Nerdventures: VanCAF 2016 – The Panels

Welcome to Part II of our VanCAF 2016 review! (Psssttt, you can read Part I here 😉 it’s all about the art!)

The nerd gods were smiling down on us as Jen and I managed to score front row VIP seats for both Lynn Johnston (For Better or For Worse) and the Sneaky Dragon podcast panels 🙂

Lynn Johnston & Doug Savage

We cannot say enough nice things about Lynn, but we’ll save some of that for a very special Nerds ‘R Us podcast next week 😉 In the meantime, enjoy a few highlights from her panel.

• She endearingly calls trolls on the web “fungus people.”
• Laughter was important in her family.
• Secret talent: being able to pick out the “class clown” in a room full of kids as she was one herself and proud of it.
• Her first publisher mowed her lawn in lieu of payment for illustrations.
• The biggest challenge facing creatives today is being properly compensated for their talent.
• The comic book exchange rate: 1 MAD magazine = 4 Archies.
• Considers the exhibit of her work with the Sudbury Art Gallery a big honour.
• If she were to continue For Better of For Worse, she would kill off John in a giant metal chicken-automobile accident.
• When visiting Charles Schulz’s workshop, she asked what happened to the middle of a large wooden table that was completely shredded. He replied, “hard work.”
• On aging: “Old people are whiny.”
• On comics: “The world needs fantasy.”
• On chickens: “If you’re stupid and taste good, you have no hope.”

And the sweetest moment happened near the end of the panel, when an old high school friend of Lynn stood up in the audience to ask a question and she ran over to give him hug.

Special shout-out to Doug (Savage Chickens) who did such an incredible job moderating. He is also a wonderful cartoonist in his own right. I can’t thank him enough for my personalized chicken.

David Dedrick, Ian Boothby, Lucy Bellwood, & James Lloyd

Ian and David of the Sneaky Dragon podcast taped a live episode at VanCAF with Lucy and James as their special guests. We were entertained with talks of tall ships and shaping the minds of future cartoonists. Listen to the recording in its entirety here. Side-note: how awesome is their theme song?!

We were already planning on going to the taping when we met Ian and Dave at their VanCAF booth. By the end of our conversation, we couldn’t wait for the podcast. The two of them are an absolute riot. They even made fun of each other’s drawing skills as they personalized their original comic, Adam & Steve for us. Check out their other podcasts Totally TinTin and Completely Beatles.

Lucy is a doll and has a serious obsession with boats in the best way possible. Her love of all things nautical is absolutely infectious. And she put all of her experience out at sea into a super fun comic called, Baggywrinkles.

In addition to being an illustrator for Futurama and The Simpsons comics, James also has professor on his ever growing list of accomplishments and he will be teaching a brand new course at Langara College this fall. Be sure to check out all of his awesome work here.

Massive shout-out to Jen for taking care of camera duties!

And be sure to read the final installment of our VanCAF recap that will be posted tomorrow! Jen and I review our purchases from the con. Spoiler alert: we may have spent too much money but it was all worth it!

‘Til next time,

Rach