TCAF!! (Better Late Than Never!!)

Eesh...almost 9 months since I posted here. Meh. No excuses and no apologies! Just going to forge ahead with a post about a recurring event documented on this here blog - the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF), which took place May 8th and 9th at the Metro Toronto Reference Library (ugh - I'm such a procrastinator). Anyway, this year was extra cool because my super-talented, artist friend Niall, who is currently creating a "Character of the Day" for each day of the year (!!!) set up a table and pimped his wares  Check out his project here: www.nialleccles.com

Niall Eccles and his Character of the Day project at TCAF

As per usual, I spent my time at TCAF hunting down my favourites, discovering new talent, and buying a buttload of books!

A view of the main floor before it filled up with the masses...it was shoulder to shoulder by the afternoon on Saturday.

More awesomeness from the bizarre mind of Scott Campbell.Check out Great Showdowns  where he posts his drawings of classic movie showdowns. I am partial to The Princess Bride showdown between Inigo Montoya and the Six-Fingered Man.

Ken Turner has an amazing style, strongly influenced by Tim Burton. I think he only heard me say "kay" when he asked how I spelled my name. :( 

I will never NOT get a sketch from Graham Annable. He's just too awesome to miss. I think this is another Spock/Mysterio piece, carrying on from last year's theme. That's MY interpretation, anyway. I could be way off, though...

I was worried for a moment that Dustin Harbin cancelled because he was not in his usual spot by the water, but was relieved when I found him with Koyama Press. I like to stock up on any new comics he has for sale and was pleasantly surprised that his Diary Comics #2 came with a free original art page. It took me forever to choose just one, but I finally decided on a page with puppies and Hurley from Lost!

Poor Myles missed out on Sunday, so he wasn't able to get in line for Pendleton Ward of  Adventure Time with Finn and Jake fame. He was a last minute addition to TCAF, and he was selling a CD at his signing table with a bunch of random recordings and a choose-your-own-AUDIO-adventure! My favourite track was him playing and singing Sea of Love (Cat Power version) on a piano he found in his hotel while drunk at 4am. He's apparently a man of many talents.

If you've read my previous convention reports, you will already be well-aware of my adoration for all things Nate Powell. I misunderstood and thought that his new graphic novel, Any Empire, would be available for purchase, but when I spoke to him he said that it's actually going to launch at San Diego next month. BOOOO!!! Oh well, I got my sneak peek of the pages when I was at the SDCC a few years ago (he even remembered me!!! I think that means we are BFFs...heh). I will just have to wait to buy it like a regular chump...unless I can find someone to pick it up for me in SD!!

Did I ever tell you how amazing Top Shelf Productions is? Besides publishing works by a bunch of my favourite artists (Jeffrey Brown, Jeff Lemire, Nate Powell, and Andy Runton, to name a few), they are also smart enough to employ the incomparable Leigh Walton who has a sneaky way of getting me to try out all kinds of new books. This time, he convinced me to buy Lucille because the French author Luduvic Debeurme, was in North America for the first time and I shouldn't let the opportunity to have my book signed pass me by. Lucille is a beautifully told story of two teenagers fighting their personal demons and finding each other. And now my copy has this beautiful sketch on the front page. Thanks so much, Leigh, for being so good at what you do!


My "fun find" this year was a children's book series called Guinea Pig: Pet Shop Private Eye, by Colleen AF Venable. I picked up the first two books of the series for Myles, who was particularly drawn to the titles: "Hamster and Cheese" and "And Then There Were Gnomes". The stories are really cute, but the art by Stephanie Yue is even more adorable! Now I can't wait for the third book, "The Ferret's A Foot".   

Okay. That's enough of that. TCAF is probably the convention that I look forward to the most. I'm glad that it now occurs annually instead of biennially. I'll have to come up with a new theme for my sketchbook before the next one, though. It's probably about time to retire Mysterio...maybe. 

[EDIT: Something strange happened and my original post disappeared...I found this version but it wasn't the *final* one...it was missing stuff about my "fun find" which I've rewritten. ~ks]