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Jim Ottaviani at TCAF, May 9-10 in Toronto

TCAF 2009 logoA reminder that I’ll have the honor of being a guest at this year’s TCAF, to be held May 9-10, 2009, at Toronto’s Reference Library.
Yeah, a comics show at a library. Whatever the world’s coming to, in this regard I like it.

I have one event scheduled so far…I’ll be on the panel “Will Libraries Save Graphic Novels?” on Sunday May 10th, 11:30am -12:30pm, held in Learning Centre I. If you don’t want to go, here’s the short version of my response: Yes. But I hope you join us, because I’m sure the other panelists will have interesting things to say.

If you want answers to questions that won’t get asked of me at the panel, you can read this interview, courtesy of the National Post’s Mark Medley. I’ve never been asked about the Wu-Tang Clan before, so you may find it worth reading just for that!

Kat and I attended TCAF in 2007, and had a splendid time. It wasn’t at the library, but nonetheless the venue was wonderful, as were all the other guests, the city, the weather, the food…you name it, it was great. Best of all, there’s no cost if you’re attending as a member of the general public. Just as an event at a library should be.

T-Minus Zero…at least for me

I have now seen copies of the books, both hardcover and softcover, and I’m delighted with how they turned out. T-Minus 12 days until everyone else can see it too! (Unless you visit me at TCAF this weekend.)

I’m going to Mars, but first…TCAF!

I’m not kidding about Mars. You can go there too!

I’m also not kidding about the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. The guest list is spectacular — I’ll have a hard time staying behind my table when faced with the opportunity to talk with folks like Emmanuel Guibert, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Hope Larson, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Kate Beaton, Stuart and Kathryn Immonen, Michael Cho, and so many others that on second thought I need to hire an intern or someone willing to pretend to be me so I can see all those people! 

TCAF 2009 logoEither way, I can’t wait. This year’s Festival is in the
Toronto Reference Library. Yes, it’s held in a library this year…proof that we
do live in that shiny future we were promised back when we were kids. I hope to see you there.

New site design

If you head over to our parent site , you’ll see an entirely new look. The old design had all the dubious charms of something entirely hand-coded by me. The new gt-labs.com is still hand-crafted, but not all by me, meaning it’s no longer built on a foundation of tar-swabbed timber and insulated with sod — think titanium beams and aerogels. (It does have a sod roof, though, since we’re all about being green.)

Thanks to Suzanne Chapman for her design skills, to Paul Sizer and Jane Irwin for moving me in the right direction and suggesting that I meld a blog into it so many moons ago, and to Kat for her troubleshooting and proofreading!

Elevator pitch: Diamond’s “Graphic Novel Outreach: A BookShelf Roundtable”

A bunch of prominent graphic novel creators and advocates, and me, were asked to give our so-called elevator pitch as to why we think skeptical parents, teachers, librarians, and other non-true-believers should at least consider encouraging people to…well, at least consider reading graphic novels.

The results are in Diamond’s “Graphic Novel Outreach: A BookShelf Roundtable”, and unlike many times I’m quoted, I don’t have many second thoughts on how I would say it better. It helps that I didn’t have to come up with it in an elevator, of course, but now that I have this thing I hope I get to use it someday. Or even better, that I don’t, and that the conversation goes more along the lines of “Oh, you make graphic novels? I loved the one I just finished. It was about…”