His portfolio features credits on a diverse mix of illustrative projects; from poetry books to horror anthologies, fantasy short stories to noir-esque graphic novels.

In the latter category, Tuazon has illustrated two graphic novels written by Joshua Hale Fialkov (Elk’s Run and Tumor), and just recently saw the release of another book. His latest illustrative effort, titled The Broadcast, was written by Eric Hobbs and published through NBM.

The Broadcast, which released in August and began shipping early September, is a noir thriller set against the backdrop of Orson Welles’ famous War of the Worlds broadcast.

What struck me most about Noel’s art was his ability to create uniquely expressive panels using a variety of different approaches. For instance, The Broadcast was done in watercolor and felt, and the gloomy, dark resonance of his artistic tone really sells the overall mood of the story.

I talked to Tuazon, who is himself a long-time resident to Toronto,  about his contribution to the book, his early comic book influences, and even the particularities of his day job (as a storyboard cleanup artist).

The full interview is below:

KD: What can you tell me about The Broadcast?

NT: The context is based on the Orsen Welles’ War of The Worlds radio broadcast, which a lot of people thought was real. The story takes place in Indiana, where they’re also hearing the broadcast, and it focuses on four families from different backgrounds.

It’s set in the depression era, and has themes of conflict over land ownership and class prejudice. As the lives of these individuals tangle and intertwine,  a mysterious stranger shows up bruised and battered on the doorstep of one of the characters.

All throughout the story, the Orson Welles’ broadcast continues on, contributing to the paranoia of the characters.

KD: How did you get involved with this project, and what originally drew you to it?

NT: Eric Hobbs like the art of another comic I’d drawn called Elk’s Run, and he also was impressed by this water colour piece I used to have up on my portfolio site. It was an image of a little boy, done in pen and ink and gray washes. I had submitted it to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, they published in their magazine-newsletter The Bulletin, and that’s where Eric saw it.

He wanted that exact style for his book, so he got in contact with me. That was back in late ‘07.

KD: What tools did you use to illustrate The Broadcast?

NT: I just used fine tip Sharpie pens, since I have more control with those than with brushes, and they help keep my hand a little more steady. Then I used black water colour to water it down, and added some white. There are a few scenes where I switched to thicker Sharpie pens, and a few flashback scenes where I switched the style up a bit, but that’s about it.

KD: What did you have in mind when you came up with the specific look for The Broadcast?

NT: I wanted it to be murky, and to keep close to the style of that original illustration that Eric saw. I drew from the style of (Italian cartoonist) Gipi and several other European artists, and also to some extent from Jeff Lemire’s work.

KD: You’ve been drawing comics in one capacity or another for quite some time. Just scanning a couple of your biographies out there, I saw it mentioned that one of your first breaks in comics was with a strip in the Cerebus single page sections back in ‘89.

Before that, where did your interest in comics start?

NT: Back when I was in Elementary School in the Philippines, my parents did the book-keeping for a publishing house out there. I read some of the historical comics they put out,  about the lives of these important figures from the history of the Philippines. Then it wasn’t really until College that I read more comics.

A friend of mine in first year College showed me some of the better artists in comics at the time, like Bernie Wrightson, Jeffrey Jones… My brother, he was also starting to collect comics like X-Men and Alpha Flight. It’s funny, looking back at that John Byrne stuff now, I really like what he was doing compared to the other super hero stuff back then.

KD: Your dayjob is as a Storyboard Clean Up artist at Nelvana Studios, is that right? What can you tell me about that job?

NT: When they get the storyboards from the artists, the director will make changes on the board itself – it’s all digital now. I redraw it from his roughs, and it could be something as simple as opening or closing the mouth of a character, or as complex as redrawing an entire scene.

It’s all so much easier nowadays than the old method of cleaning up storyboards, which required visiting and revisiting the photocopier constantly.

KD: What else are you currently up to?

NT: Josh Fialkov, who wrote Tumor, recently showed me a proposal for a story that involves one of the characters from Tumor. It’s way too early to talk more about that, though.

I’ve been doing some illustrations for a poetry magazine, and I also illustrated a trilogy of poetry books by Carolynn Blanchette.

KD: You’ve illustrated poems, children’s books, Westerns, noir… Do you have a favorite subject or genre to draw?

NT: You know, I’d really like to do a horror. I haven’t seen many horror scripts come my way, aside from my work for Steve Bissette’s Taboo and a comic I did for a zombie anthology called Fleshrot.

I’m a big fan of the EC titles, and Wally Wood’s stuff. So I would like to do something in the future along that vein.

For more from Noel Tuazon, you can check out his blog. You can also find an extended preview of The Broadcast here.

-Interview by Kevin de Vlaming

The word ‘international’, however,  might seem a little inconsistent with the content we’ve predominantly featured here on The Fabler Blog.

I’ll be the first to admit that in The Fabler Blog’s first year of life, I’ve maintained a strong emphasis on Canadian talent in the profiles and interviews I’ve posted.  This, I believe, is rightly so – with the exception of very few news blogs, such as Sequential and the Joe Shuster Awards Blog, Canadian comickers don’t often receive a load of media coverage.

My contributions to The Fabler Blog have largely been an attempt to increase that load, while also providing  content relevant to the interests of a growing online community of comic artists.

The Fabler Blog’s contribution to the figurative Canadian load, however, may distract some from the true international nature of the site. (Whew, what a mouthful!)

So here’s my pitch: I’m moving all existing profiles, interviews, and news updates about Canadian comickers into a whole new category – a column which I will continue to contribute to regularly.

The title of this column? “The Canadian Load”, naturally.

Ahhh, but I jest. In fact, we’ll be calling it “Canadian Comics“.

The mission statement of the Canadian Comics column will be to continue showcasing and promoting a varied catalogue of Canadian comic book talent. The subjects, as they have always been, will be predominantly indie – but at the same time we’re not at all against showcasing ‘big label’ Canucks as well.

Separate sections of the blog will continue to be about the site, the industry in general, and increasingly we’ll also be featuring profiles of international talent. A while back we profiled some of the contributors on the Fabler Blog, and I think we’d like to start doing that again.

As for now, are some Canadian artists, writers, and organizations you may have missed so far from 2010:

Gibson Twist (of Pictures of You and Our Time in Eden)

Kelly Tindall (of Archie Snow)

Ben Steeves (of Zom-Ben and Our Time in Eden)

Aaron Leighton (professional illustrator and member of the artist collective, Trio Magnus)

Colleen MacIsaac (indie comic artist and writer)

Marta Chudolinksa (of Back + Forth: A Novel in 90 Linocuts)

Eric Vedder (of Aardehn and Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors)

Adam Bourret (of I’m Crazy)

Ryan Sohmer (of Least I Could Do and Looking for Group)

James Turner (on the Warlord of Io graphic novel)

Nick Thornborrow (of The Anthology Project)

Ethan Rilly (of Pope Hats)

Jenny Romanchuk (of The Zombie Hunters)

Evan Munday (of Quarter-Life Crisis)

Damian Willcox (of dorkboy Comics)

Jason Loo and Arthur Dela Cruz (of The 3 Second Rule)

Robin Thompson (Vancouver Comic Art teacher and artist on Champions of Hell)

Jonathon Dalton (of A Mad Tea-Party and Lords of Death and Life)

Angela Melick (of Wasted Talent)

Cloudscape Comics (Vancouver comic collective – we talked to a number of individuals involved)

Jim Zubkavich (project manager of UDON Entertainment, writer on Skullkickers)

Eric Kim (of Streta and The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare)

As always, thanks for reading!

-Kevin de Vlaming

The gladiator arena of a shopping event known as Black Friday has also come to pass, marking another herald of the soon-to-be-frantic X-mas buying season.

If you’re like me and you don’t start buying your holiday gifts in June, there’s a good chance you’re still scratching your head over what to buy your rolling crew. That’s a crew that you roll with. Like friends, only with more rep. Nevermind.

Anyway, point is, if you have some presents left to buy for individuals even mildly interested in comics – don’t sweat it! The Fabler is here to help.

Presented for your X-mas shopping convenience, we’ve compiled a shortlist of some easily recommendable titles and miscellany, complete with links to their respective websites for online ordering.

I’ve arbitrarily chosen five categories to organize the following suggestions within, and – for bonus convenience – alliterated each of the category titles.

Canadian Comic Holiday Shopping Ideas

Humour

Hark! A Vagrant: Never Learn Anything from History

It is regularly unanimously agreed upon that Kate Beaton is hilarious. Her webcomic Hark! A Vagrant, which irreverently pokes fun at great moments (and people) in history, is validly difficult to read without chuckling. Try it, I dare you. Buying this collection of some of Kate’s best strips for someone as an introduction to her work has to be among the best things you could do for a person (providing they have any sense of humor at all).

Bear Nuts: Volume 1

Alison Acton writes a funny webcomic about a group of cute cartoon bears that live together in the zoo. Only the bears have personality disorders. Some have addictions, some dabble in sadomasochism, and still others regularly self-medicate. Oh, and there are actually bears named Gay Bear, Crack Bear, and Tanked Bear. I guarantee you know someone who will find Acton’s perverse imaginings a riot.

Least I Could Do: I Am Not a Credible Source

Ryan Sohmer and Lar de Souza are known for not one, but two famous webcomics. WoW fans might know them best for Looking for Group,  but Least I Could Do has to be their most consistently funny collaborative work. Whether you have a self-aware narcissist on your x-mas list that you’d like to spitefully mock, or if you just know someone who likes sex  jokes often embedded with pop cultural commentary, this collection of LICD’s sixth year of strips is a no-brainer.

Horror/Sci-Fi

Jan’s Atomic Heart

Robots, revolutionaries, and conspiracy plots abound in this future thriller set in Germany. Artist/writer Simon Roy might be new to comics, but his debut effort is a radtastic romp through an impressively fleshed-out alternate universe.  You don’t have to think robot terrorists plot are sweet to be able to appreciate receiving this book as a gift, but it probably helps.

The Nobody

Jeff Lemire appears twice on this list, and for good reason. The Nobody, a modern retelling of Orson Welles’ the Invisible Man, is a contemporary work of genius. Both poignant and faithful in tone to the original, the Nobody successfully transplants the mythos created by Welles to modern small town North America. With art perfectly matched to the book’s somber tone of isolation, the Nobody would make a swell gift for anyone with a love for classic thrillers, small town mysteries, or David Lynch films.

Heartfelt

The Complete Essex County

The second Lemire title that I mentioned, this trilogy collects all of Jeff’s individual Essex County tales (Tales from the Farm, Ghost Stories, and The Country Nurse) into one indispensable volume. Jeff has a talent for using his imagery an artfully sparse dialogue to tap into some of the most powerful emotions of the human experience; loss, loneliness, and ultimately, the sense of unspoken kinship that universally keeps families together.  I highly recommend this book for pretty well anyone, though hockey fans or individuals who grew up in rural surroundings might get a little something extra out of it.

True Loves (Vol. 2)

Jason Turner, together with his wife Manien Bothma, conspired to create the first volume of True Loves in 2006.  What resulted was an intriguing, genuine look at the beginnings of a relationship between two young residents of Vancouver, BC. Funny at times, while other times introspective and thoughtful, True Loves highlighted the ups and downs of an honest romance out on Canada’s West Coast. They released the second volume this past year, exploring the trials of the pair from the first volume as they endure the very real trials of a long-term relationship once the ‘puppy love’ phase has long since passed. Just a few panels of this comic are all it takes to be hooked. Also check out Turner’s website for samples of the fantastic art.

Hip titles for younger readers

Emiko Superstar

Written by Mariko Tamaki (of the provocatively well-worded graphic novel Skim) and illustrated by Steve Rolston, Emiko Superstar takes on teenage identity transition and self-discovery with a fresh sense of realism rarely present in young adult fiction. I don’t mean this book is filled with sex, drugs, and violence, for those reading into my previous statement – just that it doesn’t reek of the same dishonesty you might see in, say, a coming-of-age film starring some former mouseketeer (or something along those lines). More importantly though, Emiko Superstar really is a fun read.

Jellaby: Monster in the City

The second Jellaby book by Kean Soo is probably best bought together alongside the first, as Soo originally intended them to be a single, 300 page story. This Shuster Award-winning-story spins the tale of Portia, a ten year old girl who just recently moved to a new school, and her friendship with the titular character – a six foot tall purple monster named Jellaby. The story is undeniably charming, the artwork distinctive and eye-catching; really, what Jellaby represents is an instant children’s classic.

Hey, it’s a miscellaneous category!

Overqualified

The least directly comic-related item on my gift suggestion list, Overqualified qualifies as a great gift idea for fans of the webcomic A Softer World. Joey Comeau, who writes ASW, penned this collection of cringe-inducing cover letters as a project that originally started with several fake cover letters he actually made and mailed out. Through a series of these cover letters, Overqualified tells a story of a protagonist rife with human flaws as he candidly spills his guts out to strangers in desperate bids for employment.  Fans of A Softer World will immediately recognize Joey’s trademark dark witticism present in the letters.

Topatoco’s Collection of Holiday Greeting Cards

While Topatoco is an international purveyor of webcomic-related goodies and not a dedicated source of Canadian content, I would be remiss not to point out the excellent selection of Holiday Greeting Cards they have available for order. Be sure to check out card designs by Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics and Kate Beaton of Hark! A Vagrant.

Abominable Charles Christopher Signed Prints

Karl Kerschl’s epic weekly webcomic has earned him a healthy helping of accolades for its skilful narration and beautiful art. While technically this isn’t something exclusively released in 2009, you can place orders for recent strips to be printed, signed, and delivered for a very reasonable price.  Who wouldn’t love an artfully illustrated print of the large, furry, loveable (and easily confused) Charles Christopher?