Toronto Comic Art Festival 2007
Report By Jamie Coville
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Toronto Comic Art Festival 2007 Date: August 18-19th Location: Old Victoria College on 93 Charles Street West Attendance: 7000 Con Report by Jamie Coville TCAF is a special event that happens once every 2 years. It's a free convention that focuses on artists instead of collecting. Many of the professionals attending don't work on superhero comics, but there are some that do. The convention is done by The Beguiling, a Toronto comic book retailer known for stocking the small/independent press books that most stores don't. This years show covered almost everything. Webcomics was a big theme with many of the creators there selling collections, art, t-shirts and more. Manga artists were represented as were the bookstore oriented graphic novels. Some popular superhero artists were there and I noticed at least one syndicated comic strip creator there too. The front doors to the convention was took some looking around to find, but they had signs up pointing the way. Inside the convention was laid out over a variety of rooms within the college. Pink Styrofoam was used by many as a way of setting up displays of t-shirts, art, names and other stuff. In many of the rooms there were chalkboards which the artists drew on to attract attention to their tables. Outside the building was a large white tent for the children's comics, but early in the running it was clear the main action was inside the building. The tent would soon become a dead zone as most of those in it would soon move to wherever they could fit inside. The Owl Kids group stayed in the tent as did Chad Solomon, writer of the Adventures of Rabbit and Bear Paws. There were still signings/sketches and activities for the kids though. While I was there I also noticed Joe Matt was getting artists to fill his sketchbook for him, blowing away some of the artists he approached. I caught part of the Rand Holmes panel which had Jeet Heer, Dave Sim and Rand's son, Ron Holmes talking about the art and life of Rand Holmes. Dave went into some detail about how Rand was unique in the underground industry for being inspired by Wally Wood. He talked about a technique called feathering, something both artists did that took a lot of very delicate control of the brush for many hours, with virtually no room for mistakes. Sim said that despite airbrush work being very popular, only Richard Coburn did it in comics because he was so good at it he intimidated all other artists from even trying. Sim theorized the same about other underground cartoonists following Rand Holmes and Wally Wood's style. Ron Holmes talked about his father doing a lot of paintings and showed many samples of some of them. Jeet Heer did talked about the historical influence of Holmes work. There was a funny moment when just before they were about to show some Holmes work, Heer said anybody that has strong religious views should leave now because the work breaks plenty of taboo's. Dave Sim stood up and began walking towards the door as a joke. The next panel was Jason Thompson talking quickly about 60 manga magazines in an hour. I only caught the tail end of it but it appeared to have captured the diversity of the manga market. Thompson didn't shy away from showing the dirty stuff either. There were quite a few people there and I'm sure they learned a lot. The next panel was Make Mine Manga! Panel. On it was Bryan Lee O'Malley, Becky Cloonan, Svetlana Chmakova, Jason Thomson and Paul Gravett. It was moderated by Lianne Sentaur who is a Manga re-writer and worked for TokyoPop and Viz. It was a lively panel with Lianne giving good questions and the panel popped some common beliefs about Manga. Among them was the influence Americans had on the Japanese and how far back the Japanese had influenced American artists. Gravett brought up that Frank Miller as an Manga inspired artist, incorporating Goseki Kojima's work. There were a lot of questions from the audience, much it was Comics vs. Manga type stuff. Becky Cloonan made a funny comment about how TokyoPop wanted her to draw "Vertigo style" and Vertigo wants her to draw "Manga style." Both her and Bryan Lee O'Malley consider Manga to be nothing more than a marketing term that helps sell their work. A kid beside me said he heard Scott McCloud give a talk where he said O'Malley was the future of comics and he wanted to know what O'Malley thought about that. O'Malley figured it was about him merging east and west traditions in Scott Pilgrim. I recorded the full panel and you can hear it by right clicking here and downloading it (48 MB, 52 minutes). While the Manga panel was going on Paul Pope was doing a signing. For those that never seen Paul Pope do a signing it's an experience you won't forget. Pope has a very strong rock star presence about him, but he's very nice and unpretentious. Canada's Space Network was there and they recorded and aired clips from the signing and other parts of the show. Other major happenings to get press coverage was the reunification of the "Toronto 3" - Seth, Chester Brown and Joe Matt. Also Darwyn Cooke and J. Bone attracted the usual long lines of fans. Next up was the WebComics panel, which had a large group of panelists. They were: Chris Hastings, R. Stevens, Meredith Gran, Matt Forsythe, Danielle Corsetto, Rob Coughler, Ryan North, Joe Santoro & Jeffrey Rowland. Panel was moderated by Ed Mathews. They talked digital vs. print, making money from the web comic, other ways of doing webcomics (Zuda, groups like ACT-IV-ATE, etc..) how long before they could quit their day job, how helpful are mainstream news articles about webcomics versus small blogs, what it's like having to live directly off their customers and not having any middle men and more. You can download and hear the full panel here (50 MB, 50 minutes). I spoke with Carla Speed McNeil about her operation for her Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and she said everything went smooth. She mentioned they changed the way they've do those types of operations so the healing time is less. Carla had one new Finder book to sell, but another one was at the printer. Sharing a table with Carla was Svetlana Chmakova. I couldn't help but notice Svetlana has a quote on the back of a Finder trade promoting it. Both Svetlana and Rob Walton are waiting to hear about the Animation series they've pitched. Rob Walton is the creator of Ragmop, which was nominated for 2 Joe Shuster Awards last year. He told me the network came to him and asked about a prime time show. Walton says he's not going to do a direct adaptation, but use the same characters and start off fresh. The last panel of Saturday was a spotlight on Darwyn Cooke and J Bone, moderated by Chris Butcher. I only caught the end of it, of which I'm dreadfully sorry. Darwyn talked openly about some serious behind the scenes stuff between him and DC with a level of candor most pro's don't display. Both Cooke and Bone talked about wanting to create new stuff, instead of working on established characters. Darwyn talked about his time before doing comics and why he left the advertising world for comics. It was a really good panel. Saturday when I got home I discovered my MP3 player was missing. I was horrified as it's the best player I've had for both playing music and recording panels, among other things. Sunday morning I got to the show early and got in to look for my player and thankfully I found it. The tech guy for the convention saw it and put it aside on one of the back chairs and thankfully nobody swiped it. TCAF is the most honest convention I've been too. On Sunday I attended the tail end of George A Walker's panel about his book Graphic Witness. It reprints 4 wordless, wood cut Graphic Novels published between 1918 and 1951. I counted about 30 people in the room and George was quite enthusiastic about spreading his love of old woodcut stories. Next panel was the Spotlight on Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer, it was moderated by Chip Zdarsky. Poor, poor Chip. He did his research, came up with some intelligent questions and tried to do a serious panel. But this is Evan Dorkin we're talking about. He went into stand up comedian mode and started making fun of Chip. He talked a mile a minute and all along his cute little daughter would spit raspberry's into the microphone which made everybody laugh. Sarah did her best to try and control her daughter, but up on stage in front of a crowd of people I'm certain they were worried about looking mean in disciplining her. Anyways toward the end of the panel Dorkin told some funny stories about some run-in's he had with comic retailers. You can hear the panel by right clicking here and downloading it (56 MB, 61 Minutes). I took off to grab some lunch, when I came back Paul Gravett was just finishing up his panel on British comic history. He was showing a lot of unique art done by British artists and giving us some details about them. The panel ended with an slightly animated Dan Dare video that had music to go with it. The panel was very well attended. Next up was the Paul Pope and James Jean panel about their illustration work. It was moderated by Chris Butcher. It started a little late due to signings and other panels going a bit over, plus they had some technical issues to deal with. James Jean did a presentation of some of his artwork that will be coming out in a book later this year. Some of it was for an animation project that never got off the ground and some of it was just stuff he drew for himself. Paul Pope talked about illustration as well and they both talked a bit about the comic work they've done. You can hear the panel by right clicking here and downloading it (48 MB, 53 minutes). The last panel I covered was called From Comic Books to Graphic Novels. It was focused on traditional prose book publishers and their entry into the Graphic Novel market. On the panel was Hope Larson, Carla Speed McNeil, Kean Soo, Raina Telgemeir and it was moderated by Scott Robins. There was a lot of talk about the learning curve book publisher editors are going through with Graphic Novels. Many of them don't realize the amount of time it takes to create one and give artists extremely tight deadlines, which quite often can't realistically be met. They also talked about Agents, new material vs. adaptations and more. This panel can be heard by right clicking here and downloading it (41 MB, 45 minutes). After the panel I did some wandering around. I noticed Joe Bluhm caricatures were very popular with pro's and he was doing them almost non stop towards the end of the day. Over at the Beguiling table a girl and her father came up and noticed the stack of Dramacon books. When it was pointed out to her that Svetlana was standing right there her face lit up like she was meeting her hero for the first time. The two talked a while about drawing (the girl also wanted to draw comics) and her dad happily bought a couple of books for her which Svet sketched/signed for her. The convention had a real mix of people. There were a lot of women there, either by themselves or with their friends. There was also a real mix of ethnic people and some non readers checking it out. The show was a major success in terms of attendance as it was pretty packed on Saturday and a bit on Sunday. It should be said that some of the side rooms got significantly less traffic though. Plus the Kids tent outside didn't get that much traffic. Still creators did go there as scheduled and spent a lot of time sketching & talking to the few kids that were there. I walked around to ask creators how it went for them. The praise was almost universal. Quotes include "Excellent!" "Best Show Ever!" "Fantastic!" "Amazing!" Several creators / publishers sold out of books. First Second sold their entire stock of Graphic Novels. Top Shelf had a stack of higher priced books like Lost Girls and From Hell and they were down to a 1 or 2 copies when the show was over. But it wasn't just books that moved, a lot of folks found artwork had done well too. Plenty made their money doing sketches and the like. With the exception of one artist, everybody I spoke to was quite happy or ecstatic. Paul Pope was signing books right until the very end of the convention, maybe even a bit past closing time. The convention made an very good impression on Ron Holmes too. He's an artist but hasn't done comic book work and this was his first comic convention. He said he noticed that the artists didn't have any ego's, which I guess is something he deals with in the more standard art world. He was very impressed with the organization of the convention. He also said he might start doing comics himself somewhere down the line. I had a great time and particularly enjoyed the panels. I think it should be stated that TCAF is what they say it is, Toronto Comic *Arts Festival*. It's not your standard comic convention with dealers selling back issues in bags, boards and collectible toys & statues. It's also not your standard comic convention crowd either. I get the impression the TCAF is more inspired by Angouleme than anything else. I also took 195 pictures of TCAF, you can see them here.
Regards, http://www.TheGraphicNovels.com News and discussion on a free, Delphi like forum.
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E-mail: jcoville@kingston.net
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