Well, I went to TCAF on the weekend, both Saturday and Sunday. It was fun. I spent a fair amount of time talking to Evan Munday. I also got to meet several webcomic artists whose work I was aware of including Chris Hastings writer/artists of Doctor McNinja (I bought his collection), and Ryan North of Dinosuar Comics fame (I bought his collection also).

I bought some other comics from the participants from Evan Munday's friends at Sketchkrieg!, Jason Loo (I already own the 5 issue run of Popper Cosmic) and Zen Rankin I bought copies of AWOL'd and Action Satisfaction Supreme No. 1 respectively.

Going further afield I discovered that Jim Ottaviani the man behind G.T. Labs who has written a series of comics about significant figures and events in the history of science. I bought five of his books over the course of the weekend, these included Dignifying Science, Suspended in Language, Fallout, Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards and Wire Mothers. I already owned Two Fisted Science a fun and pretty accurate (or at least reflective of real accounts) anthology of stories about a variety of scientists and periods (a lot of Richard Feynman stories). I look forward to reading the rest of his work (hopefully I will not suffer buyers remorse), being in the field of history of science makes the stories interesting but also makes me notice where he has gone astray.

Right next to GT Labs table was that of Carla Speed McNeil. I was so intrigued by her artwork and engaged by my conversation with her about things that I bought one of her books Talisman. Looks interesting I may tell you what I think later.

Walking the festival floor I was drawn by the cover of the first issue of Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen artists Scott Chantler was on site so I bought a copy of the first issue of the series. The artwork is pretty good but overall the comic is nothing special (just your average space opera parody really).

I also bought the Annotated Pilgrim from Bryan Lee O'Malley the creator, writer and artist of Scott Pilgrim. I have the first book in the series and have ordered the second so I decided to buy the Annotation which is not something I think I could order from my local shop (it is a staple bound 8 1/2 by 11 publication). My apartment is in the area of Toronto where much of the action of Scott Pilgrim takes place and only a block from the Beguiling the comic book store that helped organize TCAF (and who sells a lot of independent comics). Ironically I do not much shop at the Beguiling preferring to shop at my old favourite Comic Connection in Oakville (I still go back to Oakville a lot to visit my parents or house sit like now). In addition to the geographic appeal Scott Pilgrim also seems to play to my days as a kid playing Nintendo.

I went to several of the panels one on Saturday was on Manga by former Viz editor Jason Thompson. He gave an engaging presentation on the different markets and genres for Manga in Japan. On Sunday I went to his booth where he was selling offerings based on his webcomics. I got a print of RPG-Oh [don't know how to put in Kanji]- King of RPGs, the tale of a kid who is dedicated to being the best Dungeon Master ever, which is short and fun (if not exactly amazingly original or anything) and he gave me a copy of Yeperenye (which I am no clear what it is about other than Australia). He also does a regular webcomic and is writing an encyclopedia of Manga.

I went to two panels other than the Manga one. One was the one on Webcomics which was less focussed but I like learning about anything so I enjoyed hearing the webcomic artists talk about their trials and tribulations. Although since I read a couple of webcomics and have been to similar panels before not much was new to me. The other was a panel on comics in the academy featuring Rohanna Green (University of Toronto, English), Alan Rhodes (York University, Communication and Culture), Anne Rubenstein (York University, History), Jeet Heer (York University, History) and Moderator Nick Shyminsky (York University, committee for Social and Political thought). This was fun and stimulating even if it has nothing much to do with my work. I enjoy the academic discussion of things I am interested in so I hope comic studies will have a bright future. I especially enjoy contrasting the academic approach to the less cerebral approach of fans on the internet. Interestingly several of the speakers expressed a desire to go native (i.e. bridge the conversation between lay person and academic). In science studies there is a certain desire to keep ones distance from the science and scientists to be studied (although not universally) and often a certain lack of appreciation of the methods and goals of history, philosophy and other studies of science by (some) scientists.

Before leaving I got one final comic (at half price). The collection of Ragmop by Rob Walton. It is a cute absurd action comdey comic with shares of odd science and classic pop culture references and lots of political criticism of things from a liberal perspective (i.e. highly critical of the current Bush administration and the neo-conservative agenda that spawned it). I actually finished reading this today. Its a fun book even if it gets heavy handed in its criticism (probably more of a problem if you really disagree with the criticism).

One slight hitch in my weekend was lunch on Sunday, which I regurgitated (luckily I made it to a bathroom in time). But I felt fine afterwards so it did not really slow me down much.

I also went and saw Transformers on Saturday. It is a very long movie, often including very silly and even stupid humour (despite a serious action movie plot) and does not focus much on the title characters (but then neither did Lord of the Rings if you think about it). I had very low expectations going in and these were pleasantly overturned. Not a great movie (perhaps not really a good movie) it was fun and not really much worse than the original Transformers movie (ducks).

Since then I've been having a lazy week. I played softball on Monday, did some food shopping yesterday (actually got some work done too). And today has been even less eventful (hopefully this entry is not my only accomplishment).

In the meme watch (note last time I called this a mime), following daisho, I filled out the which transformer are you quiz. Apparently I'm Bumblebee: I AM
81%
BUMBLEBEETake the Transformers Quiz

Hmm, this entry seems a tad long.

Edit: One more thing I also saw a talk given by Paul Gravett on the history of British comics. This was quite an interesting if very cursory (he was covering over a hundred years of history in less than an hour) look at something I knew very little about (other than the Rupert Annual I got as a kid). Obviously based on the work he did for his book Great British Comics, one book I resisted buying. He may be more famous for his book Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics, another one I resisted buying. I talked to him very briefly after the talk. Mostly about the Supermarination stuff I saw on a local cable channel years ago. He seems a very amiable sort.