Contagion

Blog-Header-05_18_16LET US BEGIN by thanking the organizers and volunteers at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival for continuing to run the best oiled ship in the sea. We seem to go out of our way to screw up our TCAF plans, year in and year out, but they just won’t let us fail. For the prime digs, the easing of international border crossing and the constant attention to, and anticipation of, our every need, we offer you our sincere gratitude. We promise to earn it in the future.

 

Toronto

 

We breathed a great sigh of relief looking at both Gabby and Sick sitting at the Secret Acres TCAF table, next to Rob and SPACE. As you know, this moment took years to materialize. Though he held genuine and reasonable worries that people might line up at the table to scorn him, Gabby was wrong as usual. He had his chance and he blew it. Bless you, all you forgiving folks, Canadian and otherwise, who greeted us and Gabby with your smiles and your strange, plastic money. We did sell a bunch of Sick and SPACE and pretty much every other book we had, after deliberating whether or not to adjust prices for the exchange rate (which we decided was stupid).

 

Gabby

 

The flagging Canadian dollar certainly contributed to our own ludicrous haul, but who needed an excuse when there were new books from Noah Van Sciver, Matt Furie, Andy Burkholder, Mickey Z, Brian Chippendale (BRIAN CHIPPENDALE TALKED TO US), Rokudenashiko, Powerpaola, Cathy G. Johnson, Joann Sfar, etc? All of those people hung around all weekend. We got to meet Nicholas Gurewitch (NICK GUREWITCH TALKED TO US). He gave us prints. Like presents. Special thanks to Max Weiss, for delivering unto us our favorite submission (of sorts) of the weekend, PAPA TIME. Perhaps the strangest absence was new work from Michael Deforge. That’s never happened before. Think about how crazy that is. Want to know what sucks about TCAF? Though we did find Alex Hoffman and the new Ink Brick, we know we missed a ton of stuff, no matter how many rounds we made.

We missed our neighbors of the past few years, Conundrum Press, but they boasted flagship status for hitting a giant milestone, their 20th anniversary. Conundrum celebrated this with a pretty damn great history/anthology, 20×20, and an even more impressive catalog, which included the likes of: Michel Rabagliati, Chihoi, Simon Bossé, Pascal Girard, Dakota McFadzean, Nina Bunjevac, Jillian Tamaki and Joe Ollmann, the Lord of the DILFs, to name a few. Congratulations, guys!

We lucked out with new neighbors in our old pals, Aaron Costain, who finally, finally finished Entropy (and we knew you could do it, Aaron!) the omnipresent John Martz, the even more omnipresent Dustin Harbin and the good ship Uncivilized Books, manned by none other than Jordan Shiveley. Our own MK Reed hid somewhere in the upper stratosphere of the library, but that didn’t stop her from coming all the way down to chill with us. You should’ve been our mule, MK. That’ll learn ya.

Within an hour of Aaron telling us about Toronto phenomenon, Zanta, we were treated to an actual TCAF Zanta appearance. Zanta was escorted out of the library, but not before doing some impressive push-ups, tearing off his shirt and screaming, “I’m Zanta! Google me!” To be fair, it did snow on Sunday, so Zanta’s appearance was not wholly unwarranted. We Googled him.

 

Library

 

Speaking of Dustin, we call bullshit on Dustin hosting the Dougies, or as they are known in Canada, the Doug Wright Awards, which engages in discriminatory practices by only honoring Canadian cartoonists – but it’s okay for Dustin to host? Really? In protest, we skipped the Dougies for our annual poutine sports bar with Annie Koyama and a little bit of Chris Pitzer. But just as it hung over the Dougies, the shadow of Darwyn Cooke‘s sudden death fell over our Blue Hawaiian cocktails. We knew Darwyn a bit from our days at the Distinguished Competition. We’re sitting on some stories about that man which would knock your teeth out, but what a terrible loss for comics. No, we’re not going to gossip. Unless we’re drunk and talking to Heidi in the lobby of the Marriott while trying not to stare at Tom Devlin’s track jacket and ponytail combo and wondering how he convinced Peggy that outfit was okay.

 

Wine of Purity

 

For the first time in forever, we brought enough of a gang to sneak out to some panels. The winner, by far, was the little panel on artists “In the Studio,” with our idol, Bendik Kaltenborn, our mancrush, Brecht Evens, our bro, Kevin Czap, and the obviously bonkers but wonderfully talented MariNaomi. MariNaomi, by way of telling us all how she compulsively buys up pens for fear of running out of them, somehow leapfrogged to sharing her obsession with Chuck Berry’s habit of eating shit, literally, and how he was caught videotaping women customers defecating in the bathroom of his restaurant, Blueberry Hill. Of course, this derailed the panel completely, with MariNaomi exclaiming, in her best Chuck Berry voice, “COME TO PAPA… …yeeeaaah.” We left the table for that and we were glad. Also, now, MariNaomi, someone might stumble upon this mention of Chuck Berry’s sexual habits in their internet searches. PAPA TIME indeed!

On that note, we’re pooped. We have a lot of reading to do now that Gabby is safely returned to Chicago and Rob to Cambridge. We’ll be heading to Chicago, too, since CAKE, the Chicago Alternative (K)omics Expo is on deck. See you in a few.

Your Pals,

Leon and Barry

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