Date: May 10-12. Note: Friday May 10th was Librarian & Educator day. For the general public TCAF was May 11-12th.
Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON
I decided to go the Librarian & Educator day on Friday May 10th as there were numerous panels I wanted to attend. I got there a bit after 9am and walked in on an opening presentation by Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman. The two gave an enthusiastic speech about comics in Libraries and schools. In particular they focused on kids comics and announced a new Kids Comics Revolution Comics Award, in which kids will vote on the best books for the year.
The day was nice with a laid back atmosphere and almost all of those attending were Librarians, teachers and I noticed some creators in the crowd. There was coffee, muffins and pastries available as well as some FCBD books and a table full of books by authors attending TCAF that you could buy. I noticed Raina was popular with multiple people asking her to sign books and take pictures during the day.
The first session I went to was
Comics Defense 101 (1:10:03, 64.1mb)
It was moderated by Robin Brenner and on the panel was Gene Ambaum, Charles Brownstein, Diana Maliszewski, Rebecca Scoble and Eva Volin. This panel was about challenges to Graphic Novels, which if successful can result in the book being removed them from the library or School. They started off talking about their more bizarre challenges, everything from Jeff Smith's Bone to Phoebe Gloeckner's A Child's Life. They also talked about push back against comics both from the communities they are in and from staff within the library or school. The librarians and teachers in the audience asked questions on how to deal with situations they are currently facing. One librarian told a funny story about how a child in her middle school had the Walking Dead TPDs and was
renting them out to his classmates to read at $2 a book, but wanted to house them in the library. There were about 40 people in the room.
Bill Amend and Raina Telgemeier conversation (54:46, 50.1mb)This was mainly Raina interviewing Bill but Bill also asked Raina some questions about her career. The panel started with Bill explaining he did a comic strip in a thing called a newspaper (and showed a really old newspaper, like it's something most people don't know about, which generated laughs). He had a sample of his strips that he put on screen and read them in voices. He did this because he learned not to assume that everybody knows his comic strip. Among the topics discussed was pitches prior to Foxtrot, Bill's education and his original career plan, the Foxtrot children's book called AAAA! and the reason why it was published. Bill also talked about his self published collection of strips formatted for the iPad. Bill revealed how much of Foxtrot he is creating now and what else he is doing with his time. He answered some questions from the audience and spoke about exchanging letters with Bill Watterson. Raina talked about how comic strips were her artistic influence and how when she was 10 a local teacher handed her a bunch of early Foxtrot comics he photocopied and she had the opportunity to have her art reviewed by Bill but never followed up on it.
The event took a lunch break and everybody either left for lunch or got their paid for lunch that was part of a package. The next panel I attended was supposed to start at 2pm, but it actually started at 2:35 as people were late getting back.
That panel was
The State of YA (Young Adult) Comcs (54:18, 49.7mb)
It was moderated by Gina Gagliano, Eva Volin, Robin Brenner, Cecil Castellucci, Svetlana Chmakova, Faith Erin Hicks and John Green talks about problems with the YA comics market and what they thought the market needed. They talked about a trend of publishers doing adaptations instead of original work. They all mentioned they like to see more ethnic diversity in the lead characters in YA, and they are hoping for a watershed book that really hits it big that will convince publishers to invest more in doing original work and supporting it. Other topics discussed was how in YA prose they can do things like a sex scene that they can't do in a YA comic. The topic of Manga came up a lot in regards to it's content and it's limitations. They also took questions from the audience.
Immediately after the next group of sessions started. It was called
Comics and Accessibility (47:06, 43.1mb)
Tory Woollcott was the presenter of this panel. She talked about literacy and how she thinks it's should be about our ability to understand vs. our ability to read. She read from her book Mirror Mind which is about her experience growing up and being dyslexic. She talked about her experience with kids with a learning disability and explains the label of being illiterate (and by extension, stupid) creates life long self esteem issues that prevents kids from reaching their full potential in life. She also says it's important to try find these kids and reach out to help them because they won't talk about their problem. She gave examples of books that help kids with leaning disabilities like wordless books for various age groups and graphic novel adaptations of more famous books. She answered questions from the audience about dealing with people who feel that reading comics isn't “real” reading and other stereotypes about comics. She also talked about her 5 ticks on what moves a book out of all ages category and into a higher age bracket.
Over all the Librarians and Educator day was very relaxing and had really good panels dedicated to comic topics. I am very likely to come again if they continue to put these on.
Friday night had a TCAF kick-off special ticketed event. It was
Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez interview by Tom Spurgeon (1:38:35, 90.2mb)
To start off the night Ab Velasco of the Toronto Reference Library talked about why the library hosts TCAF and why they think the event is great. Then TCAF organizer Chris Butcher came on and talked a bit about his history with the Beguiling and TCAF. Tom then proceeded with the interview. While Tom spoke he showed pictures of the Hernandez brothers art and a few pictures of them. Among the topics they talked about was when they knew they would be doing comics for a living, changing the format of Love and Rockets while it was being published, their place in comics when they started eg, not underground or mainstream, doing longer stories within Love and Rockets, their work outside of Love and Rockets and why they did them, Love and Rocket covers, character design, drawing with a 6 panel grid, being at this for 30 years and how it's like to be the older established pro in comics industry. They also answered some questions from the audience.
Saturday:
I had arrived on Saturday morning to see a line up outside the library waiting for the doors to open. I started in the upstairs part taking pictures of pro's, particularly of the webcomics people before their line ups got too big. Along the way I was able to talk to some people I hadn't seen in a while, which was nice. Before long I was attending panels. My first was
Comics Adaptations (58:06, 53.2mb)
On the panel were creators who had adapted a book (or book series) into a graphic novel. The creators were Hope Larson, Raina Telgemeier, Daniel Lafrance and Svetlana Chmakova.The panel was moderated by Scott Robins. The group had talked about what makes a good adaptation, why they chose to adapt somebody else's work, the positive and challenging parts of doing comic adaptations, working with the author or their estate if they are no longer alive, editing the book as they are adapting it in particular with modifying dialogue, what they learn and take to their own works after adapting somebody else's story and if they would let somebody adapt their own creator owned work into another medium. There was about 40 people in the audience.
I caught the tail end of the Blown Covers: Françoise Mouly & The New Yorker panel. An audience member asked about the New Yorker 911 cover and she said that on 911 she and Art were rushing to get one of their kids out of a school that was very close to the Towers. After they got home she got a call and was told they needed her in the office as they had 24 hours to come up with a 911 related cover. Françoise originally was against doing a cover and wanted to just do a black cover. Others with in the New Yorker has suggested breaking with tradition and doing a photo cover. Art Spiegelman had suggested doing the silhouette of the towers within the black cover and that is what they went with. The panel had run over considerably, going until 12:15 (it was supposed to end a half hour earlier).
The next panel, which got to an understandably late start was the:
Michel Rabagliati Spotlight (42:51, 39.2mb)
Brigid Alverson interviews Michel Rabagliati on his series of Graphic Novels. The two talked about the new book Paul joins the Scouts. He mentions that it takes place when the FLQ (a Quebec Terrorist group) were bombing mailboxes and that environment is the backdrop of the story. He also talks about the catholic aspect of the book and they are highly involved with the scouting organization. Rabagliati also talked about his work in general, saying the stories are 80% autobiographical. He revealed his process of how he creates his books, going from writing to drawing. He explained where computers take part in the creative process and how he got his daughter involved in doing the toning of the book. He also talked about the books being translated from Quebec French to different languages. Rabagliati revealed a bit about his 8th book that he is working on now.
I had an hour between panels and went back to the floor to take more pictures of the upstairs area. After that I went to the next panel, which was
Writing Life (55:41, 50.9mb)
On this panel were creators that did autobiographical non-fiction Graphic Novels. They were Derf, Lucy Knisley, Ulli Lust and Raina Telgemeier. The group talked about their books. They felt there was a difference between non-fiction and memoir books and spoke about how different people remember events differently. Derf spoke about how he was able to go back and talk to his high school friends about events with Jeffery Dahmer and revealed that people usually remembered things pretty much the same way. They also talked about depicting other people they know (eg family members) and if their reaction to it changes the way they tell a story. The group talked about if they leave stuff out of their comics and if some personal stories are "not for sale." This panel was moderated by Robin Brenner. It was relatively popular with about 80 people there.
Right after this was the last panel I attended for the day. It was the
Michael Kupperman Spotlight (49:58, 45.7mb)
Michael Kupperman entertains the crowd by reading some of his comics and showed an animated short. Among the comic he read from was one that was supposed to be in the Greatest American Comics series, but was rejected due to legal concerns. Kupperman answers questions from moderator Jacquelene Cohen and the audience. Among the topics discussed was his children affecting his humor, his stand up comedy, how "dream logic" affects his work, pop culture influences, characters he likes to use, the changes in his art over the years. There was about 40 people at this panel.
After the panel I went and got some supper and then attended The Doug Wright Awards. This year the awards were held at Marriott Hotel that was around the corner from the convention and where panel program was during the 2 days. The awards got off to a late start, from first letting people in to get a seat and then a fire alarm had gone off and kept going for 20 minutes, delaying the awards. They did announce there was no fire and no needed to evacuate.
The Doug Wright Awards (1:30:52, 83.1mb)
The ceremony went as follows:
Introduction of nominee's and sponsor appreciation by Brad Mackay.
Opening monologue by Scott Thompson.
Pigskin Peters Hat/Award: David Collier for Hamilton Illustrated (Wolsak & Wynn).
Seth gives an appreciation of David's work. While Seth was giving praise to David he sat with chair seat cushion over his face/chest area. Then eventually he had enough and smacked Seth with a the seat cushion. Then David talked a while about last years TCAF and eating with a bunch of Australian artists and how he had misread when last years awards were going to start and demanded everybody mow down their food as fast as possible, but he couldn't wolf it down quite as quickly and apologized for 'tarnishing' Canada's reputation of not being as uncouth as the Australians. While he was telling this story Scott Thompson jumped on the stage and started making jokes, in an effort to move along the awards, but he had no effect on David who was determined to tell his story.
Spotlight Award (AKA "The Nipper"): Nina Bunjevac for Heartless (Conundrum Press).
Julie Delporte gives an appreciation of Nina Bunjevac's book.
Albert Chartier was inducted into The Giants Of The North hall of fame.
An appreciation was done by Jimmy Beaulieu and Guy Badeaux (Bado).
Best Book: The Song of Roland by Michel Rabagliati (Conundrum Press).
Joe Ollman gives an appreciation of Michel Rabagliati and explains why the jury chose his book.
Closing by Brad Mackay.
It was nice to have the awards within walking distance of the TCAF instead of the Art Gallery of Ontario. This way I don't have to drive there and find/pay for more parking. Brad mentioned that they had a great turnout and I think the close proximity to the show really helped that. During the awards there were some audio/video problems and as usual, the host ends up poking fun at Brad's wordplay in the script ("Shopworn? Really Brad? SHOPWORN?!?") and mixing up the pages to be read. I took 15 Photos of the ceremony.
Sunday:
First thing Sunday I went to the Art Spiegelman in conversation with Seth panel. The panel had started a bit late, around 11:10-ish. Chris Oliveras did an introduction. Seth and Art talked about his upcoming book CO-MIX, which is a collection of his shorter comic stories, particular from the underground period. The two talked about his role being the President of the jury of Angoulême in 2011.As well the two talked about Art's influences and Robert Crumb in particular, his love of history, his early underground work and how it's changed. He revealed when he was in high school he was offered a syndicated comic strip, but he turned it down. They also talked about the books his edited, from Arcade anthology comic book and it's purposes and RAW. He also mentioned he recently created a mural for his old high school. Art also talked about his fame, which he calls the Spiegelmonster. While he spoke Art (and Seth at one point) smoked an E-cigarette. I did record this panel but I have not yet received approval to put the recording online.
After the panel I went back to the show and took more pictures. I did go back to record the Spotlight: Taiyo Matsumoto panel, but it was being video recorded for the internet. I took the advise of Jim Rugg and used the time to do some shopping for myself. I didn't attend anymore panels and spent the rest of the day taking pictures of the pro's that were in the downstairs area. I'm glad I did, as I wouldn't have gone through my usual lengths to try and take a picture of everybody there. I also noticed a number of pro's who might have normally been behind a table at the event were instead shopping for themselves.
I did not get to ask many people how the show did for them, but almost everybody I talked to were quite happy with the show. I really miss not being able to go to this show last year (I was suuuper sick) so it was really nice to make it back there this year.
241 Photos were taken. You can find all these panels and others from other conventions here. /TD>