Saturday At TCAF 2024 In Pictures
by Koom Kankesan
The Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) ran this weekend. There were panels all day long, both days, as well as programming for kids and comics professionals. Most of all, it was a great chance to see work from cartoonists of all stripes, buy new books, spot old pros, and surge through crowds at the Toronto Reference Library. Here are my pictures from Saturday.
The lineups were already long at the beginning of the day. Luckily, scholar Chris Zeichmann and comics enthusiast Victoria Kraus were there to keep me chatting happily as the lines inched forward:
We lined up patiently at the Drawn and Quarterly table in order to catch Adrian Tomine, Chester Brown, and Seth:
We also ran into David Bragdon, seen here promoting the Toronto Comic Jam, while waiting in line:
Next I caught the panel where moderator Mark Askwith interviewed Gene Luen Yang whose career has really skyrocketed — he was pretty down to earth despite having secured writing contracts with DC and having a show produced by Disney+. He talked about having Michelle Yeoh working on his show while she won her Oscar for Everything Everywhere All At Once:
Next was the panel focused on the release of the second volume celebrating the classic Canadian cartoonist Doug Wright. The first volume came out years ago and the second was crowdfunded. Stemming from a lot of research and interviews done by Brad Mackay and Seth, the first volume was published by the founder of Drawn and Quarterly, Chris Oliveros. Joe Ollmann moderated the panel and a couple of Doug Wright’s children were there on hand to weigh in on their father and his work:
Next came the memorial panel for Joe Matt. I’ve written on this site how I feel about Joe, so suffice to say, I was heartened to see how packed the room was for this panel. People on this panel included Chris Oliveros, Adrian Tomine, Seth, and Chester Brown. Jeet Heer moderated:
You can see Heer standing off to the side here (on the right) as the panelists for the panel on British cartoonists set up:
The rest of the afternoon was spent catching up over drinks. Here’s a photo with Victoria Kraus (Joe Matt’s ex and good friend), Seth (Joe’s cartoonist pal), and Peter (Joe’s brother who, along with Kraus, trekked up here from Philadelphia in order to catch the memorial for Joe):
Seth, generous as ever, gave me a couple of things. One was a copy of a Stephen Leacock book (Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town) he’d illustrated. He was kind enough to draw something in it for me:
The other is one of the prints from the 90s that Seth, Chester, and Joe collaborated on. I’ve been looking for one forever. You can imagine how I felt to finally get one!
It makes me sad that Seth no longer lives in Toronto and of course, Joe passed away last year. Thankfully, I still live within walking distance to Chester so that’s good. So many years have gone by. Though I’m not a cartoonist myself, comics and the people who make them have given me so much over the years that I can’t imagine what my life would be like without them. This was true when I was a kid and if anything, it’s even more true today. How many other professions can claim such warmth? I’ll look forward to tomorrow and post more photos.
