davemerrill

What have we been up to in the past month? We've been watching the COVID numbers rise here in Ontario, which is at about 800 cases a day. Not great. Walking around the neighborhood Friday we saw a bunch of people in the Bentway park under the Gardiner, all hanging out, all un-masked, nobody distancing. So there you go.

Shain's nephew came to visit for a couple weeks from Vancouver. He got tested and is negative for COVID so we're all a little relieved. A friend of his here just had a baby so he visited them a lot, did some sightseeing, and it was the longest houseguest we've had here in our Toy Factory place ever. The cat took it in stride, apart from puncturing the inflatable bed. We drove him up to Gravenhurst to visit his friends at their family cottage which is lovely, and the Saturday before he left we took our bikes to the ferry and rode all over the Toronto Islands with Donald S. as our guide. And then Saturday night I got some amazing leg cramps because that was a lot of biking and I hadn't been biking in a while.

I wrote a thing about the antique malls we've visited in the post-COVID era - https://d-merrill.blogspot.com/2020/10/fall-2020-antique-mall-roundup.html - and how they've been surviving and thriving or not quite thriving. We got to Waterford yesterday and they seem to have a decent selection of new stuff.

On the way back from Waterford we saw some road closures, and this is why: https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/six-nations-caledonia-land-back-lane-1.5774581

Six Nations Reserve fighting land developers and the OPP with commandeered earth moving equipment and road blocks. I'm on the side of Six Nations here.

Anyway, we're staying in and staying safe, I'm working on virtual panels for the virtual AWA which will happen in December, I think. Consult your local listings.

We went to the Cambridge show! And it was OK! Very super heroey. Cosplayers front and center blocking the doors of the library with photo shoots of Dude Dressed As Dr. Evil (bringing the role back to Ontario, as it were) and Pink Power Ranger, and Guys Staring At Pink Power Ranger's Butt. We printed a lot of zines but only sold a few. The crowd was mostly People Who Bring Their Kids To The Library On Saturday Anyway - a demographic I support fully, but not one really in the market for self-published comics. Especially not self published comics that aren't very kid friendly. Other tables were a pretty typical mix of aspiring super hero artists, a smattering of edgy zombie monstery professional illustrators all chatting with each other about next week's Fan Expo, one table of people selling their board game.

On the plus side, the table was free, the event was well-run and provided coffee, pizza, water, and snacks to the artists. It was nice to table again, it's been a while. The zines and the promo stuff we produced for the show can, of course, easily be used for the next show. I brought the strip I'm working on and Shain brought her sketchbook and we spent most of the time working on our various projects, and having a solid block of time away from typical distractions was really helpful. We handed out a lot of postcards and met a few people and swapped comics with one guy.

The minus side was that this really wasn't our crowd, the event wasn't that well attended, and it's a solid hour of 401 traffic away from our place. If it happens again next year, and the tables are still free, then it might be a thing we think about. But it, and tabling in general, are such a commitment- gas money, supplies, and time - that I don't know if it's worth it. Certainly for a show that pretty much sucks up an entire day, for us the return on investment is dependent on many factors.

I think we'd sell more zines at a show like Con Bravo, at a larger, more eclectic convention. Of course those tables cost more money and demand a larger time commitment. There was a zine festival last Saturday in Toronto that we probably would have done fine at - "Zine Dream" - but one half of a table was $30, which isn't onerous, but still, it's more than zero. It becomes a question of, are you at the con to sell zines, or are you selling zines to be at the con? Are you making comics just to give yourself an excuse to attend as many conventions as you can? Because I've seen that mindset in action and it might be great for some, but I don't want to attend as many conventions as humanly possible. I'm 47. I value my weekends away from my actual job that pays my actual bills.

(I did buy a zine from a guy at "Zine Dream" and chatted with him for a bit about zines and I mentioned the Cambridge comics show, and he lives in Cambridge and had heard nothing about the show. I think if you aren't an aspiring super hero artist, the Cambridge show just wasn't on your radar, if you aren't a super hero fan, the Cambridge show just didn't know how to reach out to you.)

Back in the 1998 daze, we knew enough people that we could send an email and get a free artists alley table at AWA, at ACen, at AZ, at A-Kon, you name it, we could get a table and camp at it for however long we wanted, selling whatever. Most conventions, with the exception of late Saturday nights at Anime North, do not operate like that any more, for several very good reasons. I'm good with doing the very occasional zine or comic show and distributing most of our published output on a one-on-one basis.

Anyway we did meet a guy at the Cambridge show sporting a t-shirt from the 1972 anime series Dokonjo Gaeru, the show about the frog squished onto the kid's T-shirt. He bought the shirt in a local thrift store. So jealous!!

Sunday we met visiting Twitter anime pal Dylan for lunch at a crowded, slow, brunch-filled Lakeview, and then we dropped him off and drove out to Grand Bend and got in some late summer swimming and beach time. The water was just about perfect. We got back to town really late and that was the weekend. Oh yeah, we stopped off at the antique mall in Stratford.

Shain and I have a terrible kitsch addiction that leads us to buy dumb old comic books, advertising paphernalia, weird old records, cheesy toys, fragile knick-knacks, and anything else that catches our eye. We feed this habit by getting in the car on weekends and visiting various flea markets and antique malls dotted throughout the hinterlands. But occasionally people put on shows of various kinds, and we try to hit those as well. Usually around this time I try to work out some kind of calendar collating the various show schedules so the things don't sneak up on us.

Notably missing from this calendar are comic book shows, apart from TCAF, which is a great show but isn't really the kind of room full of longboxes of old comics we're talking about here. Wizard bought the Paradise show and turned it into wrestlers and movie stars, and the big Hobbystar show in August has always been wrestlers and movie stars. If there's a comic show in Toronto that's mostly a big room full of people selling old comic books to each other, I've missed it. If there's one in Buffalo they are doing a great job of hiding it. Come on guys, give us our comic book show. Just a room full of tables and longboxes and big hairy guys talking about Lou Fine inks, that's all I ask.

Toronto Downtown Record Show
April 1, 2012
11-4
Estonian Banquet Hall
958 Broadview
$5
Not a bad show, parking is iffy, prices vary widely.

Vibrations Record Show
April 15, 2012
10-4pm
Capitol Banquet Centre 6435 Dixie Road, Mississauga, ON
Admission Price: $5
(haven't been to a record show in a while. Last time we hit this one we got some neat stuff.)

Ancaster Nostalgia Show and Sale
April 15
Marritt Hall, Ancaster Fairgrounds, 630 Trinity Road,
10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Adm: $5.
ancastershow.blogspot.com
(dunno what this one will be like, but it's a nice ride out to Ancaster so we might do this instead of the record show)

Deep Groove Record Swap
April 28
1-6pm
The Brain, 199 James St. North
FREE!

Toronto Nostalgia Show & Sale
April 29
Capitol Banquet Centre, 6435 Dixie Road,
10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Adm: $6 per person.
email torontonostalgiashow@gmail.com
(have no idea what this show will be like.)

TCAF
May 5-6
http://www.torontocomics.com/
At the Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge. This is pretty much the big one for non-stupid comics.

Anime North
May 25-27
http://www.animenorth.com/
Anime Hell is Friday night 10pm!

NXNE Saturday Vinyl Market
Sat June 16
10-6pm
Toronto Hyatt Regency, 3rd Floor
370 King Street West, Toronto, ON M5V 1J9
$5

Con Bravo
July 27-29
http://www.conbravo.com/
Went to this one last year and had a good time. We may be out of the country on this date, though.

Sometime in September is the SF/Anime Flea Market at the Toronto Reference Library. We usually get a table and sell comics and junk. Always worth checking out, and it's FREE.

AWA
September 28-30
http://www.awa-con.com/
Can't stay away from this one.

Vibrations Record Show
October 14, 2012
Capitol Banquet Centre 6435 Dixie Road, Mississauga, ON
Admission Price: $5
If we don't go in April we'll definitely hit this one in October.

Toronto Downtown Record Show
Nov 4, 2012
11-4
Estonian Banquet Hall 958 Broadview
$5

Toronto Toy & Doll Collector's Show
Nov 18, 2012
(possibly at) Hall 4 The International Centre,
6900 Airport Rd., Mississauga, ON