanese cartoonists is frankly unprecedented.

I want to talk a little bit about Furuya-san’s work. First and foremost, he’s one of my personal favourite cartoonists. He’s a unique, compelling, and incredibly talented creator with a vivid back-catalogue of work. His manga is incredibly varied, first appearing in North America in the cutting edge manga magazine Pulp with the series Short Cuts, published by VIZ Media. This humourous exploration of Japanese youth culture, and where it intersects with the ‘adult’ world, moved rapidly between strips, and sometimes in the same strip, from outré to shocking to laugh-out-loud funny to bizarrely touching, and is fondly remembered amongst alt-manga fans… myself included. Quite honestly much of the deeper appreciation for Japanese culture that I’ve developed came out of Short Cuts and its serialization in Pulp, a fact which is doubtlessly horrifying several of the people who read this. It shouldn’t be so surprising though–Short Cuts engaged an emerging Japanese youth culture and also explained it to a larger Japanese audience, and to have something like that translated for a North American audience was about as ‘inside’ and ‘authentic’ as you could get. Floppy-socked Japanese school girls, taking paid dates and listening to the hottest visual rock bands, all of this is taken for granted as a staple of Japanese culture from a North American vantage point here in 2011; in 2000 it was revelatory for me. The serialization in Pulp and the two-volume collection published by VIZ Media were enormously affecting; I’ve read and lent the series out many times.

An excerpt from Short Cuts. © Usamaru Furuya

A page from Palepoli. © Usamaru Furuya. Click for full size.

His debut manga Palepoli ran in the seminal underground manga magazine Garo, and has been lightly excerpted in North America in the sadly out of print works Secret Comics Japan (an amazing anthology of alternative Japanese comcis featuring the likes of Junko Mizuno and others) and Tokyo Edge (a mostly-text guide to Japanese underground culture written by the Editors of Pulp). Furuya’s mix of surrealism, superior craft, and an unwillingness to be bound by social mores in Palepoli was instantly appealing to me, and repeated rereadings of those precious few pages have revealed even greater depth, meaning, and humour. I wish, one day, that the series would be translated into English.

And that was it for a while.

Pulp sadly folded, taking with it the majority of alt- and underground manga releases for a little while, and seriously stalled manga-for-grownups for a little while, and the industry became very focused on boys adventure comics and girls romance comics for a little while. Not a bad thing, but not generally where my interests lie. Luckily Furuya’s career continued unabated in Japan, and surprisingly, in France. Owing to our bilingual heritage we stock French comics (including manga) at The Beguiling where I work, and new works from Furuya would appear from time to time. His manga are championed by Nouvelle Manga movement originator Frederic Boilet (whose own comics have been published in English by Fanfare/Ponent-Mon), and consequently where anglophones had a 9 year gap between Furuya projects, popular series like La Musique de Marie, Le Cercle du Suicide, and the recent Tokyo Magnitude 8 have continued to impress French audiences. His work is also very popular amongst scanlators and the grey market, it must be said, though I feel like popularizing that fact will hinder future releases of his work.

On that note, it was on my trips to Japan starting in 2007 that I started picking up Japanese editions of Furuya’s manga. By Japanese language skill is still almost non-existent, but anyone who’s looked at one of Furuya’s manga will agree that you can get a lot out of the drawings. I own 10 or 11 of his works in Japanese, and I’d love for them all to be replaced one day with English editions. His 51 Ways To Save Her was one of the announced but unreleased works from the doomed CMX manga line. Will we see it one day?

Recently, surprisingly… almost bizarrely, Furuya showed up again at VIZ with Genkaku Picasso, a gloriously demented short manga series about the inner lives of teenagers, and a boy tasked by God with helping the lives of those around him using his profound artistic talent. One element of Furuya’s work I haven’t touched on is his incredible draftsmanship. His work has a clarity and skill that is above average even in Japan, and he’s an expert at the human figure (especially cute girls…). He’s also incredibly creative, drawing objects and situations that most people couldn’t conceive of… and when you’re drawing the dreamish, nightmarish inner worlds of teenagers, that is a skill that will serve you very well. The series looks great, and is hilarious and disturbing and entertaining… of much more interest to an older audience than the “Shonen Jump Advanced” tag might imply.

Which brings us to Lychee Light Club, debuting at TCAF from Vertical Inc. I’ve got the Japanese version, and while gorgeous it’s certainly bizarre–learning that the series is actually a comedy (a dark comedy), set against the beautifully rendered violence and gore of the original? Well that’s going to add a lot I feel. But really, let me say again, the book is gorgeous. I’m really looking forward to reading it in English.

It was also just announced that Vertical has picked up another 3 volume series from Furuya, debuting this September and being released every two months, so I have that to look forward to too! And quite honestly, so do you. I feel incredibly lucky to share the work of one of my favourite manga-ka with all of you, and for those of us who’ll be in Toronto this May getting to meet him will be an additional thrill. Even if you can’t come, make sure to check out Genkaku Picasso, track down the two trade paperbacks of Short Cuts, and pick up Lychee Light Club when it appears in stores this spring.

And learn French. Musique de Marie and Suicide Circle are highly unlikely to be released in English.

For more on Furuya, check out:

- Unofficial Website: http://www4.airnet.ne.jp/mikami/UsamaruFuruya/en/index.html

- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Usamaru-Furuya/204452936604

- Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usamaru_Furuya

- Lambiek (Short Cuts era): http://lambiek.net/artists/f/furuya_u.htm

- Anime News Network: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=7174

- Future Shipwreck’s Appreciation: http://futureshipwreck.com/2010/07/usamaru-furuya/

- Christopher

Short Version: Hey, sign up for the TCAF mailing list in the upper right corner of every page at http://torontocomics.com.

Long Version: I wanted to post something because putting up Evan Dorkin’s FUN strips on the weekend makes it look like I post even less frequently than I actually do. I can’t really think of anything better to post about than what I’m working on right now, which is the 2011 Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF), because nothing I could post about is better than the work I’m doing on the Festival right now.

While a version of this post goes up every year, this one isn’t going to beg your forgiveness for lack of updates–I’m pretty determined to keep writing this year, and I’ve got a cool little Japan travelogue in the queue, about 3/4 finished. It’ll probably go up today or tomorrow.

No, I wanted to post this to remind everyone reading that TCAF IS AWESOME. I’m really proud of every TCAF we’ve thrown, but last year was really the first year it “clicked” for me, where the vast, vast majority of what I wanted to accomplish actually got done. The show ran more smoothly than it ever has, we had some amazing guests, amazing press, and we learned (more-or-less) everything it takes to put on this show. Which means that 2011 will be the year that just works. I’m already so, so happy with our guestlist, with phenomenal German cartoonist Mawil heading up a massive German Comics art show, Jillian Tamaki did our amazing Festival poster, Chester Brown is launching his first-ever original graphic novel and first new work in 8 or 9 years, and Chris Ware is Chris Ware… that’s an amazing line-up of featured guests, and doesn’t include the other 175+ confirmed exhibitors. Or the amazing featured guests who are confirmed, but not yet announced (gotta cross the t’s and dot the i’s). It’s a good, good year.

So yeah, I’m stoked about 2011, which is good, because I’m spending a lot of time on it, as I mentioned. I want to invite you to spend a little time with TCAF as well. We’re going to be sending out weekly-ish updates on the TCAF mailing list (it’s in the upper-right corner of every page at http://torontocomics.com), and whether you’re an exhibitor, potential attendee, or a member of the comics media, it’d be great if you could sign up. One of the things I’d really like to do this year is highlight some of our guests that are doing great, important work, but who might not otherwise make it into the spotlight with all of the big stuff happening. So every week, we’re going to try and talk about new guests and existing groups of interesting guests, giving a little bit of backstory to the people you see sitting behind those tables at the show, and maybe finding you a new favourite. It’s an extension of what we try to do with the Festival itself, drawing attention to great comics and the people making them, but it only works when people are reading our mailing list :)

So, yeah, sorry if you read all the way through this looking for hints about guests or the show or whatever. I just wanted you to know what I was up to, and give you an opportunity to keep up to date. I’ll try and keep the TCAF posts here to a minimum in case you cannot go this year, and therefore resent the hell out of the situation and/or me.

Thanks for reading,

- Chris

This evening, I started sending out acceptance letters, welcoming cartoonists who were chosen to exhibit to the festival.

About a third of the way through sending out those letters, I realized that I would be sending out rejection letters tomorrow morning, 4 days before Christmas. Honestly, the date and timing did not occur to me until about 10 minutes ago, as like all things TCAF, we just work as fast as we can to get it all done, and we’re already a little late on sending out the notes.

But honestly? No one wants to get a rejection letter at Christmas. Whether you celebrate the holiday or not, this can be a really difficult time of year and having that compounded by finding out that you won’t be getting to exhibit at an event that meant a lot to you? Awful. I don’t want to be the guy that does that to anyone. And so we’re going to delay sending out the rest of the responses until Monday, December 27th.

The worst part is, we’ve sent out about a third the acceptance letters, so lots of people already know that they’ve gotten in. Lots of people _don’t_ though, and I’m aware that I’ve succeeded in making the next 7 days more stressful for them. I am truly sorry about that, we don’t have very many major missteps with the Festival, but this is one of them and its squarely on my shoulders. And as stressful as I’ve made it for some folks, I didn’t make it _shitty_ for anyone, and that is a small comfort.

If you’re one of the folks who applied and is waiting to hear from us, again, I’m very sorry. Please know that we took the utmost care with your application, reading every biography, visiting every link, and experiencing as much of your work as possible. We will get back to you in as expedient and professional a manner as possible on the morning of the 27th, and we hope you’ll understand that waiting these extra days may have ensured a much happier holiday for many of your peers.

Sincerely,

Christopher Butcher, TCAF

Congrats to my buddy Zach Worton! He’s been working on his first big graphic novel, The Klondike, for years now, and the official solicit just showed up in my inbox from the good folks at Drawn & Quarterly. Seems like the book will appear in the January Previews for Items shipping in March, and the book will be appearing March 23rd or thereabouts. The full solicit info is below… – Chris

The Klondike
By Zach Worton
Trade paperback, 320 pages / 7 x 9 inches / b&w.
$ 24.95
978-1-897299-87-6
Published by Drawn & Quarterly

The history of the Gold Rush brought to life

The Klondike gold rush shook the Yukon on the eve of the twentieth century and stands today as the defining era in the taming of North America and especially Canada’s Great North. The history of how a handful of colorful characters sparked the largest mobilization of gold seekers in history is brought vividly to life in this debut graphic novel by the cartoonist Zach Worton. His stunning depictions of the Canadian wilderness are as much a part of the action as the key players: the prospector George Carmack; the racist prospector Robert Henderson; “Skookum Jim Mason,” a Native American posthumously credited with discovering gold; “Soapy Smith,” a noted con artist; Belinda Mulrooney, perhaps the first female involved in the gold rush to become rich; and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.Worton draws the reader into an absorbing historical tale of political intrigue and personal adventure, played out amid the free-for-all atmosphere of the Wild West.

–

The 2010 Toronto Comic Arts Festival Wrap-Up

Hi Friends!

My name is Christopher Butcher, and I’m the co-founder and festival director of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF)! As you might know, TCAF is dedicated to celebrating comics and graphic novels and their creators, with a specific focus on all of the great comics that Canadian creators have to offer. I had the pleasure of presiding over our fifth festival last month, and I’m pleased to report it was our most-successful and best-attended yet. Perhaps the best example of this is that TCAF was the number 3 trending topic on Twitter in Canada for much of the Sunday of the show, even beating out Canadian supercrush Justin Beiber. It’s a heartening example of how many people TCAF speaks to, and to their affection for the event.

Rather than send out a big PR, and in keeping with our tradition, on behalf of the staff and executive of TCAF — and whom I thank for their hard work and dedication — I’m sending out the following informal note talking about TCAF 2010 and announcing exciting plans for the future.

Thanks For All Of The Support!

We’d like to thank our partners and presenting sponsors Toronto Public Library for supporting, promoting, and hosting TCAF 2010 at their fantastic flagship location, Toronto Reference Library. By incorporating the gorgeous new Bram & Bluma Appel Salon into the TCAF floorplan we were able to comfortably more-than-double our footprint for 2010, expanding to more than 200 exhibitors and honoured guests, and dozens of comics-related readings and symposiums. The increased space allowed us to easily accommodate a great increase in public attendance — a record high 12,000 TCAF-specific attendees visited the Festival over the weekend (a 10% increase over 2009)! 2010 marks TCAF’s second year of partnership with TPL, and it’s a partnership that reinforces that TCAF is a not-for-profit event. We’ve always maintained that making TCAF free removes a key obstacle – finances – for anyone who might be interested in the comics medium, and TPL continues to be a wonderful partner in that goal.

Of course there’s no Festival without great creators and works to celebrate, and so we’d like to thank all of the wonderful cartoonists, publishers, writers, artists, and other agencies that took the time to exhibit and present at TCAF 2010, it made for a truly diverse and excellent look at the medium of comics, touching on every corner of the medium. Special thanks to featured guests Daniel Clowes, Roger Langridge, Jeff Lemire, Paul Pope, Dash Shaw, James Sturm, Charles Vess and Jim Woodring, all of whom chose to premiere their wonderful new projects with TCAF, and for participating in panels and workshops and presentations and general support.

About The Festival…

TCAF tried a number of new initiatives this year that used Toronto Reference Library in new and unique ways, and we found them to be generally quite successful; our Publisher’s Pavilion was significantly cooler than last year, our Sunday kids area was packed all day, and the new Webcomics Pavilion was busy all weekend! Of particular note were our art installations. The biggest and boldest installation from Toronto art collective Trio Magnus (Clayton Hanmer, Aaron Leighton, and Steve Wilson) was fantastic, featuring a massive installation, live drawing, and a unique and vibrant set-up! Canadian webcomics collective Transmission-X transformed a learning centre into something unique and fun, and the fine folks at indie-lit magazine Broken Pencil and artist group WOWEE ZONK teamed up to create “The Small Press Schooner,” a rotating assemblage of fantastic non- and nominally-narrative artists, producing unique visual works over the course of the weekend. It was a great space with a great vibe and Chris Kuzma, Patrick Kyle, and Ginette LaPalme deserve big thanks for their hard work making it look so good.

At TCAF we’ve definitely strived to integrate ourselves into the rich fabric of cultural events and exhibitions that happen around Toronto, and a big part of that has been the support of the local and national media that help to draw out comics aficionados and newcomers from all corners. Again this year, the Arts & Life section of the National Post newspaper went above and beyond in their coverage of TCAF, running over a hundred Q&As with TCAF exhibitors and cartoonists in addition to numerous feature articles—the kind of coverage they reserve for massive events like NXNE and The International Festival of Authors. Our 2010 lead media sponsor Eye Weekly ran a cover story and many other pages of coverage on the 2010 festival and guest Daniel Clowes, and cross-town rivals NOW Magazine got in on the act with a cover feature on TCAF-debut graphic novel KENK. We also received fantastic coverage from the CBC, Toronto Star, Torontoist, BlogTO, Publishers Weekly, Quill &Quire, Sequential, The Walrus, Comics Reporter, RGB Filter, Open Books Toronto, plus dozens of blogs, thousands of tweets, and a general increased awareness of what we do and why we do it was the end result. Thank you!

We Couldn’t Have Done It Without…

Finally, we’d like to thank some of the organizations and individuals who worked to make TCAF 2010 such an unprecedented success:

• - Sponsors & Partners Toronto Public Library, Eye Weekly, Owl Magazine, The French Consulate in Toronto, Broken Pencil, The Walrus, HeartsandFlours.ca, and especially The Beguiling Books and Art for their ongoing financial support.
• - Venue partners The Bram & Bluma Appel Salon, Toronto Reference Library, The Merril Collection/Lillian H. Smith Library, The Miles Nadal JCC, The Pilot, Clinton’s Tavern, Fuzion Lounge, Tequila Bookworm, and The Cadillac Lounge.
• - TCAF 2010 Poster artist Daniel Clowes, and Drawn & Quarterly’s Tom Devlin for helping us put the poster together.
• - The staff of Toronto Public Library, Toronto Reference Library, and The Bram and Bluma Appel Salon for all of their work, and especially TPL’s Ab Velasco for his tireless efforts to make TCAF a success.
• - Our many programming hosts and moderators including Mark Askwith (SPACE), Robin McConnell (Inkstuds), Gil Roth, Matthew Kumar, Jason Thompson, Bart Beaty, Holly Post, Dan Nadel, Robin Brenner, Kathryn & Stuart Immonen, Jeet Heer, Jose Villarrubia, Jason Azzopardi, Scott Campbell and Graham Annable, Larry Marder, Jim Munroe, Walter Dickinson, MK Reed, Brad Mackay, Eva Volin, Matt Forsythe, and Jaleen Grove.
• - The hosts and staff of The 2010 Doug Wright Awards for throwing a great event Saturday evening.
• - The staff of The Beguiling for working on their weekend off
• - Peggy Burns from Drawn & Quarterly for excellent organization and coordination of guests.
• - Chip Zdarsky for his wonderful maps and expert assistance.
• - George Rohac for his early support!
• - Nadine Lessio for the fantastic new web-presence.
• - The always shrewd advice of Nathalie Atkinson.
• - Finally, and especially, our volunteers. I’m convinced that we have the greatest assemblage of volunteers of any major comics event, and this year’s crew were efficient, helpful, and praised by all of our exhibitors. Thank you for all of your hard work, dedication, and support, and we hope to see you back again in 2011.

The BIG News…!

Yes, you read that correctly: TCAF will occur annually for the foreseeable future. Save the Date: the next Toronto Comic Arts Festival is on for May 7 & 8, 2011, at Toronto Reference Library. It is once again Mother’s Day weekend. (Thanks, by the way, to all of the cool Moms who came out for the event on the Sunday.)

Our number one request for years now, from our partners, sponsors, exhibitors, attendees, and staff, has been to make the show a regularly occurring annual event. After our trial year, we feel confident that we can accomplish TCAF to our satisfaction on an annual basis. We’ve looked at what worked, and what didn’t, and we’re ready to take all the necessary actions to make TCAF an annual show, even if that means some change.

A big part of going to an annual event is the recognition that we’d like to make TRL our home for the foreseeable future, that we’d like to offer a space for new exhibitors and artists every year but our physical presence is not going to increase much year-over-year, and that the Festival’s landscape and texture must continue to change every year in order to ensure a fresh and exciting event. We’ve always tried to strike a balance between innovations to improve the show and creating a familiar and welcoming experience for exhibitors and attendees, and that won’t change… But some changes will be made to how the show operates and interacts with the comics community in order to create the best event possible. We ask for the support and understanding of all of our exhibitors and attendees going forward in the years to come, and you can expect further announcements this August. We promise all of you reading this: we are committed to making TCAF 2011 our best comics festival yet, and any and all changes we make will be towards that goal.

In Conclusion…

On behalf of myself and the entire staff we’d like to thank all everyone who made The 2010 Toronto Comic Arts Festival such a fantastic success. We greatly appreciate your support, promotion, and most-of-all your attendance at all of our Festival events. We’re looking forward to presenting great shows for years to come.

Best,

Christopher Butcher, Festival Director & Co-Founder
The Toronto Comic Arts Festival

On behalf of…

Peter Birkemoe, Co-Founder

Miles Baker, Assistant Festival Director

Nathalie Atkinson, Media Coordinator

Rob Broughton, Sean Rogers, and Tory Woollcott, Site Coordinators

Kate Dickson and Gina Gagliano, Programming Coordinators

Scott Robins, Kids Programming Coordinator

Andrew Woodrow-Butcher, Volunteer Coordinator

Parrish Kilthei, Tech Coordinator

http://www.comicsreporter.com/

It’s a bit of a long one, and it was almost entirely written between the hours of midnight at 4am, so it is considerably more honest and off the cuff that I originally intended, but I think it holds up okay. I kinda wanna give it another edit, but that’s life.

Originally I was going to save any official commenting on the show until our wrap-up, but as that’s been a while in coming I didn’t want to miss this opportunity to thank our staff and volunteers for all of their hard work, and Spurgeon’s is a pretty prestigious website upon which to send out those thanks. There’s still an official wrap-up coming of course, where we name names… in thanking all the wonderful people who helped out. And talk a little bit more about how things went, and what we’re going to do next time.

Also of note, not sure I mentioned it but there are a ton of photos of TCAF 2010 up online at flickr including my own. Here’s all the tagged TCAF 2010 shots:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/tcaf2010/

Alright, nuff of me. More commenting coming soon.

- Christopher

From the @torontocomics account, this is a screenshot from Sunday at about 6:30pm. Check out that trending list.

So yeah, it went pretty well. Thanks to everyone who helped out and came out. TCAF will have a more official response a little later, but for now, we all feel pretty good about stuff. But man do I miss blogging…!

- Chris

The 2010 Festival will feature over 200 comics authors and artists, including including Daniel Clowes (Wilson, Eightball, Ghost World), Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth), Paul Pope (Wednesday Comics), Dash Shaw (Body World), James Sturm (Golem’s Mighty Swing, Market Day), Charles Vess (Stardust, Blueberry Girl, Instructions), and Jim Woodring (Frank). Other special installations include The Webcomics Pavilion featuring Kate Beaton, Jeph Jacques, and Ryan North, The Toronto Small Press Schooner (presented by Broken Pencil and Wowee Zonk!), The Publishers Pavilion, and more than two-dozen creators from outside of North America!

For more information on TCAF and related events, please visit http://www.torontocomics.com.

- Christopher

We launched the TCAF website last week, and I think we finally have all of the bugs worked out and the little changes I wanted made, made. We haven’t really done any official PR yet, letting people discover it on their own through word of mouth, but I imagine that’ll change next week some time. I have one really big meeting tomorrow, and then one ridiculously big meeting on Friday morning, so work time and free time is kind of eaten up by that.

In addition to being angry enough to throw a couple of finger-pointy blog entries up, I decided to forgo 5 or 6 hours sleep this week to write a review for Manga.About.Com, on my favourite release of 2010 (to date), not simple by Natsume Ono. Go check it out. It was interesting because About.com has very strict guidelines about format and length, and it’s the exact opposite of my experiences writing here at the blog… or literally anywhere I’ve freelanced. I’m going to try to keep writing reviews for the site, because I think a few harsh formating choices will make me a better writer. Thanks to Manga.About.Com Guide Deb Aoki for the opportunity.

As for Manga Milestones… #9 is International Manga, probably as typified by Yen Plus #1/Night School by Svetlana Chmakova. I can’t decide how much I want to write about this. I could literally write 2 or 3 thousand words ripping Tokyopop and ADV new assholes, but I’m not entirely sure there’s enough of a point to it. I’ve been going back and forth in my head for a few weeks, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be too busy to write it, but manga influenced comics from Korea and North America were utterly shit-on, 2000-2008. I wonder if dredging up every single way that happened is worthwhile, when the future is so much brighter for all involved now? Still working on it in my head.

#10 is still a secret though.

- Chris @ The Beguiling

Now it is 5:39am and I am going to go to bed.

- Christopher

- Chris

2003 TCAF Poster by Seth

2005 Festival Poster (1) by Darwyn Cooke

2005 Festival poster (2) by Marc Bell

2005 Festival poster (3) by James Jean

2007 Festival poster by Darwyn Cooke

2009 Festival poster by Bryan Lee O’Malley

TCAF's set-up at last week's SpeakEasy art show, a plethora of posters and promotional art by talented artists!

Just a quick reminder that the deadline to apply to exhibit at The 2010 Toronto Comic Arts Festival is this Sunday, November 15th. If you or a talented comics person you know might want to exhibit, get your application in at http://torontocomics.com a.s.a.p.!

- Christopher

I sincerely hope that anyone who’s been curious about our adorable little chapter book will go and visit their local comic retailer this Wednesday to pick up a copy. Thanks again to D&Q for soliciting the book for us, and to M. Ayroles for allowing it to be published in English.

For those of you that had missed the earlier blog postings, Key Moments is a book that The Beguiling published to coincide with French comics creator Francois Ayroles’ trip to Canada this past May, as a Guest of Honour of The Toronto Comic Arts Festival. It’s a collection of wry gag cartoons about the inception of the comic industry and the beginnings of various creators’ careers, from Eisner to Ware to Schultz to Herge. It rewards readers with broad tastes :)

Here’s a gag from the book, and if it gives you a chuckle make sure to look for Key Moments at your local shop this week.

;)

Best,

- Christopher

Long story short, it’s a good one. Go check it out: http://comicscomicsmag.blogspot.com/2009/10/tatsumi-in-toronto.html

- Chris

Image by Bryan Lee O’Malley. Logo by Chip Zdarsky.

:)

- Chris

Here’s a brief outline of this year’s programming, and I hope we see you out this weekend (oh and please feel free to repost):

11:00am-11:15am: All about Comics & Graphic Novels: A brief introduction.
Hosted by Christopher Butcher.

11:15am-12:00pm: Creating comics with Owlkids!
Featuring CTON (Clayton Hanmer) and Brian McLachlan.
Bonus: The first 200 kids 12 and under that attend this panel will receive a gift bag filled with great comics!

12:00-13:00: Creating Comics and Raising a Family: Finding Balance.
Featuring Jim Munroe (Sword of My Mouth), Tara Tallan (Galaxion), and Claudia Davilla (Luz: The Girl of Knowing).

13:00-14:00: No Rules, No Budget, All Fun! How and why you should make comics!
Featuring Georgia Webber (gangLion), Ruth Tait, and steflenk (The Haircut)

14:00-15:00: Graphic Memoirs – 3 New Works.
Featuring Tory Woolcott (Mirror Mind), Lesley Fairfield (Tyranny), and Adam Bourret (I’m Crazy)

15:00-16:00: Sequential Presents: Oh, Canada. Surveying The Landscape of Canadian Comics.
Featuring Bryan Munn, Salgood Sam, Brad Mackay, and Kevin Boyd.

16:00-17:00: Sequential Presents: Three New Comics set in Canada
Featuring readings by Willow Dawson (100 Mile House), Jeff Lemire (Essex County), and Evan Munday (Quarter-Life Crisis).

17:00-18:00: WEBCOMICS
Featuring Andy Belanger (Bottle of Awesome), Faith Erin Hicks (War At Ellsmere), Emily Horne (A Softer World), Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics), Kean Soo (Jellaby).

–

For full programming descriptions and stuff, check out The Word On The Street website at http://www.thewordonthestreet.ca/wots/toronto/whatson/comics.

Thanks,

- Christopher

I’m Christopher Butcher and I’m the Festival Director and co-founder of TCAF, The Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Co-founder Peter Birkemoe, a handful of staff, and dozens of volunteers and I present TCAF every two years in lovely downtown Toronto, Canada. A little over a month ago on May 9-10, 2009, we held our fourth Festival. It was a first at our new home, the Toronto Reference Library, the flagship of the 99-branch Toronto Public Library system (the largest library system in North America). Following tradition, we thought a nice note sent far and wide might be a good way to sum up this year’s Festival, and make a few announcements about the next one.

First and foremost, we think that TCAF 2009 was a great success. Our main goal with TCAF is to create a stage for the comics, art and graphic novels that we love, so they can really shine and find the audience that they deserve. Canada is a country that produces great cartoonists and comics and we’re proud that more than 250 creators, a dozen publishers, and more attendees than ever could participate in this year’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Despite economic concerns, TCAF 2009 proved that comics are still a boom medium, bursting with creativity, craft, and passion—and people want to come out and be a part of it!

Attendance at TCAF 2009 events more than doubled over our 2007 figures, with 10,500 TCAF-specific attendees visiting Toronto Reference Library across both days (official numbers, at that: from audited data provided by Toronto Public Library’s turnstile powers-that-be), and with over 14,000 attendees visiting TCAF-branded events in total. Feedback from guests, attendees, and partners has been overwhelmingly positive so far. While we did experience some growing pains this year (heat, crowds, traffic-flow) familiarizing ourselves with and settling in to the new
venue, we’re confident that moving forward we’ll be able to rectify these issues.

On that note, we’d like to thank all of the wonderful cartoonists, publishers, artists and writers who came out to exhibit this year. TCAF 2009 featured our largest and most diverse collection of guests to date, and as always these creators and their work are the reason there is a Festival in the first place. Thanks to our honored guests François Ayroles, Anke Feuchtenberger, Emmanuel Guibert, Derek Kirk Kim, Kid Koala/Eric San, Scott McCloud, Tara McPherson, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Paul Pope, Florent Ruppert, Seth, Adrian Tomine, and Craig Yoe. And a very special thanks especially to Mr. and Mrs. Yoshihiro Tatsumi, who overcame medical troubles to attend this Festival: you gave us a truly special event.

We’ve continued to receive amazing support from both Canada’s national and Toronto’s local print and online media, with many of our guests surprised at the level of coverage that we received both as an event, and around specific guests. Of particular note is the superlative support of the Arts & Life section of Canada’s National Post newspaper, who ran over a hundred biographies and Q&As of comics creators attending TCAF, several feature articles and art pages, blog and print wraps and updates — they even live-Twittered several panels. We appreciate their support of comics and their recognition of TCAF’s prominent role in promoting the medium. These efforts, alongside coverage from TCAF Media Sponsor Eye Magazine, newspapers The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail and L’Express, online coverage from BoingBoing, Torontoist, BlogTO, NOW, Publishers Weekly, Quill and Quire, Sequential, Walrus, The Comics Reporter, dozens of blogs, thousands of tweets, and the fine folks at Open Books Toronto and WHAZAMO! declaring May GRAPHIC NOVEL MONTH, created unprecedented awareness not only of TCAF, but of the hundreds of publishers and cartoonists at the event. Thank you!

Peter and I would like to thank all of our sponsors and partner organizations, and especially TCAF Presenting Sponsor, Toronto Public Library (TPL). TPL graciously donated the use of the beautiful, airy Toronto Reference Library building to act as our venue for the main exhibition and programming. Holding TCAF at Toronto Reference Library re-enforces the fact that TCAF is completely FREE for the public to attend. We’ve long maintained that making the show free removes the barriers to entry for anyone who might be interested in the medium of comics and graphic novels, and by partnering with an organization that offers free access to a fantastic, comprehensive collection of the best comics literature all year-round, we’ve found a great partner in our goals. TCAF strives to present a broad, accessible, and varied view of comics and it is with the support of TPL and their staff—particularly tireless Director of Communications Ab Velasco—that we were able to reach more people with our message than ever before. Thank you. Thanks also to our sponsors at Harbourfront Centre, Owlkids, Le Consulate General de France a Toronto, the Goethe-Institut, Eye Weekly, The Japan Foundation, Magic Pony, Teletoon Canada, and of course, The Beguiling Books and Art: You supported us with great guests, with great venues, great programming, and so much more.

As the public face of TCAF, I often get a lot of the credit and praise directed at the event (the complaints too!), but there are a number of people who help put this show together that don’t always get the credit they deserve. Foremost amongst those people is Steven Murray (aka Chip Zdarsky), who went above and beyond this year to help us put together weeks and months worth of projects related to the Festival. He is a wonderful artist, writer, designer and friend, and we are sorry for making him uncomfortable with this praise but: We literally could not have done what we did without you.

Thanks also go out to: our 2009 Festival Poster Artist Bryan Lee O’Malley; Emmanuel Guibert for lending us Sardine for our Comics Festival! comic; Professor Andrew Lesk for organizing a fantastic academic program; Jocelyne Allen for superb Japanese translation skills; our many programming hosts and moderators including: Bill Kartalopoulos, Deb Aoki, Bart Beaty, Mark Askwith, Mark D. Nevins, Mark Siegel, Douglas Wolk, Jose Villarrubia, Jason Azzopardi, Stacy E. King, Jim Zubkavich, and Robin McConnell; The hosts and staff of The 2009 Doug Wright Awards for throwing an excellent event Saturday evening; our 2009 Festival Staff including Logistics Coordinators Rob Broughton and Sean Rogers, Kids Programming Coordinators Scott Robins and Naseem Hrab, Volunteer Coordinator Andrew Woodrow-Butcher; Parrish Kilthei for his A/V assistance; the staff of The Beguiling; Kate Dickson from Teletoon Canada; Peggy Burns from Drawn & Quarterly for all of her help coordinating an incredibly busy schedule; and the shrewd advice of Nathalie Atkinson. We had an army of talented, passionate volunteers again this year who helped to ensure that things went as smoothly as they possibly could, and we greatly appreciate their contribution to making the event a success (and that they happily wore the ketchup ‘n’ mustard-coloured TCAF t-shirts). We hope that all of you will come out and be a part of next year’s event.

That’s right, the next Toronto Comic Arts Festival will be held Saturday May 8^th and Sunday May 9^th, 2010, at Toronto Reference Library. YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST. And yes, we know that’s Mother’s Day… All of the cool moms read comics.

What, so soon, you ask? Following up on feedback from our partners, our guests, our staff, and attendees, we’ve decided to build on the incredible momentum of having a new home and incredibly supportive presenting sponsor in Toronto Public Library, and produce our first annual show. This is something of an experiment for us, and I can’t say for sure that we’re “going annual” with the event, but we feel that a 2010 event is the best course of action to ensure that TCAF stays a fun, vital, and prominent festival both within the city of Toronto and in the larger comics community. That’s around the corner so we’ll be running a tight ship, and further details about TCAF 2010 (including exhibitor application & information) will be released later this summer.

Thanks again to everyone who made the 2009 Toronto Comic Arts Festival such a fantastic success. We greatly appreciate your support, your promotion of the festival through great word of mouth and online, and your attendance. We’ll do our best to keep putting together a great show.

Thanks,

Christopher Butcher, Festival Director
Toronto Comic Arts Festival

On behalf of the executive, staff, and volunteers of TCAF

Key Moments from the History of Comics
By Francois Ayroles
48 pages,  CDN$10.00
Published by The Beguiling Books
Available at Beguiling.com 

Published in conjunction with the 2009 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, The Beguiling has published it’s first book ever: Key Moments from the History of Comics! This witty chapbook collection of French cartoonist Francois Ayroles’ humour cartoons is a fantastic and funny read for alternative and literary comics fans. The book imagines–to humourous effect–the most poigniant and important moments in the lives of great cartoonists and comics institutions from around the world.

It’s funny stuff–the gag book collection is something that has largely disappeared from the shelves and racks of comic book stores, and this brings back the idea with a vengence. Admittedly it’s a little pricey for a 48 page book, but it’s… unlikely to be collected otherwise, given the nature of the material. I bought a copy and quite enjoyed it, particularly having met M. Ayroles and found him to be just as warm and funny in person.

This has yet to be solicited by Diamond and such a solicitation is at least 4 months away. I’d humbly recommend that if funny comics tickle your fancy, you give them a go. With that in mind, I’d like to share a few of my favourites from the book:

The cartooning is lovely, chunky and filled with deep blacks but with a grace that’s appealing. And it’s sad and funny. My absolute favourite is the Chris Ware one, but I’ve left that out so you have something to discover for yourself.

So yes, if you’d like to support me by supporting an employer that allows me to blog from work, might I humbly suggest that you head over to http://www.beguiling.com/productview2a.asp?P_NUM=6535 and pick yourself up a copy of this fine chapbook? It’s actually only 8 bucks and change in U.S. funds. :)

Thanks very kindly, and sorry for this commercial interuption. We’ll see you soon.

Best,

- Christopher

So I am a little sleepy still but feel good, TCAF went well. I want to blog though, but starting a post at 1:00am is probably a bad idea, I do actually have to go back to work tomorrow for reelz. Next weekend is Anime North, which, believe it or not, actually takes more out of me than TCAF does… I think it’s because TCAF is ultimately an energizing thing for me, whereas AN is a purely retail experience. Which is fine, but it doesn’t have that community/rally/prostelityzing component that makes me come off of TCAF feeling good.

Speaking of, I think I sort of half mentioned it, but Open Book Toronto (an advocacy group for Canadian/Ontarian/Torontonian Publishing) has declared it “Graphic Novel Month” here in Ontario, and is doing all kinds of coverage of Canadian graphic novelists, publishers, and festivals (heh), through a specially-set-up website called Whazamo! You can find them at http://www.openbooktoronto.com/whazamo.

Today, their TCAF wrap-up video got linked on Boing Boing courtesy of Cory Doctorow (who was at the show this year). So yeah, we got BoingBoing’d, which is lovely and I’m very appreciative to Mr. Doctrow for the coverage and attention. And thanks to Ian Daffern for putting the piece together in the first place–I owe you a beer.

I’m sure I’ll end up doing a more thorough TCAF wrap-up piece, probably this weekend. I also really want to review a bunch of the books I was able to pick up this year. I actually got two pages of art, 3 posters/prints, and like 30-40 books this year, which is amazing considering that in 2007 I walked away with like… nothing. So yeah, tons and tons of great-looking work to talk about too.

Weirdest thing post-TCAF is being back at The Beguiling Wednesday and having a customer ask me for “Blackest Night #0″, which feels like it came out forever ago, now, and it’s a reminder that for two weeks I participated in both a comics medium AND a comics industry that had almost nothing to do with the superhero mainstream. I know that it’ll seem weird to a bunch of my readers, but there are artistically and economically thriving areas of comics that don’t have anything to do with Diamond, Marvel, or DC. It’s weird to be dropped back into that, but it’s good to know, to keep some perspective on the whole thing.

Anyway, barring incident, back up to speed shortly! But until then, everyone go read some good comic books.

- Christopher

You can find the interview at http://www.inkstuds.com, or http://inkstuds.com/?p=1812, or subscribe at iTunes. Thanks to Robin for the interview!

RELATED: Peggy Burns from Drawn & Quarterly let me know today that Radio Canada International (The CBC) just gave a glowing review to Seth’s new graphic novel George Sprott, and plugged TCAF and The Beguiling at the same time. Super awesome. Unfortunately the main host has a corny “Comics Aren’t Just For Kids!” thing going on, which is lame, but the reviewer and review are lovely… and will likely sell a LOT of books for us! And send people to TCAF!

You can listen to the clip online at http://www.rcinet.ca/rci/en/emissions/archives/archivesDetails_1952_15042009.shtml. Forward to about the 13:00 mark in the first part of the show.

Whoo!

Good day, productive. Need a nap though.

- Chris

We’ve just put up most of the TCAF Events that will be happening in Toronto surrounding the Festival. We’re nailing down the dates on others, but yeah, it’s pretty outstanding, if I do say so myself. You can check it all out at http://www.torontocomics.com/tcaf, or if you’re more of an RSS person, all future updates are going to also be made via the blog on the front-page of http://www.torontocomics.com.

I am pretty proud of all of this I gotta say.

- Chris

KTR: Graphically Speaking. (L to R) Christopher Butcher, Kate Beaton, Willow Dawson, Emily Horne, Ryan North, and Brian McLachlan

Last night was our event Graphically Speaking: Webcomics, as part of Toronto’s Keep Toronto Reading month! We had a great turnout, well over 100 people (and I only knew like 10 of them!) including journalist Matthew Braga from Blog.T.O., who just put up a short article on the event:

“While the evening was a superb way to learn more about the burgeoning community of webcomics, both in Toronto and on the web, it won’t be the only chance for fans to interact with some of their favourite online authors and artists. Both the Toronto Public Library and The Beguiling will also be hosting the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) this May, where most of Tuesday’s panelists should be in attendance.” –  BlogT.O.

A superb evening AND a TCAF plug. Hoo-ray!

- Christopher

Graphically Speaking: Webcomics!
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009, 6:30pm – 8:30pm
@ North York Central Library
http://www.keeptorontoreading.ca/events/graphically-speaking
TOTALLY FREE

As you might be aware, The Beguiling works really hard to keep books in stock (for you!) that aren’t offered through standard distribution channels. That includes minis and zines, it includes specialty books of interest to comics fans but not necessarily carried by Diamond, and it also includes print versions of popular online comics (generally referred to as ‘webcomics’). We do this because we like to sell things and make money, but also because we feel that a big part of being a comic book store is… wait for it… Selling Comic Books. And that means regardless of the format, or where they originally appeared. We like comics, we sell comics, and we’re happy to do it.

Over the past few years, more and more comics material has started to become available online. Granted, comics on the internet go back to more-or-less the first protocols for displaying graphics online (and even earlier if you count bbs’), but it’s really been in the past few years that comics specifically intended for the web have become viable, moneymaking enterprises for the folks that do them. Penny Arcade, PVP, Deisel Sweeties, Questionable Content, Wigu/Overcompensating, Achewood, and Toronto’s own Dinosaur Comics, are just a few examples of folks who are making a go of publishing online, and deriving their income from those pursuits.

But how are they doing it? And how does that affect us, a comic book store, the ‘middleman’ who’s being ‘skipped’ in this publishing model.

That’s what we’re going to discuss!

I (Christopher Butcher) am going to be interviewing 6 Toronto-area webcomics creators about what they publish, and how, and why. “Can you make money at this? How much? More importantly, do you even want to make money? What are the differences between between print and online as a medium? Is this your career, a hobby, or both? What would you recommend for someone interested in following in your footsteps?”

(I might pause between questions to let them answer… we’ll see)

And who are the fine webcomics creators who will be participating in this event?

Kate Beaton (History Comics)
http://harkavagrant.com/index.php

Willow Dawson (100 Mile House)
http://www.topshelfcomix.com/ts2.0/artist/320

Emily Horne (A Softer World)
http://www.asofterworld.com/

Brian McLachlan (The Princess Planet)
http://www.theprincessplanet.com/

Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics)
http://qwantz.com/

…and to be honest, likely a dozen other webcomicsy people will be in the audience (they travel in packs!). Books (where available) will be on hand for sale at the event, and all of the creators will be available following the discussion to chat with and sign for fans and attendees.

So come one, come all, to this rather interesting look at reading and creating work online! It’s all part of Toronto Public Library’s Keep Toronto Reading event, which I have to say, is pretty forward-thinking on their parts.

Best,

- Chris @ The Beguiling

Why, what's this event at the refence library?

 That was a lovely little surprise today. :)

- Chris

That’s right! It’s the official line-up for COMICS FESTIVAL 2009! Featuring a ton of great Canadian cartoonists doing all kinds of great kid-oriented new stories! Bug your retailer, make sure he or she has ordered lots and lots! It’s AWESOME!

Featuring: 

Sardine in Outer Space, by Emmanuel Guibert!
Jellaby, by Kean Soo! (2 stories!)

Blackbeard, by Kate Beaton!
Three Thieves, by Scott Chantler!
Jelly vs. Peanut Butter, by CTON!
Ella & Squid, by Willow Dawson!
Ojingogo, by Matthew Forsythe!
Possessions, by Ray Fawkes!
To Do List, by Faith Erin Hicks!
Battle Academy, by Eric Kim!
Evil Bacon, by Dave Lapp!
Angora Napkin, by Troy Little!
Pegasus and the Monumonsters, by Steve Charles Manale!
Princess Planet, by Brian McLachlan!
Barbarian For Hire, by John Martz and Zach Worton!
Dinosaur Comics, by Ryan North!
Rosco’s Big Day, by Steve Rolston!
The Go-Friends, by Ben Shannon!
Galaxion, by Tara Tallan!
Monster Cops, by Chip Zdarsky!
Uh-Oh the Crow vs. Breakfast, by Jim Zubkavich!

Look for it on Free Comic Book Day!

- Chris

Final full-size poster (with less text) available April, 2009

(Just realized I never posted this here, and I was really happy with how it turned out, so… Thanks to Mal & Chip)

- Chris

From Canada: Dave Lapp (Drop-In), Brian McLachlan (Princess Planet), Michael Noonan, Joe Ollman (Chewing on Tinfoil), Steve Rolston (Emiko Superstar) and Jim Zubkavich (UDON).

From England, and attending TCAF for the first time, is Jamie McKelvie, author of Suburban Glamour and artist of Phonogram, amongst other works.

From the U.S.A.: John Campbell (Pictures For Sad Children), Scott Campbell (Hickee), Becky Cloonan (Demo, Pixu), Kevin Colden (Fishtown), Joshua Cotter (Skyscrapers of the Midwest), Justin Hall (True Travel Tales), Dustin Harbin (Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find), Cheese Hasselberger and Dave McKenna and Brian Musikoff from House of 12, Chris Hastings (Dr. McNinja), Jeph Jacques (Questionable Content), Matt Kindt (Three Sisters), Joe Lambert (CCS Grad), Miss Lasko-Gross (Escape From Special), David Malki (Wondermark), Sean McCarthy (Partyka), Erika Moen (Dar), Tom Neely (The Blot), Lark Pien (Long-Tail Kitty), Jonathan Rosenberg (Goats), Jeffrey Rowland (Wigu, Overcompensating), and Jason Shiga (Bookhunter)!

We’ve also confirmed exhibition space by publishers Adhouse Books, Anteism Books, Buenaventura Press, Fantagraphics Books, Le Dernier Cri,  plus The Doug Wright Awards, Broken Pencil Magazine, and Taddle Creek Magazine.

–

Cool beans!

We do have a number of potential guests who are still firming up their schedule so there’ll likely be more additions in the weekend to come, though another 30 creator update is unlikely. 

- Chris

The 2009 Finalists for Best Book are:

Burma Chronicles, by Guy Delisle (Drawn & Quarterly)
Drop-in, by Dave Lapp (Conundrum Press)
Paul Goes Fishing, by Michel Rabagliati (Drawn & Quarterly)
Skim, by Jillian & Mariko Tamaki (Groundwood Books)

The 2009 finalists for Best Emerging Talent are:

Kate Beaton (History Comics)
Caitlin Black (Maids in the Mist)
Jesse Jacobs (Blue Winter, Shapes in the Snow)
Jason Kieffer (Kieffer #2)
Nick Maandag (Jack & Mandy)

The finalists for non-traditional works (Pigskin Peters’ Award) are:

Hall of Best Knowledge Ray Fenwick (Fantagraphics)
Ojingogo Matthew Forsythe (Drawn & Quarterly)
All We Ever Do is Talk About Wood Tom Horacek (Drawn & Quarterly)
Small Victories Jesse Jacobs (self-published)

Further, this year the DWAs will induct cartoonist Jimmie Frise (d. 1948), creator of the popular strip ‘Birdseye Center’, into The Giants of the North, the Hall of Fame for Canadian cartooning.

The 2009 Doug Wright Awards will be handed out on Saturday, May 9th at 7pm, in a ceremony hosted by Canadian filmmaker Don McKellar and held at the recently renovated (and gorgeous) Art Gallery of Ontario. Just after the first day of TCAF, I might add, so another reason to come.

The DWAs are decided by a rotating jury, and this year the jury includes; Bob Rae (the Member of Parliament for Toronto Centre and 21st premier of Ontario), Andrew Coyne (national editor for Maclean’s and political panelist on CBC Television’s The National), Martin Levin (books editor for The Globe and Mail and contributor to What I Meant to Say), cartoonist Joe Ollmann (author of the 2007 DWA Best Book This Will All End in Tears) and cartoonist Diana Tamblyn, the Ignatz-nominated author of several mini-comics including The Rosie Stories and There You Were.

…I still think it’s strange that the nominating committee, who wasn’t named (and Christ do I hate that) didn’t opt to put Scott Pilgrim 4 on there, but it’s not like all four of those best books aren’t amazing, amazing work.

- Christopher

A Drifting Life
By Yoshihiro Tatsumi
856 Pages, Softcover, $29.99/$39.99
Published by Drawn & Quarterly

I have no doubt that much will be written about this book when it is officially released this spring. There’s a deceptive density to A Drifting Life, Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s arms’ length autobiography. It’s a story told very directly, switching between the first and third person to describe a young man’s passion and struggle, set against a larger picture of a nation looking to rebuild after World War II.  The 800+ pages of the book read quickly, but the ideas expressed are potent and the history chronicled Important (and largely unkown); the effect of completing the book is disorienting. At one point I flipped to the back looking for footnotes to try and match my own understanding of the origins of Japanese comics to the incredible amount of information Tatsumi dolls out in a few key chapters (though the entire birth of the manga industry, and Tatsumi’s own Gekiga can be found in these pages) (about the footnotes: there are none). At its heart A Drifting Life is a memoir, filled with a density of details to give it a setting and place that will be immediately familiar to Japanese readers of the last generation but that will largely evade North American ones. This is not a bad thing, if anything the unfamiliarity of the time and place of this story will add to the experience of the lead drifting through his life, tied only to the comic that I hope you’ll be holding in your hands.

- Christopher
Yoshihiro Tatsumi will be a Guest of Honour at the 2009 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, of which I am the Festival Director.

Hey there,

I didn’t post the press release for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, because I didn’t want to step on the toes of my comics journalist compatriots, but I did want to point out that we just posted our first guestlist update:

We’re pleased to announce that the following Canadian comics creators will be attending The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, May 9th and 10th 2009: Ho Che Anderson (King), Kate Beaton (History Comics), Andy Belanger (Raising Hell), Joey Comeau & Emily Horne (A Softer World), Tom Fowler (Mysterius), Scott Hepburn (Star Wars), John Martz (Drawn.ca), Kagan McLeod (Infinite Kung-Fu), Ramon Perez (Kukuburi), John C. Ralston, Paul Rivoche, Cameron Stewart (Seaguy), and J. Torres (Batman: Brave and the Bold).

In addition, TCAF is proud to announce that we will be working with Toronto Gallery + Retailer Magic Pony to welcome Tara McPherson to Toronto. Tara McPherson will be participating in a gallery show at Magic Pony and debuting her new artbook and toyline with Kid Robot at TCAF.

These creators rachet the guestlist up to something like 120 artists and authors who will be getting together in Toronto this May to have the most fun allowed by law. I’ve been trying to keep the hype off of my blog here (last year I think it got a little… thick) but I’m super-excited about the show this year, and knee-deep in planning it. As much fun as it is watching the direct market self-destruct (and arguing with folks who think that Nero is fiddling just fine, thanks), my attention will be more-likely-than-not focussed elsewhere for the next few months. Towards doing something cool and positive for the medium. Wish me luck!

Best,

- Christopher

Comics Festival 2009 leads a 10-page SARDINE IN OUTER SPACE story by TCAF Guest Of Honour Emmanuel Guibert, in association with SARDINE publisher First Second Books. Emmanuel Guibert also put together that striking new cover that will leap off the table on Free Comic Book Day!

Comics Festival 2009 will also feature Kean Soo, who will be providing a couple of all-new JELLABY short stories in celebration of the second volume of that series, coming this fall!

Wrapping up the book will be a bunch of comic strips and shorts by a plethora of Great Canadian Cartoonists, and there will be more than one surprise in its pages. It really is going to be a fantastic book, full of great stories, and a great retailer tool that will promote more than 15 in-print graphic novels for young readers.

If you’re a comics fan looking for a great read this FCBD, or you have kids who like comics, or you’re a retailer who wants a great kid-safe book to hand out for Free Comic Book Day this year (that doubles as a great sales-tool!) then don’t miss COMICS FESTIVAL 2009!

- Chris
P.S.: Free Comic Book Day is Saturday May 2nd this year, the weekend before TCAF.

TCAF announcement next week, it looks like. :)

- Christopher

We’re confirmed: The 2009 Toronto Comic Arts Festival will be held Saturday May 9th and Sunday May 10th, in Toronto, Canada. Our new digs? The Toronto Reference Library, a huge and beautiful modernist building, able to accommodate all of our growing Festival needs.

Mark your calendars now, book off some time, and get ready for the best TCAF yet.

For more info, e-mail me at 2009@torontocomics.com.
- Christopher

Hey everybody! I just posted The Beguiling’s Free Comic Book Day wrap-up at: http://www.beguiling.com/2008/05/free-comic-book-day-2008-wrap-up.html.

We had a good year this year despite some pretty awful weather, and though I don’t have exact figures I’d say that we had at least 600 people through both events over the course of the day, and a lot (at least 200 of them) were under 14. Mission: Accomplished.

Because my site gets way more traffic than The Beguiling’s site, I did want to take the opportunity to send you to visit the online homes of all of our participating artists at this year’s FCBD events. They were really stars, drawing and sketching all day (many of them without any breaks) and sending you to check out their work is the least I can do.

Michael Cho (Transmission-X, Max Finder): http://www.transmission-x.com/ , http://chodrawings.blogspot.com/
Willow Dawson (Violet Miranda): http://www.willowdawson.com/
J. Korim (Neozoic): http://www.jkorim.ca/main.htm
Jessie Lam (Neozoic): http://axl99.net/
Steve Manale (Superslackers, You Crack Me Up): http://www.superslackers.com/
Nick Mandaag (Artist): no website!
Tyrone McCarthy (Corduroy High): http://www.corduroyhigh.com/
Alana McCarthy (Illustrator): http://www.alanaland.com/
Brian McLachlan (Princess Planet): http://www.theprincessplanet.com/, http://www.transmission-x.com/
Tara Tallan (Galaxion): http://www.girlamatic.com/comics/galaxion.php
Jeremy Tankard (Grumpy Bird, Me Hungry): http://www.jeremytankard.com/
Chip Zdarsky (Monster Cops): http://chipzdarsky.livejournal.com/

Hope you all had a great Free Comic Book Day!

- Christopher
(Photo: Jeremy Tankard talks about his very first home-made comics to a group of rapt youngsters and their parents at Free Comics For Kids Day)

Hope to see you there!

More at: http://www.beguiling.com/2008/04/reminder-free-comics-for-kids-day-this.html

More at http://www.beguiling.com

- Chris

“As Josh notes, there are smaller cons that cater to indie comics – SPX, APE, MoCCa, etc. — cons largely by and for activists, who’ve decided to make that niche their bread and butter. But any con that hits a certain size has to start looking at their bottom line at all times, and, as in most arenas, what brings in the most money gets the most attention. That’s just how it is, and expecting the New York con to change it is looking in the wrong direction.” - Steven Grant

I’m just gonna flat-out disagree with this. It’s certainly much harder to have a creative and curatorial vision for a comics show, to believe in what you’re doing and keep it running when there are external monetary pressures, etc., but it’s nowhere near impossible, and while the bottom line is important, it’s by no means where the eye needs to be kept “at all times”. Far from it. Look east for inspiration, my good fellows, to the mighty shows of Europe. America may “not have culture” but there are art galleries and museums in areas other than New York and California, and all it takes is some smart event planners that know how to make a spectacle and get folks out.

I understand that Mr. Grant has a long-accumulated wealth of knowledge acquired over many years of con-going, but if I sincerely thought that “indie comics” (a phrase that means absolutely nothing, btw.) had an inherently limited audience of converts, I’d probably drop everything tomorrow and just go work in banking or something. Instead, “indie comics” actually encompasses everything that’s not WFH corporate comics, a huge field that now includes everyone from D&Q, Oni, Fanta, Top Shelf, and even Image, all the way to Random House, Simon & Shuster, and First Second.

Comics are literature, comics are entertainment, comics are excellent. The limit to the audience for comics is people who respond to art or the written word. Believing otherwise is narrow-thinking and self-defeating. We should be bigger, brighter, and bolder from now on, but in celebration of the medium, not the “culture”.

- Christopher
Quick edit for spelling.