2022 Guests

Adriana (Vargas) Blake is a Venezuelan/American/Canadian (phew!) artist with 15+ years of experience in the animation industry.  She’s a storyboard artist and revisionist with credits in shows such as Johnny Test, Arthur, Magic School Bus: Rides Again and many others.  She’s also dabbled in comics on occasion by self-publishing slice-of-life Fall on Me, drawing a one-shot story for Princeless: Tales of the Family Ashe (Action Lab Comics) and collaborating with Jody Houser and Fiona Staples on a story for Womanthology (IDW). She’s a wife, mom, D&D nerd and likes mermaids and tea.
Tate Brombal is a comic book writer from Guelph, Ontario. He is best known for his work as a writer on the best-selling House of Slaughter, set in the world of James Tynion IV and Werther Dell’Edera’s Something is Killing the Children, and on Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston’s Black Hammer Universe at Dark Horse Comics, most notably for writing the Eisner and GLAAD Award-nominated Barbalien: Red Planet. His comic The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos is currently being serialized online with James Tynion IV’s Tiny Onion Studios. Tate now lives in Toronto surrounded by plants and coffee mugs. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram @TateBrombal.
Scott Chantler is the cartoonist of the critically-acclaimed graphic novels Bix and Two Generals, which was nominated for two Eisner Awards, selected for Best American Comics 2012, and voted by CBC’s Canada Reads as one of the 40 best Canadian non-fiction books of all time.
His other work includes Northwest Passage (nominated for Eisner and Harvey Awards) and the Three Thieves series (winner of the Joe Shuster Award for Best Comic for Kids and listed by YALSA as a Great Graphic Novel for Teens). In 2015, he served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Windsor, the first cartoonist to be appointed so by a Canadian university.
He lives and works in Stratford, Ontario, Canada where he is hard at work on his next project, the Squire & Knight series of all-ages fantasy adventure graphic novels for First Second.
 
Working and residing in Mississauga, Ontario, Adam Gorham’s career in comics began in 2008 with work on various indie efforts. In recent years he’s worked for publishers like Valiant Entertainment, IDW Publishing, Archie Comics, and Marvel Comics (Rocket, New Mutants: Dead Souls). Prone to occasional Werewolf transformations, with victims typically experiencing a nice warm hug. Adam is currently embroiled in an eons-old battle with a wild raccoon, and yet, somehow managed to knock out some of the best commissions on Earth in 2019.
David J. Knight, a Guelphite, is, among other things, an author, publisher and artist. Aside from his academic publications in Archaeoacoustics, Knight has published several local fiction, nonfiction and art projects including Sound Guelph (Publication Studio 2013), The Star of Destiny – a new edition of a John Galt play (Vocamus Editions 2015), and a new edition of Mary Leslie’s 1878 local novel The Cromaboo Mail Carrier (Vocamus Editions 2016). 
Knight started the comic Tales of a Guelphite in 2018 and, with Caleb Rollingson-Martindale, The Head in 2019. Knight is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of Fenylalanine Publishing (Guelph), and an active member of WhirlWhirl Publishing (Orlando, Florida). His latest works include Aerosomnia: The Awakening Ear (WhirlWhirl Publishing 2022) and Heads & Tales, the new flip-comic that combines Tales of a Guelphite #4 and The Head #3 (Fenylalanine Publishing 2022). 
More information about David’s work can be found on his website: http://davidjknight.weebly.com
And at WhirlWhirl Publishing: https://whirlwhirl.com/projects/
Diana Tamblyn is a Joe Shuster and Ignatz-nominated cartoonist who has been actively writing and drawing comics for over 14 years. She’s exhibited her comics at small press fairs and comic book shows in both Canada and the US, and has had artwork displayed in various group and solo shows. In 2005, She was chosen by the Globe and Mail as a Canadian cartoonist to watch.
Her latest comic project is “From Earth to Babylon: The Story of Gerald Bull and the Supergun”. This is a historical based work on the life of Canadian Gerald Bull – considered to be one of the most brilliant artillery scientists of the 20th century. His work on artillery led him across the globe, from Canada to the Pentagon, Barbados, South Africa and Iraq – where he ultimately developed the “Supergun” for Saddam Hussein. He was assassinated in Brussels in 1990 by two shots to the head and three in the back, and was never able to finish his dream project. Diana has been awarded a Canada Council Grant to assist in the production of this work in progress.
Currently living in London, Ont, she works as a web producer. She graduated from Concordia University in 1994 with a BFA in Film Animation.
J. Torres is the award-winning writer of the Forest of Reading Honour Book Planet Hockey, the Junior Library Guild Selection How to Spot a Sasquatch, and Lola: A Ghost Story, recipient of an Aesop Accolade from the American Folklore Society. He’s also written comics for the Archies, Simpsons, Teen Titans Go, Wonder Woman, and others. His most recent releases include the graphic novel Stealing Home and the miniseries Batman: Knightwatch. 
Michael Walsh is an Eisner award winning Canadian comic-book creator, based out of Hamilton, Ontario.
In 2013 Michael co-created the IMAGE comic book series COMEBACK (soon to be a major motion picture) . After this, Michael launched a follow-up to the hit television series the X-FILES for IDW. Since then he has worked primarily with MARVEL COMICS on properties such as Star Wars, Spider-Man, The Avengers, and the X-Men, as well as adapting the Star Wars film THE LAST JEDI. In 2019 Michael was the artist and colourist of the hit DARK HORSE x DC COMICS crossover, Black Hammer/Justice League.
In 2021 Image announced THE SILVER COIN ( co-created by Michael) a new horror anthology series for mature readers. Each issue will tell a tale of terror in a shared supernatural world.
Rio Youers is the British Fantasy and Sunburst Award–nominated author of
Westlake Soul and Lola on Fire. His 2017 thriller, The Forgotten Girl, was a
finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel. He is the writer of
Refrigerator Full of Heads, a six-issue comic series from DC Comics, and
Sleeping Beauties, a graphic novel based on the number-one bestseller by Stephen
King and Owen King. Rio’s latest novel, No Second Chances, was published by
William Morrow in February 2022.