I went to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival today and met some really neat people.
All the webcomic artists were smushed together into the Beeton Auditorium (which had been titled Beaton on the TCAF signs either by mistake or in homage to Kate Beaton). There were about 30 artists/hangers on manning (personing?) the tables and probably 100 people browsing in a room that couldn’t have been more than about 30’x30’. It was a bit warm, to say the least.
I was on a mission today. I wanted to get books from David Malki !, Ryan North and Kate Beaton and in this, I was successful. I had a secondary goal of being cool and polite and impressing them all with my charm. In this second goal I failed miserably.
I don’t often have brushes with celebrity of any kind and so I really don’t have any sort of mental picture of how to behave around somebody that is (at least to my mind) pretty famous. I pretty much just blithered and made partial sentences with regards to how much I liked their work and could I please buy some of it printed on paper and oh man you are pretty rad and crap I am demonstrating the worst fanboyism I have ever done in my life and thank you so much for writing nice things in my new books.
Ryan North is way taller in person than I had expected him to be and has a very firm and pleasant handshake. It just occurred to me now that there is a pretty good chance that given the temperature of the room my palms may well have been sweaty. D:
Joey Comeau and Emily Horne were at the table next to Kate Beaton and had no easy means of getting out so he just sort of crawled out under the table between boxes of merch. I noticed some money lying on the floor and asked the girls standing nearest it if it was theirs. They said no so I picked it up and split it with them. I figured that their honesty deserved reward. Attention anybody who was in the webcomics room and lost $10! Ryan North has some of it and so do some girls, one of whom was wearing a yellow t-shirt so you should ask them for it if you want it back.