![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
my tcaf report
May. 8th, 2012 12:33 amThis year I was determined to carve out some time to hit TCAF. Last year I was there for all of ten minutes, squeezed in between who knows what else was going on. Anyways, Saturday morning I got my hair cut, and then Shain and I were off to TCAF. First we had to get across town. The Falun Gong was marching through Chinatown, up and down Spadina, turning at College. Which was right where we were trying to get through. Hanging a left to get up to the library, we got stuck in traffic resulting from the global marijuana day Queens Park rally. Everything happens at once! However, we did finally make it up to the library and TCAF, which gets bigger every year because it's a fun, casual show highlighting great comics and great creators, in a wonderful space filled with people and comics and art, in a city that comes out to support the arts. And it's free.
There are tons of great artists at TCAF and there's no way to give them all the attention they deserve. What I did is to focus on the task at hand, which was to get a copy of Derf Backderf's books PUNK ROCK AND TRAILER PARKS and MY FRIEND DAHMER. Yes, this cartoonist went to high school with Jeffrey Dahmer. I have the pamphlet size MY FRIEND DAHMER, but the graphic novel isn't a mere expansion but a whole new, disturbingly revelatory journey through the hell of suburban high school and how it failed an amazingly troubled kid on just about every level. I'm sure Derf now gets totally annoying email from serial killer junkies, but this book is far from the typical 'edgy', fatuously regressive true crime voyeur glurge they're used to. PUNK ROCK AND TRAILER PARKS is far more upbeat; any book about teaming up with Lester Bangs and the Clash to dispense Midwestern Punk Rock Justice is tops with me. Anyway, I bought these books and got 'em signed.
Then we tried to track down a potential guest as a favor for another convention, but were unsuccessful. THEN we tracked down Ed Chavez from Vertical and gossipped for a while. And then it was lunchtime.
(one of those terrible fake panoramas I'm bad at but persist in attempting)
My photos don't do Saturday justice, apart from the main floor there were two large rooms full of webcomics folks and children's comics upstairs. Autographs were in the basement. And people were everywhere.
After a late lunch/early dinner at the Yorkville Diner we wandered around Yorkville in the sunshine, visited the chi-chi Whole Foods, went to the Indigo at Bay and Bloor, and then went over to the Japan Foundation to see Ed Chavez interview Konami "Chi's Sweet Home" Kanata.
(Ed in his enviable Mitsuru Adachi t-shirt, with custom stuffed Chi)
Chi's Sweet Home has been a big success for Vertical, the cute and charming comic is kind of a departure for the publisher, who's other titles are sometimes its polar opposite. But there's room enough in the world for cute cat comics, and as Ed pointed out there are deeper things at work in Chi than just the story of a kitty who likes milk, a lot. This was Kanata's first trip to Canada and while it's unknown if she has yet made it to Honest Ed's, we did get to hear how she and her husband rescued her editor from a stalled train after the Tohoku Earthquake last year. Vertical and TCAF arranged for Kanata to produce a limited-edition print for the show, all proceeds of which go for earthquake relief, and after the interview there was a lineup for autographs. We bought a print and a volume of Chi and had them both signed. Now I need a frame, I guess.
This is a photo of Kanata and her translator, whose name eludes me. My photos are getting worse and worse. I need a new camera.
Afterwards we hung out with the cool kids, namely Chris "TCAF" Butcher and the swarms of talented cartoonists that surround him at all times, at least at TCAF. Talked to Ed for a while and finally got to meet Twitter pal Deb Aoki in the flesh. The Japan Foundation puts on a great event, BTW. And by that I mean coffee service, which was desperately needed after our day of walking and talking.
Sunday I zipped out to the Anime North staff meeting, and then came home, and then we zipped right back out to TCAF after lunch at Caplansky's. I made my connection with the potential guest and did my best to sell him on the convention in question, and then we watched Ed mentor a young manga artist with ambitions to move to Japan and make it big in the manga industry, and then it was time for everybody to pack up. Shain bought me the latest TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE from the Fantagraphics table. And that's our TCAF. We got in the car and left downtown and went walking down the trail at Highland Creek Park and then came home and drew comics. Which I guess is the point of the whole thing.
There are tons of great artists at TCAF and there's no way to give them all the attention they deserve. What I did is to focus on the task at hand, which was to get a copy of Derf Backderf's books PUNK ROCK AND TRAILER PARKS and MY FRIEND DAHMER. Yes, this cartoonist went to high school with Jeffrey Dahmer. I have the pamphlet size MY FRIEND DAHMER, but the graphic novel isn't a mere expansion but a whole new, disturbingly revelatory journey through the hell of suburban high school and how it failed an amazingly troubled kid on just about every level. I'm sure Derf now gets totally annoying email from serial killer junkies, but this book is far from the typical 'edgy', fatuously regressive true crime voyeur glurge they're used to. PUNK ROCK AND TRAILER PARKS is far more upbeat; any book about teaming up with Lester Bangs and the Clash to dispense Midwestern Punk Rock Justice is tops with me. Anyway, I bought these books and got 'em signed.
Then we tried to track down a potential guest as a favor for another convention, but were unsuccessful. THEN we tracked down Ed Chavez from Vertical and gossipped for a while. And then it was lunchtime.
(one of those terrible fake panoramas I'm bad at but persist in attempting)
My photos don't do Saturday justice, apart from the main floor there were two large rooms full of webcomics folks and children's comics upstairs. Autographs were in the basement. And people were everywhere.
After a late lunch/early dinner at the Yorkville Diner we wandered around Yorkville in the sunshine, visited the chi-chi Whole Foods, went to the Indigo at Bay and Bloor, and then went over to the Japan Foundation to see Ed Chavez interview Konami "Chi's Sweet Home" Kanata.
(Ed in his enviable Mitsuru Adachi t-shirt, with custom stuffed Chi)
Chi's Sweet Home has been a big success for Vertical, the cute and charming comic is kind of a departure for the publisher, who's other titles are sometimes its polar opposite. But there's room enough in the world for cute cat comics, and as Ed pointed out there are deeper things at work in Chi than just the story of a kitty who likes milk, a lot. This was Kanata's first trip to Canada and while it's unknown if she has yet made it to Honest Ed's, we did get to hear how she and her husband rescued her editor from a stalled train after the Tohoku Earthquake last year. Vertical and TCAF arranged for Kanata to produce a limited-edition print for the show, all proceeds of which go for earthquake relief, and after the interview there was a lineup for autographs. We bought a print and a volume of Chi and had them both signed. Now I need a frame, I guess.
This is a photo of Kanata and her translator, whose name eludes me. My photos are getting worse and worse. I need a new camera.
Afterwards we hung out with the cool kids, namely Chris "TCAF" Butcher and the swarms of talented cartoonists that surround him at all times, at least at TCAF. Talked to Ed for a while and finally got to meet Twitter pal Deb Aoki in the flesh. The Japan Foundation puts on a great event, BTW. And by that I mean coffee service, which was desperately needed after our day of walking and talking.
Sunday I zipped out to the Anime North staff meeting, and then came home, and then we zipped right back out to TCAF after lunch at Caplansky's. I made my connection with the potential guest and did my best to sell him on the convention in question, and then we watched Ed mentor a young manga artist with ambitions to move to Japan and make it big in the manga industry, and then it was time for everybody to pack up. Shain bought me the latest TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE from the Fantagraphics table. And that's our TCAF. We got in the car and left downtown and went walking down the trail at Highland Creek Park and then came home and drew comics. Which I guess is the point of the whole thing.
