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.

Was working through my computer today and tripped over this… An awesome illustration by Jim Mahfood to promote the 2005 TCAF kick-off event featuring musician/turntablist/graphic novelist Kid Koala and featuring live art by Mr. Mahfood. Unfortunately due to the tight deadlines we were under (and the extreme stress I was under…) this postcard never got printed up, which is a real shame as it’s pretty kick-ass. The least I can do is share it with all of you wonderful people.

Visit Jim Mahfood’s site at http://www.40ozcomics.com/.

Visit the gateway to Kid Koala’s two sites at http://www.kidkoala.com/.

- Christopher

What’s comics about this picture? Give up? It’s James Jean, his illustrations bedecking the fabulous organza silk tunic and pant combo, inspiring the colours of all of the outfits, and acting as the canvas upon which these models are laid.

James Jean, cover artist for various popular comic series including Fables and The Umbrella Academy, and a comics creator himself whose work can be found in anthologies including the forthcoming Meathaus: SOS, has his art splashed across the spring collection from Prada.

Jean’s first announcement of a collaboration with the internationally renowned fashion house came last summer, when he mentioned on-panel at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (which I co-founded) that he would be designing a massive mural installation in the New York Prada boutique. The New York gig became New York and Beverly Hills, and the mural became the inspiration for an animated film/commercial for Prada, Trembled Blossoms, a unique animated affair that features the dark faerie designs and illustrations of Jean, set to a creepy ambient trip-hop soundtrack and featuring gorgeous creatures turning into shoes, frocks, and handbags.

The collection is huge, more than a hundred pieces including this organza silk fairy-print top modeled by the lovely Kate Moss and checking in at around $2200. While industry sites had made notice of Jean’s mural and film, no one (myself included) seemed to have noticed that James Jean’s palette, visual style, and even his actual illustration, is present across almost the entire line, and to be found in the pages of virtually every fashion magazine around the world. No one of course, except The National Post’s Nathalie Atkinson, who profiled Jean last month in a huge double-page spread that incorporated his commercial and fine art, as well as the new fashions that bear his art. Unfortunately, the spread that featured the art is no longer online, but do check-out the profile text which is still available.

Curiously, Jean’s involvement feels like it is being kept from the limelight, with most of the praise resting squarely on the shoulders of Prada head Miuccia Prada. One of the few mentions I’ve seen of Jean’s involvement came from the New York Times Magazine, both in print and on their website (they loved the collection, by the by). But for anyone familiar with Jean’s illustration and comics work, it’s hard not to see the inspiration. Jean’s work even adorns the “IT” handbag of the spring, much as Japanese illustrator and artist Takeshi Murakami’s collaboration with Louis Vuitton defined couture fashion handbags several years ago:

The Prada Fairy Bag comes in square and round versions, and is apparently the must-have item right now. Completely sold out from the New York Prada boutique (the only place you can find it when you can find it), this site estimates that less than 15 people are “walking around the city with Prada fairies dangling off their shoulders.” If you can actually find one, it’ll run you $2,300.

Finally, a piece of James Jean art that will get female collectors with a taste for the finer things as excited as the men. Is that sexist of me? Apologies.

So who’s wearing James Jean’s prints on Prada this spring? Everybody. Shown above is Marion Cotillard, the actress who tackled the role of Edith Piaf in the film La Vie En Rose, an Academy Award-winning performance. Marion is showing off the printed silk organza skirt, $2,195, in this photo shoot for ELLE magazine.

This chunky-heeled Runway Collection Mary Jane is pretty fierce, incorporating a floral design found in the original mural. A pair of these will set you back $790 from Neiman Marcus.

Now, I’ve got something of a vested interest in this post. As I mentioned at the beginning, Mr. Jean has been an Honoured Guest at the last two Toronto Comic Arts Festivals, and I hold his work in high esteem. James was even kind enough to accept our commission for a TCAF poster in 2005, and another in 2007 for The Beguiling’s 20th Anniversary Ltd. Print. I’m thrilled to see his work being so widely acclaimed. While this post is about his contributions to the world of high fashion, I’m also thrilled to see him moving more and more towards fine arts and traditional media. While I fear it might mean the end of his contributions to illustration (and comics…), it’s been fantastic watching him grow as an artist, from all the way back to when I first discovered his work in one of the early Meathaus publications. James’ blog is essential reading, and I highly recommend it.

Prada is a big name–and big business! Their Spring line has been covered by everyone in the fashion world, which makes it very easy for you to track down the entire collection (at least online… you’ll need a swiss bank account and some very good connections to track it all down in the real world). The folks at Style.com have a fantastic slideshow feature on the collection, with the pictures (including some nice detail shots) and even a review, for those of you that need hand-holding into the world of haute couture.

I did.

Congrats to James Jean on this career milestone; not every comics creator can say they’ve had such a wide and prestigious distribution of their work (just him, Paul Pope, and Range Murata I believe). And for you die-hard collectors? You’ve got a whole new avenue of rare art to obsess over…!

- Christopher Butcher

Photo Credits from top: Prada Advertisement, Prada Advertisement (detail), Prada Advertisement, all ©2008 Prada. Kate Moss in Prada, photographed by Craig McDean from UK Vogue. Prada Advertisement, Prada Advertisement, all ©2008 Prada. Prada Fairy-print Bag image from nymag.com, ©2008 New York Media Holdings LLC. Photo of Marion Cotillard by Tom Munroe from Elle Magazine. Photo of Runway Collection Mary Jane by Svend Lindbaek, from Elle Magazine. Beguiling 20th Anniversary Image by James Jean, ©2008 The Beguiling and James Jean. Fairy Canvas Bag product shot. When not explicitly stated, copyright is unknown but is generally assumed to rest with the photographer mentioned.

The Beguiling is the premiere sponsor of The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and the fest actively encouraged participating exhibitors to debut new works at the show. We did that because we wanted the exhibitors to have a good show, first and foremost. The benefit to us? As a local retailer, we knew there would be too much stuff for any one person to buy, and because every new book that comes out needs all of the promotion it can get, the excitement generated at the show that will last for the next couple of years and we’ll reap the rewards of all of that. So, you know, it’s actually more advantageous for us–as a local retailer–for these publishers to do big launches of these books, even if we don’t get all the sales, because more often than not, it’s these big launches/pushes that help put the books on the radar of our customers on the first place.

Part two of all of this is the fact that I’ve worked on the publisher side of the table as well. I’ve been behind a publisher booth, at The San Diego Comicon, selling books that had not yet been released to direct market comic book stores. And you know what? I don’t really think that enough credit is being given to the customers in the direct market. I would say that the number one question I was asked was “will this be available in comic book stores?” when confronted with a debut book. It’s a different story when there’s an author signing accompanying the debut or something, but yeah, customers want to honour their preorders and don’t want to lug around books at a show that they can get at their local store in the next month. And the reality of the situation is, if the book is so popular and so desirable that customer absolutely must have it as soon as it’s released, then I think that this is indicative of the kind of excitement and buzz really affecting customers in a large way… and that they weren’t really “our” customer in the first place, so much as someone who just likes to buy comics where they find them.

Much to the detriment of my making friends at retailer get-togethers, I think this is more of a non-issue than anyone would care to admit, a matter of principle that doesn’t even come close to playing out in the real world. I’m actually a lot more concerned, on the release-date front, about Diamond’s continuing inability to process books that they receive as a distributor as fast as the bookstore chains. Most bookstores are receiving manga, “mainstream” book publishers graphic novel releases, and magazines like Giant Robot, between a day and a month before Diamond gets them into my store. This week Diamond shipped Negima Volume 16, and I’ve had that direct from Del Rey since before Christmas! Maybe it’s easier to issue veiled threats against independent publishers than it is against Diamond? There are serious distribution inequities within the direct market, but I don’t think this position paper begins to addresses them… they certainly aren’t coming from 100 copies of Kramers Ergot at the San Diego Comic-Con.

- Christopher

The Word On The Street

The line-up of panels and participating creators has been announced, and you can find an overview of the programming at the website. Participating creators include Chester Brown, Scott Chantler, Willow Dawson, Ray Fawkes, Stuart Immonen, Karl Kerschl, Jeff Lemire, Nadine Lessio, Brad Mackay, John Martz, Kagan McLeod, Jim Munroe, Ryan North, Ty Templeton, Noel Tuazon, Zack Worton, Chip Zdarsky, Jim Zubkavich, and many more in a host of panels. The Beguiling will also be selling books from all of the attending authors at the venue.

Also! The IdeaSpace Young Adult Marquee will feature graphic novel programming as well! Make sure to check out Eric Kim, and Svetlana Chmakova on the panel MANGA! MANGA! MANGA! THE HOWS AND WHYS OF THESE HOT NEW COMICS! at 12:30pm, and COMICS: DOIN’ IT YOUR WAY with Tyrone McCarthy and Arthur Dela Cruz at 4:30pm.

The Word On The Street is a huge literary event in Toronto which draws more people in than the San Diego Comic Con. It was a huge, huge thrill to be a part of putting together the comics and graphic novel programming for this year’s event, as I think it will continue the trend of putting comics and graphic novels out into the public eye in a way that can’t be ignored. Getting our own major venue to do so–alongside the integration of comics and graphic novels into other venues–is spectacular, and the fulfillment of a personal dream of mine. I remember going to WOTS for the first time nearly a decade ago, and coming home energized about the potential for comics in that sort of environment. I even wrote a column about it at the time that might be around online somewhere… I’m glad to see that potential becoming a reality, seeing that all of the crazy ideas I had as a 20 year old weren’t so crazy, and in fact, would be hotly in demand as I turned 30.

I sincerely hope that any of you reading this will come out for this (completely free!) event, and bring friends… The better it does, the better the next event will be, and so on.

Oh, and if you wanna spread the word, that’d be great too ;)

- Christopher

Hello everyone!

I’m Christopher Butcher, one of the co-founders and organizers of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. I and my co-organizers, Peter Birkemoe and Matthew Seiden, decided that a letter might be a nicer way to address the public than a press release after TCAF 2007, our most successful and praised festival to date.

In the days following the TCAF, we’ve been inundated with calls and e-mails congratulating us on a show that was well-run, well-curated, and in such a beautiful, historic setting as the University of Toronto campus. Added to that are numerous Internet message board posts and blog entries proclaiming this the “best comics festival around” (Mark Siegel, Editor In Chief, First Second Books) and we’re very confident in announcing TCAF 2007 a huge success.

TCAF is different than any comics event I’ve ever attended… it was a conscious decision on our park to add something new and innovative to the comics landscape. Perhaps the one thing that surprises people about TCAF—attendees, press, and exhibitors alike—is that the show is completely FREE for the public to attend! The doors are open and people can walk in and out and return at their leisure (with staff and volunteers greeting them at the door with a smile and a program book). Because admission is free, it removes the psychological barriers associated with going to ‘a comic book show.’ Curious, tentative newcomers share in the energy of a crowd of enthusiastic and knowledgeable fans, and get caught up in attending panels, getting sketches and buying books as a result. TCAF is designed to show the interested public the best that the comics medium has to offer: a broad, accessible, varied view of comics instead the stereotypical collectibles and nostalgia image they might have. As an antidote to the frequent “news” items about outrageous prices being paid for rare and mint condition vintage comics, we kick open the doors and invite the public to witness firsthand that comics and graphic novels are a living, breathing, and most importantly, booming medium.

TCAF also has a fairly unique-to-comics approach of selecting exhibitors and creative guests from across different facets of the industry, including art-comix, independents, mainstream publishers, world manga, webcomics, superheroes, comics historians and especially mini-comics and self-published materials. Because the show is free, we try to pick exhibitors and guests who will appeal to the public, who will put on a great display in their exhibit space and who will engage attendees. We were really pleased to see how well all of these diverse talents worked within the TCAF space, with each section of the show’s eight rooms and two floors truly having something for everyone, including attendees who weren’t already comics fans, but were curious about the medium. All the TCAF exhibitors did a fantastic job of enhancing the stately Victoria College building, and we’d like to thank them for their efforts. In particular, we’d like to commend the folks responsible for the new Toronto-based webcomics collective Transmission-X for turning their room into a beautiful, multi-faceted exhibition space of comics art, illustration and video installation. That interactive experience was the perfect articulation of my specific vision for TCAF, and we hope that more exhibitors will follow their lead in future years (though not, perhaps, their 3am finish time!).

Our number one goal in putting on the festival every two years is to draw attention to the great comics being produced in Canada and around the world. Hearing from exhibitors that they had a great show, financially, personally, and promotionally, we know we’re achieving our goals.

Because of the vast amount of media coverage that TCAF received, before, during and even features and profiles afterwards, TCAF has a much larger reach both locally and internationally than we’ve ever had before, and than most typical comics festivals or conventions. That exposes new audiences to great comics, and this year specifically the works of TCAF exhibitors and special guests including Paul Pope, Seth, Hope Larson, Jillian Tamaki, Darwyn Cooke, Ryan North, Joe Ollman, Paul Gravett, and dozens more. Attendance for TCAF hovered at around 6,500 people over the course of the Festival, with demographics fairly evenly split between men and women, and with the primary age demographic solidly in the 18-35 area (though many both much older and much younger attended as well). This builds on our strong attendance of 2005, having our show remain approximately the same size – an intimate size and experience we and the exhibitors enjoy. Our observation though, is that our 2005 show was held adjacent to a main thoroughfare in the city and because of that there were a number of attendees who enjoyed the event as spectacle, whereas the majority of attendees this year were pre-informed about the event (and according to our exhibitors came with money to spend). We’re aware that most traditional cons and festivals like announce higher and higher attendance numbers with each successive show, but we don’t work that way.

 

I’m going to start thanking people now. First and foremost, a special mention of our volunteers. You’ve probably heard it before, that these events couldn’t happen without the help of the people behind the scenes, blah blah blah. Well, one of our volunteers GOT HIT BY A CAR on his bicycle ride home from the show Saturday and still showed up for his all-day shift on Sunday. Seriously. We were set-up for the show in under 3 hours on Saturday morning, and everything was torn down and clean an hour and a half after we closed un Sunday. Our volunteer staff were absolutely amazing: friendly, tireless, and extremely competent in every task. We’ve received tons of compliments, and I want to say for the record that the show would not have happened without them, period. My sincere thanks go to everyone who volunteered to help for TCAF 2007, including Adam, Ahrem, Amanda & Victoria, Anthony, Bryce, Carl, Carlos, Choon-sik, Corey, Dave, Denise, Diana, Diane, Ehab, Erin, Jacob, Jennifer, John, Linda, Myung-Jin, Ba Da, Paul, Rizie, Rob, Solly, Stacey, Steve, Tom, Victor, and everyone else whom I’ve inadvertently forgotten. You were all awesome. And you have the t-shirts to prove it.

The Festival also looked bloody great out in the world this year, thanks to some phenomenal pieces of art by our talented attending artists. Thanks go to: Darwyn Cooke, who made TCAF look more festive than ever with his gorgeous cover art to Comics Festival 2007 and our official 2007 Poster; to Bryan Lee O’Malley for lending Scott Pilgrim to the cover of Comics Festival 2007 and to our promotional material ensuring a healthy dose of recognition from Torontonians; to Evan Dorkin for having his characters Milk & Cheese destroy Toronto in some lovely promotional art; to Zach Worton for turning around our excellent program book cover and badge art in no time flat; to James Jean for his beautiful and haunting image for TCAF sponsor The Beguiling’s 20^th Anniversary Print (which debuted at the show); to Chip Zdarsky, whose talented fingerprints are all over everything we did; and last but not least to Paul Pope for lending his pretty face to the cover of Eye Magazine, one of Toronto’s two alt-weeklies, for our most visible and effective promotion of the year. Funny how that works out.

I’d like to thank the TCAF staff, including Nathalie, Andrew, Jason, Naseem, and Scott for taking excellent care of their respective responsibilities: we love you very much. I’d like to thank The Beguiling staff for giving up their weekend to be conscripted into service, including Parish, Becca, Kayla, James, Derek, Jerry, and Shane. Our panel moderators Ed, Jeet, Jon, Lianne, and Neil did a great job with their respective engagements, and really every one of our guests who held a workshop or created a presentation for the show, especially Darwyn Cooke, Paul Gravett, James Jean, Marc Siegel, Jason Thompson, and George A. Walker, added immeasurably to our success. Speaking of events, I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank all of the wonderful folks who put on ‘satellite’ TCAF events around the city. Our appreciation goes out to: Jim Munroe, Salgood Sam, and Claudia Davila for the Drawn Out Apocalypses launch; The Doug Wright Awards committee and especially Matt Seiden for our Friday-night kick-off event; Brendan Fletcher, Willow Dawson, and Bryan Lee O’Malley for the Songs & Pictures party; Brian McLachlan for the Indiana Jones party and art show; and our venue CENTRAL for our ‘victory’ party Sunday night.

I need to thank our sponsors, too. Not just because we’re contractually obligated to do so (heh), but because they really came through for us on all fronts. OWLkids, Eye Magazine, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, Firefly Books, Drawn & Quarterly, and all of our publisher friends: your contributions were very much appreciated. We’ll be hitting you up again in 2009.

I know this is going to seem weird to all of you reading, but I really need to take a second and thank The Beguiling. I know I work for The Beguiling, and one of the other TCAF organizers Peter Birkemoe is the co-owner of The Beguiling, but nonetheless: props. The Beguiling is the main sponsor of the festival, putting a ton of money and an amazing amount of sweat-equity into ensuring that the show goes on. Basically, every hour that I invest into TCAF is one taken away from my job at The Beguiling, and the whole free festival does sort of distract from my employer’s job of selling comics. TCAF wouldn’t happen without the support of this fine store, and as an employee I’m always proud that we bring some of the finest comics creators from around the world to Toronto (and they in turn fall in love with our shop and brag about it elsewhere: I particularly love that).

Finally, to Matthew Seiden, this year’s Festival Director. You did a great job this year, especially in putting up with Peter and I—two less than organized people who live in our own heads more than the real world. Everything you contributed made the show better than it’s ever been, and we’re really sorry to see you go. Best of luck. :)

And with that, I think we’re done for this year. I’m exceptionally happy with how everything turned out, and despite some bumps in the road, I think we came through it all fantastically well. Thank you to everyone who came out, who spread the word, and who made this the best comics event I’ve ever been to.

Christopher Butcher, Festival Co-Founder On behalf of Peter Birkemoe, Matthew Seiden, and himself.

(Photos by Flickr user “The Doodlers” except where noted. 1st: TCAF Main Floor Exhibition Space, photo by Karen Whaley. 2nd: Gina Gagliano and Mark Siegel of First Second Books. 3rd: Transmission-X installation space, featuring art by J. Bone. 4th: TCAF Second Floor Exhibition Space. 5th: Beguiling 20th Anniversary Print by James Jean. 6th: TCAF kick-off party.)

Oh! And a special note about the art in this post. It’s the full-colour version of the cover to the 2007 TCAF Program Booklet, by artist Zach Worton. It was officially announced this weekend that Zach’s forthcoming non-fiction graphic novel about the gold rush will be published by Drawn + Quarterly in early 2008. Congrats to Zach, who’s a great artist and a very good friend of mine.

(Zach also did the art for this year’s badges, I’ll probably post them a little later.)

On that note, here’s what people are saying about TCAF right now:

Tom Spurgeon has set up a “collective memory” link-list at:
http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/collective_memory_tcaf_2007/

Robert Fulford in the National Post focussed on the Canadian content in his show wrap-up:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/artslife/story.html?id=752deb4b-4093-4a21-95af-0c8c7d2bbfa9

SPACE covered the show pretty extensively, and the first bit of footage has been released to the net here:
http://www.spacecast.com/videoplayer_4446.aspx

Torontoist.com has a photo gallery up from the show, with a promise of more coverage to come:
http://torontoist.com/2007/08/torontoists_tca.php

BlogTO did some coverage in process of the event, and I hope they come back around for another pass:
http://blogto.com/arts/2007/08/toronto_comic_arts_festival_in_progress/

There’s a TCAF Photo-pool on FLICKR:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/tcaf/

Actually, I’ve come across hundreds of photos on Facebook as well, but they’re mostly hidden from the public I think? Type “TCAF” into the search box at Facebook and some of them should come up…

PW Comics Week gave us a nice plug, via First Second Editor Mark Siegel’s kudos at his blog:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/eNewsletter/CA6470505/2789.html

…and speaking of which, Mark’s full commentary is here:
http://firstsecondbooks.typepad.com/mainblog/2007/08/tcaf-best-comic.html

Speaking of creators and editorial types who wrote about the show, there was GALAXION’s Tara Talan:
http://ttallan.livejournal.com/13547.html

Jason Marcy wrote up the show three times:
http://jaymarcy.livejournal.com/333617.html
http://jaymarcy.livejournal.com/333889.html
http://jaymarcy.livejournal.com/334778.html 

My friend Jim Zubkavich had a successful show:
http://zubkavich.livejournal.com/176207.html

Diana Tamblyn was actually first-to-the-punch with her report, but due to the vagaries of tabbed browsing is a little lower on the list. Make sure to go read her report anyway:
http://tamblyn.blogspot.com/2007/08/tcaf-wrap-up-well-tcaf-is-all-over.html

Rich Stevens of Diesel Sweeties had a great time:
http://www.dieselsweeties.com/blog/?p=128

His studio-mate Jeffrey Rowland is immortalising TCAF in comics at OVERCOMPENSATING, starting with this entry:
http://overcompensating.com/posts/20070815.html

(Both of those last two links don’t look too good in IE. FYI)

Blogger Blake Bell was actually on staff this weekend, helping out with Mr. Pope, and he has some great photos:
http://www.bestofmostof.com/07aug/index070819.htm

Dave Merril of “Mister Kitty” was also on staff Friday and Saturday, and we worked him and his adorable little car to the bone. Thanks Dave:
http://davemerrill.livejournal.com/442276.html

And then people who are just… you know… fans of comic books have been saying so many amazing and nice things that I’m actually blushing, from time to time:
http://joshcheung.livejournal.com/66617.html
http://jtruong.blogspot.com/2007/08/toronto-comic-arts-festival-2007-report.html
http://thatstheheavy.blogspot.com/2007/08/tcaf-report-day-1-august-18-2007.html
http://www.emoware.org/newsarchive31.aspx#18.08.2007
http://comics-and-more.blogspot.com/2007/08/toronto-comic-art-festival-2007.html
http://ndgmtlcd.livejournal.com/47521.html
http://cannedlizard.livejournal.com/94537.html
http://isawthesceneunfold.blogspot.com/2007/08/uhhmetric-is-really-awesome.html
http://kev-the-mev.livejournal.com/67085.html
http://rtmurphy.blogspot.com/2007/08/long-story-short-i-owed-them-80000.html
http://www.myraphan.com/toronto-comic-arts-festival/
http://dayuse.wordpress.com/2007/08/19/im-a-closet-fanboy/
http://reyortega.wordpress.com/2007/08/20/toronto-comics-arts-festival/

And of course, Jamie Coville took an absolute ton of photos of the whole event. AND he lost his MP3 play on Saturday in the Chapel, AND when he went back to look for it Sunday it was still there. CANADA! WHOO!
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/TCAF07/TCAF2007

Edit: Somehow, I missed a ton of entries. Jeez! Serves me right for not doing a blogsearch.

http://www.needforinformation.com/arts-and-design/joe-bluhm/
http://davemerrill.livejournal.com/442630.html
http://www.flightcomics.com/?p=384
http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveandraina/sets/72157601589813647/
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=45043&l=daeae&id=888685390
http://itallends.livejournal.com/32418.html
http://rufftoon.livejournal.com/15431.html
http://kathrynimmonen.com/?p=48
http://chodrawings.blogspot.com/2007/08/transmission-x.html
http://goraina.livejournal.com/154862.html
http://crushedyetagain.livejournal.com/138701.html
http://torontoanimation.blogspot.com/2007/08/tcaf-comic-goodyness.html
http://drawn.ca/2007/08/21/joe-bluhm/
http://www.possumpress.com/blog/?p=161
http://www.possumpress.com/blog/?p=160
http://ghoizdoz.livejournal.com/14220.html
http://www.horhaus.com/v4/2007/08/21/387/
http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2007/08/21/more-tcaf-stuff/
http://www.immonen.ca/news/archives/665
http://thecjm.blogspot.com/2007/08/tcaf-part-1.html
http://thecalaverakid.blogspot.com/2007/08/kukuburi-and-tcaf.html
http://batsam.blogspot.com/2007/08/hanging-out-with-joe-bluhm.html
http://the-heroesonline-blog.blogspot.com/2007/08/travelogue-toronto-comic-arts-festival.html
http://dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2007/08/21/toronto-comic-arts-festival-reviews-are-pouring-in/
http://theengineer.livejournal.com/197504.html
http://www.myraphan.com/toronto-comic-arts-festival/
http://ndgmtlcd.livejournal.com/47521.html
So that’s it for now, I think. If I missed your round-up, I’m sorry. Please post it in the comments section here and I’ll edit this post. Also, it was STACY K. who made the cookies, and I’m sorry I spelled her name wrong two posts ago.

Thanks for reading,

- Christopher