Taddle Creek #32 Comix Supplement

by Ethan Rilly, Dave Lapp, Michael Cho, Jason Turner, Jason Kieffer, Joe Ollmann, Maurice Vellekoop, Corey McCallum, Matthew Daley, and David Collier

Just in time for TCAF this year, the fine people at Taddle Creek have put together a terrific broadsheet comics supplement to their latest volume; seven massive pages of comics for only $2.  I always enjoy Taddle Creek's fiction and reporting, but the way it's embraced the Toronto comics scene is something that's always endeared me to the magazine.

The first strip (shown in the image) is by Ethan Rilly, of Pope Hats fame.  It's about a stained glass artist who is so unhappy with his creation that he feels compelled to destroy it.  This story would not feel out of place in an issue of Adrian Tomine's Optic Nerve, as it has many of the same sensibilities.

Dave Lapp, the most regular of Taddle Creek contributors, has a nice strip about an incident from his childhood, when he got in trouble for drawing 'Dirty Drawings' in his classroom.

Michael Cho, one of Toronto's greatest cartoonists, has a nice little piece about a man looking back at his youth, and the way the ever-changing city has cut him off from many of his memories, although that's not exactly a bad thing.  I love his stuff.

Jason Kieffer, who is probably the perfect person to adapt Rob Ford's story into a graphic novel (since it would fit nicely with his Zanta! and The Rabble of Downtown Toronto), adapts an Achomawi legend to the comics page.

David Collier contributes a page of reminiscences about the Toronto Reference Library (home to TCAF), and the joys of looking through old bound newspapers and comics.

There are other strips here, but these are the ones that stood out to me as the most memorable and most impressive.  I hope this is something that Taddle Creek chooses to do again, as I loved it.

For readers outside of Toronto, you can check out the comics here.

Taddle Creek No. 30

Edited by Conan Tobias

One sure sign that summer is on the way is a new issue of Taddle Creek, Toronto's best literary magazine. Behind it's lovely cover, this issue contains four great pieces of fiction, and some other cool stuff.

Dani Couture shares an excerpt (of a novel?) called 'Salt', which has a young woman struggling to reconnect with her absent mother after her death.  David Ross's story 'No Blood' is somewhat similar, in that it's about a man who is struggling to reconnect with his own past after learning that his childhood babysitter has died.

'The Canadian Grotesque' is a strange story by Michelle Winters, about a woman who is cheating on her husband with a man living (or squatting) in a house hidden in a ravine.

Andrew MacDonald's story 'Four Minutes' is probably the one that is going to stick with me the longest.  The protagonist is involved in helping his developmentally delayed twin sister to have her first sexual experience with a man in similar circumstances.  It's both straight-forward and kind of creepy, and MacDonald handles it all perfectly.

Among the fiction, there is also an interesting piece of reportage about the two men who now own the bulk of the film collection that the Toronto Reference Library discarded a few years back.  I can completely understand the temptation to take ownership of such an eclectic and unmanageable mass of cultural heritage, and would probably feel as equally overwhelmed by the task of cataloguing and housing it all.  Maybe Nicholson Baker would take it...

I rather enjoyed looking over the covers of past issues of Acta Victoriana, the literary journal published by the University of Toronto's Victoria College.  The covers do a terrific job of chronicling the changes in choices of graphic design among probably pretentious students over a period of a hundred years.  Cool stuff.

And then there's Dave Lapp's 'People Around Here' strip.  It's always the part of the book that I most look forward to reading, but half the time that's just because I know it's going to annoy me.  Once again, Lapp doesn't tell a complete story in his first page, instead giving us the beginning of a conversation wherein a guy (Lapp?) recounts being solicited by a strange woman on the street, who manages to con a cab ride home out of him.  I don't need to know if the guy ended up sleeping with her, but I would have liked to have seen him get to the part in the talk where he tries to justify his actions to his friend.

Anyway, if you live in the Toronto area, go buy this magazine.  It's good.

Taddle Creek No. 29

Edited by Conan Tobias

It's always cause for excitement when a new issue of Taddle Creek shows up in my mailbox.  I like supporting this most local of literary magazines (although I feel that they are really relaxing the rules around where contributors have to live, and have stopped including the specific neighbourhood of residence in each author's bio), and am always rewarded with some very good fiction, and some decent comics.

This time around, the best piece in the magazine by far is Emily Schultz's 'The Side Sleeper', a fictional portrait of a woman who moves through life lying and stealing from just about everyone she meets.  She's found a new man, who she is happy to spend her nights with, but she's already back to her usual habits of deceiving him, and swiping objects from his home.  This is an excellent story.

Many of the other excellent stories were incredibly short, often only one page in length.  This includes great tales by Tony Burgess, Alexandra Leggat, and Gary Barwin.  Stuart Ross's one-pager is classic Stuart Ross, if you like that kind of thing (I don't think I do).

In terms of longer pieces, there is a nice one by Zoe Whittall which is narrated by a girl whose father was just arrested for his improprieties, and by Jessica Westhead, who shares a story about a family gathering at a Chinese buffet.

Marguerite Pigeon writes an interesting story about a woman who meets her double one day on the street, except unlike the narrator, this woman has a child.  Matthew Firth's story is about a Canadian man living in Scotland who can't handle his upstairs neighbours, a pair of Greek brothers who like to wrestle with each other.

In terms of comics, Joe Ollmann gives us 'Movie Night', about his relationship with his son, and Jason Kieffer provides his recipe for do it yourself nude pickling.  I think the nudity is optional.  Dave Lapp writes about the first engagement ring he ever bought, and also provides us with a collection of his recent Biblical drawings, which are rather strange.

There is also an interview with novelist Grace O'Connell (who is adorable), and a piece on the design elements that the cartoonist Seth incorporated into his wife's new barber shop in Guelph Ontario.  There is also a great deal of poetry to read, and enjoy.

In all, a very worthy magazine, and well worth the $6 you will pay for it on the stands.

Taddle Creek No. 28

Edited by Conan Tobias

From the very nice Ethan Rilly cover through to Dave Lapp's visit to the Toronto Humane Society comic strip at the end, this is a quality issue of Taddle Creek, my favourite Toronto-centric literary magazine.  Which actually makes it my favourite Canadian literary magazine.  Although, in the interest of fair disclosure, the only other Canadian magazine I read is Spacing, and while it's great, it's not the least bit literary...

Anyway, this issue opens with a strong story by Stuart Ross about a man who wakes up while on a family trip to Black Creek Pioneer Village to find the place completely abandoned.  I haven't been to Black Creek in probably 25 years, but much of it came back to me while reading this story, and it reminds me that this is probably not somewhere I want to go.  That is one of the better features of good literature.

Kevin Chong's story 'Professions' is the strongest in the magazine.  Julian is a young lawyer who accompanies his fiancee to a ski chalet with her family, a group of upper class liberals, with whom he has no end of problems.  I love the scene where the brother takes Julian to task for having an iPhone, and then whips out his clunky FairSmart, the phone "made in Denmark from recycled materials by an industrial design collective with the help of at-risk youth and sex workers leaving the trade who are paid a living wage."  Brilliant stuff.

Sara Heinonen contributes a story about teens on the verge of going off to university that helps show the effect of underemployed parenting on the next generation, and Stacey May Fowles writes a strong story about dangerous flirtation at a cocktail party.  There is also a tough little comic strip by Nina Bunjevac about the politics of lesbian friendship and depression.

The magazine also has a nice little piece about author Lauren Kirshner, and another on the fading villages of Digby Neck in Nova Scotia.  There is an article about the changes in TTC street signage, and about an artists collective that decorated phone booths in the city to make an artistic point.  My favourite non-fiction piece in this issue is Sarah Gilbert's short article about attempting to access the beautiful art deco restaurant in Montreal's Eaton's store that has been boarded up for years.

In all, another very good issue of a very good magazine.

Taddle Creek #25

I love how I usually get a new issue of Taddle Creek around the time I always have a week off, so I'm able to devote enough time to get through the magazine in just a few sittings.

This issue doesn't have a unifying focus to it like last issue's 'Out of Towner' theme, but it is full of some good stuff.  Here's what I liked or found interesting this time around:

Kelly Ward's 'Stop Loss' is an interesting story about a woman who likes to hang out at a casino playing the slots.  She's hooked up with a guy named Dodds, who has a system, and is a full-time slot player.  This story encapsulates all the sadness that I feel would come with spending a lot of time at a casino.

Ethan Rilly provides a short comic called 'Ex Montreal'.  Rilly is the author of the comic Pope Hats, which I enjoyed a lot, but have never seen a second issue of (it's been a year and a half).  The comic in this magazine has a woman breaking into her old apartment in Montreal to have a look around.  It's good stuff.

'Our Many Splendoured Humanity', by Jessica Westhead, is an examination of neighbourly obligation, as seen through the prism of political correctness.  It's well written and amusing.

I was surprised to see an interview with Dave Lapp, the cartoonist behind Drop-In and Children of the Atom by Peter Birkemoe, the owner of the comic store I shop at.  Lapp talks about his 'Atom' work, and the way in which it helped him work through a difficult period in his personal life.  Lapp also has another installment of his 'People Around Here' strip in this magazine.  I try to like this guy's work, but somehow it always manages to annoy me.

One thing that's cool about Taddle Creek is the way they've started to run short articles and pieces about forgotten corners or aspects of the city.  Lauren Kirshner has a loving piece about the Sylvan, an abandoned low-rise apartment building in Dufferin Grove that, despite landmark status, is languishing under ownership of developers that want to turn it into condos.  There are some lovely photos accompanying this article, but I would have loved to see a few more.  Likewise, Conan Tobias has a short piece about horse fountains in Saint John.

There's a small portfolio of pieces by Blair McLean, a local artist who burns his images into wood.  There is also a short story by Stuart Ross.

The last story in the magazine is probably the best one.  It's by Amy Jones, and it chronicles the build up to and aftermath of the narrator's one-night stand with the headliner of a small-time rock and roll band.

This is always a worthy magazine to pick up.  I'm looking forward to the next one.

Taddle Creek

Summer Number 2010

It's always a treat when a new issue of Taddle Creek, the Toronto literary magazine, comes out.  This summer, the people at the magazine did something a little different, breaking their injunction against non-Torontonian contributors, and decided to make an 'Out of Towner' edition, featuring a variety of work from places other than Toronto.

There is strong fiction by Michael Christie ('The Quiet' is about a teenage car thief),  Danielle Egan ('Strange Attractors' tells of a really bad trip a couple makes to the woman's parents' house, and the bizarre events that follow), and David Ross (who actually lives in Toronto).

There is a section of photographs depicting Saint John, New Brunswick in the sixties, before urban renewal made some drastic changes, and a cool profile of novelist Lee Henderson.  In addition to the usual comic page by Dave Lapp, there are comics by Jason Turner and David Collier.

My favourite part of the magazine was a series of short essays by Sarah Gilbert about the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal.  Gilbert lives in the area, and has been writing about the people that make up this community, which is in the early stages of gentrifying.  She does a terrific job of portraying people from different ends of the gentrification spectrum.  We read about the owner of Maple Leaf Hat and Cap, a company that has been there since 1930; the artist who has worked to protect neighbourhood trees from bicycle lock damage by planting around them; a recently deceased gardener who grew lemons, olives, and grapes in his backyard (and was a fixture of the community); and about the woman who has turned a vacant lot into an example of land art.  These profiles are quick yet detailed, and when read together, really give a sense of the place.

There's some other stuff in this magazine too, but that's what I liked about it.

Taddle Creek

Christmas 2009

This is my first regular issue of Taddle Creek (my previous experience being limited to the comics issue), and I'm pleased with it. I've been feeling the need to be more connected with the city, in terms of the arts that it produces, and this periodical scratches that itch quite nicely (one of the stories is set blocks from where I grew up).

What I liked about this issue:

Why, Zanta?... Why?... is a wonderful comic treatment of Zanta, the notorious Toronto character, known for doing push-ups on the streets of Toronto wearing shorts and a Santa hat. It's done by Jason Kieffer, whose book on local street people will be the subject of a posting in another week or so.

Terry Murray has a nice piece about Merle Foster, the Toronto sculptress and philanthropist.

There is a collection of four of Michael Cho's alley scenes. I bought two of these prints at the first TCAF I attended, and it's really nice to see more of these being displayed. They are wonderful pieces of art.

Nathaniel G. Moore has a couple of excerpts from his new work Savage. These pieces about a boy growing up in North Leaside were like a direct injection of nostalgia. I will definitely keep an eye out for the finished product.

The other stories in this issue, by Heather Hogan, Cary Fagan, and Stacey May Fowles were also all decent efforts.

In all, a very good magazine, well worth picking up.