Cartoonist group photo in Toronto restaurant

A gaggle of devastatingly handsome cartoonists pose for a group portrait in a Toronto restaurant. Left to right: Chris Ware, Charles Burns, Seth, Chester Brown, Anouk Ricard, Peter Birkemoe, Adrian Tomine. (photo: Nathalie Atkinson)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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The Snowden Principle

Mitchell Glaser

Cartooning is clearly hard on your eyes! It looks like an optometrist’s office.
- LinkMan
  
  Correlation ≠ causation.
  
  A perfectly plausible hypothesis one could draw from this photo is that congenitally myopic children who have trouble seeing the chalk board in school are more likely to hone their doodling skills.
  - Diogenes
    
    But they need to stop drawing while resting their foreheads on their other hand. It’s wearing them smooth.
Nash Rambler

They look like a flock of starlings; ready to take flight at the first sudden movement or loud noise.
orangedesperado

I think the abundance of bulging foreheads is interesting and possibly significant. I seem to remember in an old phrenology book that said this was a sign of greater than average intellectual capacity…and knowing 50% of the comics that the artists represented here I gotta say that Chris Ware and Charles Burns are the king of the forehead bulgers = smarty pants.

No body snarking — I’m serious !
- Halloween_Jack
  
  Ware looks like a forehead alien from Star Trek. I’d always assumed that if he happened to drop in Chicago Comics when I was there that he’d sort of fade into the background, but he’s actually weirder-looking in person than he draws himself. (So is Chester Brown, for that matter.)
- ffabian
  
  According to Dr. Galls Phrenology a bulging forehead is a sign for “Reiselust/Ortsinn” (wanderlust, travel desire) or “Witz” (humor).
http://twitter.com/NitroChimp Nitro Chimp

Why is the bad guy from Who framed Roger Rabbit there?
- brzap
  
  Not to mention the bad guy from The Last Action Hero.
  - http://twitter.com/plainandy Andrew Brown
    
    Another motley gathering of villainy… Charles Burns also resembles the bad guy from the “Raiders of the Last Arc”
  - http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis
    
    One of them looks a bit like the guy whose company did the effects for Last Action Hero…
    http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/02/12/business/12adman.583.jpg
- chaopoiesis
  
  Dat no bad guy… dat James Joyce.
http://blog.glennf.com/ Glenn Fleishman

Charles Burns is a snappy dresser!
- http://twitter.com/apelad Adam Koford
  
  That’s Seth in the suit and hat. Dashing as ever!
  - http://blog.glennf.com/ Glenn Fleishman
    
    Is Burns crouching? (Crouching Burns, Hidden Seth)
    - http://twitter.com/apelad Adam Koford
      
      Yes indeed.
- hypnosifl
  
  The guy in the fedora is Seth rather than Burns.
Roose_Bolton

Taken at the Korean Village resto on Bloor W.; amazing service!….he said, apropos of not much at all…
Scott Belyea

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/cartoonist-is-coming
GawainLavers

Are they all siblings? I’ve seen nuclear families with less resemblance.
- ObeyMyBrain
  
  This seriously looks like one of those photos where you photoshop the same face on multiple bodies.
  - GawainLavers
    
    Mediaplex Ads FTW
- sburns54
  
  Chris, Seth, and Charles look like triplets, Chester looks like their eccentric older brother, and the guy in the back looks worried that he’s gonna look like them in 10 years.
http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

You know how it can be difficult to forget Tom Cruise’s scientology baggage and just enjoy watching his movies? I think I’ve got that problem now with Chester Brown after reading Paying For It.
- Halloween_Jack
  
  A lot of people got that mental picture of him after the Yummy Fur arc (The Playboy, I think) in which he depicted his unusual masturbation method.
http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

Someone crop close to Peter Birkemoe way in back there with caption: SOON.

knowyourmeme.com/photos/378253-soon
waksawak

This looks like the evolution (devolution?) of hair.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SVV4BXZ3NUPXI34WH3EERSF64Q Seriously

They all look the same except for the guy on the right who looks like Will Wheaton
Cowicide

I’m amazed with how thin they all are. I thought that drawing cartoons for a living would have them put on some weight over time.
- GawainLavers
  
  It’s the “not eating” thing.
metafactory

Used to see Seth and many of the others at Jet Fuel in Cabbage Town all the time … this picture makes me feel so old! These were the young turks of the freak/alt comics world not that long ago.
MollyMaguire

Ooo, I am deep in the uncanny valley with this shot for some reason.
Will Bueche

Dude on the right – run while you still have hair!
http://undulantfever.blogspot.com/ Bruce Arthurs

Does cartooning cause hair loss, or does the despair of hair loss lead to cartooning?

Cowicide: You’ve never heard of “starving artists”?
http://hame.ca/one/ Hamish Grant

Here’s a little slideshow of pics from the discussion these heroes had at the Bloor Cinema the same evening this photo was taken. http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigdaddyhame/sets/72157631996455164/show/

Such a wonderful evening it was!
- http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul
  
  Nice collection.
  
  In those shots, the fellow in the brown suit looks very much like a cross between Joseph Campbell and Bertrand Russell.
http://twitter.com/therantguy therantguy

It’s actually pretty hard to assemble a weirder bunch…Chris Ware is strange…Seth and Chester are super nice both both terribly weird…and Birkmoe isn’t weird he’s just socially awkward and bad with people…
dalgoda7

All that’s missing from this photo is Joe Matt.
- Stephen Marts
  
  You are forgetting Julie Doucet!!
- Halloween_Jack
  
  He, Seth, and Chester Brown used to be like the Three Musketeers of autobiographical cartoons–at one point Matt was even living in Toronto and the three would hang out regularly–but I get the feeling that Matt has withdrawn quite a lot in recent years; his output has slowed down to about nothing.
theophrastvs

Why are we looking at a photo of cartoonists? next up: a cartoon of photographers.
http://twitter.com/mikesalibaphoto mike saliba

This picture looks like the Major Arnold Toht fanclub.
Brian Bara

Why do at least three of these people look like they stepped off the set of “Men in Black?”
Halloween_Jack

I should amend my gossipy comments above by saying that, with the exception of Anouk Ricard and Peter Birkemoe, whose work I’m simply unfamiliar with, I admire the work of the men above hugely.
http://twitter.com/twistmeyer Mike Meyer

Where’s Joe Matt? Did he lock himself in the bathroom?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Col-McGillveray/100001601736627 Col McGillveray

RIP Spain. Who was, in contrast, a handsome chap with great hair!
Tom McCarthy

well, soon as I start losing my hair I’m changing career to cartoonist.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Christopher-Lee/100001074475538 Christopher Lee

THEY ARE LITERALLY ALL THE SAME PERSON HOLD ME MOTHER
destroy_all_humans

This could have been a family photo and I would have believed it.
princeminski

I think at least one person alluded to this in the midst of the high school yearbook critiques, but this is an astonishing collection of very talented people.
http://twitter.com/WikiTruths Wiki-Truths

Check out all their books and Peter’s shop in Toronto – one of the best in North America! I got out of comics because of this. I’m too social.