Comic book characters have gotten more and more ubiquitous in American society, but how can a kid go from loving those characters to making their own? A good place to start is at the Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival, June 14 and 15. Dan Mishkin, an artist organizing the festival, said that after bouncing around between a few library systems, including in Ann Arbor, the AADL asked if they could stay in Ann Arbor permanently.
“And that was a really good match,” Mishkin said. “The people there from the top down [are] really behind our mission to expose kids to comics, to get them passionate about comics, to give them an opportunity to learn how to make comics.”
The Ann Arbor District Library hosts the A2CAF in their main branch, at 343 South Fifth Avenue. The free event will welcome kids of all ages to celebrate the art and creative process.
Comic books have also gotten a lot harder to relate to in some ways for kids. As the industry started to get more successful at the start of the century, they found an older audience, making it a bit harder for the children who used to be at the center of the industry to find material specifically for them. This is the antidote to that problem.
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According to organizers, there will be drawing games and workshops to let kids set their imaginations free, while learning from real professionals. Saturday’s activities will go from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday’s will go from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
There will also be an Artist Alley, where over 40 professional comic book experts will be able to meet their fans and get kids interested in how to actually make their own comics. Tony Weaver Jr. will be a guest, and will be introducing his memoir “Weirdo,” and explaining both how and why he chose to make his recollections about his tween years. Organizers describe the memoir as Weaver’s experience as “an awkward preteen who loves all things geeky, but struggles with mental health issues and self doubt.”
How many kids do you know who sound like that? How many would feel less alone if they read it, and would get a lot out of the A2CAF?
It will actually be a bit like “The Comic Books Club” – a story written by guests Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud. This New York Times bestseller follows a group of kids who come together to find friendship and fulfillment as they form a club to make a comic themselves.
Drew Saunders is a freelance business and environmental journalist who grew up just outside of Ann Arbor. He covers local business developments, embraces his foodie side with reviews restaurants, obsesses over Michigan's environmental state, loves movies, and feels spoiled by the music he gets to review for Ann Arbor!
