In keeping with tradition, we’re ringing in the new year by looking at some of the stuff that’s impacted our little corner of the interweb over the past twelve months. This includes some of the news bits the Fabler Blog has reported on, some of the changes and landmarks the main site has experienced, and of course, a Coles Notes list of the interviewees we’ve featured on the site throughout 2010.

Let’s start by talking about The Fabler directly. Our second year online has been filled with small triumphs (and minor road bumps), but a few in particular stand out.

First, our presence at the 2010 Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo was much stronger than at the ‘09 Expo, which was when the Fabler first launched. The 2010 Expo gave us a great chance to network, spread the good word about the site, and nab some pretty nifty interviews in our first (and, to date, only) Fabler Blog video segment. The Expo itself was a huge success last year, bringing in over 20,000 attendees – over twice the amount of the 2009 Expo. We were thrilled to be a part of that.

The Fabler’s next landmark came in May, when the site’s founder, Bruno Steppuhn, took home the Digital Alberta Media Fresh Award for Best Use of Social Media on behalf of The Fabler. You can read more about that in Bruno’s post here.

Shortly after, we launched our first major comic contest, which ran from June 15th to September 15th.  The Fabler gave away a Sony PS3 Bundle, a Wacom Intuos4 XL, and for first prize, a Wacom Cintiq 21UX. Competition was stiff, as many new contributors to the Fabler submitted a diverse and colourful array of sequential entries into the contest, but ultimately there could be only one grand prize winner. The first place finalist was Scott Ferguson, for his comic Scout Crossing.

As a reminder to all interested parties, the second Fabler Comic Contest started on October 15th and is currently still on until January 15th. If you’re interested in tossing your hat (comic) into the ring (upload section), you can view the full rules and regulations here.

To briefly touch on some of the larger news items we mentioned on The Fabler Blog, the year opened with a fresh new lawsuit between legendary comic artist Jack Kirby’s heirs and Marvel regarding copyrights to the work he did on a tonne of iconic comic characters. The latest news on this legal battle is that there really is no news. Honestly. There was a counter-suit at some point, Marvel wasn’t forced to pay damages, the Kirby Estate’s case wasn’t thrown out… It’s all sitting fairly stagnant in judicial purgatory.

In Canadian Comic news, Seth’s George Sprott: (1894-1975) unsurprisingly garnered the Doug Wright Award for Best Book, while Michael DeForge won Best Emerging Talent for Lose #1, and the Pigskin Peters Award went to Marc Bell for Hot Potatoe. Meanwhile, over on the Joe Shuster Awards side of town, Stuart Immonen earned Best Artist, Maryse Dubuc won Best Writer for her work on Les Nombrils, tome 04, and Karl Kerschl’s fantastic comic The Abominable Charles Christopher was named Best Webcomic.

In July, the world of digital Indie comics was changed forever when Zuda Comics announced it was shutting down. Zuda was DC’s online imprint and a place for independent creators to post their works in hopes of earning a publishing contract with one of DC. They were shut down as part of a DC corporate restructuring that also saw half of their staff relocate from New York to California.

This led into a host of additional major industry announcements that came to light around September and October. The Wildstorm Comics imprint was shut down, much to the chagrin of fans of The Authority and Astro City. DC and Marvel announced that their monthly issue comic prices would drop an entire dollar in 2011. Dark Horse announced a new digital publishing initiative, also coming in 2011.

As we venture forward into 2011, the state of the industry seems to finally have some sort of gameplan for adapting to a changing market. That market is of course the digital market, which had grown from an estimated value of around $1 million in 2009 to $8 million in 2010.

The Fabler Blog will continue to have its eye on the industry in this regard, and we’ll post the ‘news that fits’. Whatever that means.

This year you can also expect to see more big changes in store for the main portion of The Fabler, but I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise on that front.

In bringing this, the  first post of 2011, to a close, I would like to thank all of you Fabler fans and comic creators who have brought something to the site over the past year. I would also like to thank you for reading our humble little blog, when the internet is such a big, wide, interesting place.

On that note, for your handy convenience and ready perusal, here’s a list of all the interesting individuals we featured on the blog over the past year:

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

Kelly Tindall (Archie Snow)

Ben Steeves (Zom-Ben, Our Time in Eden)

Aaron Leighton (Illustrator, member of Trio Magnus)

Colleen MacIsaac (Minicomic creator and multimedia artist)

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

Eric Vedder (Aardehn, Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors)

Adam Bourret (I’m Crazy)

Ryan Sohmer (Least I Could Do, Looking for Group)

James Turner (Warlord of Io)

Nick Thornborrow (The Anthology Project)

Ethan Rilly (Pope Hats)

Jenny Romanchuk (The Zombie Hunters)

Evan Munday (Quarter-Life Crisis)

Damian Willcox (dorkboy Comics)

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

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

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

Angela Melick (Wasted Talent)

Cloudscape Comics (Vancouver-based comic collective)

Jim Zubkavich (Skullkickers)

Eric Kim (The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare)

Mike Jasper and Niki Smith (In Maps & Legends)

Noel Tuazon (The Broadcast)

Scott Ferguson (Scout Crossing, Nerf This)

Ty Templeton (Northern Guard)

Danielle Keller (GHOST!, Acid Monday)

Sarah Leavitt (Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, Mother and Me)

Derek McCulloch (Stagger Lee, Pug)

Matthew Dunn (Lonely Monsters)

Scott Chantler (Two Generals)

Rhian Engel (My Life as a Grum)

Jason Bradshaw (Boredom Pays, the Worst in Everything)

Salgood Sam (Dream Life, The Rise and Fall of it All)

-Post Written by Kevin de Vlaming

Whether you were here to witness the legions of Vulcan-ear adorned trekkies swarm for autographs from Leonard “I am not Spock” Nimoy, or whether the combined starpower of Alex from A Clockwork Orange, that surly guy from Dollhouse, and the always creepy “Candyman” Tony Todd wasn’t quite enough to entice you out…

For better or for worse, the Roundup Centre has bid farewell to the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo for another year.

Let me tell you, it was a helluva time.

I don’t have access to the numbers, but this year’s expo was definitely on par with last year for traffic. Which is to say, at peak periods in the afternoon (particularly on Saturday) the expo was shoulder to shoulder in the main lanes and throughout Artist Alley.

An ample distribution of cosplaying con keensters further contributed to the crowd problem. Ready for more alliteration? The costumed con-goers caused significant clots in crowd traffic, as camera-wielding expo fans lined up to snap away.

Regarding the popular costumes this year – unsurprisingly, several Deadpools were present. I also counted four Zatanna’s over the weekend, perhaps curiously.

And, as I mentioned before, the Trekkies were out in full force. If the combined presence of Leonard Nimoy and Brent Spiner (pallid-faced android Data) weren’t enough on their own, the hype surrounding Nimoy’s pre-con visit to the small Alberta town of Vulcan contributed the final sparks necessary to reignite Star Trek craziness here in Calgary.

The worst part of this was the children. Dorked-out Dads riding the waves of sci-fi nostalgia from their glory days threw pointy ears on their (usually bespectacled) spawn, fitted them with oversized Halloween Star Trek shirts, and marched them around like beacons of hope for a next Next Generation.

But I’m detracting now from the coolness of some of the more inspired costumes from over the weekend. Here’s a brief sampling of some of the cosplay from this year’s expo:

Panel-wise, Saturday was really the big day for prominent comic creators/authors/artists present. Chris Claremont proved himself as articulate a speaker as he is a writer of comics, sharing some genuinely insightful kernels of wisdom at the Writing for Comics panel as well as the X-Men Q & A. Fans hoping to attend either the Leonard Nimoy or Billy Dee Williams panels were greeted with massive lineups, with the former boasting a lineup that stretched around the exterior of the con, back into the main hall and halfway through the room.

Much of Sunday I was personally occupied with taking video footage and doing the whole interview thing, but I heard the Boom! Studios and Top Cow panels were pretty thoroughly lively. The one panel I actually made it to was an Iron Man spotlight featuring several Marvel Artists as well as a concept artist on the Iron Man movies, John Giang. After ten minutes of anxiously awaiting the presentation in our seats, we were informed that Giang has mysteriously vanished from the Con altogether.

Whether he was abducted by a jet black minivan in the harsh afternoon (pre-rain) sunlight, or whether he simply ate too much of the Coco Brooks’ pepperoni pizza (who could blame him, really), this meant my Sunday was effectively panel-less.

But! No big loss, as I had the pleasure to chat with a few past Fabler interviewees in person, including (but not limited to):

The super-friendly and fantastically talented Eric Vedder, of Udon Comics and now also Transmission X.

New Reliable Press‘ Simon Roy (pictured at left), author of the Shuster Award-Nominated graphic novel Jan’s Atomic Heart.

…And Lar deSouza, webcomic artist on both Looking for Group and Least I Could Do. He’s pictured here with a convincingly costumed Richard, the sadistic warlock and fan favorite character from Looking for Group.

On the topic of Lar, I had the opportunity to interview his creative counterpart writer Ryan Sohmer at the Con. Stay tuned to the Fabler Blog in the coming weeks to see how it turned out. Ryan appeared to be verging on deathly ill when I chatted with him, but, as he confided in me, the sheer power of Red Bull sustained his wits throughout the Expo.

As for the Fabler, we had our own corner booth which we shared with parent company Zensoft Studios.

The artist you see at front is Jay Korim, penciller on the soon-to-be-launched Fabler exclusive webcomic, the Sundry 7. The Fabler team was on hand distributing freshly printed copies of issue # 0 of the Sundry 7 free of charge to anyone who stopped by the booth.

We met a lot of friendly faces curious as to what the Fabler’s all about, and had the pleasure of chatting with some interesting creative talent that had their own thoughts to share about what we’re aiming to accomplish with the site.

We also gave away some nifty prize packs, including several PS3’s and a bunch of copies of Batman: Arkham Asylum.

As you can tell from the above photo, the air was positively thick with excitement as the winners were drawn. Thick, I tell you.

I mentioned before that Sunday included, in part, some serious video-taking. We shot a bunch of footage with a trusty handy cam that hopefully we’ll get to show you here on the Fabler Blog soon. Among those featured in our video segment are Eisner-nominated artist Fiona Staples, Dinosaur Comics’ author Ryan North, and a few other talents you’ll just have to wait and see. Provided our trusty (read: budget) handycam came through for us.

On a final note, I leave you with this inspiring image of Vince Smith of the Calgary comic collective Vicious Ambitious (formerly of Team Zissou).

If that doesn’t get your short shorts bunched up in enthusiasm, I don’t know what will.

For more photos from the con, browse over to our Flickr page.

Did I purposely avoid mention of Twilight at the Con altogether? Yes I did.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming

The parameters for this award would include:

- ability to render epic-level fight sequences skillfully and with non-clichéd flair.

- uniquely imaginative portrayals of characters of extraordinary and/or otherworldly origin.

- demonstrated comfort with gratuitously graphic content, though never to the point where the violence and/or sexuality overwhelms the subtext.

- bonus points for sequences involving mass evisceration.

With this checklist in mind, absolutely the first name that would grace my shortlist of contemporary Canadian artists would be Eric Vedder.

Vedder, who resides in St. Catherines, Ontario, is the author, artist and creator of Aardehn – a dark fantasy/sci-fi webcomic of epic scale.

Aardehn, which launched in February of 2008, chronicles the adventures of Celeste – a demon hunter who is herself marked by darkness and carries a burden of prophecy.

Prominent secondary characters include Aveenda, a fiercely independent elf currently held in captivity, and the demonic Lady Skar – as delightfully twisted and sadistic a villain as one could hope for, really.

Last September, Aardehn was officially added to the Transmission X roster of high-quality webcomics.

Outside of Aardehn, Vedder works on concept and character art for videogame development companies, and has worked as a penciler on various titles from Udon Comics.

In fact, recently he was drafted to share penciling responsibilities on the latest Darkstalkers miniseries from Udon, the Night Warriors – a job which Eric was particularly (and understandably) excited to work on.

Eric was amiable enough to do an interview with the Fabler about Aardehn, Darkstalkers, and beyond.

That interview….(dramatic pause, for effect) is below:

KD: What have been some of your most prominent influences with Aardehn? I would guess that you have some pretty distinct influences in anime/manga – would that be totally off the mark?

EV: You guessed correctly. I’ve been a huge fan of anime/manga for quite some time and they have totally influenced Aardehn. The first anime I watched was Akira and it opened my eyes to a whole new world. Here we had violence, swearing and slight nudity all in a cartoon format… I loved it! Then I saw Ghost in the Shell. Well, that was it. I collected anything I could get my hands on that had Masamune Shirow’s artwork on it.

Following that was Blade of the Immortal by Hiroaki Samura and Naruto by Masashi Kishimoto. Two phenomenal manga’s that completely influenced Aardehn’s art and storytelling style.

KD: Aardehn seems as much of an epic adventure in high fantasy as it is an experiment into different artistic styles.

Can you tell me a little about your decision to use Aardehn as a testing grounds of sorts for your art?

EV: From the get go, I made the decision that Aardehn would be where I grew as an artist (hopefully).

Basically it comes down to the fact that I appreciate all art styles and if the mood strikes me to play with other styles, then I wanted to use it in my crazy world. It’s also a way for me to help break through my many bad habits and barriers that have grown stubbornly over the years. I always feel I can do better or rather should be doing better, so this keeps me trying new things and I find that’s the best way to learn.

KD: Aardehn is definitely not a G-Rated comic. If the violence/glimpses of nudity you’ve had in the comic prior weren’t enough of an indicator, this a point you certainly drove home with your January 25th update (featuring what we’ll call the “uninvited tentacle” scene).

Were you wary at all about posting that particular update/was there any consideration of portraying it differently?

EV: Ah, the infamous tentacle scene. This page definitely gave me pause and posting it made me feel a little uneasy. I struggled with other ways to portray it or perhaps take a completely different approach but in the end it felt right. I had to establish how unflinchingly creepy Lady Skar was and hint at some of her bizarre powers.

Having said that, I can now limit how many times, if ever again, we see that same scene. A simple shot of her arm unraveling should be enough to let the viewer know what’s coming next.

KD: How early on in Aardehn’s conception did you make the decision not to censor the more graphic elements of the comic?

EV: I loathe censorship of any kind. Let me decide what I want to see, read, hear and ingest. That’s basically my thought process when it comes to comics as well. Years before it was on paper, I knew I wanted Aardehn to be un-censored.

However, I will say I feel that there is a time and place for all things and over-doing anything will just turn out poorly, in comics and in real life.

KD: Can you give any hints as to where the tales of Celeste and Aveenda will be heading in the coming year?

EV: Think dragons, archers, aliens and spaceships… ok that might be too vague. Over the next year, we’ll see Celeste grow into much more of a leader and we’ll learn how Aveenda is connected to her and to many others.

I have a long story to tell so hopefully people stick with me.

KD: You officially joined up with Transmission X last September, adding Aardehn to the TX Comics stable of high-quality webcomics.

What are some of your thoughts on working with Transmission X this past year, and on working with a webcomic artist collective in general?

EV: Joining Transmission X was a huge moment in my life. It also made Aardehn seem more real. Those guys are all professionals and really force you to think and act like a pro more and more. They really challenge me to be better as an artist and as a person and I’m so stoked and grateful to be moving forward along side them. We have big plans ahead so make sure to check out the new website and the new store!

I think working in a collective can only make your comic better. Also, you are part of team to a degree and a lot more gets accomplished this way. I really think more people should try hooking up with other artists and help promote each other, especially in the beginning stages of your comic/art career.

KD: I understand that you were a pretty big fan of the Darkstalkers universe prior to being asked to pencil the new miniseries.

What has it been like for you, having the opportunity to work on this particular franchise?

EV: I’ve been a huge fan of Capcom, particularly the Street Fighter series, for years and years now. Going back to the earlier question of influences, the artists from Capcom blew my mind. I would try and draw like them for years and still do!

Kinu was perhaps my biggest influence as her mix of cartoon and life drawing like style resonated within me.

Along comes Darkstalkers with its insanely designed monsters and sexy heroines. I couldn’t believe the characters and being a fan of monsters and women, this game was made for me. Also, not many people know this but, Morrigan was my inspiration for Celeste and yes, she too was originally a succubus.

When Udon approached me to split the penciling duties on the 3 issue mini series, I was shell-shocked. It really was a dream come true for me and was a long time goal of mine. Getting to draw the comic with my good friend Joe Vriens was awesome and made the experience even more special. Needless to say, I was really happy.

KD: Do you have a particular favourite Darkstalker character to draw?

EV: I love drawing Capcom characters in general, particularly the females.

Hands down my favorite character to draw and for obvious reasons is Morrigan. Beautiful and deadly, a perfect combination.

KD: My questions so far have been focused on your experiences as an artist of comics and webcomics, but you also have a strong background in videogame art design.

Can you tell me a little about the specifics of your work in gaming, and what it entails?

EV: Currently I work on a game called Sacred Seasons. I’ve been working with them for over a year now dabbling in almost every aspect of art for it. Initially I was doing character concept art for them, which I then transferred into in-game character art.

As we are nearing the end of our first content update, I’m finding myself doing website design, item and weapon art as well as advertisement art. They are great bunch of really talented people to work with and look forward to continuing on with them.

KD: How do you portion your time between working as a comic artist and your work in the videogame industry?

EV: It’s a bit of a juggling act at times. For the most part the videogame comes first as it’s a full time job. Aardehn is only a weekly update (for now), so the time needed for it is much less and splitting the penciling duties for Darkstalkers provides a little breathing room… but not much!

KD: As a final question, what’s next for you outside of Darkstalkers/Aardehn? Are there any projects that you’re particularly excited for coming up in the near future?

EV: After Darkstalkers, I’m not sure what Udon has lined up for me. Aardehn however, will continue on as scheduled. There is a secret project being released later this year that I’m very excited about but I can’t share with you just yet. You’ll just have to stay tuned!

For more from Eric Vedder, you can check out his website, Aardehn, or his page on deviantART. You can also follow him on his blog or on Twitter.

-Interview by Kevin de Vlaming