TCAF - Toronto Comic Arts Festival - May 9-10

This weekend, readers, writers, artists, publishers and fans of comix will converge at the Toronto Reference Library to take part in the the FREE Toronto Comic Arts Festival.

Among the talented people who will be at TCAF this year are a small number of comix professionals who have done work that has already been mentioned at the Jewish Comics Blog.

* Willow Dawson, a talented Canadian artist, who has illustrated the anthology No Girls Allowed : Tales of Daring Women Dressed as Men for Love, Freedom and Adventure, written by Susan Hughes & published by Kids Can Press. The anthology includes the story of Esther Brandeau, the first Jewish person to immigrate to Canada.

* Dan Goldman, author-illustrator of a short piece titled "Schmear" (in Smut Peddler #2), which he describes as "Jewish porn" (since it takes place in the backroom of a Brooklyn bagel shop), as well as a special 1-page illustration for The New York Post titled "Israel Turns 60".

* Miss Lasko-Gross, author-illustrator of the graphic autobiography Escape from "Special" and A Mess of Everything

* Miriam Libicki, author-illustrator of the jobnik! series, the first volume of which has been collected in trade paperback, the illustrated essays "Towards a Hot Jew: The Israeli Soldier as Fetish Object" and "Jewish Memoir Goes Pow! Zap! Oy!" & the illustrated mini-journals Ceasefire and Fierce Ease.

* Jim Ottaviani, author of Wire Mothers: Harry Harlow and the Science of Love and Fallout : J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and the Political Science of the Atomic Bomb

Paul Pope, author-illustrator of the story "Berlin Batman" in The Batman Chronicles #11 (reprinted in Batman : Year 100, in which Batman is a Jewish painter named Baruch Wane.

Jonathan Rosenberg, author-illustrator of the webcomic Goats, which includes the Jewish character "Jon", as seen in the strip from Nov. 24, 2005

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According to the Facebook guest list, both Alan Oirich (author of issues 1 & 2 of the comic book series Jewish Hero Corps and Gina Kamentsky (author-illustrator of the comic book series T-Gina) will be attending, although neither of them are official guests (i.e. they will be around, but will not have exhibitor tables).