In addition to their close proximity to Canada’s Western Coastline, they share something else in common; founding membership in a comic book collective by the name of Cloudscape Comics.

I was fortunate enough to recently connect with a few individuals involved with the group. My goal was to learn a little about what they do, what they stand for, and how local comic creators can benefit from collaborating through a collective like their own.

According to Jeff Ellis, current Cloudscape President and a founding member himself, the collective’s reason for being is to promote and assist Vancouver-area comic artists and writers.

“There are a lot of talented individuals living in the city,” says Jeff, “but they’re all working on their own, and it’s much harder to get recognition working that way. Cloudscape Comics is a way to support those individuals.  Secondary to that, we also want to build up the reputation of comics in general – we’re trying to make interesting fictional stories that have a broad appeal, not just for kids and not just for really discerning indie connoisseurs.”

Jeff says that Cloudscape was born out of the initial desire of a few Vancouver comic artists to start up a local collective. Without any real idea where to start, he and a friend created a Facebook Fan page, which ended up pulling in quite a few members. They decided to meet in person at Our Town Cafe in Vancouver, which became a weekly event.

“The next idea that came to us,” says Jeff, “Was hey, we have all of these artists making comics – rather than spending money to do our own individual works why don’t we work together and pool our resources to publish something. That’s where our first volume came from, Robots, Pine Trees and Broken Hearts. It was a 48 page floppy comic, and doing that encouraged us to keep going.”

Angela Melick, author of the popular webcomic Wasted Talent, initially became involved with Cloudscape immediately after graduating from University.

“I was searching for structure in my life before I found a job, and Jonathon Dalton told me about a group he was starting up with these other cartoonists,” says Angela, “I said hey you know, I’ve got nothing better to do, I’m unemployed, and I’m looking to get back into doing comics. So I wrote a story for the group and we actually managed to publish an anthology together, which I think shocked everyone in the community.  As many cartoonists could tell you, anthology groups come together very often, and ninety percent of the time they implode.”

She says that publishing Robots, Pine Trees and Broken Hearts was significant in that it showed the group they could actually pull together to release a quality anthology. In doing so, herself and the other Cloudscape artists also learned a great deal about the publication process  and what they would need to tell artists submitting works in order to  make the process flow more smoothly in the future.

“Since then,” says Angela, “we published Historyonics, which was a long book of history comics, and we published Sunday Funnies, which was a color book  – and that impressed a lot of people, because they didn’t know that color was achievable. Our latest book, Exploded View, we really tightened up on the editorial direction and we’re really proud of the emphasis on story-telling in the book. I think with Exploded View, we really hit our stride as a group. ”

As for the origin of the name, Cloudscape Comics was not the group’s original moniker. Back in the beginning, they called themselves Cumulus  – that is, until they found out there was another publisher in Montreal with the same name, coincidentally also doing comics.

“We decided to rename ourselves,” says Jeff,  “after a long meeting at the comic shop we took a vote and Cloudscape was what we ended up with. I think we were looking for something related to the Vancouver weather, so we came up with a lot of names very cloud and rain related. Precipitation Press was another option. (Jeff laughs)”

Over the course of four anthologies, Cloudscape has built an impressive list of over thirty contributors – including the likes of Camilla d’Errico, Colleen macIsaac, Jordyn Bochon, and Colin Upton, to name a few. (We’ve actually featured both Colleen and Jordyn on The Fabler Blog before – click on their respective names to read the articles!)

Of those contributors, Colin Upton would be the member with the longest hands-on experience in comics. He started making minicomics in 1985, and released his first full-length comic, Big Thing, in 1990. He saw his comics published by Fantagraphics and several other Seattle-based alternative publishers throughout the nineties, before returning to the minicomic format around 2000.

“I remember coming across the first Cloudscape anthology,” says Colin, “and being very impressed with this group of young people who were managing to get their stuff together enough to publish in print.  I particularly appreciated this since so many new comic writers and artists choose to put their stuff online, rather than publish in print.”

Another draw for Colin was the fact that Cloudscape was very story-oriented.

“At the time,” he says, “I was seeing a lot of comics that were what I like to call ‘arty-type comics’. That is, ones that don’t have much of a plot or direction where it seems to be mostly about sketching or drawing, rather than anything story-driven.  So I appreciated that about Cloudscape, that they were story-oriented.”

For these reasons, Colin decided to get involved with the collective. He has contributed to every Cloudscape anthology since.

“Cloudscape allows local comic creators a chance to come together and do something larger than a minicomic,” says Upton, “Also, in my case it allows me to connect with what’s going on in the comic scene these days. Just about all of the artists I knew doing comics in the eighties or nineties have gone on to other things – working in video games, graphic design and the like. It gets quite lonely when you reach my age, having very few cartoonists as your contemporaries.

Not to mention, hanging out with a group of younger people involved with web-publishing and the modern world of comic publishing in general helps me come to terms with those developments I don’t yet fully understand myself.”

The value of connecting with local comic creators is, in itself, a significant benefit to collectives like Cloudscape. As Angela Melick points out, drawing comics can be a very isolated experience.

“One of the greatest things for an artist about the internet is being able to find other artists,” she says, “but being able to do that locally is ten times better. You can actually talk to people informally about the artistic process, and learn from their technique as you’re sitting with them, watching them draw.  Even if you don’t ever publish anything in your group, just finding other cartoonists near you is tremendously helpful for anyone.”

Currently, anyone that is presently living in Vancouver or has previously lived there can contact the group about getting involved.

“All of the contact information is on the website,” says Jeff. “We’re currently trying to keep the anthologies grounded in a West Coast perspective, but we also run comic battles as a weekly feature on our website, and anyone can submit something for that.  We post a theme, and anyone is welcome to submit a comic, then we put it up for a week for everyone to vote on. The winner gets the glory (and possibly a prize, depending if we have a prize ready).”

Jeff says that one major goal for the near future of Cloudscape Comics is to establish a distribution method that can get their anthologies onto shelves in a wider radius of bookstores.  Being a sharp sort of fellow, he acknowledges that this is no small feat.

(For those unfamiliar with the world of indie publishing, distribution is traditionally one of the largest hurdles to overcome – largely thanks to the existing, outdated, and non-indie-friendly Diamond-based infrastructure of distribution.)

The group is also working on tightening their editorial control over the next Cloudscape Comics anthology, Journeys, which would hopefully be due out sometime around next March .

“When cloudscape first started, it was very democratic,” says Colin Upton, “which has its problems. But increasingly they are attempting to up the quality of the book by making editorial decisions and judgements and suggestions. Which is great, because in my experience with editors I’ve dealt with before – even from professional publishers like Fantagraphics – you don’t usually get much feedback. Getting that from the editorial group at Cloudscape really helps you improve your story and see some of the mistakes you might otherwise have missed yourself.”

“We’re really trying to up the ante, creatively, ” says Jeff. “We’re trying to push everyone to write and draw to their best ability, and we hope to make something that could maybe catch some critical acclaim. We’d love to attract the attention of, say, the Shuster Awards.” (hint)

You can find Cloudscape Comics  on the web, and purchase any of their four anthologies to date here. They also have a Twitter account!

Jeff Ellis keeps a personal website, blog, and Twitter account. You should also check out his webcomic, Teach English in Japan, which he does with Jonathon Dalton.

Angela Melick writes this super fun and quirky autobiographical webcomic, and she also has Twitter.

Colin Upton can be found here on the web, and he also updates both his Facebook Page and blog regularly.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming

Melick had been drawing comics in one form or another for almost as long as she could remember,  and she felt that pursuing an education in engineering shouldn’t be a reason to suppress her interest in that form of art.

It was lucky for us that Angela made the decision to find an outlet on the internet – that simple website collecting her quirky, autobiographical sketches on looseleaf became Wasted Talent, a hugely popular and extremely funny weekly webcomic that’s still updating, 5 years later.

The Vancouver-based Melick has been busier than usual lately, between planning (and starring!) in a wedding, and working on her first solo book.

All the same, she managed to fit in a quick interview with The Fabler for your perusing pleasure – the results of which you may gleefully behold below:

KD: Back in 2005 when you put your first Wasted Talent sketches online, at that time what was the extent of your knowledge about webcomics?

AM: There were a few webcomics that I read, but I didn’t know anyone that was actually doing them.  I knew quite a few cartoonists, but I had never met another webcomicker.

I didn’t really have a good feel for the industry, so my knowledge was very minimal. It was a learn by doing sort of thing.

KD: If you could go back and give your 2005 self advice about the webcomic, what – if anything – would you say?

AM: I would say that someday people are actually going to read it! I think that would have made a difference to me to know.

I might not have been able to put any more time or energy than I did into the comic, (’cause I had almost zero energy to spare on it back then) but I think there would have been a few things I’d have done differently if I had known it would go somewhere.

KD: In the five years you’ve been doing Wasted Talent, what aspects of your experience making it have been the most rewarding for you?

AM: Definitely knowing that people all around the world read it, and that it brings a bit of extra happiness into their lives. I think it’s the only thing I could have done that had the potential to make that kind of impact on other people.

KD: On the flipside to that coin, what aspects of your experience doing Wasted Talent have been the most stressful?

AM: I tried really hard not to make it stressful. It could very easily have fallen into the ‘work’ category of my brain, and because I’ve done a lot to mitigate that it hasn’t been very stressful.

That being said, trying to get out to conventions and missing out on opportunities that I would have had if this was a full time thing has been fairly stressful. I wish I could just jump into everything headlong, but you know, you make trade-offs.

KD: Has it been any easier (or harder) to find time to do the comic and convention thing than back when you started?

AM: It’s gotten easier, probably, because the more you do it the faster you get, and you just learn how to fit it into your schedule. Also the more successful you are at it, the better you get at working the logistics behind it.

So the more I go to conventions, the easier it is to get to conventions – because I have a better idea about what I need to do in advance in order to get there. One of the big learning curves for me was learning that certain things you need for conventions, such as table space and tickets, often sell out up to six months in advance. So you sometimes have to start preparing for a convention literally six months ahead of time. Now that I’ve learned all of that, it’s a lot easier.

KD: What’s your creative process like for coming up with a Wasted Talent strip?

AM: Well, I go out and live my life, right? (laughs)  Then anything something happens that’s remotely joke-like or that I think I might be able to make a comic out of, I put it in my little book.

I have a little book that I carry around with me all of the time, and I just write a little note about what happened. Like, this is the situation, and this could be the punchline. Anything that’s just enough to remind me what it was without being too detailed, ’cause then I might forget what was funny about it in the first place.

When it’s time to draw a comic, I go over my notes and pick the ones that seem funniest to me. I sketch them out, and if it looks good I go forward, and if it doesn’t I try an idea.

KD: As I understand it, you’re planning on releasing your first solo book soon. Can you tell me a little about that?

AM: I would love to! It’s at the printer, and it’s completely finished. What I did was I took the best comics from the University days back at the very beginning of Wasted Talent, and I redrew them.  I redrew about eighty comics, and I put that altogether with a bunch of bonus material – pictures from back then, stories, sketches, and a history of the campus that affects the comics a little bit.

I’ll have preview comics together for Anime Evolution in mid-August, and I expect it to be available for sale online September-ish.

KD: With those eighty comics you redrew, did you alter the dialogue at all, or leave that much intact?

AM: I did for some, because I think I’m a much better writer now than I was then. So there are ways that I was able to improve the dialogue, I took out some sections to streamline it a little better, and made things generally clearer. I left the spirit of the jokes intact.

KD: Is there anything else you’re currently working on outside of Wasted Talent, comic-wise?

AM: I’ve done something for every anthology put out by local comic collective Cloudscape Comics, and I’d like to keep doing that. I love writing short stories.

I’m working pretty hard on a book called Lost Omens, which is a fantasy/sci-fi sort of story that I’ve been working on for a really, really long time. I hadn’t found the time to get it going before – I put about two pages up and then I got engaged. I had to redirect all of my energy into the wedding. Now that the wedding and Book 1 of Wasted Talent are done, I’m hoping rechannel my energy into Lost Omens.

KD: Name a webcomic that you find hilarious.

AM: I really enjoy Questionable Content. That should probably be obvious, but I really enjoy the characters and a lot of people identify with them – I have an inner Hannelore myself.

KD: Name a webcomic that you find inspiring.

AM: I’m really inspired by Der-shin Helmer’s ‘The Meek‘; he draws comics that I wish I could draw. I’m also inspired by Rice Boy, I just love Evan Dahm’s world building.

I also admire Dresden Codak for the art, and Anders Loves Maria for the writing and style.

I’m much more readily inspired than I am driven to laughter, I guess.

For more from Angela Melick, you can visit the Wasted Talent website or follow her on Twitter.

-Interview by Kevin de Vlaming

A substitute teacher by day, Jonathon fills much of the rest of his time churning out wildly imaginative webcomics for his website, jonathondalton.com. The subject matter of these comics varies greatly – you’re just as likely to stumble upon a story rooted in ancient Aztec lore as you are a humorous vignette exploring the secret origins of Chop Suey.

The former comic, which Dalton describes as a “Mesoamerican fantasy story”, recently earned him a grant from the Xeric Foundation – an organization dedicated to provided yearly financial assistance to committed comic book self-publishers. (If you weren’t already familiar with the grant, it was founded by Peter A. Laird of Ninja Turtles fame and you can read more about it here)

Based in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Dalton is also a co-founder of the Vancouver area comic collective Cloudscape Comics.

I caught up with Jonathon to chat about his own secret comic book origins, receiving the Xeric grant, and his currently updating webcomic, “A Mad Tea-Party“.

The interview is below:

KD: I wanted to point out that you have an impressive variety of webcomic content currently up on your site. What can you tell me about the first comics you ever put up online?

JD: Tianxia was the first one. When I started that, I wasn’t even thinking about putting it on the web. By the time I had finished it, I had also discovered webcomics and thought, “hey, I could put this up on the internet!”

I lived in Taiwan for a year and a half, and that comic came out of an idea that I had when I was there.

KD: What was your experience in comicking prior to Tianxia?

JD: I’d been reading comics since high school. Mostly superhero stuff, for  a long, long time. Even though that was what I was reading, the comics I would draw tended not to be very superhero-ey.  Generally not the kind of stuff that I imagined DC or Marvel would publish.

It was when I discovered Manga and webcomics that it occurred to me I don’t have to work for Marvel or DC. I could do the kind of stuff I wanted to, and people could still see it.  So I kept going with that, and for that reason a lot of my early stuff that I don’t have online is a lot like what I’m doing now – just more amateurish.

KD: Although your various comics each deal with different material and often different approaches to illustration, there definitely seems to be a recurring theme to most of your work. Your stories tend to be interested with exploring totally different cultures, often with reference to some ancient historical context.

Where did this interest come from?

JD: Part of that is from having moved around and lived in a few different countries. Outside of Canada, I’ve lived in Taiwan and London, England. In both of those locations, I did quite a bit of travelling around their surrounding countries as well.

The experience of being a foreigner living in another country really informed the way I see the world, and that comes through in my comics.

KD: Let’s talk about Lords of Death and Life, the comic that recently netted you the Xeric Grant. What can you tell me about that title?

JD: It’s set in the historical context of Ancient Mexico, with Mayans and Aztecs, but there are also these surreal elements to it, like magic and trips to the underworld.

For the most part, I wanted to explore the culture. It’s not one that you don’t really see represented in popular culture. There are maybe two, three movies with that setting in the history of Hollywood movies, and not that many comics or books even.

KD: Congratulations, by the way, on receiving the grant. What was your reaction when you heard the news?

JD: I was pretty excited! Applying was actually a pretty rigorous process with lots of paperwork involved, and I had no idea what my chances of actually receiving it would be. They only give out a dozen of them each year for all of North America.

KD: What do you plan to do with the grant money?

JD: I will be printing Lords of Death and Life as a book. I have been printing it in just small print runs, printing them on my laser printer and putting them together by hand, but that’s not really cost effective and I can’t do much with those books.

Now that I can afford to do a larger print run and have it look really nice, I hope to be able to distribute it and maybe get it on the shelves in a few book stores.

KD: I wish you the best of luck with that.

Moving into more recent territory, let’s talk about A Mad Tea-Party, the title you’re presently updating.  How long have you been working on this particular comic?

JD: I started it in about 2003, I think. A lot of the other comics that are on my site, I’ve been doing those at the same time as A Mad Tea-Party. I have just about 67 more pages to draw, and then it’s done. It’s definitely a title I’ve put a lot of effort into.

KD: Would it be accurate to say that the art of A Mad Tea-Party is the most influenced by Manga of your work to date?

JD: Oh yeah, and the story is too. When I originally came up with the idea for the story, I’d been consuming a lot of Japanese sci-fi manga and anime. I wanted to do my own take on that, but I was more interested in telling the story of ordinary people living in a fantastic science fiction world.

I have a backstory throughout it about a battle between Earth’s genetically engineered soldiers and these alien robots, but really that’s all just background to set up the main story.

KD: I wanted to mention here that you’re actually also a substitute teacher by day. How do you strike a balance between working that job to pay the bills, and putting the necessary time into your passion for making comics?

JD: The two jobs work pretty well together because they’re so different from each other. As a substitute, if I need to go off to a convention I can always turn down work for that day when they call. If I have a print deadline, then I can work on the comics rather than teaching.

One of the other advantages of being a substitute is that when the work comes, there isn’t a lot of work outside of the classroom. Regular classroom teachers do report cards, marking, lesson planning and all that sort of stuff, whereas if you’re a substitute you show up for work and at the end of the day there’s time for comics.

You can visit Jonathon Dalton’s website to view his comics, or you could find him on LiveJournal or Twitter.

-Interview by Kevin de Vlaming

The other question is: ‘what do you need to become a successful comic artist or author?’ While again the phrasing might change, the answer to this question is almost always the same: you need to truly love making comics.

Robin Thompson is a comic illustrator, writer, and instructor currently living in Vancouver, BC. And he loves making comics.

Thompson teaches comic illustration workshops for kids and teenagers, and works as an instructor at The Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where he teaches similar content to an adult demographic.

“Starting next week I’ll be doing a comics course for teenagers,” he says of his summer teaching plans, “It’s part of a program that gets kids ready for art college so they know what to expect.”

In addition, he has been illustrating indie, self-published comics for over a decade. In 1998, he responded to an ad in the local paper from someone looking for an illustrator for a comic they were working on.

“It was for this comic series called Champions of Hell,” he says, “and the writer needed something dark and scary, and so I did a few sample drawings for him and we’ve been great friends ever since. His name is Ira Hunter, and that comic series is still going on.”

The first comic books that Thompson can remember taking a serious interest in were Alpha Flight and The X-Men.

“I always loved John Byrne’s art,” he says, “I used to sneak my brother’s X-Men comics out of his room when I was younger, and I would read those without him knowing. I used my allowance money to buy Alpha Flight issues from the racks at a local corner store.”

His first-ever foray into self-publishing was a title called The Highlanders, which he worked on with a group of friends from school. (Note: No relation to Christopher Lambert’s movies, other than a recurring theme of decapitation)

“It was about a group of Scottish vampire hunters, ” Thompson says, with a laugh, “It was a hand-made, photocopied zine style book, and we’d bring it to school and try and sell it to people.”

Outside of Champions of Hell, Thompson says he has quite a few projects on the go. His ongoing goal in comics is to challenge himself to continually produce work that’s both innovative and different from his previous projects.

For example:

“I’m a big fan of sharks and there’s no shark comics out there,” says Thompson,  “so I thought, I’m gonna do one! Right now I’m sitting on a shark story that I’ve completed and will at some point in the future be a new book.

I’ve also recently wanted to do a bit more writing and less drawing, so I needed a project for that. I watch a lot of really crappy, crappy movies, and out of that I did a book called the ‘Fifty Worst Comic Book Movies Ever Made’. It consists of my reviews of these horrible comic book movies, and of course I have illustrations throughout the book.

I made that and then a new one that I want to do is nerds of film. Kind of a review book about nerd films.”

Thompson maintains a firmly positive belief in the Do-It-Yourself approach to print publishing, which is reflected in the wealth of projects he currently has on the go. In an era when digital comics have taken a front seat for new comic creators and mass distribution is all but impossible for the indie self-publisher, his optimism is refreshing.

“There’s always a decent market for self-published stuff,” Thompson maintains, “Especially if you’re dedicated enough to getting your stuff out there. That’s what I love about the DIY approach, because you have that opportunity. Not only does it reward hard work, but you can inspire others into adopting their own DIY approach as well.

The more people that get involved, the stronger the DIY market becomes. Of course, we’ll always be the underdogs to the major distributor stuff. ”

When asked about his beliefs as to why this is, his answer comes as a familiar, two word response. If you guessed ‘reverse synergy’, you probably haven’t read many articles here on the Fabler Blog before.

“Diamond Comics,” says Thompson, “If you’re just starting out and trying to get your stuff out there, Diamond Comics will ruin you. By telling a self-publisher that if they don’t sell X amount, Diamond won’t carry their product, they’re basically telling the new generation ‘if you’re not part of the big boys, then don’t even bother.’”

Oddly enough, Diamond Comics’ position in the market actually had a direct hand in Thompson’s decision to start teaching comic art.

“Thanks to changing distribution patterns,” he explains, “It’s not like when I was younger and I could take my allowance down to the corner shop to buy a comic. Now you have to go to a comic shop, and most kids don’t live near comic shops, and their parents don’t often take them there. They might borrow something like Bone from the library or pick up an Archie comic, but that’s about it.

It’s really nice to be in a position to introduce kids to something new that they might never have known they’d like. Sure enough, over the course of teaching kids about comic art and what’s out there, you really see them develop personal tastes of their own in terms of art style and characters that they like.”

Thompson says that another motivation for getting into teaching was that it would provide a venue where he could share his love for the art:

“I decided to put a proposal out there to a community centre for a  drawing class, and they accepted, and I started a drawing class for kids. Word just got around that this is what I do, and I got offers from other community centres to do illustration/cartooning classes with kids heavily focused on comics.

From there, it went from teaching kids to teaching teenagers, and now of course teaching adults at Emily Carr.”

Thompson says the focus of his courses is generally on narrative storytelling, drawing techniques, and inking techniques.

“I don’t want to assume that everyone has the same interest as I do in comics,” he says, “so I try to keep it broad and more general.  Sometimes on the first day I have a slide show with a little bit on the history of comics.

There’s a lot of stuff that a lot of people don’t know. For example, Santa Claus was originally designed from a political cartoonist. They think that Coca-Cola created that image, but it was actually Thomas Nast.”

In his experience teaching, Thompson says he finds that most newcomers to the field don’t realize how much work actually goes into making a comic.

“I tell them to look at all of the names that are credited on their favorite comic book. Oftentimes, they don’t realize that someone’s doing the penciling, someone’s doing the lettering, someone’s doing the inking, and so forth.  When it’s all done by one person, it can be a really daunting task.

Sometimes people can be put off when they realize how much work goes into it. But then, those who put the time in can find it extremely rewarding.”

Thompson’s most important advice for aspiring comic artists?

“Draw every day, and don’t let comics be your only influence. Most comic artists are influenced by something outside of the comics field. For example, I would go sometimes to the art gallery and use the sculptures as models – which I would then draw, and use those sketches in my comic art.”

For more from Robin, you can visit his personal webpage or visit the Champions of Hell website.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming

The 3 Second Rule, a webcomic by Jason Loo and Arthur Dela Cruz, is not your typical buddy comedy.

‘Buddy fiction’, as I’m pretty sure nobody calls it, is both a plot device and a genre onto itself. You’ve seen it countless times in the movies, in books, and even in mainstream comic books (think Power Man and Iron Fist). Yet something about the genre keeps consumers of popular culture coming back.

Perhaps it’s what buddy fiction tells us about the true nature of friendship. Or maybe it’s just something we can all relate to – after all, isn’t life just a series of interactions between different personality types trying to find some common ground?

Answer: it’s neither.

Buddy fiction is popular because it’s fun, plain and simple. And when it’s done right, as it is with 3 Second Rule, it can deliver an entertaining, fast-paced narrative with room for both characters to meaningfully grow and develop.

The 3 Second Rule follows the adventures of a very serious, dedicated hit man named Axel and his debonair counterpart Shane.  Axel is the silent gun, Shane the charismatic socialite. You could imagine the sort of dynamic that unfolds.

So what sets it apart from every other buddy comedy?

Arthur Dela Cruz, who writes the strip, has this to say on the subject:

“My original plan was to do a straight forward buddy comedy in the same vein as films like Bad Boys, Lethal Weapon even Pineapple Express. You know, heavy action starring two guys who are constantly at each other’s throats. However, I do tend to write serious subject matter and lean towards the darker side of drama and comedy, so you’ll notice the scripts will veer to back and forth between light and dark comedy, but the action is always consistent.”

In addition to the interesting contrast of light and dark humor, Dela Cruz provides a solid, compelling story that goes beyond much of the more cliché buddy comedy fare you might stumble upon.  But this shouldn’t be much of a surprise, since he came to the project with ample experience in comicking.

“I freelanced as a colourist and designer for the likes of Image comics and Oni Press,  among others,” says Dela Cruz, “before I mustered enough courage to pitch my first ever comic Kissing Chaos to Oni Press at the turn of the century. (2000). At that point I worked on Kissing Chaos in print form for a few years. Because indie comics doesn’t often pay ALL the bills, I would freelance as an illustrator and writer to make ends meet, which I still do to this day.”

In addition, Dela Cruz has been affiliated with web comic collective Transmission X with his digital Kissing Chaos strip, titled “Til I Die” (currently on hiatus).

But of course, only half of the credit for The 3 Second Rule can be attributed to Arthur. His creative partner, Jason Loo, not only draws the comic but helps with creating dialogue.

On his own background in comics prior to 3 Second Rule, Loo has this to say:

“I was self-publishing mini-comics prior to the collaboration. I did a series called Popper Cosmix which was my homage to Tezuka about two aliens that visit Earth to become superheroes. I also self-published a teen runaway-turned paramilitary drama graphic novel series called AWOL’d.”

Arthur and Loo met at a comic convention years ago. They were mutual friends of Eric Kim, and wound up seated at tables on either side of him at the con.

“When I found out we both live in Mississauga, that’s when our friendship developed,” says Loo, “We’ve been going to life-drawing classes and discussing about each other’s work since then and Arthur brought up the idea of us collaborating at one of our lunch meetings. He had a bunch of story ideas and it was after a year talking about a collaboration when we started the buddy-hitman-comedy 3 Second Rule.”

Artistically, Loo says that he’s been drawing a lot of his inspiration for the comic from action flicks and European comics.

“I find the European artists pay a lot of attention to detail especially with the backgrounds. These comics have a great sense of cinematography.”

Another influence behind the comic which Loo lists is… Mexican wrestling?

“I went through a Lucha Libre phase when I was drawing the first chapter,” he explains, “and I thought it would be cool to have Axel wear a Luchador mask during his hits. The skull represents Death, but the yellow adds the flashiness of a Luchador.”

Both Dela Cruz and Loo attest that creating the strips for 3 Second Rule comes as the result of a meticulous process.

“I prefer to finish two months worth of backlog so I can focus on other comic projects,” says Loo, “But Arthur could be busy with his freelance work and I’d find the new script for the next chapter a week or two before the entire backlog is up on the site. So I’ll spend 2-3 weeks pencilling, inking, lettering an entire chapter (that’s worth two months of backlog), then work on my other comic projects, look at the calendar and tell Arthur to have the next part of the script ready, then 2-3 weeks of crunch time again.”

Dela Cruz compares his end of the process to his experience writing Kissing Chaos:

“Kissing Chaos, both in print and online with TXCOMICS.com, is a very personal, almost diary style comic, laced around a fictional narrative that provides the backbone for what is basically stream of conscious writing.

The 3 Second Rule is completely different, in that it’s very meticulously planned. So, often, when I’m caught up with my freelance work my scripts will be delayed, as Jason mentioned. With Kissing Chaos, I could very much feel my way through the story, and produce work on the fly and it will still fit tonally within the framework of the series. However, The 3 Second Rule requires a lot of time to execute the story as planned. So apologies to the fans for the sporadic schedule!”

The end result of all of Arthur Dela Cruz and Jason Loo’s efforts is a webcomic that highlights the best parts of ‘buddy fiction’.

3 Second Rule is fun, well-written, and artfully drawn. Though the majority of the early strips focus more on developing Axel, both he and Shane shine as strong individual personalities sharply at odds with each other.

And you know… I think there’s a little bit of both characters inside each and every one of us.

“I think I lean towards Axel sometimes,” says Jason Loo, “because we both come across as shy and quiet. But when I find my comfort zone around people I don’t know (and maybe after a drink or two), I can be just as social and loud as Shane.”

What about you, dear reader? Are you more quiet, contemplative killer? Or loud, sociable womanizer?

On that note, you can check out 3 Second Rule over at www.kissingchaos.com/3s/. You can also find Jason Loo and Arthur Dela Cruz on their respective web-pages.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming

When the combined comics of one creative Calgarian threaten to overwhelm the humble corner of the interweb that they occupy…

One name resounds clearly amidst the din. (the din?)

Damian Willcox is… dorkboy.

(cue theatrical John Williams knockoff score)

Damian Willcox has been making comics for over fifteen years, an impressive span by any standard.

‘dorkboy‘ represents his fictional alter-ego , a superhero in a world similar – but substantially more ridiculous – than our own. Over the years, dorkboy evolved into ‘dorkboy comics‘, a banner under which Willcox has created a number of totally different comic strips, each featuring their own unique artistic approach and distinctive tone.

One of those comic titles is ‘skully.‘, which features the curiously human encounters of an unassuming, well dressed spectre of death. Another is ‘workin’ jones‘, a much more realistically drawn portrayal of an average person in his everyday interactions with the people around him.

‘sketchbook comics‘ is yet another example of the diverse interests which appeal to Willcox’s creative side. sketchbook comics is the most overtly autobiographical of his creative corral, featuring a super-cartoony version of Willcox in short vignettes taken from his everyday life. The art is, as you might guess, very loose and sketch-like.

You’re probably getting the point by now that Damian Willcox is hard to nail down in a particular artistic niche. Which is for the best, really.

dorkboy comics, which originated as self-published minicomics before Damian moved the majority of his work online, is all about variety.

In an attempt to make sense of the creative cornucopia that is Damian Willcox’s comic book canon, I tracked him down for an interview.

The interview went as follows: (rest assured, dear reader – there’s very little alliteration in the actual interview)

KD: How did dorkboy comics start?

DW: Oh boy. I made the first one in 1995. When I was in college a friend of mine was in the printing program at SAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology). He was doing a zine kind of thing, and he had one last page to fill so I ended up drawing a comic for that out of the blue.

Probably a year or two after that, I decided to make a minicomic as a christmas card from my friends and family. That would’ve been the first official 11×17, folded dorkboy comic.

People liked it, and I had fun making it – so it just kept going from there.

KD: Fifteen years is a long time to be involved with one comic concept. Does it feel like it’s been that long to you?

DW: No, it’s weird – it’s actually gone really quickly. The thing is, as I’ve gone along I’ve just started up a new comic whenever I felt like doing something different.

When you’re doing comics, you can change the presentation and you can change the content so much that you can create totally different story experiences.

There are certain stories I could only do with one of my comic titles that just wouldn’t work with any of the others.

KD: What methods or programs do you use to create the strips?

DW: Right now, I lean more towards digital methods. A big reason for that transition from pen and ink was that I was getting tendinitis.

I’ve tried a bunch of different programs, but the main two that I’ve settled on are Adobe Illustrator and Manga Studio. Using the second one, I’ve been able to reproduce the linework very closely to when I used to draw in pen and ink.

KD: On the topic of drawing digitally, I know you like to experiment with a lot of different mediums. Lately, what have been your favorite platforms or programs to play around with?

DW: (laughs) I’ve been doing comics on my iPod Touch, using SketchBook mobile. I’ve actually made six or so comics on that tiny little screen.

KD: How much of your time does dorkboy comics take up these days?

DW: Usually, the comics take up about ten to fifteen hours of my time per week. I can stay regular so long as I’m not too busy with work – during a busy period, it gets pretty hard to free up fifteen hours out of nowhere.

KD: What does your dayjob entail, exactly?

DW: I do product design for software. I don’t do any of the programming or anything, but I basically design how the program should work for average people to be able to understand it.

KD: Your collection of work tends to venture all over the place, and it becomes sort of hard to readily define. What do you tell people when they ask you about what dorkboy comics is?

DW: I try and break it down into the different titles. There’s no real way to summarize them otherwise – I mean, most of them tend to be more of the humor category, but then you have ‘workin’ jones’, which is much more serious.

KD: How did your approach to making comics change when you shifted from print to almost exclusively digital?

DW: With print comics, I would end up spending more time on the business side, on running around putting them together, and on distribution. Ultimately making comics is not something I want to be a job.  It’s something I enjoy doing, and once it becomes a job, it loses that portion of its appeal.

Anytime I’ve experimented with taking my comics in a direction where I could make money from them, like for a while there was interest in a tv series based on them, it just turns into an unenjoyable experience.

I just want people to read the comics and enjoy them really, and the nice thing about the web is I can do that without a lot of financial risk or commitment.

KD: What would you say is one important thing for an aspiring comic creator to know in the current state of the industry?

DW: I would say to have realistic expectations, and be realistic about where they’re starting. A lot of people might decide, “Hey, I’m going to do a daily webcomic” and then a month into it when they don’t have a million followers, be discouraged. The workload for that could get pretty huge, and it can seem daunting when you’re not getting the reception you hoped for.

The most important thing is just to make comics for the sake of making them, and get better in the process of doing that.

KD: Do you have anything else in the works that you might like to share?

DW: At this point I feel like everything’s been pretty much transparent in terms of what I’m working on. I pretty much post everything (laughs). If I do a crappy little sketch comic, it’ll either show up on the website or on Twitter.

I’d like to pull together my kernel corn and my workin’ jones stuff and maybe put together a couple of individual books. So that might work out in time for next year’s Calgary Expo.

For more from Damian Willcox, you can check out dorkboy comics, his blog, twitter feed, and the dorkboy comics Facebook page.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming

The Ontario-based Munday is a long-time comicker, with his interest in the medium dating back to the comic strips he used to create for his school paper at the University of Waterloo. That segued into a few early self-published comics, but it wasn’t until last year that he published his first full graphic novel.

Quarter-Life Crisis: Only The Good Die Yung was released in April of last year, with a premise that’s both genuinely unique and distinctly Canadian.

According to Evan:

“QLC is a book about a post-apocalyptic Toronto in which only the twenty-five year olds have survived.  The first book follows two brothers who live in the box above OCAD and try to survive on their own. ”

In Munday’s post-catastrophic vision of a not-so-distant future, the 25 year olds have divided into territorial gangs. Only The Good Die Yung follows the adventures of the two brothers as they struggle to fend for themselves without  themselves getting mixed up in the gangs that rule the streets.

Evan describes it as Mad Max meets Scott Pilgrim, though I definitely picked up just a hint of a Warriors vibe there as well. Mostly the ‘neighbourhood-based street gangs at the root of a new social hierarchy’ bit.

“Probably my most direct inspiration came from reading Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim books,” he says, “I loved the way he was able to make Toronto such an exciting setting. I also really liked how he was able to blend a love story that’s sort of heartbreaking, really, with this hilarious, videogame fantasy world.”

Munday’s story is definitely a mixed-bag adventure that avoids dwelling too heavily on the more depressing tonal elements common to post-apocalypse stories.

In his own words, Evan describes it as, “one of the more fun post-apocalypses out there.”

Nobody said global catastrophes of epic proportion couldn’t be a swingin’ time.

Quarter-Life Crisis was entirely self-published and distributed.

The publishing, Evan says, was the easy part. As a publicist employed at Coach House Books, he paid to make use of the onsite printing presses.

“In terms of distribution,” he goes on to say, “That’s been the difficult part. It’s mainly doing shows, selling it through the website, and a lot of just going from store to store and soliciting the book in person. Which is why it’s currently much harder to find outside of Toronto.”

Despite its relatively limited availability, QLC still managed to impress a few of the right people – garnering itself a nomination for this year’s 2010 Gene Day Award for Self-Publishing.

In addition, Evan says that he was pleasantly surprised at this past weekend’s Toronto ComiCON Fan Appreciation Event to find his book had built its own fan base.

“There were a lot of people asking me about book two, so it was nice to know that there are people actually interested in seeing a second one.”

Fans of Only The Good Die Yung will be pleased to hear that Munday is already well along with the second title in what he intends to be a limited series of Quarter-Life Crisis graphic novels.

“The plan is to make it a four book run,” says Munday, “with each roughly the same size as the first (which was 124 pages). The idea is for there to be four books to tell the story in quarters, keeping up with the quarter theme. ”

As for details about book two in the series, Evan confides that he’s a little nervous about how fans will receive it on account of a decision that he made to switch up perspectives between the two volumes.

“The second book focuses on the Rogers, this paramilitary group from the first book that have taken a bunch of police riot gear and set up base at the Sky Dome. They’re kind of these big baddy authoritarian types in the first book, and in this one the narrative shifts to one of the Rogers characters that was really only a minor character before.

So the focus is now on her as a main character, and the main characters from the first book are still there, but now they’ve become supporting characters in this story.”

Outside of Quarter-Life Crisis, Evan currently has a few other projects in the works. One that I feel I absolutely have to mention – for obvious reasons – is ‘Super-Villain Erotica’.

“A friend of mine,” says Evan, “a poet named Natalie Zina Walschots, had written a manuscript collecting love odes to all these different super-villains. Doctor Doom, Green Goblin, the Joker – all these famous comic book villains. She’s currently looking for a publisher, and I agreed to do up ten initial drawings and do more if it gets picked up.”

Munday mentions that he’s worried legal issues may prevent his drawings from ever being published, but on the bright side, having them out at conventions has been a successful way of bringing traffic to his table.

“It’s a really interesting turn, too,” he adds, “I mean when you go to cons there are all these pin-up drawings of female super-villains everywhere, and you just don’t see the male super-villain erotica. Stuff like Magneto in the shower, or Joker holding a really strategically positioned Jack-in-the-Box. ”

So who is the sexiest male super-villain?

Evan argues Lex Luthor would have to take the mantle, adding, “Though Doctor Octopus was the most fun to draw. But he’s not what I’d call sexy. ”

Post-apocalyptic street gangs and Magneto’s naughty bits aside, Evan Munday has a couple of other big projects slated for release in 2011.

“The first is a young adult novel for ECW press called The Dead Kid Detective Agency,” he says, “It’s written work with no illustration, and it’s about a girl and her five dead friends who combine their skills to solve mysteries around her town.  The hook is that each of the dead kids is from a different era in Canadian history – so it’s edutainment as well.”

The second project is a graphic novel that Munday will be illustrating for author Elyse Friedman titled The Laws of Motion, which is due out sometime in Fall of 2011.

For more from Evan Munday, you can visit his website, www.IdontlikeMundays.com.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming

I’m gonna go ahead and stop you before you embarrass yourself by saying ‘Chuck Norris’. I would however, accept Simon Pegg, Woody Harrelson, or Bruce Campbell.

Although for my money, I’d go with Jenny Romanchuk – author and artist of the epic webcomic The Zombie Hunters. Why?

Have you seen how much zombie ass this girl kicks?

Well, not exactly Jenny herself, but the fictional Jenny Romanchuk who serves as one of the lead protagonists in The Zombie Hunters. That’s right, she wrote herself into the story alongside several of her friends. As she explains in her website,

“This isn’t about ego fluffing, this is fun, and I am unashamed to proudly show off that I would rather be running around bashing in zombie heads than boring old daily life.”

I find myself inclined to agree with her position.

But the reason that I would choose Jenny over Woody or Bruce isn’t simply because her two-dimensional alter ego swings a mean shovel. In creating the universe of The Zombie Hunters, Romanchuk undertook a massive task that required building its own world history, complete with detailed facts about its inhabitants – both living and non.

“I have about ten notebooks and binders filled with TZH notes,” says Jenny, “not to mention about 30 different notepad files. They’re all filled with information about the world, how everything works, and about everything from zombies to wastelander culture to life on ARC. I have some of that info on the website, but that’s really only the tip of the iceberg.”

The undead post-apocalypse world that she came up with was not your typical ‘Night of the Living Dead’ zombie fare, either.

“I knew for a fact that the classic ’slow zombie’ just… wouldn’t last in the modern world,” she says, “It’d be a problem for a little while, but I’d say give it a month and it’d all be over pretty quick. People aren’t as dumb as Hollywood makes them out to be.”

Instead, Jenny came up with a detailed bestiary of lethal undead classes that make the traditional ‘crawler’ zombies look about as threatening as mildly disgruntled geriatrics.

“I wanted to create something that would give the survivalist buff the run for their money,” says Romanchuk, “For the zombie classes in particular I drew inspiration from a variety of sources. I realized early on that the normal zombies are pretty easy to take care of, so I wanted to kick it up a notch.”

Jenny says that she often avoids watching movies or reading stories in her own genre, instead opting to draw inspiration from actual human history and real survival stories.

So let’s see… Survivalist buff, check. Vast knowledge of potential outbreak scenarios, double-check. Skeptical take on the traditional ’slow-zombie’ mythos, check again (hey, I’m all for it if the zombie Armageddon comes one shuffle at a time, but it just makes sense to be prepared for the worst).

If she can wield a shovel half as well as her Zombie Hunter avatar, then we’re really in business. Though they do say half of doing something is being able to visualize yourself doing it…

Probabilities of real apocalypse aside, it’s easy to see how Romanchuk’s dedication to The Zombie Hunters has evolved into being a full time job.

“These days TZH takes up ALL of my time,” she says, “Right now I’m having to cover a lot of responsibilities for the book and for the business, so I haven’t been able to put as much time into the artwork for the actual pages. Hopefully when things settle down, I’ll be able to put more time into the comic itself, which will mean more updates!”

The current update schedule is ‘every Monday and sometimes Thursday’. Over the three years that The Zombie Hunters has existed, Jenny has built a dedicated following of fans that eagerly await each new update. Hordes of zombie survival enthusiasts regularly fill the Zombie Hunters’ forum, each sharing the common interest of finding out what happens next to the characters that Romanchuk has created. (Or adapted to comic form, as the case may be.)

“The people who read TZH usually express an interest in RPG’s, books, and videogames that pertain to the post apocalyptic genre, and a lot of them are into various ‘survivalist’ hobbies,” says Jenny, “Many of them are or have been in the military themselves, or play simulated war games like air soft, paintball, or military re-creations. Those that aren’t into modern combat often favor things like medieval reenactments or similar interests. People who enjoy these sorts of activities are usually into ‘world building’ – they need to know everything about a subject, and want to know that a storytelling world has all the details mapped out”

It is no happy accident that Romanchuk’s writing appeals to this demographic. According to Jenny, the process of building the TZH world and story has been heavily informed through analyzing her fan base:

“When I first started this comic, I had no idea about what kind of audience I would attract. After I went through my Graphic Design courses, I realized how I could analyze the audience and look at the work objectively. This allowed me to better tailor the strip, the site, and my writing style to reach that audience. Because of all these audience factors TZH has evolved into an expansive, detailed, and elaborate world with a lot of dimension to it.”

The elaborate world she has created just recently hit a new milestone: over the past year, Jenny has been taking preorders for the first printed edition of the Zombie Hunters series. A gauge on the left-hand side of her website has tracked progress of the preorders as they drew near a pre-determined target that, once it was hit, would mean the release of the book.

“The per-unit costs of printing a smaller run are prohibitive,” explains Jenny, “I wanted to be able to create a good, quality book. And those aren’t cheap to make- just getting the presses set up and running off the proofs involves fees of a few thousand dollars, and that’s something you have to do even if you only print a single book.”

Anxious fans no longer have to wait for their quality copy of The Zombie Hunters: Book 1. Just last week, Jenny announced on her website that the preorder mark hit 100%.

“I’m feeling nervous,” says Jenny about the book’s pending release, “I hope everything turns out okay, and that people like it. I want people to be happy with their purchase, despite the wait.”

With her meticulous dedication to The Zombie Hunters, I’m sure there is no cause for worry. Now if you were stuck in a zombie apocalypse with no one by your side but an aging internet meme, then I’d start to worry.

You can find the ongoing tales of The Zombie Hunters at www.thezombiehunters.com. Jenny also keeps a professional portfolio of her illustration, a livejournal, and you can follow her on Twitter.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming

Its themes of directionless youth and awkward/witty attempts at human connection will resound with you as genuine, just as you will very likely find yourself fascinated with the kind of idiosyncratic conversation that can be produced by a nondescript cartoon ghost.

This is the world that author and artist Ethan Rilly has created; a place that you will be able to relate to while keeping you guessing where the book is going with every page turn.

The story of Pope Hats centers around a young woman named Frances Scarland and her self-destructive roommate, Vickie. As Vickie careens down a path of alcoholism, Frances does her best to help her friend – but Franny has her own issues, which often come out in her interactions with a literal ghost named Saarsgard.

Ethan’s deft ability to construct a sincere narrative laced with convincing dialogue, combined with his knack for breezy, expressive illustration, contributed to Pope Hats winning a Xeric Foundation Grant in 2008. At the time, Pope Hats had manifested only as a limited-distribution minicomic.

Pope Hats # 1, a 32 page black-and-white comic book, saw wider distribution in 2009 via Adhouse Books.

The reason that we have yet to see a second issue of Pope Hats is owing to Ethan’s decision to follow the first comic with a longer length graphic novel, which he states on his website that we can hope to see in late 2010.

Being the impatient sort myself, I tracked down Ethan for an interview about the new book, his illustrative beginnings, and some general miscellany about what he’s up to outside of Pope Hats.

Read on, humble reader, and be enlightened:

KD: How far back does your interest in comic books go?

ER: I started reading comics in the early 90s around when Marvel was re-launching the X-Men books with Jim Lee as the main artist. I’m Asian, so I guess that was a pretty big deal for me. But those early books almost never cross my mind anymore.

KD: When and how did you decide that you first wanted to try your hand at making a mini-comic?

ER: I started a couple gag-ish comic strips for a campus newspaper when I was a student at McGill University. I needed an outlet that felt like the opposite of academia. My first mini didn’t require a lot of deliberation – I just xeroxed all those terrible strips together into a book and sold it in Montreal. To my surprise, people really responded to it.

KD: What formal education have you received in illustration?

ER: None, except for high school art classes. I guess I’m a little skeptical about art schools in general, though I am impressed by a lot of the young illustrators graduating from OCAD in Toronto. I’m more interested in good writers, which is a different ballgame.

KD: On your website it states that in addition to cartooning, you work for the Ontario government. Are you still occupied there?

ER: Yes, but recently I’ve been lucky enough to take some time off work for comics.

KD: How do you typically draw a balance between the responsibilities associated with your job and the sheer time commitment that being a professional artist entails?

ER: It’s never a perfect balance when I’m working full time. I don’t really have any good tips other than forsaking sleep (laughs). I sometimes dream about getting some kind of “bonus year” where I don’t age, don’t have any social or job obligations whatsoever, and where I just work intensively on comics.

Of course, in reality, that would be the end of me.

KD: How far along are you with the forthcoming Pope Hats graphic novel?

ER: A fair chunk is drawn, if I keep it down to a modest size.

KD: At this point, what are you able to tell me regarding what it’s about?

ER: It’s partly about failure. And there’s a part where I had to draw a whole lot of snow.

That’s all I’m going to say for now!

KD: Are you self-publishing it? Do you have plans for it to be distributed by AdHouse?

ER: I’m holding out until I finish it before I officially look for a publisher. I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

KD: How much of the story in the new graphic novel did you already have in mind when you put together Pope Hats # 1?

ER: Not much. Some of the parameters are the same. There’s something in particular I’m trying to capture, that Pope Hats touched the surface of.

Even with other projects I’m working on, it feels like I’m generally aiming for the same thing.

KD: Do you feel at all daunted by expectations for the new book, since the first Pope Hats received so much positive attention?

ER: To be honest, I don’t think there’s a great deal of expectation for my new comic or “graphic novel” or whatever you want to call it. Which is perfect. Agonizing over such things is hazardous.

KD: What else are you currently working on that you might like to share some info about?

ER: I’m working on a project where I interview real people and turn it into a wordy comic. I’m trying to marry comics with personal anecdotes that you would only tell when you’re at your most vulnerable–like at a seedy bar at two in the morning or something like that.

I like the project because it’s got “bad idea” written all over it. There are a bunch of logistical challenges. And it also satiates my interest in documentary-type stuff.

For more from Ethan, you can check out his official website. Popehats # 1 may be ordered directly from AdHouse.

-Interview by Kevin de Vlaming

Let’s also say you have a well-rounded social sphere of other, equally talented artists, and you’d like to showcase what you collectively could produce.

You have no experience self-publishing, but what you lack in experience, you figure you can make up for in sheer dedication and persistence.

What do you do?

If you’re Nick Thornborrow (or any of the other creative minds behind The Anthology Project), you round up your friends and put together a hardcover collection of the most diverse, colorful, and imaginative stories you can come up with .

That’s just what Thornborrow & Co. did with The Anthology Project: Vol. 1, which released this past April – just in time to showcase at TCAF and the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo.

“We just wanted to provide a venue for these artists,” says Nick, “We knew that this group of talented individuals could produce amazing work, so the idea was really to get everyone together and have a book to show for it at the end of the year. There’s something nice about being able to do this on your own with your friends.”

Nick, along with Joy Ang, was one of the two editors responsible for putting the book together.

According to Nick, the biggest responsibility attached to his role was “corralling all of the artists and just getting everything organized”.

Most of the artists, who were predominantly graduates from the Alberta College of Art and Design as well as Sheridan College in Ontario, already knew each other. The only contributor with experience as a professional comic artist is Connor Willumsen – the rest work miscellaneous jobs in the animation or video game industries.

“It was kind of something we dove into headfirst,” says Nick, “Just figuring that people had done it before, so it shouldn’t be impossible. We basically did all of the necessary research as we went along.”

To his credit, the anthology turned out fantastically well.

The Anthology Project Vol. 1 features a diverse selection of stories from fifteen talented artists.  They range between short and playful vignettes to introspective reflections, even featuring a particularly poignant story about a polite dung-headed leader of forest animals.  That’s literal dung. (His head is made of poop.)

“I don’t think I could pick any one favorite story,” says Nick, “it’s like asking ‘who’s your favorite child?’ Not that I birthed these stories, but they’re all really close to me after a year of seeing them from their infancy. They each have their own charm. Connor’s is wild because it uses the short format so well. It doesn’t try to tell anything epic, it’s just this really quirky sci-fi story and I like it for that. But then, Joy Ang’s comic fits a really well-constructed decently long narrative into the short format and it’s beautifully drawn and really well told.”

In addition to housing a truly well-drawn collection of stories, the book is beautifully hardbound with a gold foil imprinted cover. At the risk of sounding like any more an infomercial, the high quality of the publication really does grab you right from the moment you pick it up.

” We wanted a really nice looking book right from the beginning,” says Thornborrow, “On the very first week that we started putting it together, we made a trip to Happy Harbor Comics in Edmonton just to look at books for their production value. We gravitated right away towards Drawn and Quarterly’s hardcover volumes, like Seth’s Wimbledon Green. ”

Volume 1 of The Anthology Project can be purchased in several comic book shops, both across Canada and in the States.

So far, the book has been entirely self-distributed.

“We’ve been literally cold-calling comic shops that we couldn’t get to on our own, and then in Calgary and Edmonton we just drove from store to store pitching the product and getting people excited about it. It’s such a massive undertaking to do on your own, and it was something we underestimated going into this.”

In addition to co-editing the book, Nick also contributed his own story – an alternative, Western take on the classic Dickens tale A Christmas Carol.

Thornborrow presently works as an artist for the Edmonton-based video game company Bioware.  He can trace his interest in comics back to age ten.

“I guess the first comic that I really fell in love with was (Jeff Smith’s) Bone, back when it was published in the back of Disney’s Adventures magazine. I’d been reading comics before that, but that’s the first one that got me going to the comic store regularly when I found out that it was published in black and white standalone instalments by Smith’s Cartoon Books imprint. ”

As far as an Anthology Project: Volume 2 goes, Nick says that work on the next book “may or may not have already started”.

For the sake of being optimistic about seeing a sequel to this stellar collection sooner rather than later, I choose to assume this means the next book is, in fact, already in the works. Feel free to also assume at your own risk.

Nick says that the next Volume will open up the selection of artists beyond the circle of friends that came together on this first project.

“We’ve had people email us and that kind of thing,” he says,  “and right now we’re looking at sending out some invites for the second volume and seeing what happens.”

You can order The Anthology Project: Vol. 1 directly from The AP website.

For more from Nick, you can watch him answer a few questions from yours truly on-location at the Calgary Comic Expo here.  He also keeps a blog, which you could check out for more samples of his own art.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming