Every year TCAF grows its hard to keep up with all the talks and panels, so many great ones at the same time, it’s hard to choose. One of the panels I really liked was Craig Thompson (Blankets) I’m a big fan of his work. He talked about his new serialized comic Ginseng Roots. I found some parallels in his life to my own childhood. As a kid he had summer jobs working on a ginseng farm, picking rocks from the fields, hoeing weeds and all the things that go along with growing that crop. The money he made was not much but it paid for his comic habit! He equated how much money he made with how many comics he could buy. He mentioned now a days immigrants do most of that work, back then it was a  summer job for teens but not anymore, either they don’t want to do that kind of work because it is hard, or the immigrants  don’t mind the hot sun and work harder. When I was old enough to work in the farmer’s fields, I did every summer into my late teens. I picked beans, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, we hoed weeds and picked rocks out of the fields so they would’t damage the farmers machinery. With the money I made I’d buy Basil Wolverton gum cards at the corner store. They were exaggerated cartoons of faces with common names. We would find our friends name and laugh at the ugly face on the card while we chewed our gum. Wolvertons were a big influence on me, I started drawing caricatures throughout my art college days, that money paid for my tuition!

 

Anyway… getting back to TCAF. The range of diverse art styles was inspiring. I was incredibly happy to be part of all the debut books at the Conundrum table. I also had a signing on Saturday and Sunday as well as a panel called Then and Now with Jeffrey Ellis of (Cloudscape Comic)a publisher from Vancouver,  soon to publish my son Alex’s comic, in the fall! Michael Charka (Silent Invasion) was also on the panel, with our moderator Brendan Montgomery of Sequential magazine. There’s a review of Aurora BoreAlice in the latest issue. Ken and I were also interviewed by Aaron Broverman of Speech Bubble Podcast. There’s also an interview I did with Comics Journal but I’m not sure when it’s coming out… I keep you posted.

Basil Wolverton cartoons

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The last two weeks have been exciting, interesting, exhausting and fun! I’ll try and keep this as brief as I can - ha! Now that I have some time to reflect… I'm at my brothers place in the country with no internet (not a bad thing). I walked three miles to town to get it, or sometimes I hitch a lift, so I won't be posting to often.

First day at TCAF The Toronto Comic Art Convention. Ken and I started with educators day the Friday before the con. The whole day was organized with panels and talks on a wide range of subjects for librarians and educators. Raina Telgemeier (Smile) Scott Chandler ( Two Generals), Gord Hall (War On The Coast), James Daidge ( Utopia) and more, it was hard to keep up... 

There were also lots of publishers showing graphic novels, so many more now then when I first made an appearance at TCAF in 2011. The two publishers that stood out for me were First Second from New York and Manga Classics. The enthusiasm of the publisher of First second was exciting when he talked about the reneasance  that is happening  now in graphic novels being published. Scott McLoud's novel on Visual Literacy will be out soon - can’t wait! Also a new line of Science Comics and Maker Comics. The other publication I found inspiring was www.mangaclssics.com. They’re  publishing a whole line of classics, from Shakespeare to Poe but the kicker is the artwork style is Manga, these are not adaptations, they’re the original text and young people are eating them up! The form has changed but not the content. A lot of the classics in literature are being transformed and published at a fast pace, kid’s no longer bulk at reading them anymore. Teachers who grasp this new form will have an easier job trying to get kids into reading the classics. That is, the teachers who are progressive...

That was Friday, Educators Day, it was very well organized by TCAF. Later I’ll fill you in on Sat. and Sun.

https://www.cbc.ca/books/10-canadian-comics-to-read-right-now-1.5122450

I'm very excited about this!!! I'm leaving tomorrow - can't wait!

The image below is me when I was in my early teens. This was my junkyard playground, where I grew up. My dad wasn’t the most organized, random junk came and went over the years... scrap cars, appliances, anything made of steel, tin, brass or copper.  One year my dad got in some old vending machines, it was a gold mine for us because we found lots of money that had fallen in the back of machine! I think we made more money that way then my dad did from scrapping the machine!! I’m not sure how the toilet got in there but it did...

The little house in the background was our first home before we had electricity, didn’t have that till the early 60s - hard to believe! But we managed, four kids and my parents in that small house. I still remember my mum heating water on a wood burning iron stove, so we could have a bath in a metal tub, I often shared with my sisters. I have lots more pictures were that came from...

Okay... guess who? 

I've been looking through some old photos and found this, I used as reference for a page in my graphic novel. The page is below. When I was growing up in my dad's junkyard we had some interesting junk to play around in... This was a Shell gas station sign from back in the 60's.  I might have been about ten when this photo was taken. That's me with the pole, our junkyard dog, my sister Beryl standing on the shell with my friend Kathy, who I'm still friends with. The pond or rather swamp was lots of fun in the summer and in the winter became our skating rink, near the front of our house. The pond has since dried up.

I made the Shell sign more visible in my drawing as you can see, with my brother and

sister playing. The house I grew up in is in the background and my brother still lives there. I visit every summer and winter. That's my nostalgia trip for today!