If you’re looking for something interesting, fun, inexpensive and unusual to do this weekend in Accordion City, you might want to check out TCAF, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. It’s a celebration of comics, graphic novels and other forms of “serial art” (to use the coinage by Scott McCloud, author/illustrator of Understanding Comics). It’s been going on all week, but the really big stuff is happening this weekend at the Toronto Reference Library, and it’s free to attend! The Reference Library is right on top of Bloor/Yonge station, so if you can, save yourself some parking hassles and take the subway. (Or if you can, bike there — Bloor Street’s a great bike route.)
Among the artists you can meet are Bryan Lee O’Malley, creator of Scott Pilgrim (now a major motion picture!):
Alison Bechdel, creator of Dykes to Watch Out For and the Bechdel Test for movies (Does the movie have two named women in it? Who talk to each other? About some topic other than a man?)
And one of my favourite comic artists, Kate Beaton, creator of Hark! A Vagrant!
I’ve already got plans for today, but I’m going to try to catch some of it tomorrow.
2 replies on “Toronto Comic Arts Festival This Weekend!”
Wow, what a weekend:
Avengers opening weekend (expect smashing box office numbers).
Free Comic Book Day.
Toronto Comic Arts Festival.
If I went back in time and told my high-school self that some day comic book culture will become this mainstream, his head would explode.
I lecture on Bechdel’s Fun Home every year in Glasgow’s Comp Lit class, and I’m eagerly awaiting the release of Are You My Mother? in hard copy; meeting her would be a high point of the weekend for me. If you see her, send my regards.