It’s hard to pinpoint the exact cause of comics’ increasing popularity. Perhaps the influx of blockbuster superhero movies is responsible for placing these panels in front of the public eye, or maybe it’s the increase of social media and sharing platforms that have allowed art to be seen and distributed more easily than ever before. Whatever the cause, the medium has seen a significant claim to legitimacy in recent years, and the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) is but one indicator of that.
Now in its sixth year being hosted at the Toronto Reference Library, the TCAF is as big as it’s ever been. The festival, which celebrates and promotes the artistic and literary legitimacy of the comic medium, has grown since its conception in 2003 where roughly 600 attendees were present, to pulling in over 20,000 comic fans at TCAF 2014.
A fundamental goal of the festival is to promote not only the medium of comics, but also the artists behind the pages. Here, we dive into the careers of a few Canadian comic creators whose work caught our eyes at TCAF 2015.
Jason Loo
Since launching his Kickstarter campaign last May to fund his series, The Pitiful Human Lizard, Jason Loo has had quite a year. A graduate of Sheridan College, Loo spent several years contributing his art to a handful of newspapers and comic series in Canada. He has contributed to the Globe and Mail, and has written a comic about the Canadian team of G.I. Joes.
With four issues of The Pitiful Human Lizard released — the fourth of which launched at TCAF — Loo has seen an overwhelmingly positive response from the fans he has met at conventions and live events in and around the city.
Loo set his story in a near-to-perfect Toronto. From the geography to the diverse cast of characters, The Pitiful Human Lizard depicts Toronto, in the comic, ravaged by giant monsters, and a handful of wannabe heroes frantically running around in an attempt to save the day.
Jason believes a superhero story that is situated in Toronto is long overdue. “This city hasn’t been that celebrated in the comic book medium,” Loo explains. “I mean you have Scott Pilgrim and a handful of others, but really not many when you compare it with someplace like New York.” Throughout the story, The Human Lizard visits city landmarks like The R.O.M., Sneaky Dee’s, and most recently, Kensington Market.
While Jason is the writer, illustrator, and lead creative mind for the series, he works closely with editor Allison O’Toole, who recently wrote a mini comic about The Pitiful Human Lizard for Free Comic Book Day starring one of the great heroes in Loo’s series, Mother Wonder. Though keeping creative control over the series is key for Loo, he is excited about giving other creators a chance to shine.
Chip Zdarsky
In the past, mainstream comic books have taken a lot of flak for what many critics view as an over reliance of repetitive or recycled story plots. With this in mind, I’m fairly certain the synopsis for illustrator Chip Zdarsky and writer Matt Fraction’s Sex Criminals is unlike anything you’ve ever heard. In Sex Criminals, newly formed couple Suzie and Jon discover — in the midst of an intimate moment — that they can stop the flow of time when they orgasm. Like any sensible young couple would do, they decide to use this power to rob banks.
Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Zdarsky was given the birth name Steve Murray, but adopted the pseudonym Chip Zdarsky in the early 2000s for his comics and illustrative works. Under the name Steve Murray, he contributed to the National Post for over a decade as both an illustrator and writer of a humour column titled Extremely Bad Advice. In the middle of 2013, the Canadian illustrator joined forces with Matt Fraction, the writer responsible for the recent publication of Hawkeye, for an entirely new project.
Though Sex Criminals’ shocking title drew in many readers, it’s the substance within Zdarsky and Fraction’s book that has created quite the following. Both the art and writing have been praised by countless sources, even earning the number one spot on Time Magazine‘s list of the top ten comics and graphic novels of 2013. The elegant, edgy colour and design choices Zdarsky makes are apparent even from the cover of Sex Criminals’ first issue.
Julie Doucet
Looking back at her long history of work, Julie Doucet is the closest thing to a veteran of Canadian comics. Throughout the 1990s the Quebecois artist made substantial leaps forward for women in comics thanks to her wonderfully bizarre art style and unconventional, fantasy-driven stories.
Doucet’s art style is nothing short of iconic. In works like Dirty Plotte and My New York Diary, Doucet comes across as a visual hoarder, cramming any and every trinket she can dream up into the background of her characters’ rooms. It’s a meticulously unorganized look that Doucet stirs up, and the entirely unique nature of her work keeps these twenty-something year old comics feeling as fresh as the day she first pencilled them.
In 2000, Doucet announced her departure from the comic book industry to the dismay of many fans. Despite this retirement, she remains an advocate of various forms of art in the Canadian landscape.
