In a friendly corner of The Cameron House, local artists come together monthly to share in drinks, drawing and a community that has endured for over three decades.

By Luis Ramirez-Liberato

Content warning: This article has one mention of suicide.

Ray Oldenburg’s book “The Great Good Place” describes the framework for three social spaces: the first, second and third space being home, work and the social anchor, respectively. These are terms that have become familiar to current social discourses over discussions regarding the death of the third place. Third places are defined as locations wherein people can “relax in public, where you encounter familiar faces and make new acquaintances,” according to Oldenburg. In a post-pandemic time when long-lasting businesses are shutting down and many once-physical spaces are moved to the online world — blurring the lines between the first and third place — it is easy to see why sentiments lamenting the death of real-world spaces exist.

Yet, in the back of Toronto’s Cameron House stands a bastion for cartoonists that has withstood the test of time for over three decades as a space for artists to meet and commune over a shared love of art and comics. On the last Sunday of every month (except December), people gather for a comic jam — a collaborative event where artists contribute panels or pages to create a single comic. All of these contributions are compiled into a monthly jam book, providing a snapshot of that month’s participants, their artwork and the memories created during a night of drinking and drawing with others.

The first event held by The Toronto Comic Jam — originally “A Toronto Comic Jam” before morphing into the current name — was conducted by founder Dave Howard in November of 1996 at Frank Nevada’s Tune Saloon on the main floor of the old El Mocambo. After over a year of holding the comic jams at El Mocambo, the group relocated to The Cameron House as their primary meeting place.

Howard recalls what this first event looked like with great clarity, describing the music of Johnny Borra and Frank Nevada’s open-mic night and the sounds of Roger Ramjet cartoons playing on a television set in the corner of the room.

Howard explains that before the establishment of The Toronto Comic Jam, there was no place for cartoonists in Toronto to connect with one another. Dalton Sharp, the comic jam’s main organizer following Howard, mentions that the old Silver Snail on Yonge Street served as a makeshift comic “headquarters” because of its bulletin board where artists could post announcements and look for collaborators. But beyond that, Sharp says, “you knew that things were happening, but there wasn’t really a nexus point.  In contrast, Montreal had been hosting its own comic jams for some time, supported by a thriving indie comic and zine scene. Howard cites comic artist Rupert Bottenberg and Canadian Max “Salgood Sam” Douglas, an artist working for Marvel at the time and based in Toronto, as having played a key role in organizing some of the first comic jams in Montreal. These predecessors would ultimately serve as a model for the future comic jams in Toronto.

“The whole process started [with] these parties, and then Rupert Bottenberg said, ‘Let’s have this in a bar and make it an event,’” said Howard. “It was quite the spectacle. And of course, they would produce a book at the end and then share it around. I think that was key to Rupert’s comic jam.”

These events were less frequent and much larger in scale than those of the later Toronto comic jams. Howard described them as “carnival-like,” featuring clowns and magicians with performance artists showcasing “bizarre sort of performances.” The culminating effect of these comic jams was the production of a zine collecting all the comics drawn and shared with participants.

One of the appeals to the Montreal comic jams was the high-status crowd it brought in. Howard describes how some participants of the comic jams travelled from the United States to attend these events. 

“[There was] so much talent in Montreal, and the cartoonists often in the jam book, [were] the best of the best,” said David Bragdon, a participant turned organizer for the comic jam. “What that sort of created was this feeling you had seen the same people over and over again in the jam books, and lots of people would come and it was hard for them to break in.”

Howard would go on to factor this bias into his own comic jams by creating an environment free from competitiveness with a focus on community. Everyone would contribute to their jam books as a collective.

“That way, people feel seen and heard and more likely to come back, but also just to feel like they are welcome,” said Howard. “I really wanted it to be a safe space so that everybody could come and it didn’t matter how good or bad you were, just come and have a good time.”

In the summer of 1996, Bottenberg and Douglas brought one of the first-ever comic jams to Toronto, a three-floor extravaganza held at the Hyper Bar. Through his involvement in the comic scene — at the time working on an anthology of cartoonists’ short stories in zine form — Howard caught wind of the event and found himself volunteering to sell merchandise at the comic jam.

“I think they were pretty blown away by how many people came out for the comic jam portion of it,” said Howard. “It turned out there was a huge underground independent cartoonist slash comic scene in Toronto. But lots of people were not talking to each other. There wasn’t really a third place.”

Throughout the medium’s existence, comics have had the perception of appealing exclusively to youths. This paradigm manifested in part due to the massive popularity of superhero comics — 1936’s The Phantom still stands as one of the best-selling comics in approximate sales for a periodical single-issue floppy comics — a main staple for DC and Marvel which dominated the market in sales but also through a series of predatory practices which helped them maintain dominance in the industry.

“If there was an independent cartoonist who put out something, [DC or Marvel] would put out something similar and steal the attention until the independent couldn’t survive anymore. And that’s why the whole market since the 70s and the 80s and on, were dominated by superheroes,” said Howard.

The lack of attention on the indie side of comics largely facilitated the necessity for a third artist place.

“That’s part of the reason I wanted to start the zine, because if you’re a prose writer, there is a whole history of people who would write, drink, and they would have wild or adventurous lives. They didn’t make a ton of money, but it was somehow noble. And there’s that whole trope about the writer’s life, but there was nothing like that for the cartoonists,” said Howard.

From the cavity in the cartoonist social sphere came The Cameron House to fill the void for an established third place where cartoonists could meet. The Cameron House was an especially lucrative place for developing The Toronto Comic Jam as people saw it as a hub for artists of all genres and mediums through the 1990s.

“It was really cool that we got to have the jam there because a lot of independent artists were there. People were coming into the city, well-known musicians or dancers, entertainers, publishers, and film people,” said Howard. “Often you’d be at the Cameron and you would meet others there big on connecting people.”

In the late 90s and early 2000s, the comic jams met Toronto with great acclaim and some even had large turnouts of nearly 200 participants. The popularity of these events eventually brought The Toronto Comic Jam to the front page of Eye Weekly, which is now defunct.

A major boon for the longevity of The Toronto Comic Jam is its consistency. Through this consistency came something of a revolving door for the comic jam. In speaking with Bragdon, he mentions how some current members have participated since the early inception of the comic jam while others have come and gone over the years. Bragdon recounts having taken a five-year hiatus from attending the jams and, after so long, being able to return to it in the same place on the last Sunday of the month.

“It’s like Dave Howard created an institution that is always there, that people can just go and come back to,” said Bragdon.

To the recollection of many and the dismay of all who endured, in 2020, Ontario began to lock down amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Federal data reports that over 120,000 small and medium-sized businesses shuttered in Canada during the pandemic. Those who experienced the pandemic remember the shift to the online world and the homogenization of social spaces into the glow of a computer monitor where home, work and communities existed tangential to one another.

As was the case with many Toronto communities, The Toronto Comic Jam made the move to virtual in 2020.

In smaller communities, it is often individuals who maintain and sustain their life force. On their Facebook page, The Toronto Comic Jam describes itself as “an open community run by volunteers.” During the pandemic, Thomas John King served as one of these crucial individuals, acting as a pillar of strength for the comic jam and playing a significant role in keeping it active.

“He was instrumental in keeping the comic jam going through the pandemic because he set up the online comic jam,” said Bragdon. “A lot of people [said] the online comic jam was what kept them going during the pandemic. The comic jam survived thanks to Tom King and everyone else going to the comic jam.”

On Aug. 28, 2024, Thomas John King took his own life. The Toronto Comic Jam dedicated their October comic jam to celebrating the life of one of their fellow community members.

Mason “Mason Jar” Barnes-Crouse joined the comic jam right around the time of the pandemic, having only attended two jams at The Cameron House before the lockdowns began. He talked about his disappointment in being unable to get together to draw with the community. However, through the online jams, a subculture of a subculture formed around this space, as Barnes-Crouse describes.

“I found out that [Thomas King] was working on an online version of the jam where people can upload their drawing digitally,” said Barnes-Crouse. “And it was through that process I learned how to draw digitally. Seeing other artists and their process, I started getting really [close] with my digital illustration and so I started drawing comics that way too, and I feel like I got way better.”

As with all subcultures, a clique forms which gravitates towards elements that resonate with them. In the case of indie comics, Howard uses the term “trash culture,” not in a derogatory way but as something co-opted by comics through its perception as a low art form. What stems from this perception is what Howard describes as a sense of liberty for a second-classism of comics that works to express the depraved side of oneself. This “trash culture” coexists with superhero comics and literature, creating distinct divisions within the comics scene.

Barnes-Crouse highlights that in the indie comics scene, the ability to self-insert into their comics facilitates a reflection through the caricaturization or projection of the inner persona onto the art.

“There’s often a lot of self-deprecation going on in indie comics, and it’s a very personal thing to release that self-deprecating expression that a lot of us have,” said Barnes-Crouse. “Comics, people, I feel like are very peculiar kinds of personalities. We’re a little bit neurotic and anxious.”

The Toronto Comic Jam is a clique sustained, as Howard puts it best, “because they sincerely had fun and they could blow off steam. And I think that motivation is the strongest sort of glue to keeping the community together.”

The Toronto Comic Jam has endured for so long because of the love and work put into the community by its members, who have made that effort to create a third place for cartoonists. 

“I guess it’s just people. If you just keep coming long enough, you start feeling like this is your place. And then you want to welcome other people in,” said Bragdon.

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*Correction: This article originally contained a misattributed job position and had misspelled the names of two sources. These corrections have been implemented in the story.