Pow Pow is hitting the road and heading to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival on June 6+7 for a wild weekend of comics fun!
This year we are delighted to report that 3 of our creators are Featured Guests:
Joana Mosi will be making the first stop on her 2026 Canada tour, including an appearance during TCAF’s Libraries and Educators Day on Friday, June 5! TCAF holds a special place for Pow Pow and Joana (we first met her during a protfolio review, and the rest is history) so this feels like a full circle moment! Don’t miss this rare North American appearance by this Portuguese author.
Pascal Girard is back at TCAF for the first time in years in support of his new book Pastimes and we couldn’t be happier! We’ll also have copies of his latest French book, Fausse balle, which will be coming in English in 2027.
And Cathon will be at TCAF with Fruit Salad and all her other wonderful books. As a big plus, Cathon will be participating in TCAF’s first ever French-language panel, on the Quebec comics scene!
In addition we’ll have Pow Pow creator Alexandre Fontaine Rousseau (Vampire Cousins) with us… Make sure to ask him about his upcoming book The Conquest of the Cosmos, out this August!
Find us all weekend long at the Pow Pow table, and don’t miss our great panels:
💊 Graphic Medicine Without Borders
with Joana Mosi, Maureen Burdock, Arizona O’Neill, Veronica Post, Moka Onmae, Tsubasa Kosaka
Moderated by Shelley Wall
11:00 PM – 12:00 PM | Libraries & Education Day | Friday, June 5
Graphic medicine, or the intersection of comics and health, offers insights into the, often contradictory and too-hard-for-words, experiences of embodied life. Moderated by one of the leading scholars in graphic medicine, Dr. Shelley Wall, and spotlighting creators from around the globe, this panel highlights graphic medicine from around the world, encouraging us to think beyond borders and embrace our shared humanity. Attendees will walk away with a greater understanding of what comics can offer medicine and plenty of comics suggestions to bring back to their communities!
❤️🩹 Spotlight on Joana Mosi x Arizona O’Neill
11:15 AM-12:05 PM | Saturday, June 6 | Jet Ice Lounge ⋅ 4th Floor
Comics have a special way of leaving you quietly devastated as heartbreak, pain and loss unfolds panel after panel. In The Mongoose (Pow Pow Press), Portuguese visual artist and cartoonist Joana Mosi crafts the tale of a woman haunted by grief, loss and a garden-destroying pest. Montreal-based author and illustrator Arizona O’Neill’s Opioids and Organs (Drawn & Quarterly) is a heart-wrenching graphic novel memoir of a daughter grappling with the loss of her father alongside her family’s story and the city’s own macabre history. Join these two prodigious artists in conversation as they excavate the hardest emotions and why comics offer such a singular way to explore them.
📥 The Comic Book Gig Economy
with Pascal Girard
11:30AM -12:30 PM | Sunday, June 7 | The Bunker ⋅ 3rd Floor
Comics defined the gig economy before the term was even invented, with creators making a living, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so, never knowing for certain if they’d ever work again once their current assignment was completed. This reality makes branding and promoting more important to a cartoonist’s bank account than it’s ever been. In this panel we’ll get into the highs and lows of getting those gigs and keeping them coming.
⚜️ BD Québécoise Aujourd’hui
with Cathon, Pascal Girard, and Cassandra Calin
Moderated by François Vigneault
1:30 – 2:20PM | Sunday, June 7 | The Lookout ⋅ 3rd Floor
Ce sera une séance en français.
La scène de la BD québécoise s’impose aujourd’hui comme l’un des milieux les plus vibrants et créatifs de la bande dessinée internationale. Vous êtes curieux·se de découvrir la BD québécoise? Vous aimeriez lire davantage de bandes dessinées du Québec, en français ou en anglais? Vous voulez en apprendre plus sur les multiples univers de la BD québécoise? Venez assister à une table ronde en français avec Cassandra Calin (La Nouvelle), Cathon (Fruit Salad) et Pascal Girard (Pastimes), animée par François Vigneault! Pas besoin d’être parfaitement bilingue — les questions en anglais, en français, ou même en franglais sont les bienvenues!
English Translation:
This will be a French-language session.
The Québec comics scene is establishing itself as one of the most vibrant and creative hubs in international comics. Curious about Québec BD? Interested in reading more stories from Québec, in French or in English? Want to learn more about the many worlds of Québec comics? Join Cassandra Calin (La Nouvelle), Cathon (Fruit Salad) and Pascal Girard (Pastimes), along with moderator François Vigneault, for a lively round-table discussion en français! Audience questions in English, French, or even “Franglais” are warmly welcome too!
Toronto Comic Arts Festival
June 6-7, 2026
Mattamy Athletic Centre
