Only one day until the whole family flies to Toronto with me for TCAF! You can find me wandering around a lot, but also at:

Saturday, 10:15am-11:15am: Concept Comics: Abstract Comics Ideas. Bill Kartalopoulos will investigate the challenges and opportunities of communicating abstract ideas in the comics form with artists Tom Kaczynski, Scott McCloud, Dash Shaw and Jason Shiga. Learning Centre 1.

Saturday, 2:00pm-3:30pm: Scott McCloud: FAQ. The author of Understanding Comics, Making Comics, and ZOT! will be talking and taking questions from the audience! Have you ever had a question for Scott McCloud? Well here’s your chance to ask Scott! TD Gallery.

Sunday, 1:00pm-2:30pm: Newspapers, Comic Books, and The Internet. Featuring R. Stevens, Scott McCloud, Stuart Immonen, Brendan Buford, and John Martz. Moderated by Steven Murray. Learning Centre 1

[Photo: Edgar Wright’s snapshot of Mr. O’Malley on the set of the Toronto-based Scott Pilgrim film w/Michael Cera, filming right now.]

This was pretty much our experience with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as well (during our drive through B.C. on the way down from Alaska in 2007). A fine, polite fellow was our Mountie.

Off to New York for the seminar and reference photos for the GN.

Hm. Must blog something…

Ooh—Kate Beaton collection! There. That was easy.

Dylan Meconis began her webcomic about vampires in the French Revolution back in high school, but you’d never know it from the smart, funny writing and accomplished artwork.

Now we can finally own it as a book so all is right in print as it is in pixels.

Also out this month (with a considerably bigger spine) is Tatsumi’s monumental A Drifting Life which I’ve been reading with great interest. Early in the book, the young cartoonist meets his hero, Osamu Tezuka, still in med school, but already a Manga sensation. I’d pulled over in my car to a shady spot to read a bit, and it made me think about how I’d been influenced by Tezuka, and had the pleasure of meeting some of my own heroes like Eisner when I was just starting out.

Starting to drive again, I realized that I was about to pass the cemetery where Jack Kirby was buried. I pulled in, parked, and picked up a small stone.

Dylan Meconis was in late elementary school when Jack Kirby died, and barely out of kindergarten when we lost Tezuka, but their genetic traces run through almost anyone making comics in America today, whether they realize it or not. It’s a long, long lineage, and it’ll be longer still with any luck.

It’s all here. Help out one comics’ greats any way you can.

Also going the distance is David Chelsea who’ll be dedicating his next 24-hour comic event to raising money for Wilson.

Larry Marder is collecting his amazing Beanworlds into gorgeous new volumes from Dark Horse. They feel heavy, blocky and wonderful. Soon there will be NEW Beanworlds and all the world will rejoice, but for now add this collection to your must-have list. It even includes my original introduction from almost exactly 20 years ago.

From Mind TV (via Tom), comes this great bit of shop talk from one of America’s most thoughtful cartoonists. Would love to see a central repository of these kinds of videos someday. Cartoonists could learn a lot from each other.

No one has had more influence over my art than my old friend, the legendary Brian Dewan. He’s a songwriter, composer, builder, music historian, and fine artist, but in my world he’s always been, first and foremost, a cartoonist, because he understands better than anybody how ideas and images can be distilled to their essence, a magic trick I’m still trying to learn.

I talk a lot about how Kurt Busiek got me into comics in junior high school, but despite a statistically-improbable cluster of geniuses my age growing up within a block of my house in Lexington, MA (including Brian’s amazing brother Ted whose photo of Brian I stole above), no one did more to unlock the mysteries of art for me than Brian.

One of Brian’s coolest inventions, his funny, touching, brilliant, insane, and unforgettable filmstrips, have been issued as a DVD collection from Bright Red Rocket. I can’t recommend them highly enough. Here’s an audio portrait of the talented Mr. Dewan, courtesy of NPR, which includes the filmstrip Innovations (from which the above screenshots were taken) if you’d like a sample.

Lucy + Erika = Awesome. Hey, and there’s still time to order Erika’s new book and reward one of the many printers out there that aren’t prudes.

Cartoonists are visual artists. We should all have better headshots. Everybody’s been enjoying the great photos of NYC comics artists that Seth Kushner has been taking, but I think my favorite is this one from a recent interview with James Kochalka. If anyone out there has a better headshot than that, I’d love to see it.