Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset. In a city of endless comicons, the behemoths battled it out while the little guy emerged a winner. This......

Beginning this Thursday, the fifteenth annual Junction Arts Festival will be swarming the streets with an entourage of innovative musicians, performers, and visual artists hailing from Canada, Denmark, Brussels, and the United States. Taking place on the one kilometre stretch between Quebec Avenue and Keele Street on Dundas Street West, the festival will present the works of over fifty visual artists as selected by the 2007 Juried Art Exhibition—and for the first time, will......

A lot happens in and around Toronto, but we can only write about so much in a week. Here's the best of the rest, in a new weekly feature we're calling Superfluist. Superfluist will now appear every Saturday. Three couples tried to break the world record for longest kiss last weekend at Mexx. If the photo above is any indication, it was precisely as awkward as kissing competitions tend to be! More photos are in......

This weekend’s TCAF was a lesson in facial hair and anxious hovering (refer to Karen Whaley's photo recap). Most comic artists are known for their self-loathing and surrealism (what artists aren’t?), but never have so many accomplished beards gathered in one place. Knowing that comics have traditionally been a boy’s club, it was especially great to see so many women artists come out and make it a more gender-even atmosphere. However, the female presence did......

Torontoist attended the Toronto Comic Arts Festival last weekend and was astounded by how much talent could be crammed into one building. Despite wanting to obtain nearly every giclée print and minicomic we saw, it was more economical to take photographs instead. Check out over twenty photos of your favourite writers and illustrators at TCAF behind the cut.......

This Saturday and Sunday is the third Toronto Comic Arts Festival, the city's only comics convention where you're unlikely to find cosplayers. Instead, fans call comic books "graphic novels" and story protagonists are often neurotic everymen rather than superheroes. This free event is organized to showcase the talent of Canada's cartoonists, both up-and-coming and well-established, while also welcoming international comics creators to the Great White North. The festival, called "TCAF" to be concise, will......

Roxanne Bielskis will be appearing at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this Saturday! Check out the full schedule online, and be sure to check back later today for Torontoist's preview of the event.......

James Bow. Transit Toronto Editor. Blogger. Yonge Street dream-dasher. Fantasy novel writer. Anti–Harry Potter activist. In what may be the best indie literary publicity stunt in some time, Bow will stage a half-serious one-man picket beside the midnight line-up of Potter fans waiting outside Another Story Bookshop (315 Roncesvalles Avenue) this Friday night. The fans, of course, will be there to get their hands on a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the......

Submission deadlines are quickly approaching for some of this year’s most exciting weekends of outdoor artfulness and it’s time to get those applications together. The ALLEYJAUNT will return for its 5th year in alleyways, garages and green spaces in and around Trinity Bellwoods Park. Proposals are being accepted from local artists and art collectives for site-specific installations, projects that incoporate urban themes and artistic interventions. The alleyway art will be taking place August 11 and......

Let's just get this over with right off the bat -- Arcade Fire have announced their Toronto show dates. Hurrah! They'll be at Massey Hall on May 15 & 16, and tickets go on sale on Feb. 23rd. Predicted time to sell out? 1 minute 49 seconds. If you have no luck with those, the next closest location is Montreal on May 12 & 13. In other big concert news, unless you've been living......

It seems pretty appropriate that we just had Groundhog Day, given that we're feeling a little bit like Bill Murray looking at the concert listings this week. Not only is there very little going on, but most of the bands who are playing seem to be here every week (Apostle of Hustle, The Tragically Hip, Hostage Life, Friendly Rich). Thus, we have nothing left to say about them! So if you've already seen these......

Now in its 7th year, the ImagineNative Film and Media Arts Festival opens tonight at the Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor W.) with the international premiere of the Kanakan Balintagos drama, Tuli. “The directors show a solid command of composition, lighting and pace”, commented Andrew Dowler in his review in last week’s NOW magazine. The festival continues until Sunday, closing with Waban-Aki: People from Where the Sun Rises, a documentary by Alanis Obomsawin, at the......

Len Cervantes moves the audience with his words during the poetry slam portion of the Kultura Filipino Arts Festival at the Kapisanan Philippine Arts Centre in Kensington this past Saturday. Editor's Note: Torontoist contributor Cal MacLean was at another poetry slam event on Saturday - The Drake's. As Cal notes, it's been a "slamming" week for poetry. He sends us this from the show:Maybe wordplay is just infectious. This past Saturday the Drake hosted......

Torontoist remembers that wonderful summer afternoon spent in the alley behind Honest Ed's at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. There were just far too many talented artists and graphic novel goodness for us to take it all in. So sadly we missed meeting the three artists appearing at the Revival tonight. Sammy Harkham (Drawn and Quarterly), Kevin Huizenga (Drawn and Quarterly), and Anders Nilsen (Fantagraphics) are current favourites for the comic gurus over at the......