| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 1987 |
| Founder(s) | Steve Solomos Sean Scoffield |
| Headquarters | 601 Markham Street Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Area served | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Products | Comics |
| Owner(s) | Peter Birkemoe Shane Chung |
| Subsidiaries | Little Island Comics |
| Website | http://www.beguiling.com |
The Beguiling is an adult-oriented comic shop in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It specializes in underground and alternative comics, classic comic strip reprints, and foreign comics. It has built an international reputation for focusing on and promoting non-superhero comics in the superhero-dominated North American comic book market.
The store has done much to promote comics culture in Toronto by organizing the annual Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) in coöperation with the Toronto Public Library, and by opening sister store Little Island Comics, the first North American comic shop aimed exclusively at children.
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Founded in 1987 by Steve Solomos and Sean Scoffield on Harbord Street near the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, The Beguiling quickly built a reputation for the diversity of what it stocks, focusing on art-oriented, avant-garde, underground and alternative comics, "anything that is even peripherally comic book-oriented", according to current owner Peter Birkmoe. In the earliest days, much of their income was made through mail order, as the material the dealt in was not mainstream. They also built a reputation for stocking the works of cartoonists such as Chester Brown and Julie Doucet, whose comics most stores wouldn't touch due to the controversial nature of their contents.[1] Well known Toronto-based cartoonists such as the trio of Brown, Seth and Joe Matt became associated with the store,[2], and sometimes depicted it in their comics. Others like Jay Stephens made it their shop of choice[1]
In 1998, Solomos and Scoffield decided to devote their time to creating art (and later film production), and ownership was passed to Peter Birkemoe and Shane Chung,[1] who expanded operations. It is now located in a two-floor Victorian building in Mirvish Village in Toronto, and has since branched out into selling to libraries,[3] organizing the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and opening another location, called Little Island Comics, catering to children.
The Beguiling is "a store with an agenda",[2] according to Birkmoe, and has been derided for some for its perceived elitism, built in part on their sponsoring of Crash, a journal of comics criticism that mainly condemned bad comics.[1] Others, like comics historian Charles Hatfield, have praised it for its sense of history, saying "You always leave the shop with a larger sense of what comics are about."[1] The store has made the top five lists in The Comics Journal[4] and by Drawn and Quarterly.
The Beguiling is patronized by an international audience,[1] and has won numerous awards, including sharing the inaugural Eisner Spirit of Retailing Award in 1993,[5] and the Joe Shuster Awards' Harry Kremer Retailer Award in 2010.[6]
In 2003, Peter Birkmoe and Chris Butcher of The Beguiling first organized the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF),[7] a free-admission event (unusual in the world of comics conventions[8]) which focuses on alternative and independent comics, but also on other creative arts besides comics.[7] Rather than being like a traditional comics convention, it is patterned after European festivals like Angoulême, and the Small Press Expo. The organizers were concerned that most Torontonians associated "comic books" with superheroes, despite the fact that htey considered Toronto to be a hotbed of alternative cartooning. Their stated goal was "to present the quality and prestige of[...]local and international artists in a package that’s respected and recognized".[8]
The festival was a biannual one until 2009, when, in partnership with the Toronto Public Library, it became an annual event. Starting that year, the Festival took place at the Toronto Reference Library,[7] and broke attendance records by attracting over 10,000 attendees.
As most North American comic shops focus on teenage and adult customers, and The Beguiling itself mainly on adults, the owners decided to fill in a void by opening the first children's comic shop in North America,[9] Little Island Comics, on September 6, 2011.[10] The store is located on Bathurst Street in the Annex, close to The Beguiling, and was designed with children in mind, with bright colours and the shelves made child-height.[3]
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