2009 Toronto Comic Arts Festival
Report By Jamie Coville
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2009 Toronto Comic Arts Festival Location: Toronto Reference Library, at 789 Yonge St.
Pictures of the convention can be found here:
Audio of the panels and the Doug Wright Awards can be found here: When I showed up around 10am, I was surprised to see everybody set up and the place already busy. I walked around and began catching up with people I hadn't seen since a previous convention. One of them was Salgood Sam from Sequential Swap, a Canadian focused Comic news link blog. He handed me a small stack of the Print Edition of Sequential Swap that I contributed an article and reviews to and I proceeded to hand them out to a mix of people. It wasn't too long before the first panel started that I wanted to cover. That was The Secret History of Manga in North America, hosted by Jason Thompson (Manga: the Complete Guide). It was a slow start as some cables needed for a presentation were not there, but the Toronto Library staff did get them. Jason then did a slideshow showing magazines, books, people, maps and other things related to Manga's growth in the market. Two of the funniest moments were a reprinting of a Stuart Levy written promo piece where he tries to be Stan Lee and showing an e-mail where another Manga publisher employee challenged him to a fight. At the end they held a draw for some random Manga books. The panel right after that was the International Perspectives on Manga. On the panel was Bryan Lee O'Malley (Scott Pilgrim), Becky Cloonan (East Coast Rising, Demo) Eric Ko (UDON), Antoine Dodé (Armelle et Mon Oncle) and Jason Thompson (Manga: the Complete Guide) talk about their experiences with Manga. The panel was hosted by About.com Manga guide (and cartoonist) Deb Aoki. Early in the show a kid came up and asked Bryan to sign a poster for them. The group talked about a bunch of Manga stuff, books they recommend, the European market for Manga and other stuff. This was a pretty packed room. I roamed around and took more pictures of pros. One thing that stuck out was Transmission X group had their own section and a large screen advertising their various webcomics on over them. On the 2nd floor of the Library is where they had specific high drawing pros like Scott McCloud, Paul Pope and Svetlana Chmakova doing signings. There were long line ups for them, but it was everybody in 1 line as they really didn't have room for separate lines for everybody. Probably the biggest disappointment for me was The Beguiling didn't have copies of Svetlana's new book, Night School Vol. 1 from Yen Press available. I then went into the Scott McCloud panel where he was interviewed by Mark Askwith. The seats filled up quickly with some people standing along the back wall (myself being one of them). Scott is a very enthusiastic speaker, who can be quite funny. As there was paper along the walls in this room Scott made use of it in explaining his points. He also revealed he is working on a epic, sort of hard to describe GN that will take him 3 years to complete. Immediately after this was the Craig Yoe panel about his new book, Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster. Craig was interviewed by Douglas Wolk and later took questions from the audience. Craig described his discovery of the fetish Shuster work, the history behind it, his recent correspondence with Joe Shuster's sister which explained the noble reason why Joe took on this work. At the end Yoe played a funny montage of Shuster's fetish art to the song Whip It by Devo. Toward the end of Saturday I noticed there were some people who were supposed to be at the con whom I hadn't seen yet. I asked the information table about them and discovered they were in a room that was far off to the left of the main floor. Apparently a lot of people missed this and the con had volunteers working to drive some foot traffic their way part way throughout the day. One of the things the convention could have really used was a floor map so that people could find out where the artists and panel rooms were. Saturday night was the 5th Annual Doug Wright Awards held at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The awards were hosted by Actor, Writer and Director Don McKellar. Among the presenters are Stuart McLean, Andrew Coyne, Jeet Heer, Adrian Tomine and an unintentionally funny video from Bob Rae. The ceremony was as follows:
After the ceremony there was a signing by the various nominated cartoonists.
Pictures from this event can be found here: Sunday the convention was quite busy as well but it was only crammed for some of the day. Early in the day was the first panel, Will Libraries Save Graphic Novels. Panel moderator Jason Azzopardi started it off asking the opposite question, Will Graphic Novels save Libraries? On the panel was Lisa Heggum (Librarian, Toronto Public Library), Diana Malizewski (Teacher, Toronto District School Board), Scott Robins (Blogger Book Comics for Kids/SLJ), Kent Allin (Teacher, Hastings and Price Edward District School Board), Jim Ottavini (Comic Writer, Editor and Publisher) & Douglas Davey (Librarian, Halton Hills Public Library) talk about Graphic Novels in libraries and schools. There were some interesting stories about problems with certain books getting restrictions, arguments to overcome those restrictions, the ease of getting the more academic institutions to accept Graphic Novels and more. The panel room was almost full of people. The panel right after it was Graphic Novels for Young Adults. It had Nate Powell (Swallow Me Whole), Cecil Castellucci (The Plain Janes books), Derek Kirk Kim (Same Difference and other stories), Jeff Lemire (Essex County Trilogy) and Mariko Tamaki (Skim) and moderated by Stacy King. I wasn't able to see the whole panel but I can tell you the chairs were all taken and some people elected to stand and watch the panel. The next panel I did attend was Newspapers, Comic Books and the Internet. On it was Rich Stevens (Diesel Sweeties), Brendan Buford (Comics Editor for King Features Syndicate), John Martz (Chair of the Canadian Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society and co-creator of Drawn.ca), Stuart Immonen (Artist Ultimate Spider-Man, and webcomic artist) & Scott McCloud (cartoonist, Understanding Comics series, Zot) talk about the webcomics, newspaper print comics, and the Internet. Hosted by the very funny Chip Zdarsky/Steve Murray (cartoonist for National Post and Monster Cops and Prision Funnies). On the panel they talked about the Richard Stevens breaking into the newspaper comic syndicate, which is like winning the lottery, and then walking away from it (or running, screaming as Richard said). There was plenty of talk about how difficult it is for newspapers right now and how that's going to hurt comic strips. Alternative ideas were suggested by Scott McCloud and batted around. Chip Zdarsky added a lot of humor to the proceedings and the panel went very well. Sunday had some kid geared activities and lot of kids were around with balloons. Some of the panels were dedicated to kids too. One was a puppet show, another was an artist teaching kids how to draw using his character. There was a kids table where they could draw and a wall were their art was posted. Also in the big panel room was paper on the walls for kids to draw on. I spent the rest of the afternoon snapping pictures and chatting with people. One of those I talked with was Tom Scioli who informed me that he drew the H.E.R.O Initiative T-shirt I was wearing. There was a very long line up for the Tatsumi Yoshihiro signing. Seth and Chester Brown also had sizable line ups. I also couldn't help but look around the library and noticed they had a strong selection of GNs and comic related history books available for people to check out. Towards the end of the show I went around asking people how the show did for them. Most of them said really well or very good. I got the impression it wasn't quite the spectacular sell out the last TCAF was, but was still a very good show. I did notice certain pro's did sell out of certain books. Faith Erin Hicks only had a few books left with a half hour before the show ended. Jeff Lemire was out of Vol 2 and 3 of his Essex County Trilogy. There were a couple of grumpy people who I think had higher expectations. One publisher told me they did better than last year. Then came shutting it down. People didn't want to leave. The volunteers had to go around to wave everybody out, even after the loud speakers told them of the convention being over and flicking the lights off and on. At the very end people gave a loud applause for the 2 day festival. TCAF has been in a different location every time. There were some pro's and con's to the Library. One of the pro's was the location, very easy to find and get to. There was a subway stop across the street, even somebody like me who was driving down had no problem getting parking at a city lot a stone throw away from the Library. Also a big plus was it was near plenty of places to eat and drink and many pro's had their Tim Hortons or Starbucks coffee with them. It being a Library drew in not just the comic readers but also a non-comic readers who just decided to go to the Library that day. The downside was the size. Everything was pretty crammed. It was one of those cons where the pro's were probably happy to be sitting/standing behind a table and not trying to squiggle their way through the isles. One pro I talked to theorized the cramming of people may have hurt sales and people may not have felt comfortable browsing and shopping. They used a couple of side rooms, one which worked out well, the other not so well as it was out of line of sight and many people didn't realize there were pro's in there. The rooms for the panels were also quite small. They were a good size for the average panel with a niche appeal, but for the panels with the "big" name pro's the room size was not enough to accommodate all the people wanting to see them. That said, almost all the TCAFs to date have been jam packed affairs. The convention is of course free to attend so it's not able to be held in a large convention centre (nor should it). One of the benefits to this years convention was it exposing a wide variety of comics to the general reading public. I had a good time at the convention as I bought some books, caught up with some people I hadn't seen in a while and met plenty of new folks as well. I'm looking forward to the next TCAF.
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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