Location: 789 Yonge St., Toronto Reference Library
Attendance: 15,000
I arrived about 15 minutes before the doors opened and there was a bit of a crowd waiting. I chatted a bit with Tom Spurgeon of ComicsReporter.com. Soon after entering I went to the room for the first panel, which started 15 minutes after the convention opened. David Boswell Spotlight (38:51, 35.5mb) The panel was moderated by Tom Spurgeon. David Boswell is best known for Reid Fleming, the World's Toughest Milkman comic. The panel started a bit late as David brought an apple computer with his images on it but the library staff had difficulty getting it hooked up to the projector. David talked a bit about his becoming a professional cartoonist, explained he was delivering pizza's and doing photography work while he was still doodling and trying to sell single panel gags to magazines like the New Yorker. He talked about how he originally thought Reid Fleming was a 1 page joke and didn't think there was anything more to the character. He was moved by fans to do more stories. He did explain that he has had to step away from the character for a while here and there because the character isn't his alter ego or anything, and he's not a nice guy. He talked about self publishing his own book (he guessed he would need 10,000 copies) and with the help of Last Gasp distribution he was able to eventually sell them all. He talked about the collecting of the work as a graphic novel and mentioned he needed to use scans of good quality back issues in order to make the hardcover. Reason being the negatives of his work at Eclipse was on a shelf that had collapsed and the workers in the warehouse just walked over them. The negatives ended up with foot prints and scratches on them. He also talked about movie version of Reid Fleming. He said there was a script by a studio, he didn't think it caught the character very well. He wrote his own script which was much better. Several big name actors wanted to do the movie over the years. He personally wanted Bob Hoskis, but said he wouldn't even read a script for less than a million dollars. Currently David is working on a 2nd Reid Fleming GN. About 10 people were in the audience.
Between panels I took pictures of almost every pro on the bottom floor. There appeared to be more people than last year. They did some changing around from last year's layout, which was an improvement. The hot, stuffy room in the past was used for panels, meaning people would only have to sit for an hour at a time, which was tolerable. The room that all the webcomic artists were in had a row of tables in the middle which allowed more artists. They had panels both in The Library and also off site at participating venues like The Pilot, a nearby restaurant. Like last year they had a Novella room which was a dedicated kids area. They had 7 round tables, sat about 8 people and a GN seating/reading area with a bunch of library GNs out for the kids to read (some parents were reading them too). On the one wall they were doing very visual panels of sorts for the kids. The one that was going on while I was there was an introduction to webcomics. Agnes Garbowska was doing the panel, asking the kids basic questions about what was needed to make a comic. Then they talked about HTML or using a blogging website to put up their comics. While this was going on creators were in the room drawing comics with kids on papers with panels already lined up. There was a schedule made up of panels and creators coming in at certain times. There were also a few laptops off on the side where kids could read digital comics. The room was pretty full of kids of all ages and some parents. There was a regular stream of creators coming in to draw and put on educational panels for the kids all though the weekend.
Telling True Stories (45:55, 42.0mb) This panel included a number of non-fiction writers spanning from autobiographical, history to biographies on other people. On it were David Collier, Tory Woolcott, Jim Ottaviani, GB Tran and Zach Worton. The panel was moderated by Greg Means. The group talked about writing about people who are alive and would likely read the work vs. people who are dead and gave reactions that they've received from family members to their subjects. They talked about how their behaviour changes when they are regularly doing autobiographic comics, also how they depict themselves in their works. Just about everybody admitted to fictionalizing their work in some manner and went into the how and why of doing that. Researching their topics was also discussed. At the end the audience asked some questions. The room was full with about 37 people.
The next panel was the Chris Ware spotlight. No recording was allowed at the panel. The panel was moderated by Tom Spurgeon. Chris got his iPad hooked up to the projector and started off with early pictures of him and his grandparents. He talked about how his family influenced him and showed examples of his grandfather's cartoon work. He also showed toys that he made himself and his early comic work for newspapers. There were lots of images of Jimmy Corrigan, including a cover for the Japanese edition. He showed his more realistic drawings of a few of his characters. He talked about Rusty Brown, a story he is working on. He showed progress of his work from blue panels, to inks on characters, backgrounds then colour. Showed a number of New Yorker covers. He also talked about a cartoon he worked on with Jack Black on Quimby the Mouse and showed the cartoon. The audience applauded after the cartoon. Said HBO had approved of it, then unapproved of "anything weird" after the economy went bad. He also worked on a cartoon for Robot Chicken but it didn't get made, saying it wasn't that great of an idea. Tom asked about his relationship with Chicago as some of his comics are based there. Ware said it was because the city was very unpretentious and there isn't much of an arts scene there. Ware also talked about Omaha where he grew up. Buildings and archeology were talked about. Ware showed off this animation he had made, which was like an iPad type comic only a hand would show up and touch things and move the comic for you. Ware took questions from the audience. Topics included editing himself, using colour to move along the story. Tom asked about how being a parent affected his work, Ware mentioned that he does a diary comic for his daughter, but it's for her for when she gets older and not something he's going to publish. The panel was packed with about 120 people and there was a long line up to get in to begin with.
I left when the con ended at 5pm. I grabbed some supper then headed over to the Toronto Arts Centre for the Doug Wright Awards (1:25:50, 78.5mb) The awards were a little late in starting but ended before the 9pm time. The awards were hosted by Don McKellar. While the show was going on, R Sikoryak was doing live cartooning on a sheet. There was also Greg Morrison doing bits of piano playing when people were coming up on stage. Within the award show there was some Canadian election humor, making fun of Chester Brown's new book Paying for It and his running for the Libertarian party. They joked about similar books for other politicians, "Laying for It" about NDP Leader Jack Layton's massage parlour "scandal" that had recently came out and "Praying for It" (which was like a Jack Chick track) about the Conservative's Leader Stephen Harper. They did the Pigskin Peter Award, which was won by Michael DeForge. Erin Karpluk of CBC's Being Erin introduced the Best Emerging Talent which was won by Alex Fellows. Then there was a live interview with Seth and Boswell on his Reid Fleming book, Boswell repeated most of what he said at his panel with Tom Spurgeon earlier that day. Chester Brown gave Boswell his award and they showed a funny old picture of them. Chester had long shaggy hair then, he joked saying "I cut my hair this way" (A Reid Fleming line) in regard to his nearly bald head now. Chester gave the award to Boswell. They then did the Best Book Award and it went to Pascel Girard for Bigfoot. A Jury member did the intro for that book. The awards ended a bit before 9pm. Afterwards, The Beguiling was selling signed books from all of the nominees.
Sunday I had showed up a bit before the 11am starting time and there was a significant line to get in. I spent much of the day upstairs taking pictures and talking to creators. I had only visited 1 panel today. Usamaru Furuya Spotlight (1:03:41, 58.3mb) Manga creator Usamaru Furuya was interviewed by Chris Butcher on this spotlight. Chris started off by explaining how Furuya's work was translated into English 10 years ago and it was among the few books that dealt with the Japanese youth culture at the time. After a long time his work is getting translated again. Furuya seemed to understand and speak very basic English, but there was an interpreter who translated and answered questions for him. Furuya also flipped through his comic while he spoke, sometimes showing bits of art to the crowd. Furuya talked about when he started, he drew only in 4 panel grids because he didn't quite understand how make the story flow between panels. Eventually he figured it out when a bigger publisher offered to publish new works by him. He talked about how he has changed his style over the years, being a chameleon, changing his work to fit the story, or in one case to show respect to another legendary creator that he was in a magazine with. Chris showed a funny piece of Furuya breaking a 4th wall, as he was drawing a book in 9 panel grid, then showed himself as a cartooney character, saying he's sick of drawing that way. The next page was a lavish 2 page spread of all the fun stuff he liked to draw. The next page had some blank panels with just text about how tired he was. Furuya said he was being a bit selfish in doing that, he wouldn't do it today but he was being honest about how he felt and it showed humor. Furuya also gave us his weekly schedule, explaining he often worked 12 hour days with his assistants. Monday to Wednesday was drawing, Thursday and Friday was meetings and interviews, Saturday was storyboard day. Chris thanked him for taking time to attend TCAF which got everybody laughing. Chris asked Furuya about a book he did about an earthquake hitting Japan and if he'd do anything different due to the recent catastrophe in Japan. Furuya spoke of disappointment over the nuclear reactor failing and how its radiation is being spread by winds to other countries. He said that disasters affect people differently depending on the time of year, saying summer months would have been worse with more people outside and the diseases would have spread quicker. The audience was able to ask some questions towards the end of the book. He spoke of a Plastic Girl book where every page of the story was done in a different medium, from etched out in walls to stain glass and more. When asked about the interview, he held up a page with his URL on it talking a bit about a free comic on there (www.poco2.jp). Some of those in the audience could understand Japanese and were laughing at Furuya jokes before the translator could get to them. About 40 people were in attendance.
I spend much of the day upstairs taking pics and talking to creators. I spent a bit of time looking for a bag of stuff for a friend that had given me a call (didn't find it, he lost it elsewhere but did recover it).
I also went into the Novella room for a bit again, and saw Raina Telgemeier doing a bit of a panel with the kids drawing a comic for the audience. One of the kids told a short story about how he got his arm in a cast and she drew it. She had asked the kids if they needed help in how to draw certain things. One kid asked about a car, Raina drew a basic car due to not knowing how to draw detailed cars off the top of her head, she said she would normally look that up based on the type of car that was needed. She had asked the kids to draw their own comic and she went around to check on them as they were doing them, offering to help out. I spoke with Raina after the panel and she mentioned it's really different doing that type of panel, but it's really worth it.
At the end of the con I went around asking people how they did. Almost everybody said they had a really good con, many saying better than last year, some saying the same (and weren't complaining because last year was fantastic), a couple said it was a little less than last year. One creator was sure it was because he hadn't brought enough volume 1 of his series, as those sold out and people who hadn't bought volume 1 weren't interested in buying volume 2. A number of the people I spoke to said it was their first TCAF and they had a really good time. A couple of creators I talked to also said they spent too much of their own money buying other creators work, but didn't feel bad about it at all. A number of creators mentioned they had sold out of some books, one thankfully lived in Toronto so he was able to go home and grab some more for the next day.
A lot of the creators said that there were more people this year than last year. Saturday was busier than Sunday for sure.
When they announced the end of the con, people gave the con workers applause. I noticed Chester Brown was still signing books for people as the con closed. One guy stopped Peter Birkmore (Beguiling owner and TCAF organizer) and thanked him personally for the con, saying it and his store was like a vital organ to the comics industry/community. I think this is becoming true for the indy/art comic scene as they do really well at this convention. A number of significant books debut at this convention, a lot of creators sell a large number of books and quite a few creators mentioned they feel reinvigorated to draw comics.
I took 230 pictures of the show and the Doug Wright Awards. They can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/comichistory/TCAF2011
The audio files of all these panels and more can be found at http://thecomicbooks.com/audio.html.
Regards,
http://www.TheGraphicNovels.com
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