Many thanks go to The Beguiling bookstore in Toronto (owned by Peter Birkemoe) for hosting the Toronto launch of my book, in conjunction with The Merril Collection. Special thanks goes to The Beguiling's manager, Christopher Butcher, for organizing the whole event and making it a smash success. Almost 70 people gather on a sporadically-rainy Wednesday night in downtown Toronto at the Lillian H. Smith library (of which The Merril Collection is a large part of). That's more than a lot of cartoonists get for an event, and even more impressive was the fact that over 40 copies of "Strange & Stranger..." sold at the event! That's a pretty good attendee-to-buyers ratio! (Above picture by Zack King Kotzer)

The night opened with a revamped (seen here for the first time!) 25-minute slide show and talk by me about Ditko's work. Around 7:45pm, we assembled into the lobby to sign copies of the book, before reconvening for the first Canadian showing of In Search of Steve Ditko documentary by Jonathan Ross but technical problems with both copies of the DVD cut that short at the 15-minute mark, and I did an extensive Q&A and another round of signings before the evening ended at about 9pm. (Above picture by Michael Hill)

It was a great thrill to see many people from my past show up at the event, including my Grade 9-13 art teacher Robert Montgomery, and former managers and team members who reported to me back in the ol' Rogers dayz! On the left in the picture above is Brent Voisey, who had a better Spider-Man collection than me back in primary school and we hadn't seen each other since 1982! He just started getting back into comics, purchased the Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus, saw my essay inside, and contacted me on Facebook. The power of technology... (Above picture by Zack King Kotzer)

For those of you in Toronto who couldn't make the event, the book (provided it hasn't sold out yet) is available at The Beguiling for purchase, and we're setting up another Toronto event at the July 12/13th Paradise Comicon, so stay tuned for more details!

The book should hit bookstores either July 2nd or July 9th. Thanks again to all who attended!