Toronto Comics Art Festival 2005
29 May 2005, evening time
Dave and I met for lunch today, and then made our way over to the Toronto Comics Art Festival. There were a bunch of artists Dave wanted to see, and since I like comic books so I thought I’d tag along. Two tents were set up to house the artists. One was a tent for artists that do comics for Children, the other was for everyone else. Andy Lee was outside painting a picture of Optimus Prime when Dave and I arrived. His shirt wasn’t as black as the last time I saw him, but it was getting there.
The first tent wasn’t that busy. Besides the children’s comic artists, there were also the guys and girls that do the Flight anthologies sitting at one table, and Kid Koala and Louisa Scabas, who did Nufonia Must Fall together, sitting at another. I almost bought Nufonia Must Fall a few years back when I saw it at Chapters. I bought the comic today at Dave’s suggestion. The comic comes with its own ambient soundtrack that is quite good, albeit short. After Dave chatted with a few of the artists from the Flight anthologies, we made our way over to the second tent.
The second tent was packed full of people. There was table after table of comics and art for sale. Everything looked impressive, so it was hard to force myself not to blow all my money on new comics. I’m not really hip to the comic book scene, so I didn’t recognize anything or anyone—that is until I saw a book with a stick man on the cover. It turns out Sam Brown from Exploding Dog was at the show. His site is amazing. I told him as much. He came off as a very humble guy. I picked up his comic Amazing Rain. Apparently Sam Brown used to live next to Richard Stevens, the artist behind Diesel Sweeties. Stevens, who was sitting right next to Sam Brown, was also a very nice guy. I snapped a photo of the pair, before Dave and I headed out.
On our way out, Andy Lee was painting someone a picture of one of the covers from the Marvels series.