Celebrating creators at Prairie Comics Festival

Winnipeg

Creators and supporters from all over the prairies are welcome to come together at the Manitoba Museum (190 Rupert Ave.) for a celebration of art, comics, and the people who make them.

Prairie Comics Festival will be back on Sept. 6 and 7 and will boast over 90 comic creators and publishers. The two days will be free to attend, like previous years, and jam-packed with panel presentations.

This year’s special guests will be Jeff Lemire — best known for Essex County and Sweet Tooth, which have both been adapted for television — and Jenn Woodall, an award-winning illustrator from Brampton, Ont.

The annual celebration not only serves as a place to buy art and learn at panels, but provides a supportive space for people in the community to engage in the comic world beyond just Winnipeg and into the prairies as a whole.

Nyali Ali, a freelance journalist and writer, has been involved with the festival since 2016, when she met a few of the festival’s founders at a presentation on comics at the University of Winnipeg. At the time, she had just started reviewing graphic novels for the Free Press, she said. Ali is the writer behind Curb Angels Vol. 2, a post-punk, female-led graphic novel illustrated by Lisa Mendis and published in 2024.

”I attended the first festival (that year) and saw that it was really something special that filled a need the local community of independent comics makers in the city clearly had,” she said, adding that, as the festival grew, she lent a hand with prep, moderating panels, promoting and fundraising. “For me, it’s been so delightful to help build community by connecting folks to the festival, and to each other as artists and writers and educators of sequential art, to help develop programming, and to watch the festival grow both in physical size and in scope.”

“It’s a reminder of how much creative work is being done behind-the-scenes and also across the province,” said Jonathan Dyck, who joined the board earlier this year. The Winnipeg-based graphic novelist tabled at the festival for the first time in 2019, and has been wrapped up in the community ever since. He published his first literary graphic novel, Shelterbelts, with the BC-based Conundrum Press in 2022.

Dyck added that he’s excited for the future of the festival, as well, as the craft becomes more accessible for younger creators overtime.

“It’s relatively young and I am really excited for new and up-and-coming creators who are just kind of getting into comics, and maybe have already have a pretty long relationship with reading comics and graphic novels and so on, maybe from when they were kids to now,” he said. “I know, for older cartoonists like me, there’s often a little bit of a gap. There’s a period where you didn’t really read comics, or they weren’t very available … And so just seeing people who have been immersed in it from the get-go start creating and engaging with the scene is really exciting.”

Although Dyck won’t be tabling this year, he’s steadily involved in the programming Prairie Comics puts on year-round. Over time, the non-profit has put together a good list of different comic workshops — most of which are free — available to schools, libraries, and community spaces such as Martha Street Studio, keeping comics in the community even during the off-season.

“I think that’s just another tool in the Prairie Comics Festival arsenal,” Dyck said, adding that he’s been “roped in” on that end for the last few years.

”Manitoba has such a vibrant arts scene in general, and many creative folks have their hands in lots of different DIY scenes, but are sometimes siloed,” Ali said. “I love telling interested folks about all the opportunities to participate in the local comics scene, too … We’re always also excited about the out-of-town comics creators who come to our main festival every year so that local folks can see what they’re up to, too.”

“Canada’s got a lot of amazing cartooning, but the biggest centres are around Toronto, Montreal (and) Vancouver. So I feel like the prairie scene is a really happening and lively scene, and I like that Prairie Comics Festival has become kind of one of the anchor points for that scene,” Dyck said.

To keep up with the festival, visit prairiecomics.com or @prairiecomicsfestival on Instagram.