University of Toronto Innis Town Hall
2 Sussex Ave, Toronto, ON
The JSA's got off to a late start, but once the show began rolling it did so fairly quickly. The show's previous presenters Rob Salem and Rick Green were both busy with other projects. Stepping in for this years Master of Ceremonies was Jonathan Llyr of HardcoreNerdity.com.
Thanks to the internet, the JSAs were contacted by a member of Ted McCall's nephew Russ. Last year Ted McCall was inducted into the Hall of Fame but they were unable to find any family members to accept the award on his behalf. This year Russ was there and they presented the award to him.
Other highlights of the show was Andy B, using wearing mask of Cameron Stewart face accepting the Outstanding Web Comics Creator/Creative Team award for his work on Sin Titulo. A friend of Dave Sim accepted the award on his behalf, while Dave provided a video of himself accepting an award. It was funny as Dave, dressed in a tux, was sitting in a chair showed off a place on his wall where he would put his award and questioned where he was going to move in Inkpot award to.
Two presenters did very quick, trashy reviews of a number of books as part of their presentations which got people laughing. Also using comics as part of their presentation was Mark Askwith when inducting Diana Schutz to the Hall of Fame. He bought up a couple of 80s Daredevil comics that Diana wrote fan letters to praising the work of Frank Miller.
New to this years awards was the Gene Day Award for Canadian Self Publishing. It was presented by James Waley and David Day, younger brother of Gene. The award winner got more than just an award, they also got a number of books provided by The Labyrinth and $500 cash, which delighted winner Jesse Jacobs, blurting out "I can really use the money!" Comics for Kids award was also new and while Kean Soo wasn't there that night to accept it, he received it the next day at the Word on the Street festival. A video of him receiving it is below:
At the end of the awards they gave away a box of books to a lucky audience member.
The disappointing part of the awards were that few of the winners were there to accept their awards. Some of the nominees were at SPX convention being held in the US at the same time. On the positive side there were no major audio/video glitches like in previous years. After the panel was a social gathering room with free food, drinks and art to look at as a number of creators contributed pictures of Wolverine for an upcoming art auction. There was also a table where people could buy books and posters.
Pictures of the event can be found here:
An Audio Recording of the awards can be found here:
Word on the Street
Location: Queens Park, Toronto, Ontario
Date: September 27th, 2009 - 11am - 6pm
Report by Jamie Coville
I should start off explained Word on the Street is an old book fair / literary festival. A wide variety of book publishers, sellers and other organizations set up in tents all around the Ontario Parliament. The festival is free to attend. Sprinkled throughout the tents were comics/graphic novel related publishers/creators/organizations.
The Labyrinth had a large tent that seemed to be always surrounded by people. They were somewhat more traditional in their approach, having a lot of long boxes of TPBs selling them for 40% off US cover. They also had a lot of kids books as well. Other retailers selling were The Beguiling (who hosted a tent for panels, which manager Chris Butcher spent much of the day moderating) and Hairy Tarantula. The Joe Shuster Awards there as well.
A number of creators had their own little spots, Tara Tallan was there selling Galaxion, as was Matthew Mohammed with his Black Bastard comic. Claudia Davilla, Willow Dawson, Diana Tamblyn were there as well. Publishers involved were Drawn and Quarterly, Classic Illustrated, DMF, and Beach Studios. The Kitchen Brothers were there selling Spy Guy and The Possum books with cardboard standouts up front to draw more attention to them. I walked by the Drawn and Quarterly booth many times and Chester Brown spent much, if not all, of the day on his feet talking, signing and sketching books for readers.
Some of the more traditional book publishers getting involved in graphic novels were there like Schoolastic who had Bone GNs as part of what they were selling. Some of the book retailers had GNs among their mix of books, one had a comic stand with slim GNs devoted to mythological characters. I flipped through the Hercules one and noticed it was written by Paul Storrie.
There was a tent devoted to Sony's new E-Reader. They had several models there for people to examine and Sony staff to sell them on the die hard print readers. They were also selling the e-readers at $250, which was $50 off the SRP. I examined one myself and noticed it only displays a couple of paragraphs of text at most before you have to "turn the page." It seemed a bit small for images, even Manga sized books and I don't think it had image capability. I overheard many people comparing the readers to the Amazon Kindle and one person saying "you know, if this takes off there won't BE any more Word on the Street."
There was plenty of what you may call fringe groups there. Some promoting religion or political philosophies. There were some union organizations there and writer/editor groups as well. There was a nice variety of street vender's there. The group selling Sweet Corn on the Cob was popular (I had some myself). There was people BBQing Chicken and shish kabobs, the usual hotdog/burger stands and various ethnic foods too.
At the Beguiling hosted Graphic Novel tent I did catch a few panels. The first was Creating Comics and Raising a Family: Finding Balance. It was hosted by Chris Butcher and panels were Tara Tallan, Claudia Davilla and Jim Munroe. I got to the show late and missed the first 20 minutes of it. Chris asked about external pressures they feel in doing a comics, particularly for the web. All of them said as long as you set a date and stick to it for producing new work there wasn't really any external pressure.
On the subject of kids influencing their work, Jim Munroe said he had created games based on his kids. Tara mentioned her son is a geek and gets a lot of mileage from his friends about his mother being a comic creator. Both Mom's said their kids have asked them to draw their story ideas. Tara said as a result of her child she's done some school speaking about comics, something she probably never would have done without him.
Chris asked Claudia about kids reading their work, particularly since some of her work is controversial and X-rated. She said her kids do see it but know they are not supposed to read it. She said her kids make a funny disgusted face when they come across it.
Another major topic was about having time to themselves to work when there are kids around. All creators mentioned they went through a period of guilt as their kids wanting to play and have attention and them needing to get work done. Tara mentioned her kid did learn to play by himself. They all said that to be a good parent and for their own well being they do need to work and keep their creative outlet going.
The next panel I covered was Sequential Presents: Oh, Canada. Surveying the Landscape of Canadian Comics. The panel was hosted by Bryan Munn and Salgood Sam from Sequential (the Canadian comics devoted blog). On the panel was Brad Mackay (pronounced Macka-eye) from the Doug Wright Awards and Kevin Boyd from the Joe Shuster Awards. Much of the panel talked about their respective organizations when it comes to a variety of Canadian cartooning topics. Brad Mackay did do much of the talking. I did record the panel and it is available here:
The last panel of the day was Webcomics. Hosted by Chris Butcher, the panel consisted of 5 webcomic creators. They were Ryan North (Dinasour Comics), Andy Belanger (Transmission X), Kean Soo (Jellaby), Faith Erin Hicks (Ice and War at Ellsmare) and Emily Horne (A Softer World). They talked about a variety of webcomics issues, how and why they started, what day has the lowest web traffic, supporting themselves with a web comic, getting into print, etc.. I recorded the panel, but lost the tail end of it. The panel can he heard here:
Towards the end of the show I went around and asked the various comic related people did at the show. The responses ranged from Excellent to so-so. For everybody involved a sale is a sale and they all had tent/traveling expenses to make back, but I did get the impression that they were all happy to be helping grow the market for comics at that event. The vast majority of the people there were book readers who didn't regularly read comics, but at those tables they did take an interest and were buying comics and GNs. For some it was perhaps a bit validating for them to see their work appeal to and sell to a group more respected by regular society then a niche of a niche of comic fans.
Much of the people mentioned it was busy, and it was. Everybody was happy that the rain that was forecasted did not come and the weather was quite nice. One creator I talked to wished all the comic related booths were together in a section instead of spread out. People who were comic fans may have missed some booths unless they did a lot of walking around. On the other hand, if the comic/gn portion were all together would the book readers (the primary group) even bother to go into that area? It could end up like an artist alley "ghetto" that people just avoid. I enjoyed my time there between the panels and the walking around finding comic related booths it was a relaxing breather from the traditional comic conventions.
Pictures of Word On the Street can be found here:
Regards,
http://www.TheGraphicNovels.com
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