From the always entertaining and hard to find Murray Roach.

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Deidre and I went for about an hour or so yesterday - looked like the show had a good turn out. The few things I did:

(1) Got a nifty sketch from Jeff Smith and he signed my “Complete Bone”. The coolest happening in the Jeff Smith line other than Jeff Smith himself - Chester Brown walked by and Jeff quit signing to ask Brown if could sign his copy of Louis Riel. It’s always neat to see a guy with Jeff Smith type talent gushing over another artist. Chester took the book and said “Mind if I take this and bring it back? I want to add something to it b/c it’s for you.” Jeff was part of the Scholastic booth and they was all types of promo materials for the the new coloured releases of Bone. It’s great to see a guy like Smith doing so well on something he obviously loves so much.

(2) Andy Runton rules. What a fantastic guy. My wife and I talked to him for probably 10 minutes, bought an Owly t-shirt, got a couple of copies of FCBD Owly and got Andy to draw sketches and sign both our Owly Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. I plan on sending him a note this week to get a commission or two done b/c he seemed excited at the prospect of doing one and was such a great guy. He really had some fantastic insight on the stories he was producing for Owly, and gave us one quote that will resonate with me for sometime; when my wife and I both said that the times where Owly gets sad were really heart-wrenching, his reply: “But Owly always gets sad!” It’s really a great testament to his abilities as an artist that you can have an emotional attachment to the stories so easily. He also had the prototype “stuffed Owly” that Top Shelf is going to mass produce in the summer. The story behind that? His mom sewed him the prototype and was just taking it to cons as part of his display until at one show he had to tell a little girl “Sorry, that’s not for sale” and it looked like it broke her heart. Mark my words - Runton will be the next Jeff Smith.

(3) Jim Mahfood also rules. He had a bunch of great stories and graciously drew me a “Jay & Silent Bob”, whose’s Oni Double Feature adventures first introduced me to Jim’s work. Looking through Mahfood’s original art it’s brilliant to see the use of blacks. Another great, great artist, no doubt.

Those were all the people I talked to and things I saw. It was my first experience at the TCAF and I’ll have to go back next year now that I’ve seen what it’s like. The creators all seemed so glad to be there because it wasn’t a convention setting - it was an art festival. From what I heard on the floor, the only mob of the week-end was for Jeff Smith (the guest of honour) and it was a very diverse crowd of people all looking for very diverse types of reading!

Spread the word!