TCAF—The Toronto Comic Arts Festival—is expanding with a holiday pop-up shop at the Toronto Reference Library, home of the yearly comic festival. The shop will kick off with an event for “Just The Tips” the Sex Criminals spin off book by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky this Wednesday, December 3rd at 6 pm. Home town hero Zdarsky will be present to sign.
The shop is described as a seasonal boutique selling comics and graphic novels by Canadian authors, with purchases benefitting the TCAF non-profit.
It’s a nice idea for the festival, an d a great expansion of the retail portion of the show. TCAF 2015 will be held May 8-10.
BTW: Zdarsky—the pen name of Steve Murray—was profiled in the Globe and Mail, whicvh chronicles his off-kilter career, which has just announced its latest triumph writing a Howard the Duck revival.
Last Friday, Marvel announced that Murray had inked a deal to resurrect Howard the Duck, the much-maligned mallard last seen sipping a martini in a postcredit sequence in the summer blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy. The first issue, illustrated by Joe Quinones, will be published next March. The news caps off a spectacularly successful year for Murray, who has emerged as one of Canada’s funniest – and weirdest – voices thanks to the combination ofSex Criminals (his breakout New York Times bestselling comic series), his irreverent and frequently profane Twitter persona, and an atypical résumé that includes a stint as an intentionally bad advice columnist, a requited Facebook love affair with Applebee’s and a quixotic Toronto mayoral campaign. But Howard the Duck presents an entirely new challenge: Can Murray add punch to a character who’s become a punchline?
