The Calgary Comic Expo, which has steadily been growing in both size and attendance since its birth in 2006, was this year extended from a  two day Saturday/Sunday event to a full three days. Friday being an ‘advance sneak preview’ day, before some of the larger media guests (read: William Shatner) arrived at the Con.

They additionally opened up the Expo to include the Stampede Corral itself, which is a significantly sized arena-style venue,  and to increase the overall size of the event grounds to something much larger than seen in previous years.

Somewhere in these new changes, a swarm of planning issues and miscellaneous ‘bumps’ have seemed to start popping up with routine frequency. For instance, I could have taken it as a sign of things to come when the very first panel I dropped by on Friday – a Q & A with Hellboy creator and ‘guest of honour’ Mike Mignola – seemed to fall flat several minutes in due to audio issues.

The issues? Paper-thin walls between panel rooms letting roaring applause and music flood in from the neighbouring panel, a conspicuous absence of microphones to aid Mike and the moderators in being heard, and repeat announcements on the loud speaker nearly every five minutes that there were still Photo Ops available for Shatner.

To Mignola’s credit, he powered through the panel as best he could and with an admirably resilient positive disposition.

Other issues have included: organizers routing attendees back and forth due to miscommunications about what panels should lineup where; frequent bottlenecking due to there only being one corridor linking the main hall to adjoining events’ rooms; late-starting panel guests and scheduled events; horrifically organized photo ops; etc, etc.

But then, these could all be seen as growing pains as Calgary adjusts to its largest pop culture expo taking on a life of its own. As it has grown in size, so too has its recognition spread as one of the larger North American Comic and Entertainment conventions.

I mean, for the first year ever, DC Comics has had its very own booth at the Calgary Expo. There was even a DC Nation panel featuring top writers and artists from the DC Universe talk about their plans for their respective post-reboot properties.

The DC Nation panel, for the record, didn’t reveal anything new. In fact, it seemed the panel guests (which included Jimmy Palmiotti, Gail Simone,  Francis Manapul, and Jeff Lemire) were constantly walking on eggshells for fear of ’spilling too much’. What I did take away from it is that Jeff Lemire’s new Frankenstein series is going to kick serious ass, Palmiotti’s vision of Jonah Hex in a crime-riddled turn of the century Gotham City is positively inspired, and Gail Simone’s Batgirl (Barbara Gordon once again!) has a funky new costume that in some way features new technologies more ‘relevant’ to current times.

Another sign of the Calgary Comic Expo growing in repute was the presence of The Joe Shuster Awards for Canadian Comic Book Creators, which were presented this evening for the very first time outside of Toronto.

The Joe Shuster Awards deserve some special mention in this post, and I’m going to give it to them.

I was a little disappointed in the turnout for this year’s awards, which I suspect was at least partially due to their being scheduled at the same time as the Costume Contest. The latter event has long been one of the biggest crowd-drawing events at the Expo. Comic fans missed an engaging, interesting event that not only celebrated the achievements of some of Canada’s top contemporary talents (more on that in a bit) but also inducted both Chester Brown and Todd McFarlane into their Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame.

In the case of Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, who is himself originally from Calgary, his father Bob was present to deliver an inspired acceptance speech of behalf of the legendary comic artist.

Regarding this year’s Shuster Award winners, I have to say there were a few (not unpleasant) surprises. While Fiona Staples picking up the award for Outstanding Cover Artist came as little shock (she has certainly earned it), it was interesting to see Tin Can Forest beat out such influential contenders as Darwyn Cooke, Bryan Lee O’Malley and Jeff Lemire to take home the award for Outstanding Cartoonist.

Tin Can Forest, which is Mark Colek and Pat Schewchuk, won for their graphic novel Baba Yaga and The Wolf. Baba Yaga and The Wolf marked their second book, and it was published by Koyama Press. I was glad to see them win the award for their truly outstanding effort – perhaps equally as glad as I was to see Koyama Press win the award for Outstanding Publisher.

Other award-winners this year included Julie Rocheleau for Outstanding Colourist; Scott Chantler’s Three Thieves Book 1: Tower of Treasure in the Comics for Kids category; Émilie Villeneuve for Outstanding Writer, and Francis Manapul for Outstanding Artist.

I was super-stoked to see Emily Carroll awarded for Outstanding Webcomics Creator – though she was up against some stiff competition in the category, (Kate Beaton, Karl Kerschl, Salgood Sam, etc) what she’s currently doing with her webcomics have impressed me like few others have.

Though Shuster Award Show hosts Ajay Fry & Teddy Wilson (of Inner Space fame) did an admirable job of keeping the ceremonies lively and engaging, it was also neat to see a variety of additional presenters participate. Former winner of the Harry Kremer Award for Outstanding Retailer Jay Bardyla (Happy Harbour Comic) was on hand to present this year’s award to Planete BD from Montreal, Quebec.

Shuster Awards Associate Director Robert Haines awarded the Gene Day Award for Self-Publisher’s to John Martz for Heaven All Day, while Kevin Boyd, the Executive Director for the Awards, gave a compelling insight to the life of Chester Brown.

It was also a treat for (comic legend in his own right) Ken Steacy to give an introspective into the life and times of Todd McFarlane.

Going into the third day of Calgary’s Comic Expo, I have high hopes for more quality events and panels with – hopefully – a lot less of the ‘hectic mess’ element prevalent over the first two days.

I’ll also be making my interview rounds – so, Fabler followers, you can look forward to some interesting individuals being profiled here in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, stay frosty. Or something.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming

As such, the interviews and profiles we feature are generally about comic authors and artists. It didn’t require a hyper intellectual think-tank to  come up with this formula, but we’ve stuck to it all the same (as it seems to make sense).

Too much of the usual, however, can easily become boring.

Which is why this week we are featuring someone who, in fact, does not have any published work directly in comics.

Aaron Leighton is a professional illustrator who specializes in the unusual.

(Okay, so illustration and comics aren’t technically THAT far removed from each other – but really, did you expect I was going to profile a urologist?)

Leighton has been turning his fantastic imaginings of the weird and the wonderful into dollars for over a decade now, since graduating from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 1995.

He describes himself as bi-provincial, owing to the fact that his hometown, Lloydminster, is technically in both Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Being the wild provincial swinger that he is, he left the Prairies in 1998 bound for Toronto, and he’s been there ever since.

Leighton’s art is a dynamic mixture of cartoon (non)sensibility and tribal artwork, balancing bizarre doodles against simple symbolism.

“If I had to pick a shortlist of influences,” says Leighton, “I’d say that Picasso and the German expressionists taught me about the possibilities of the abstracted figure, cartoons taught me the power of drawings coupled with humour, and the artwork of indigenous cultures, specifically those of Northern Canada and Africa, taught me not only about the power of simplicity but also how mythology can imbue imagery with meaning.”

According to Aaron, his unique style developed steadily over time – it wasn’t at all something he ‘hit the ground running’ with immediately after Art school:

“The evolution of my illustrative style has been a combination of my natural inclination to fill up a page with doodles and a slow, painful struggle of figuring out how to translate this spontaneous tendency – coupled with the things that influence me – into a visual language usable for problem solving.”

His art has appeared in Maclean’s, PC Magazine, The New York Times, and The Globe and Mail, amongst a wealth of other publications.

With such a variety of clients commissioning Aaron for projects varying from promotional to informative to just plain fun, his creative process can get a little messy:

“I usually start by putting my head in my hands and thinking “How the hell am I going to solve this one?” That blank sheet can be terrifying. But despite the fact that I often find conceptualizing difficult, it always works out. Sometimes it helps to leave the studio and give your eyes new stuff to look at, thereby cutting through the feedback loop of the mind to allow it to come up with ideas instead.”

Leighton has also been involved with ‘interactive broadcast animation project’ The Zimmer Twins as creative lead since 2005.

The Zimmer Twins has a pretty interesting concept behind it; kids can visit the official website and, using a series of various pre-cut background and character animation options, build their own endings to a professionally produced story starter.

The best of those short animation endings would then be aired on Canadian broadcast television network Teletoon.

“Working as the creative director of the Zimmer Twins with zinc Roe (the design company behind the project) was rewarding not only because of the originality of the idea but also in that I was able to collaborate with some talented animators to bring my drawings to life. Also it has indeed been very interesting to see the characters being repurposed to fit the technology as it evolves, from the original animated shorts we did to the more recent apps.”

Despite the preamble I made at the beginning of the post, there is at least one other correlation between Aaron Leighton and the world of comic books: stumble into the right comic shop, and you might actually find a book co-illustrated by Aaron for sale by the name of Equally Superior.

Equally Superior was a collaborative project done by Aaron and a couple of his friends under the banner of Trio Magnus.

“Trio Magnus is the name of an artist collective I am part of, along with my friends Clayton Hanmer and Steve Wilson, both of whom also happen to be extraordinary illustrative talents. We had been sketching and doing group art shows together for years here in Toronto, and somewhere along the line we just decided to try joining forces with a bit more focus in order to create interesting (to us, at least) collaborative work fuelled mainly by beer and Led Zeppelin.”

Equally Superior came about in 2007 when Anne Koyama of Koyama Press asked Trio Magnus if they were interested in publishing a book of some sort.

“We gratefully replied that we were,” says Leighton, “and proceeded to create the book with content from our sketchbooks plus some new collaborative pieces. While not in any way narrative, the book ended up being rude, colourful, funny and extremely bizarre – a perfectly appropriate Trio Magnus creation. We launched it at Design Festa in Tokyo in 2007, and Anne has been tireless in her efforts to promote us since then, getting the book into bookstores and galleries not only in Canada and the US but in Spain and Holland as well.”

Going back a few paragraphs, if that comic shop you stumble into happens to be in the greater Toronto area, you might even bump into Aaron himself.

Aaron has a self-professed love for comics, specifically graphic novels and webcomics.

Among his favorites?

“‘Blankets’ by Craig Thompson, ‘Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth’ by Chris Ware, ‘Lous Riel’ by Chester Brown, ‘Skim’ by Jillian Tamaki, and the work of Guy Delisle and Michel Rabagliati. Webcomics-wise, some of my favorites include ‘The City‘ by DERF, ‘The Perry Bible Fellowship‘ by Nick Gurewitch, and the amazing animated comics of Brad Neely.”

“Aside from the artists above,” says Aaron, “I love the work of my friends such as Clayton Hanmer and Tom Humberstone, as well as a guy I discovered at TCAF last year named Mat Brinkman who does these insanely intricate black and white narratives about monsters and spirits doing battle with each other in magical realms.”

Aaron and the other Trio Magnus fellows will be present and accounted for at this year’s TCAF (Toronto Comic Art Festival), showcasing art from their most recent project.

“Currently,” says Leighton, “we’re working on a series of 6 ft. square collaborative drawings (created with red and black Snowman markers) which we plan to convert to smaller silkscreened prints. We’ll be selling these at TCAF in May.”

He also has a book project in the works due out in time for the Festival, to be published by Koyama Press. Leighton says that it will ‘combine illustration and photography, and feature a variety of homeless nature spirits who, having lost their forests and streams, are forced to live in the back alleys and vacant lots of Toronto’.

“It’s sort of a combination of three interests of mine: folk mythology, environmental issues and urban  photography. Nothing stokes my creative fires like the alchemy of combining ideas.”

For more from Aaron, you can visit his website, the website of Trio Magnus, or stop by his booth at this year’s Toronto Comic Art Festival.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming