Heading down to TCAF

Preparing to go to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) this weekend.  Despite it, obviously, being in Toronto and me, not quite so obviously, also being in Toronto, I haven't attended the show before.  Should be interesting.  The main reason I'm going, of course, is the attendance of Larry Marder, of Beanworld fame.  He's giving a history of the Beanworld show on Saturday afternoon, so I'll definitely be there for that.

Looking down the full guest list, I don't recognize a lot of these names, but I've been kind of out of touch with new independent comics for a while now.

One name that jumps out is Charles Vess, whose work I've been reading for some twenty years or more.  Hell, my review of his BOOK OF BALLADS was the second ever post on this weblog, after a short introductory post.  I'll have to get that signed.  Maybe one of his old TALES OF ASGARD things.

And Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer both, that's pretty good.  I love all sorts of stuff they've done together and separately, MILK AND CHEESE, PIRATE CORPS, ACTION GIRL, SUPERMAN ADVENTURES.  Hm, I was thinking KID BLASTOFF would be a good thing to bring for signing, but it seems to be misfiled...

Good to see Jim Ottaviani on the guest list.  I have a bunch of his books about real-life science from GT Labs, starting with TWO-FISTED SCIENCE.  Think I might have missed a few of the more recent ones, so maybe I can catch up.

So that's a pretty good list of people to look up.  Depending on how long that takes and how long I feel like sticking around, I might also stop by and see a few of the other names I recognize who've done work I enjoyed, like Salgood Sam (SEA OF RED), Jim Rugg (STREET ANGEL), Roger Langridge (FRED THE CLOWN), James Sturm (GOLEM'S MIGHTY SWING), Paul Pope (100%) and some others, and see if I can spot anything unfamiliar which looks interesting.