TCAF Preview
...with Joey Comeau
Interviewed by Adam Bourret
Posted August 14th, 2007
MONDO: Could you tell us a little about yourself and your work?
Joey Comeau: My name is Joey Comeau and I am one of the two creators of A Softer World, along with the delightful Emily Horne who could not attend TCAF this year. A Softer World is a photo comic on the Internet at www.asofterworld.com - it is also running this month in the Guardian (guardian.co.uk) and so we can go around saying things like "We are huge in England." I also write fiction, and was just in Toronto last month to launch "It's Too Late to Say I'm Sorry," which is a collection of my short stories.
MONDO: What's your game plan for TCAF? Are you debuting a new comic, selling merchandise, participating in a seminar?
JC: I'll have some Softer World books and t-shirts, and some old Softer World zines, too. And some prints. I will probably also sneak in my non comic work to sell, because I am ticksy and self serving? I will be hanging out with other webcomic creator friends who I hardly ever get to see because they live in the USA. Are there seminars? I never know about these things. I'm just happy to have been invited.
MONDO: What are you most looking forward to at TCAF this year?
JC: Reading new comics and meeting old friends. My friend Sheryl will be in town, and I haven't seen her in a long time. We used to climb up on playground equipment and lash our hands together and fight to the death. Do you know that feeling where you don't see someone for months and months, and then you see each other and it's like no time has passed at all?
MONDO: Who are you most looking forward to meeting?
JC: Becky Cloonan. I've met her once before, and before that she illustrated a story of mine in a magazine. I have a print of that piece up on my wall. I'm going to give her a copy of my short story collection, which unfortunately doesn't have that story in it. She's really an exciting artist, I think. Her stuff is so strange and liquid and murky and perfect.
MONDO: What do you think of Toronto?
JC: I am moving to Toronto two days before the festival, so. I have a lot of friends there, and Toronto seems to have a sense of mystery about it that comes from being a huge sprawling machine of a city. All huge systems have their secrets. There are pockets of forgotten space, and there are places meant to support the machine - not for people. I've written about this before, but on my last trip to Toronto I passed the entrance to an underground parking garage. It went down for three or four stories before it turned off. A road that led down down down and then out of sight. I stopped walking and just stared. With the buildings so close around me it made no sense to be able to see that far down into the ground. That's what Toronto feels like to me, like there might be something new and strange down under those grates in the sidewalk, like there are whole underground cities waiting.