New comics anthology captures the best — and worst — things about being an artist in Toronto

"I feel like this is a terrible time to be making comics," says Jenn Woodall. And yet, that's never stopped her from doing it.

Woodall is an award-winning comics creator and the illustrator of books including Haunted Canada. For more than a decade, she's built a career making comics, and even if she's right about the "terrible" state of her industry, Woodall is, funnily enough, making comics as we speak. She's calling CBC Arts from a makerspace, where she's preparing for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Woodall will be tabling at TCAF this weekend (May 11-12), and with just a few days to go, she still has books to print. In fact, she's launching multiple titles at the fair. 

As the saying goes, the hustle is real, and one of Woodall's new comics captures just how much of a grind it can be. That book is Pulping, a 144-page anthology created by Woodall and fellow local artists Jon Iñaki, Jonathan Rotsztain, Mitch Lohmeier and Paterson Hodgson. (The latter three are also tabling at TCAF.) 

Pulping is a collection of comics about comics — making comics, reading comics, selling comics (and, in one unfortunate scenario, burning comics for survival). But more than that, it's about doing all of those things in Toronto. 

The book's 35 contributors are based in and around town — "Comics City, Can-a-duh," as contributor Robb Mirsky dubs it. And to quote the book's very first line: "Toronto is a harsh but fertile land." 

Harsh how?

"Everyone I know who is a working artist, they're struggling," says Woodall. 

Try making rent in a city where the average one-bedroom goes for $2,500 a month. Now imagine you're juggling multiple jobs — which may or may not be stable. It's a challenge Woodall has written about before. (Check out this comic she drew for local newspaper, the West End Phoenix.) 

"People have less time, less energy and less money than ever," says the artist, but as she explains, that's exactly why Pulping came to be.

When you're feeling overworked and overwhelmed, it's easy to lose sight of why you do what you do. That was Woodall's experience, anyway, until she started talking with Paterson Hodgson, a friend and colleague in the local comics scene.

Like all the book's editors, Hodgson has a comic in Pulping, and in her story, Zine World, she pays tribute to the things about Toronto that keep her keeping on. For Hodgson, it's all about the people, and the IRL friendships she's forged in the arts community.  

Woodall happens to be one of those connections, and the duo was hanging out at a book launch — swapping stories of professional burnout — when Hodgson pitched the concept for Pulping. 

"Her energy about the project really motivated me," says Woodall. "Paterson made such a great point when we initially came up with the idea: Toronto was such a great comics city, and there's so many cartoonists who live here, but it feels a bit fragmented." 

What could they do to bring those folks together? Make a comic, of course.

Why is Toronto a great place to make comics?

Since the beginning, the goal was to have Pulping published in time for TCAF. The timeline would be rushed; the editors' first meeting was in January. But after inviting artists in their networks — and posting an open call for contributions — the stories began to roll in. 

Pulping's contributors include art students and industry veterans. (Fiona Smyth, an official hall-of-famer in Canadian comics world, wrote one of Woodall's favourite stories in the collection.) But as every submission arrived in Woodall's inbox, she found herself reflecting on why she makes comics in Toronto. 

"It reminded me of the things I kind of forgot about," she says. "I love this community and I love this art form."

And there's another thing that's uniquely wonderful about Toronto's comics scene: TCAF. Since launching in 2003, the event has become one of the world's largest comic arts festivals, and this weekend, when it takes over the Toronto Reference Library once more, some 30,000 people are expected to attend. 

"I feel like every single cartoonist is always counting down the days to when it happens," says Woodall, whose first TCAF was in 2012. "It was really my first footing into the community, meeting people and making connections," she says. "I really credit a lot of the support that I felt I got at TCAF as motivating me to keep tabling, keep getting better, keep making comics, keep meeting people."

You can add one more thing to that list: she wants to keep making Pulping. After its debut at TCAF, the book will be available at the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival later this month (May 18-19), and copies are also being sold through TCAF's online marketplace. Woodall says there are plans to publish further editions of the anthology, with the hope of releasing a new book every year. Discussions for Volume 2's theme are already underway. 

The editors have decided on one thing, though. Next time, they'll give themselves more than five months to self-publish an entire anthology.  "I'm just glad that Pulping didn't make my burnout worse," says Woodall, laughing.  "Instead, it reinvigorated my love for making these things."