Fabulous afternoon at VanCaf Day 1- the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival last Saturday!

I have broken down some highlights from my visit into 6 blog posts:

1. Julian Lawrence, Drippy the Newsboy, Conundrum Press: BLOG LINK

Update: Julian’s book is a FABULOUS READ and VISUAL FEAST!  Truly the kind of comic you read lying in the grass under a tree in the park, by yourself, cover to cover, with a big smile on your face.  Surprising and dark, quirky and wonderful.  This is obviously work with history, tradition- done with love and humor.

2. Kat Verhoeven, Towerkind, Conundrum Press

3. Emily Cowan, Boundary Comic

4. Jasmine Schuett, Spaceclub Comic

5. Inspector Pancakes

6. Erica Moen, Boumeries and VanCaf takeaways/notes

2. KAT VERHOEVEN, TOWERKIND, CONUNDRUM PRESS

I met Kat at her booth and was honored to have her draw inside the front cover as she personalized my copy of Towerkind.  [I was very hyper, having just arrived at the festival and totally over-stimulated.  Sorry, Kat!]

[Photo of Kat: SOURCE]

Never judge a book by it’s cover?!  Are you kidding me?!  I judge!  And that is what drew me to Kat’s book in the first place.  The book is tiny and delicious and beautiful.  With an engaging and intriguing cover.  So I had to have it.

I devoured it yesterday and it was a magical and strange journey- frightening, sad, eye-opening, dream-like, a warning.

Kat Verhoeven is a maker of comics by web and by print from a small studio in Toronto. She’s a dabbler in indie game making.

Crafting tales in fantastical colour or stark black and white, hers are stories of loneliness, struggle and inconclusive endings. Somehow there manage to be jokes. Kats ongoing work is the web comic Meat&Bone about eating-disordered Anne, her room-mates, and their cat. You can read her short stories in KUS, Puppyteeth and Wolfen Jump among other anthologies. [SOURCE]

Towerkind is an oblique end-of-the-world story seen through the eyes of a diverse group of children in Toronto’s St James Town, a neighbourhood of densely populated high rise apartments. The kids in this “towerhood” become aware of an impending catastrophe through a number of supernatural abilities. Among other characters, super strong Ty is a self-proclaimed monarch, Mackenzie uses her death magic to meddle, and language savant Mose would prefer to be left alone. Something is revealing itself through cracks and crevices, and through the children in the neighbourhood. Birds are falling from the sky. Originally done as a series of minis that was nominated for an Ignatz Award, Towerkind is a true page-turner. [SOURCE]