Toronto Comic Arts Festival Report
By Jamie Coville
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Date: May 27-29, 2005.
Attendance: 8,000.
Place: Two tents behind the Beguiling comic store, I drove up from Kingston on Saturday morning and got to the con around 9:45ish. I was told they weren't quite finishing up setting up tables and so forth so I went out to breakfast. A TCAF staff member recommended me Mel's Montreal Deli, which is open 24 hours and only a few blocks away. When I was there I discovered it was run by the Simpson family - in Canada the Simpsons are semi-famous for having a humongous family, 4 kids of their own and over 30 more that they adopted. They were once used in TV ads to sell headache pills. Once that was done I went back over and things were up and running. I went inside the bigger tent first and saw Cameron Stewart. He was chatting with a fan about how when Arkham Asylum came out he went to a con, stood in a line up for a half hour just to meet Grant Morrison. Fast forward to today and he's done Seaguy with him and is working on the Seven Soldiers mini. He said Grant has been asking editors for him on a number of projects. Cameron also said he'd love to work with Alan Moore, but since he won't do anything for DC that ain't likely to happen anytime soon. Cameron also gave advice to a fan interested in breaking in, he said do a mini comic and actually print it. If you put some financial investment in your work just to show it to people that will let publishers know you are serious about doing comics for a living. I then saw Brian Wood and bought The Couriers from him. I read it Sunday morning and went back to buy the next book in the series. He told me not to, he said he doesn't like dissing his own work, but he told me to just skip to book 3 instead. I took it word and bought it. By Sunday he had completely sold out of Couriers book 1. He told me the Demo series has done very well as singles only sales. Then I saw Carla Speed McNeil, we remembered each other from TCAF #1 that happened 2 years ago. At that con I bought all her trades and saw a fan show her his Finder tattoo. I took a picture and e-mailed it to them at their request. 2 years later the same fan is now handing out free Finder issues and helping Carla behind the table. I bought the latest two trades from her. I also saw a young woman that was doing mini comics ask her for advice regarding publishing comics. Carla told that when she started, she printed 100 mini comics and went to San Diego Comicon with them. She said she went to all the pro's she liked best, awkwardly introduced herself and said "I like your stuff, I hope you like mine" threw her mini comic towards them and took off. She then got 5 letters from pro's that were all very encouraging, telling her she was doing good work and to keep it up. She said she will treasure those letters forever as they helped her out. She was able to show them to people at Diamond and that helped get her work distributed. She recommended getting a website with a lot of space and put as much work as you are comfortable with on it. Said people will still buy the books. Carla also told her that online word of mouth, be it via reviews, interviews, whatever is very important. She said the real money is in the trade paper backs, the monthlies she sells, but whatever left over she has she gives them away at cons to give readers a taste. People read the issue then come back for the rest of the story. I also met Phoebe Gloeckner who has done a few books on child abuse, from what I understand much of it is drawn from real life experience. In particular I bought A Childs Life, a book that was challenged in a library by a politician in California trying to get re-elected. Phoebe and I chatted for a brief bit about the situation, took pictures of each other and she signed my book. I was pretty lucky in getting to meet here as she wasn't at her table much during festival. I noticed there were people outside the tents handing out postcards and encouraging folks to visit the Hacienda. There were panel type discussions being held there and some pro's with tables. I walked over and didn't notice too many people there. I did see Andy Lee who is a regular at comic conventions in Toronto. Also there was Bryan Lee O'Malley, who was debuting his 2nd Scott Pilgrim book. I then saw Jeff Smith give a presentation on why he does comic books. In particular he talked about the symbolism in Mutt and Jeff, panel to panel transitions in Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle book (plus that it was a graphic novel intended for a bookshelf), Will Eisner's Contract with God and how there are panels without borders and their effect, Bryan Talbot's Tale of One Bad Rat and the use of color and panel layout. He talked about his own work and how he used a moving camera on a page to make it more "COPS" like. He also talked quite a bit about adding realism to his work. He showed us pics of his trips to Nepal and the various things he saw there that made it's way into Bone. In particular he said Bone was a Holy Grail story. Said the idea of a young boy on an adventure is a grail story and they are very common in entertainment. At then end he did a Q&A. There were a number of kids in the crowd, some of them asking questions. Among them were questions about doing more Bone books, he said he wasn't but more of the color editions would be coming out from Scholastic. He was asked about what Boneville looks like as fans never saw it in the comic. At the very beginning of #1 Fone Bone has already left it. He said fans have written him lots of letters with ideas of what it looks like. Jeff said in his mind it's a lot like Duckberg from the Carl Barks stories, cartoonish version of real life. He also said Carl Barks was a huge influence on him. Afterwards Jeff Smith did his signing and there was a huge line up.
You can hear the entire presentation at I saw Chester Brown doing a signing and he appeared to be enjoying himself, which was nice to see. It's well known that Chester doesn't like doing cons all that much, but he has been participating in them in some fashion.
I then went to the Victory Lane restaurant that
was donating their upstairs area for various con
programs. I saw Dave Sim do a possibly one time
only reading from Cerebus. It was very funny as
Dave does unique voices for all of his characters,
including a very good Neil Gaiman voice for his
Sandman parody character Swoon. You can hear the
entire thing at: Afterwards, it was announced that because it had been raining for a brief bit, they decided to move Dave's signing from outside to inside over at the Hacienda Bar. As I was walking over I noticed Dave looking at a map, I asked him if he was looking for the Hacienda and he said he was. I told him I knew where it was and I'd walk him over. On the way we chatted about his show. He told me he secretly hoped it would bomb. I laughed and said "yeah, instead now everybody will be asking you to do another one." I then showed Dave to his table, got in the back of the small line that was already there, bought Cerebus Guide to Self Publishing and got him to sign it (he also did a sketch). While he was doing that I asked him about his mentor Gene Day, a former penciller who mainly worked for Marvel. He's probably best known for his run on Shang Chi. Dave told me the story of how he died and cleared up some nasty rumors about it. Among the things I learned was he lived and died about a half hour from where I live. I met with Blake Bell, who runs a Steve Ditko's fan site and put together the "I Have To Live With This Guy!" book for TwoMorrows in which he talks to the significant others of comic book pros. He also hosted some panels at last year's Paradise Comics Toronto Comicon. Soon afterwards we both ended up at Victory Lane eating dinner and yakking about stuff. Afterwards I went upstairs to the Doug Wright Awards Ceremony. I was there early as they were still helping to set up (Blake pitched in a hand). I was looking at the original Doug Wright art on the walls, then Dave Sim walked in and began doing the same. He began telling me about the artwork, how it was done, the colors in particular, the various newspapers he worked at and more. He also told me how familiar the work was to him. Doug was a master of taking what was in his neighbourhood and using it in his drawings. People over the age of 40 instantly recognize the clothes, furniture, architecture, hair styles, etc . . . Afterwards we split up. Dave wanted to sit on the one side out of the way, while I wanted to be in a good spot to get pictures. Blake ended up grabbing a seat next to me. The Doug Wright Awards Peter Birkemoe (Owner of the Beguiling and organizer of TCAF) started the awards thanking people who helped with the entire TCAF event. Then the host Brad McKay began thanking various people involved in the Awards and his wife for putting up with him talking about comics non-stop for the last 5 months. Then Seth did a presentation about Doug Wright, who he was, why he was great and why they named the Awards after him. As he spoke there was a slide show of his artwork. It went for about 20 minutes and Seth got a huge ovation at the end. This presentation was repeated the next day. We also got to meet the family of Doug Wright, his son Jim in particular made a speech saying his Dad would be very happy with an Awards Ceremony named after him. Brad came on again and described the process of how they nominated and who they nominated. He said they decided to make the awards for people who write and draw their cartoons, rather than freelancers doing one part of the job. The winners are picked by a jury and the members were: Chester Brown - Cartoonist - (Louis Riel, Ed The Happy Clown) Don McKellar - Actor/Director - (Childstar, Last Night) Rebecca Caldwell - Globe and Mail books reporter Nora Young - Writer and CBC broadcaster Jerry Ciccoritti - Director - (Trudeau, Lives of The Saints) Brad also mentioned Seth designed the Award itself and there was a possibility that he could win it too. And lo and behold the winners were:
Best Book: Clyde Fans Book 1 by Seth Seth said he was mortified that he won the award since he had a lot to do with setting it up. He did tell the crowd he did not nominate himself and stayed out of the voting process. There was also a Giants of the North hall of fame as well. The inductee's were:
JW Bengough - (1851-1923) You can hear the entire awards ceremony on MP3 here: http://www.TheComicBooks.com/Audio/DougWrightAwards.mp3 After the awards I headed to my friends place, showed them the stuff I bought, chatted for a while and went to sleep. On Sunday I drove down to the show, I arrived and got good parking around 10am. The Pro's were still setting up their tables - but almost all of them back in the tents where they were yesterday. Sunday was the day they had Markham Street closed down and a rows of tables down both sides of the street. The idea was to draw in casual folks and have the pro's sell their stuff to the general public and create new readers. But there was a good chance of rain that day (and it did rain a bit the day before) so most guests didn't want to risk getting their books wet. As a result, about 80% of the tables were empty. One person that did brave the outdoors was Andy Lee. He set up his own table right outside the tent because he didn't want to go back to Hacienda. He said there was very low traffic there on Saturday. There were signings being done outside. In particular I met Paul Pope and Gary Panter. Got pictures of them both too. I looked around for Derek Kim Kim wanting to buy Same Difference and Other stories from him. After a fruitless search I asked Peter Birkemoe (Beguiling Owner) about him and he told me Derek sold out of all his copies, he came into the store got all of theirs and then sold all of them too! Among other books to sell out was Brian Woods The Couriers Vol. 1. I had read the book that morning and decided to go back and buy more. Brian told me to buy #3 and not #2. He said he doesn't like to diss his own work, but to trust him and skip #2. I did. Just prior to leaving I also bought King by Ho Che Anderson, I didn't see Ho Che but I understand he was there doing panels. I left around Noon. As I was getting on the freeway to head home it began to rain. Overall, I really enjoyed the festival. While not everything went off as it was planned, it was a great event and I'm looking forward to another one in 2007.
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E-mail: jcoville@kingston.net
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