All posts by Chris @ The Beguiling

Hi, I'm Christopher Butcher. I'm the co-founder and Festival Director of The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, an annual event promoting Canadian graphic novels and their authors!

Danielle Corsetto’s GIRLS WITH SLINGSHOTS Signing

Danielle Corsetto’s GIRLS WITH SLINGSHOTS
Book Signing & In-store event!
Friday, 14 August 2009, From 6pm-8pm
The Beguiling, 601 Markham Street, Toronto, Canada
(Around the corner from Honest Ed’s, at Bathurst Subway)
FREE

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=111977801355&

Danielle Corsetto is the author of the hit webcomic GIRLS WITH SLINGSHOTS, as well as the former writer/artist of the comic strip adventures of BAT BOY in the weekly world news (following Peter Bagge, natch) and she’s coming to Toronto!

Danielle will be signing, sketching, and hanging out at The Beguiling on Friday, August 14th from 6pm-8pm. She’ll have art, prints, books and more normally available only online!

For more on Danielle Corsetto’s work, check out Girls With Slingshots at http://www.daniellecorsetto.com/gws.html.

See you there!

– Chris @ The Beguiling

MARVEL 70TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY AND SALE

The Beguiling Presents:

The Marvel 70th Anniversary Party and Sale
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009, From 9pm-11pm
@ The Beguiling Books & Art, 601 Markham Street, Toronto, Canada
Just around the corner from Honest Eds, at Bathurst Subway Station
FREE TO ATTEND

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=123224306638

The Beguiling would like to wish Marvel Comics a Happy 70th Birthday, and so we’re participating in this great big international party that they’re throwing. But we’ve decided we’re going to go all out, create a giant, ridiculous event that everyone will enjoy. So, here’s hoping you enjoy it!

The Beguling will close at it’s normal time of 7PM on Tuesday, August 11th, only to reopen 2 hours later for the 70th Anniversary party! That’s right, swing by the store starting at 9PM to join us for the party.

DETAILS:

– Be the first to own “The Marvels Project #1” by the Captain America team of Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting, which will be on sale starting at 9pm. And hey, everyone loves Ed Brubaker, right?

– Have access to ALL of the insane variant covers for The Marvels Project #1, including the 70th Anniversary Variant, the Blank Cover Variant, the 70th Anniversary Edition Party Variant, the Steve McNiven Variant, Gerald Parel Variant, and Steve McNiven Sketch Variant. Prices TBD.

AND EXCLUSIVE TO THE BEGUILING:

– SALE: 20% off U.S. Cover Price on all normally-priced Marvel trade paperbacks

– SALE: Secret in-store sales on select additional Marvel stuff!

– Get a free Marvel 70th Anniversary Poster with any purchase over $100 (limited to the first 5 people).

– MARVEL COMICS TRIVIA CONTEST. PRIZES!

– Snacks and refreshments!

Be there or be square!

– Chris @ The Beguiling

SIGNING: New TANK GIRL Artist Rufus Dayglo in Toronto!

TANK GIRL CANADIAN CAMO TOUR
Featuring New Tank Girl Artist Rufus Dayglo
Friday, August 7th, 2009, 6pm-8pm
@ The Beguiling, 601 Markham Street, Toronto
FREE

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=130975151421

Join The Beguiling in welcoming RUFUS DAYGLO, the brand new artist of TANK GIRL. Handpicked by co-creator and writer Alan C. Martin and co-creator Jamie Hewlett, DAYGLO has been drawing the adventures of Tank, Jet, Booga and company in Britain’s weekly 2000AD anthology for a few months now, and also provided artistic duties alongside Ashley Wood on the recent IDW Tank Girl series’!

Books that Rufus Dayglo have contributed to include:
Tank Girl: The Gifting (IDW)
Tank Girl: Visions of Booga (IDW)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (IDW)
SNAKED (IDW)
2000AD

Rufus Dayglo will be signing and sketching for fans at The Beguiling on Friday, August 7th from 6pm-8pm. The first 20 attendees will get a free copy of 2000AD with an Alan Martin/Rufus Dayglo TANK GIRL story in it!

This event is free to attend!

The Beguiling at Comic-Con International: San Diego

(This one is for our international customers, enjoy! – Chris @ The Beguiling)

The Beguiling: Original Comics Art & Illustration Sales
at The San Diego Comic-Con, July 23-26
Drawn & Quarterly Booth, #1529

The Beguiling will once again be representing the original comics art and illustration sales of more than 3 dozen cartoonists at The San Diego Comic-Con this week, July 23-26 (we will not be at Preview night). The Beguiling’s Peter Birkemoe will be on hand and exhibiting in a small corner of booth #1529, owned by venerable Canadian publisher Drawn + Quarterly.

The Beguiling represents original art by some of alternative comics’ greatest names at their online artstore, http://www.beguiling.com/artstore1a.asp, including D+Q cartoonists Seth, Jason Lutes, and Sammy Harkham, all of whom will be signing at the D+Q booth during Comic-Con. The Beguiling will be sure to have a bunch of art by these fine cartoonists on hand at the show.

Other highlights of this year’s mix of comics art and illustration include:

– Dozens of all-new, never-before offered pages by artist Farel Dalrymple from OMEGA THE UNKNOWN (with Jonathan Lethem), including pages from issues 9 and 10, covers, and process work! Also on hand will be illustrations and the original art for his story in MEATHAUS: SOS.

– For the first time ever, we will be selling the original artwork from the popular U.S. tv series QUEER AS FOLK, by Toronto artist and former-Beguiling-owner Sean Scoffield! These pages feature the character CAPTAIN ASTRO created for the show, with one painting and one pen-and-ink illustration, as well as other work from Scoffield’s recent career at Marvel Comics.

– Recent art from Norwegian cartoonist Jason (LOW MOON), Kevin Huizenga (CURSES), Maurice Vellekoop (PIN-UPS), Anders Nilsen (DOGS & WATER), Jeff Lemire (ESSEX COUNTY), Becky Cloonan (AMERICAN VIRGIN) and more!

– If all goes according to plan, we will have some last-minute new artwork on-hand from Paul Pope, creator of THB, BATMAN YEAR 100, and WEDNESDAY COMICS. According to Paul, his WEDNESDAY COMICS original art are some of his largest pieces EVER, and this will be the first time that they will be available for sale!

– If you weren’t able to make it to this year’s Toronto Comic Art Festival, then you missed one of the most unique and exclusive releases of the year, Francois Ayroles’ GREAT MOMENTS FROM THE HISTORY OF COMICS. This hilarious comix chapbook sends up all of the greatest creators in comics from around the world, and is an indispensible item for any artcomix fan. GREAT MOMENTS FROM THE HISTORY OF COMICS will be available exclusively at the D&Q booth.

Hate paying for shipping? If you will be at the San Diego Comic-Con and are interested in purchasing a specific piece of art from our website, we will happily bring it to the show for you. If you’d like us to bring a specific piece from our website to take a look at, please contact us at mail@beguiling.com. Unfortunately we are not “holding” art for people unless they have purchased it outright, but we will try to accommodate all requests. Contact mail@beguiling.com for further details.

Also, a number of the artists that we represent will be signing and exhibiting at San Diego this year. Here’s a quick guide to everyone (we think) that will be in San Diego:

Gabriel Ba, Becky Cloonan, Fabio Moon – #1322
Jeffrey Brown, Jeff Lemire – Top Shelf, #1721
Jordan Crane – Fantagraphics, #1716
Sammy Harkham, Jason Lutes, Seth – Drawn + Quarterly, #1529
Bryan Lee O’Malley – Oni Press, #1833
Paul Pope – DC, #1915

So once again, that’s The Beguiling Books & Art in San Diego at Drawn + Quarterly’s booth, #1529! See you this week!

ABOUT: Celebrating it’s 22nd Anniversary this summer, The Beguiling is a book store and original art dealer in Toronto, Canada. We represent original art sales from over three dozens comics creators and illustrators from around the world. Almost all of the original art that The Beguiling represents is consigned by the artists, ensuring we are able to offer the widest possible selection of material and that the artists get the largest possible chunk of the proceeds. To see our collection of original art, visit us online at http://www.beguiling.com/artstore1a.asp.

Radio Free Parrish INDEED.

Hello, it’s Chris. I’m back. I see Parrish posted in my absence. Feh! Bah! You all know it’s my soothingly typed messages that you love.

Lots of stuff is going to get announced and whatnot in the next two weeks, a few targetted sales, some creator events (that post just below this one is a hint…), and we will hopefully have a ton of new product from my recent visit to Japan up on the store shelves before August comes our way.
Oh and TCAF.
So yeah, I’m back, thanks for the well-wishes and I shall be providing you with all kinds of informative postings and emails in the weeks to come.
Best,
– Chris
P.S.: Seriously though? Thanks to Parrish for keeping shit together while I was away. I feel like he needs a vacation now too, but he did a great job at everything while I was gone. if you see him at the store, make sure to give him a big hug 😉

Shipping June 24th, 2009

The following comics and graphic novels are scheduled to ship The Beguiling Books & Art on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009. All Prices listed in U.S. Funds. Variant prices are generally accurate to what we will be charging in store, but all disputes between prices will defer to the stickered, in-store price.

Click here for the complete list: /090624shipping.txt
– Christopher

TCAF 2009 Wrap-Up

Hello folks,

I’m Christopher Butcher and I’m the Festival Director and co-founder of TCAF, The Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Co-founder Peter Birkemoe, a handful of staff, and dozens of volunteers and I present TCAF every two years in lovely downtown Toronto, Canada. A little over a month ago on May 9-10, 2009, we held our fourth Festival. It was a first at our new home, the Toronto Reference Library, the flagship of the 99-branch Toronto Public Library system (the largest library system in North America). Following tradition, we thought a nice note sent far and wide might be a good way to sum up this year’s Festival, and make a few announcements about the next one.

First and foremost, we think that TCAF 2009 was a great success. Our main goal with TCAF is to create a stage for the comics, art and graphic novels that we love, so they can really shine and find the audience that they deserve. Canada is a country that produces great cartoonists and comics and we’re proud that more than 250 creators, a dozen publishers, and more attendees than ever could participate in this year’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Despite economic concerns, TCAF 2009 proved that comics are still a boom medium, bursting with creativity, craft, and passion—and people want to come out and be a part of it!

Attendance at TCAF 2009 events more than doubled over our 2007 figures, with 10,500 TCAF-specific attendees visiting Toronto Reference Library across both days (official numbers, at that: from audited data provided by Toronto Public Library’s turnstile powers-that-be), and with over 14,000 attendees visiting TCAF-branded events in total. Feedback from guests, attendees, and partners has been overwhelmingly positive so far. While we did experience some growing pains this year (heat, crowds, traffic-flow) familiarizing ourselves with and settling in to the new
venue, we’re confident that moving forward we’ll be able to rectify these issues.

On that note, we’d like to thank all of the wonderful cartoonists, publishers, artists and writers who came out to exhibit this year. TCAF 2009 featured our largest and most diverse collection of guests to date, and as always these creators and their work are the reason there is a Festival in the first place. Thanks to our honored guests François Ayroles, Anke Feuchtenberger, Emmanuel Guibert, Derek Kirk Kim, Kid Koala/Eric San, Scott McCloud, Tara McPherson, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Paul Pope, Florent Ruppert, Seth, Adrian Tomine, and Craig Yoe. And a very special thanks especially to Mr. and Mrs. Yoshihiro Tatsumi, who overcame medical troubles to attend this Festival: you gave us a truly special event.

We’ve continued to receive amazing support from both Canada’s national and Toronto’s local print and online media, with many of our guests surprised at the level of coverage that we received both as an event, and around specific guests. Of particular note is the superlative support of the Arts & Life section of Canada’s National Post newspaper, who ran over a hundred biographies and Q&As of comics creators attending TCAF, several feature articles and art pages, blog and print wraps and updates — they even live-Twittered several panels. We appreciate their support of comics and their recognition of TCAF’s prominent role in promoting the medium. These efforts, alongside coverage from TCAF Media Sponsor Eye Magazine, newspapers The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail and L’Express, online coverage from BoingBoing, Torontoist, BlogTO, NOW, Publishers Weekly, Quill and Quire, Sequential, Walrus, The Comics Reporter, dozens of blogs, thousands of tweets, and the fine folks at Open Books Toronto and WHAZAMO! declaring May GRAPHIC NOVEL MONTH, created unprecedented awareness not only of TCAF, but of the hundreds of publishers and cartoonists at the event. Thank you!

Peter and I would like to thank all of our sponsors and partner organizations, and especially TCAF Presenting Sponsor, Toronto Public Library (TPL). TPL graciously donated the use of the beautiful, airy Toronto Reference Library building to act as our venue for the main exhibition and programming. Holding TCAF at Toronto Reference Library re-enforces the fact that TCAF is completely FREE for the public to attend. We’ve long maintained that making the show free removes the barriers to entry for anyone who might be interested in the medium of comics and graphic novels, and by partnering with an organization that offers free access to a fantastic, comprehensive collection of the best comics literature all year-round, we’ve found a great partner in our goals. TCAF strives to present a broad, accessible, and varied view of comics and it is with the support of TPL and their staff—particularly tireless Director of Communications Ab Velasco—that we were able to reach more people with our message than ever before. Thank you. Thanks also to our sponsors at Harbourfront Centre, Owlkids, Le Consulate General de France a Toronto, the Goethe-Institut, Eye Weekly, The Japan Foundation, Magic Pony, Teletoon Canada, and of course, The Beguiling Books and Art: You supported us with great guests, with great venues, great programming, and so much more.

As the public face of TCAF, I often get a lot of the credit and praise directed at the event (the complaints too!), but there are a number of people who help put this show together that don’t always get the credit they deserve. Foremost amongst those people is Steven Murray (aka Chip Zdarsky), who went above and beyond this year to help us put together weeks and months worth of projects related to the Festival. He is a wonderful artist, writer, designer and friend, and we are sorry for making him uncomfortable with this praise but: We literally could not have done what we did without you.

Thanks also go out to: our 2009 Festival Poster Artist Bryan Lee O’Malley; Emmanuel Guibert for lending us Sardine for our Comics Festival! comic; Professor Andrew Lesk for organizing a fantastic academic program; Jocelyne Allen for superb Japanese translation skills; our many programming hosts and moderators including: Bill Kartalopoulos, Deb Aoki, Bart Beaty, Mark Askwith, Mark D. Nevins, Mark Siegel, Douglas Wolk, Jose Villarrubia, Jason Azzopardi, Stacy E. King, Jim Zubkavich, and Robin McConnell; The hosts and staff of The 2009 Doug Wright Awards for throwing an excellent event Saturday evening; our 2009 Festival Staff including Logistics Coordinators Rob Broughton and Sean Rogers, Kids Programming Coordinators Scott Robins and Naseem Hrab, Volunteer Coordinator Andrew Woodrow-Butcher; Parrish Kilthei for his A/V assistance; the staff of The Beguiling; Kate Dickson from Teletoon Canada; Peggy Burns from Drawn & Quarterly for all of her help coordinating an incredibly busy schedule; and the shrewd advice of Nathalie Atkinson. We had an army of talented, passionate volunteers again this year who helped to ensure that things went as smoothly as they possibly could, and we greatly appreciate their contribution to making the event a success (and that they happily wore the ketchup ‘n’ mustard-coloured TCAF t-shirts). We hope that all of you will come out and be a part of next year’s event.

That’s right, the next Toronto Comic Arts Festival will be held Saturday May 8th and Sunday May 9th, 2010, at Toronto Reference Library. YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST. And yes, we know that’s Mother’s Day… All of the cool moms read comics.

What, so soon, you ask? Following up on feedback from our partners, our guests, our staff, and attendees, we’ve decided to build on the incredible momentum of having a new home and incredibly supportive presenting sponsor in Toronto Public Library, and produce our first annual show. This is something of an experiment for us, and I can’t say for sure that we’re “going annual” with the event, but we feel that a 2010 event is the best course of action to ensure that TCAF stays a fun, vital, and prominent festival both within the city of Toronto and in the larger comics community. That’s around the corner so we’ll be running a tight ship, and further details about TCAF 2010 (including exhibitor application & information) will be released later this summer.

Thanks again to everyone who made the 2009 Toronto Comic Arts Festival such a fantastic success. We greatly appreciate your support, your promotion of the festival through great word of mouth and online, and your attendance. We’ll do our best to keep putting together a great show.

Thanks,

Christopher Butcher, Festival Director
Toronto Comic Arts Festival

On behalf of the executive, staff, and volunteers of TCAF

HAPPY GAY PRIDE WEEK – Sale June 20th to June 30th

The Beguiling is celebrating Gay Pride Week in Toronto by making it easier to get your comics Pride on. From Saturday June 20th to Tuesday July 30th, we’re having a big Gay sale with discounts on tons of great gay comics!
THE BEGUILING’S BIG GAY COMICS SALE:

30% off of the sticker price on all CLASS COMICS porn!
This includes some of our bestsellers like PORNOMICON, PORKY, & SATISFACTION GUARANTEED!
20% off of the sticker price on all main-floor import gay comics collections from BRUNO GMUNDER VERLAG and etc.
This includes hardcover collections like STICKY, all of the Joe Phillips books, the STRIPPED anthology, and more!
20% off of Select Works by Maurice Vellekoop!
How could we leave out Toronto’s premiere gay cartoonist and illustrator! You can get 20% off the sticker price/Canadian cover price of VELLEVISION, A NUT AT THE OPERA, and PIN-UPS by Maurice Vellekoop!
20% off of SCOTT PILGRIM VOLUMES 1-5
It’s Wallace Wells-tastic. Get 20% off of the Canadian price on Scott Pilgrim. If you’ve been waiting for a chance to read it, lower-than-U.S.-cover-price is probably the best incentive you’re going to get. It’s not like it’s gonna get LESS popular. 🙂
10% off the U.S. Cover Price on any Marvel, DC Comics, Image, or Dark Horse trade paperback with a gay character in it.
We are willing to accept certain interpretations of Batman, Robin, The Legion, and Wolverine. We feel like we have a good idea what’s going on ‘between the panels’ in Wonder Woman too. Try us…!
20% off of the regular price on FUN HOME and STUCK RUBBER BABY
These are two great gay graphic novels that we think everyone should read, and so we’ll give you a bit of an incentive to do so.
Check out the big PRIDE display on the second floor for book suggestions, regardless of your taste in comics. We’re sure you’ll find something you’re interested in 🙂
– Chris @ The Beguiling