The Toronto Comic Arts Festival 2021

TCAF is excited to announce that we will be featuring an EXCLUSIVE online art show in partnership with mangaka Akane Shimizu and her publisher Kodansha. Get a peek behind the scenes of the hit series Cells at Work! this May!

Check out a sneak preview of the upcoming final volume (complete with a look at the virus that’s upended our lives), along with rough sketches from creator Akane Shimizu. Dive into the secret world of the human body manga-style!

We will also be hosting a panel to continue our highlight of Cells at Work!. Join us on Thursday, May 13th, at 3:00 PM EDT (link coming soon), as we examine the dynamic, entertaining, and educational world of the hit manga series. A science teacher, a doctor of medicine, and a manga writer band together to look at the series through their respective lenses, talk about the science behind the stories, and consider the intersection between science literacy and visual storytelling.

Thanks to support from publisher Kodansha, you’ll also get a sneak peek of the upcoming English release of Cells At Work! volume 6! Don’t miss it!

More about Akane Shimizu:

Akane Shimizu was born in 1994, Tokyo. After receiving The 27th Shonen Sirius Rookie Award Grand Prize in 2014, she began the Cells at Work! serialization in the March 2015 issue of Monthly Shonen Sirius. This series saw the end of its Japanese run in March 2021. The English-language editions of Cells at Work! volumes 1 through 5 are available from Kodansha, with the final volume 6 set to debut in June 2021.

More about our panelists:

Deb Aoki writes about manga for Publishers Weekly, and is a co-host on Mangasplaining, a weekly podcast introducing comics from Japan to people who don’t normally read a lot of manga. She’s also an illustrator and comics creator. You can see more of her work at debaoki.com, and find her on Twitter @debaoki.

Dr. Yi Ariel Liu (she/they) is a medical doctor who looks at cells under the microscope and diagnoses diseases. They were the co-editor and illustrator for ThinkSkin.ca, a blog dedicated to discussing common dermatology myths. As a surviving cancer patient, they strive to tell stories through comics to raise awareness in chronic illnesses and improve health literacy. Their work has been exhibited at the Canadian Conference on Medical Education, Vancouver Comic Arts Festival and other medical events. Find them on Twitter @YiArielLiuMD or at artofyaliu.com.

After receiving a Bachelor of Science with a major in microbiology and immunology from McGill, Wen Zhao went on to complete his degree in education with a semester abroad in Japan. For the past four years, he has taught math and science in both Alberta and British Columbia. As a fan of anime and manga, Wen has found both invaluable in fostering connections with his students, and a great way to pique interest in the sciences with educational series like Cells at Work!. He is currently a science teacher in Calgary and an aspiring lawyer who will begin law school at the University of Calgary this fall.

About Kodansha USA Publishing, LLC:

A subsidiary of Kodansha, Japan’s largest publisher, Kodansha USA Publishing is the English-language publisher of some of the world’s most recognizable manga properties, including Katsuhiro Otomo’s AKIRA and Naoko Takeuchi’s Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, along with a robust catalog of English-language Japanese novels, cookbooks, craft guides, historical and cultural literature, and more. Today, thanks to recent fan-favorite and critically acclaimed hits like Attack on Titan, Battle Angel Alita, Witch Hat Atelier, and the popular MONOGATARI novels, Kodansha USA Publishing is one of the best-selling manga publishers in the United States. Kodansha USA Publishing’s print offerings are distributed by Penguin Random House Publisher Services, and their digital manga and select digital books are available across a number of digital comics, manga, and book vendors. For more information, visit kodansha.us.

Applications Open! 

Les candidatures sont ouvertes!

We are delighted to host a fourth year of this initiative, and add the French Embassy in Canada as our second partner organization!

Le Toronto Comic Arts Festival (Toronto, Canada) et l’Ambassade de France au Canada ont le plaisir de vous inviter à participer la nouvelle édition de Blind Date 2021.

In 2018, TCAF and the Ministry of Culture of Colombia launched the Blind Date project (Cita a ciegas), which aimed to connect two comic artists from each country to collaborate digitally. In December 2020, we selected two more artists to continue this project. We are excited to show you the results very soon!

Initié en 2018 par le TCAF et le Ministère de la Culture de Colombie, le programme Blind Date (Cita a ciegas), invite un bédéiste Colombien et un bédéiste Canadien à collaborer numériquement. Deux nouveaux artistes ont été sélectionnés en 2020 dans le cadre de ce programme.

At this time, we’re asking Canadian artists to submit their interest in being considered for the first ever French/Canadian Blind Date project. The selected Canadian artist will receive $1500 CAD to support the creation of this work. The selected French artist will also receive $1500 CAD.

Pour la quatrième édition de Blind Date, en 2021, le programme s’étend en France! Auteurs français et canadiens: vous êtes invités à manifester votre intérêt pour participer au tout premier projet de Blind Date franco-canadien. Un artiste français et un artiste canadien seront sélectionnés: chacun recevra 1 500 dollars canadiens (environ 1000 euros).

The Canadian artist and French artist will jointly develop a comic art project around the theme of conversation with the expectation that they:

• Deliver a total of 10-12 pages of comic, or the webcomic equivalent, to be hosted online and formatted for digital audiences.
• Meet digitally at least once every two weeks (for example through Zoom, Skype, video calling, screenshare, etc.) with ongoing correspondence between meetings.
• Create some official documentation of the artistic process that can be publicly shared.
• Complete and submit the final project by May 5, 2021.

L’artiste canadien et l’artiste français développeront conjointement un projet de bande dessinée autour du thème de la conversation, et seront invités à :

• Livrer un total de 10 à 12 pages de bande dessinée, ou l’équivalent en webcomics, qui seront hébergées en ligne et formatées pour une diffusion numérique.
• Se rencontrer virtuellement au moins une fois toutes les deux semaines (par exemple via Zoom, Skype, appel vidéo, partage d’écran, etc.) et échanger régulièrement en dehors des rencontres.
• Documenter le processus de création  artistique sous un format qui puisse être diffusé et partagé publiquement.
• Terminer et soumettre le projet final avant le 5 mai 2021.

If you are interested in participating, please submit your application to registration@torontocomics.com by April 11, 2021 at 11:59pm. We recognize the short turnaround for this deadline, so we are making the application process as straightforward as possible. Please send the following three parts to registration@torontocomics.com with the subject heading “Blind Date 2021 Application”:

• A selected artist’s CV or bio (no longer than 2pgs) with relevant experience
• Digital portfolio of 5-7 works/images of comic art
• A short statement of interest (max. 400 words) OR a 15 minute zoomcall (let us know if you’d like to take this option and we can schedule it)

Si vous souhaitez participer, merci de bien vouloir soumettre à registration@torontocomics.com avant le 11 avril 2021 à 23h59. Nous sommes conscients du court délai, c’est pourquoi nous rendons le processus de candidature aussi simple que possible. Veuillez envoyer les trois éléments suivants à registration@torontocomics.com avec pour objet “Blind Date 2021 Application”:

• Un CV ou une biographie de l’artiste (pas plus de 2 pages) indiquant toute expérience pertinente
• Un portfolio numérique de 5 à 7 œuvres/images de bande dessinée
• Une courte lettre de motivation (400 mots maximum) OU un appel Zoom de 15 minutes avec nos équipes (faites-nous savoir si vous préférez cette option et nous pourrons la programmer)

Canadian creators interested in participating in the project do not have to be exhibitors at TCAF to apply.

Les créateurs canadiens intéressés à participer au projet ne doivent pas nécessairement être exposants au TCAF pour envoyer leur candidature.

After a challenging year, we’re so excited to announce the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) is back — with a virtual twist! Free of the shackles of corporeal existence, TCAF’s marketplace will have more days than ever before, and include a week of on-demand programming. Comic and art lovers can visit TCAF 2021 online any time between May 8-15, 2021, to peruse and shop hundreds of exhibitors’ amazing works, sit in on classic Q&As, workshops, talks, and so much more!

Our new exhibition website is being made in partnership with Canzine (the festival of zines) and the Toronto Hand Eye Society. Zinesters and indie video game creators will be among our 600 virtual exhibitors in May.

If you want to exhibit at TCAF 2021, fill out this form by March 3, 2021:

CLICK HERE TO APPLY

Applicants will have the choice to apply for TCAF, Canzine OR Comics x Games. Accepted exhibitors will have a customizable online shop page where they can upload up to 5 items for sale. After TCAF, exhibitors will send all sold items to a warehouse, where orders will be bundled and shipped off to shoppers. This process is to help save exhibitors and visitors excess transaction and shipping fees. There will be options to include additional products.

More details will come on Twitter @torontocomics, on our website at www.torontocomics.com, and at canzine.ca.

FAQ

❥ When and where is TCAF?

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival 2021 will take place virtually May 8-15, 2021.

❥ Do I need to live in Toronto to take part?

Nope. International exhibitors are welcome!

❥ So, how does this work for me?

If accepted, you will have an online profile store page along with hundreds of other cartoonists in a shared marketplace. After the exhibition is closed, we will send you a report of all the items you’ve sold and you will ship those items to a centralized location. From there, our third-party warehouse will ship compiled orders to our happy customers.

❥ Why the additional item fees?

The additional fees will cover the costs of shipping, handling, and transactions. To save costs for exhibitors and visitors, shipping will be handled by a third-party warehouse. After the event, exhibitors will send all of their sold items to the warehouse to mail out to shoppers. This will save exhibitors and visitors quite a bit on shipping costs; however, this service comes with associated costs, hence the fees for additional items.

❥ Why the different registration costs between TCAF and Canzine?

The different registration costs reflect the difference in products and audiences. TCAF exhibitors sell (relatively) higher-priced items that are heavier (e.g. books) and tend to sell at higher volumes. Canzine exhibitors sell low-cost items (e.g. 16-page zine) that are lighter and tend to sell at lower volumes.

❥ I was accepted to TCAF in 2020 but didn’t get to exhibit because of the pandemic. You said we’d be at the next TCAF? What’s the deal?

If you were accepted to TCAF in 2020, you can either defer to this year or defer to 2022. If you apply to TCAF 2021, we will assume that you are taking your deferral to this year. Please include that you were accepted into TCAF 2020 in the “Anything else we should know?” section.

❥ How do collectives and publishers apply?

Unlike past years, we are asking for a single application from collectives and publishers. If you’re a collective, please

include a list of all members of your application. If you’re a publisher, please include authors you are planning on featuring with your application.

If you have additional questions, please email registration@torontocomics.com.

In light of the recent allegations made by women against various men in the comics industry, we at the Toronto Comics Arts Festival (TCAF) wish to make it unequivocally clear that all forms of harassment and predation, including subtler forms such as grooming, are not tolerated by the festival.

We recognize that TCAF plays an important role in the comics industry, that the festival is an active space for networking, and this tasks us with the responsibility of continually addressing and revisiting the challenges of maintaining a safe space for all attending and aspiring creators.

We are currently reviewing our existing Conduct & Harassment Policy, with the aim of explicitly addressing events we host or co-host with our cultural and business partners off the main exhibition sites of the festival where TCAF staff are harder to identify. We will announce revisions before our next live event.

In addition, we will be reviewing our past and current processes for inviting and handling reports of harassment and will provide updates as necessary.

— Christopher Butcher, Miles Baker + The TCAF Board (Coralie D’Souza, Gary Sherman, Kawai Shen, Khris Cuthbertson, Peter Birkemoe)

“Stay safe.”  We say it so often and without thinking. It’s even starting to lose its meaning.

These words have a very different meaning to Black and Indigenous peoples, groups who are subject to greater precarity, particularly when intersecting with gender, class, and other forms of systemic discrimination.

In the wake of recent events, including the widespread outpourings of solidarity against anti-black racism in North America, and specifically in Canada, the killings of 8 indigenous persons by police since just this April — we are taking stock and acknowledge the systemic and institutional barriers we play a part in.

Simply put, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF)—whose leadership currently lacks Black or Indigenous representation —can do better.

We exist to support creators of comic works in their broad and diverse voices in order to promote the medium of comics as a legitimate medium of literary and artistic worth. We believe we have a role to play in supporting diversity in our field and are making a commitment to do so, with intention.

We will begin with a commitment to learning by ensuring our staff and volunteers and the board receive resources and materials to help facilitate their understanding of issues raised by BIPOC communities, with attention to intersectional identities, including but not limited to QTBIPOC identified individuals. We are also exploring new ways of applying an anti-racist lens in building our community, including our staff and volunteers, with the understanding that accounting for anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism must be at the forefront.

We do not see this as a one-time project, but a life-long one that will inform the organization we aspire to be going forward. We look forward to working with the larger comics industry, and community to do so and will provide updates as we develop our plans.  

– Christopher Butcher, Miles Baker + The TCAF Board (Coralie D’Souza, Gary Sherman, Kawai Shen, Khris Cuthbertson, Peter Birkemoe)