The Toronto Comics Arts Festival, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, has of late made its name bringing over cutting-edge Japanese artists for signings, live drawing sessions and speaking events. The atmosphere at this year's event, held in May, in many ways like an independent film festival, which is to say refreshingly mature — for those manga fans who thirst for coffee and rather than Mountain Dew.
In its relative distance from the American comic-con epicenters, TCAF ("Tee Caff" as it is more affectionately referred to) has been able to distance itself from the typical blockbuster-TV-RPG-toy franchise convention, without explicitly singling out "the indies," something that is heartening to many in the publishing industry. There did appear to be a predictable cosplay event, but a good number of us went on the guided-bus tour to Niagara Falls instead, videotaping the Old Town's Main Street instead of Narutos dressed in homemade metal-plated headbands.
It was with no surprise, then, that TCAF's featured guests this year included writers of elegiac novels such as Rutu Modan, superhero darlings like Paul Pope, as well as pornographer Gengoroh Tagame (in the interest of disclosure I attended TCAF in Tagame's party as the producer of his first English tome).