(a segment from Seth’s new Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists book, just coming out from D&Q)

A quick look down the list of some 70-odd authors who will be at the Festival in October (when the award will be given) also reveals some fellow comics folks who will be guests at the literary bash, including Daniel Clowes and Kate Beaton, as well as a pair of Scottish crime novelists who have also turned their hands to comics work, Denise Mina and Ian Rankin. The IFOA runs from October 19th to 30th in Toronto.

(a page from Snow by and (c) Benjamin Rivers)

Benjamin Rivers has posted up a video promoting his new graphic novel Snow, which I have to say from the premise and the taster of it you can check out looks very interesting, dealing with something most of us are likely to experience in our lives, how you react when your world changes around you. Snow follows one woman as she finds her home turf of Queen Street West in Toronto altering and changing around her, favourite stores closing, buildings changing, until it doesn’t feel like her old neighbourhood anymore. I like that the video isn’t just showing art from the comic but also Benjamin walking the neighbourhood and talking about the changes that the comic mirrors, gives it a nice, grounded, ‘real’ feeling to the story. I see from the official Snow website that it is a Xeric Grant winner, which is usually a good indicator of a quality bit of comics work. The site is pretty cool too, with a taster of the comic, both print and digital versions available to buy (very organised!) and even a wee free PC game based on the comic that you can play, Ben obviously has his self-published approach down very well, it all looks very slick and professional.

SNOW – A Graphic Novel Set in Toronto from Benjamin Rivers on Vimeo.

(pic above and quote below shamelessly borrowed from Tom’s TCAF article on Comic Reporter)

“I made a point of asking after people’s business as late in the weekend as I could (I left a couple of hours before things closed up on Sunday). Many cited best weekend ever sales, while only about 10 percent said that sales were off or disappointing. Drawn and Quarterly had their best weekend ever, Nobrow sold out of about a half-dozen books, Dustin Harbin said he did an SPX’s worth of business on the crowded Saturday all by itself, and Top Shelf I believe flat sold out of a couple of their debut books including the Jess Fink robot/sex book. Fantagraphics’ Mike Baehr said they had their best TCAF yet. Tom Neely and Dylan Williams had done well enough they looked like they had just eaten a big Thanksgiving meal and were ready to push back from the table and take a nap. (Williams promised a forthcoming blog post about the show that will serve as a companion piece to his post-Stumptown meditation on the utility of shows.) Newer material did well across the board, no surprise there. I don’t think it was a great weekend for everyone, but in general I think a lot of people moved a lot of product.”

This Saturday and Sunday is the annual TCAF, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival in the Toronto Reference Library, a bash that everyone we know who has been before has absolutely loved, so we are jealous of anyone who is heading there over this weekend, of course. And among the people who will be juggling selling and looking at comics with trying to consume vast amount of pancakes with proper Canadian maple leaf syrup drizzled all over them is FPI’s very own Kenny Penman, who will be present wearing his Blank Slate Books hat (a tricorn hat, with Blank, Slate and Books emblazoned on each of the three sides. Okay, no, it’s a metaphorical hat, sadly, I’m sure he’d look great in a real one as he proclaimed the fineness of his wares to the citizens of Toronto). Before heading for Canada Kenny was telling me that a whole bunch of new Blank Slate titles had arrived fresh from the printer just in time, so Canadian comics folks, you will be among the first to see them anywhere. And it is also a good chance for North American comics readers to see why BSB has been generating a lot of good word of mouth among those of us on this side of the Atlantic, so if you are going to be at TCAF please take advantage of it to check out some of their titles and give them some fine Canadian support.

(above: German creator Mawil’s Home and Away, one of the Blank Slate Books title making its debut at TCAF this weekend; below: Joe Decie’s Accidental Salad, the first of Blank Slate’s new Chalk Mark series of shorter comics works, also debuting at TCAF)

A glance down the list of other exhibitors is making me even more jealous that I won’t be there myself. A parcel of Blighty’s own will be there too, including Sean Azzopardi, Adam Cadwell, Joe Decie (Joe’s Accidental Salad, the first of Blank Slate’s new Ignatz-like Chalk Marks titles, should be available too, all being well; fellow Blank Slater Mawil will be there too and his new BSB titles – Home and Away and The Band should be with him), Howard Hardiman, Nobrow, Kayla Marie Hiller, Fanfare/Ponent Mon, Tom Humberstone, Jamie McKelvie and more. And look at some of the others who will be at TCAF: Lorenzo Mattotti, James O’Barr, Paul Pope, John Porcellino, Seth, Zak Sally, Adrian Tomine, Maurice Vellekoop, Chris Ware, Top Shelf, Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, Adrian Alphona, Kate Beaton, Box Brown, Becky Cloonan, Abby Denson, Brecht Evans (that noise you just heard was our own Wim fainting with pleasure at the mere mention of Brecht’s name), Kathryn and Stuart Immonen, Matt Kindt, Jeff Lemire… Okay, I’m going to stop now, I’m making myself more jealous at not being there and anwyay, you get the picture – this is a real comics lovers comics festival. All the best to everyone exhibiting or visiting TCAF over this weekend, sure you will all have a blast and we look forward to hearing your TCAF reports when you get home.

(Also making their debuts at TCAF this weekend – above, Lucille by Ludovic Debeurme, published Top Shelf, below: Paying For it by Chester Brown, published Drawn & Quarterly)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrL7lHrZ7zA

and

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRTHJVh3uOE

(cover artwork for The Girl and the Gorilla by and (c)  Madéleine Flores, to be published by Blank Slate Books this summer)

I’ve had a sneaky peek at it and I have to say I’m quite taken with it already, even after reading just the first few pages, following a rather down in the dumps Aurelie, who is brooding over something as she walks through the city. When she bumps into a talking gorilla reading a newspaper on a street corner. Following the gorilla leads to a sort of urban twist on chasing the white rabbit down the rabbit hole, with Aurelie emerging into a fantastical realm, Creativity, where Leonardo Da Vinci offers to show her the sights, including this wonderful street of buildings built from books:

(buildings of books in Creativity, from The Girl and the Gorilla by Madéleine Flores, published  Blank Slate Books)

That has to be every bibliophile’s dream (most of us have to settle for lining the interior walls and every other surface with books rather than using them for the exterior). I’m sure we’ll persuade Maddy and Kenny to share more on The Girl and the Gorilla a little closer to the publication date, so watch this space. Meanwhile Madéleine was at TCAF at the weekend – she’s posted up a report and pictures from her trip on her own site, Little Love Monster, and very kindly allowed us to share it on here too; over to Maddy:

I decided on a whim to go to TCAF. Why? Well I guess I’m just whimsical.

OR because I so desperately want to become part of comics culture and my attempts at that have been tallied up to going to ONE convention thus far in my life, and that just wasn‘t going to cut it. That and my good friend Ty Dunitz let me invade his homespace in Toronto for the weekend.

The day I arrived it was cold, grey and wet. Perfect. Also, the border control sneered at me when I replied that ‘comics’ was the reason why I was entering their fair country. Maybe I have crazy ‘I’m going to invade you!’ American eyes, I just can’t be trusted.

I woke up at 5:30 a.m , ready to start the day. TCAF wasn’t starting until 9 a.m, and I had all my energy built up for it so it was impossible for me to go back to sleep and get some well needed rest until it was actually time to make merry. I ate Sandwiches and Chocolate waiting for a respectable hour to arrive.

When the time finally came it was raining and miserable outside.

And glory behold! The Toronto Reference Library!

Magnificent. Friendly volunteers greeted us with festival programs, people bustling in and out of the show , new purchases in hand or already being read in a huddled corner.

Frankly, lil’ ol’ me was overwhelmed. The comic scene isn’t too big where I’m from, my city is governed by tourists and a magical mouse.

Since I had made the decision to attend  literally 26 hours beforehand, I wasn’t too well prepared or informed as to what books would be making debuts, who all would be there and what they would have. I am awful.

But this led me to make fun discoveries on my own, without any influence of outside media.

TCAF was on two floors, the first being the ‘main floor’, which also had a Publisher’s Pavilion in one of the smaller side rooms.

I love it when artists have their original pages out on display. It feels like I’m doing covert studies and spying on them, gathering information about their process and then borrowing bits to later apply to my own work.

One thing that I like to do when I can’t decide on what book to buy, I just flat out ask the creator

“ Which one of your books is your favorite?”

Sometimes I’ll get an immediate answer and a proud point to their little paper offspring, other times it can take a few seconds and they’ll deliberate out loud the pros and cons of the different books they have.

My favorite purchases this weekend were a result of that question, from Vicki Nerino and Britt Wilson , who together make up The Uterus Parade Press. Miss Wilson couldn’t come up with a direct answer, but had one of the best ones anyways. “Well, I had the most fun making this one”

Quick Note- The 5 Dollar bills in Canada look like Spock.

The second floor was the Webcomics pavillion , which housed an independent gaming section, a zine room and hey! Webcomic artists.

Here-in lies my one critique for the convention layout plan.

To get to the web comics pavilion room you had to pass through the book signing area, populated by comic legends and fans alike. I felt awkward having to walk just in front of someone who was waiting in line to get their book signed by their favorite author. I mean, they were just a few steps away from their idol, getting mentally prepared to say the speech that they’ve been practicing in front of the mirror in order to not come off like a complete crazy person and then WOOSH- here comes this little girl waltzing right in front of them to get to the comic room and their concentration is completely broken and now their favorite creator hates them because the first thing they said was an insult directed at said girl (me)  but it was within clear ear shot to the comic legend sitting behind the table and they got the wrong impression and called security to kick them out for being hostile.

I mean that’s just poor planning. But hey, I to a comic convention without business cards or mini comics to hand out. So we’ll leave it at that.

The web comics room was where most of my money stayed- yes, a lot of things found there could be read for  free online, but there were also oh so many things that the creators are putting out as extras or con specials that one can’t help but just feel like a kid in a candy store.

I was most excited to purchase Lucy Kinsley’s ‘Make Yourself Happy’ she claims that it is “ A little self-pub book fulla 220 pages of my comics! My annual “let’s find a print home for all these stray comics” project” I have been a fan of hers for many years but never had the chance to meet her in person. It’s so nice when someone you admire turns out to be extremely nice and friendly!

She was offering watercolour comissions so I had to splurge. I need things to decorate my non-existent new apartment with. Moving is going to be so much fun.

To exit the second floor area, the foot traffic was directed through the Zine room. I know nothing about Zines or Zine Culture. And I didn’t really expand my horizons in that front this weekend either. But it was a very clean room and very colorful.

I didn’t attend any of the panels at TCAF  because:
1) As previously mentioned, I was up before dawn and by 4 p.m I was ready to crash.
2) This was my first time in Canada and wanted to spend some time with friends and see a little bit of the city besides the Library. So I went to an art store.

My evening was spent slurping ramen noodles, while pouring over the pages from the new books I had purchased. I don’t read them first, I just enjoy looking at the lines.

Because this trip was a whim, I have to stick to certain rules. Those rules are set by my wallet, and my wallet needed me to leave Canada early the second day of TCAF. I went to do a quick sweep through of things that I had missed the first time around, and introduced myself and my highly forgettable name.

My last purchase was Phil McAndrew’s ‘Are you Man enough?’ I’m sure he has sold it at previous conventions that he’s attended, but again, this is new and exciting ground for me.

So, Thank You Comics, Thank You Canada.

I forgive your awful weather.

All pics and text (c) Madéleine Flores ; FPI would like to say thanks for letting us share her TCAF report and pics here. The Girl and the Gorilla should be published in August by Blank Slate Books and of course we’ll bring you more on that later on.