Coming atcha. Coming at-cha. Yeaahhh.

There are a few cool things worthy of note in this week’s comics round-ups found around the web, but before I get to those, I wanted to mention how unbelievably rad it is that Adriana Blake (of the webcomic Fall On Me) took the time to translate my entire interview with her into Spanish!

Blake writes an English version of Fall On Me as well as a Spanish version, called Cuenta Conmigo.  She did the translation so her Spanish-speaking fans wouldn’t feel left out.

As one of my favourite web games to play involves using an online translator to translate paragraphs of text back and forth into nonsensical oblivion, I immediately felt the need to run Adriana’s Spanish version of the interview through Google Translator and back into English.

Highlights included the following excerpt:

“KD: Did you miss your husband was fit to be in a webcomic? How do you feel about it now?

AB: Surprisingly, it soon and I think even flinch. “

As well as these questions that I most definitely asked during the original interview:

“What motivates you to take that approach ’soft’ so full?”

“How do you know you have fans seemed interested in your interaction with your spouse every day?”

Apologies: I am considering joining a self-help group for people disproportionately amused by really simple things, I promise.

Right, and the news:

The 2011 Hugo Award nominees have been announced, which include the nominees for “Best Graphic Story”.

This is the third year that the Hugos have included this category, and this year the nominees include ‘Fables Vol. 13: Witches‘ (written by Bill Willingham and illustrated by Mark Buckingham), ‘Girl Genius Vol. 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse‘ (written by Phil and Kaja Foglio, illustrated by Phil Foglio), ‘Grandville Mon Amour‘ (by Bryan Talbot), ‘Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel‘  (by Howard Taylor), and ‘The Unwritten Vol. 2: Inside Man‘ (written by Mike Carey and illustrated by Peter Gross).

Both Fables and Girl Genius are titles that also popped up on the 2009 and 2010 nomination lists, with the latter taking home the Award each time.  Could this year foretell a Hugo upset? Will reigning champions the Foglio’s be dethroned?

We’ll have to wait until the winners are announced on Saturday, August 20th to find out. Nuts, right?

On the (Canadian) homefront, the Joe Shuster Award just announced their five finalists for the Harry Kremer Award for Outstanding Canadian Retailers.

The nominees are Amazing Stories in Saskatoon (Saskatchewan), Another Dimension Comics in Calgary (Alberta), The Comic Hunter in Moncton (New Brunswick), Comic Readers in Regina (Saskatchewan), and Planéte BD in Montreal (Quebec).  According to the Shuster Awards blog post on the subject, winners are selected based on such factors as “(1) Support of a wide variety of innovative material, (2) Overall appeal of the store and usage of space, (3) Knowledge, (4) Community activity, and (5) Adherence to standard ethical business practices.

The Harry Kremer Award winner will be announced alongside the rest of the Shuster Award winners at this year’s Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo on June 18th. (Speaking of the Calgary Expo, they now have an impressive list of Canadian comic creator guests up on their website – the list includes Fabler Blog interviewees Scott Chantler, Ray Fawkes, Jim Zubkavich and Jeff Lemire, alongside a bunch of other very cool individuals).

I was sad to read that comic publisher New Reliable Press announced this week they would be shutting down after one final showing at TCAF. Ed Brisson, who owns and operates the company, put out the word Monday, citing his desire to focus more on his own work in comics as a primary motivator in the decision.

New Reliable Press has put out a lot of solid titles over the years, notably Jason Turner and Manien Bothma’s True Loves, Simon Roy’s Jan’s Atomic Heart, and the Crime Comics anthology Acts of Violence, alongside the series of anthologies You Ain’t No Dancer.

Ed has said that Jason Turner is making copies of his work available for order online through his website, while other New Reliable titles may be obtained through San Diego-based publishers Poseur Ink.

Bummer, but best of wishes to Ed Brisson and the other creative talent associate with New Reliable Press.

It wouldn’t be civil to end a Fabler Blog post on a sad note, so instead, here’s a little piece of nifty that you might be interested in.

The 900th issue of Action Comics hits the stands today, and if you’ve ever been a fan of the big blue man of steel with a heart of gold, I suggest you head down to your local comic shop at a spritely trot and pick it up.

Action Comics #900 is one hundred pages of epic, featuring a story that DC is billing as the ‘ultimate Superman vs. Lex Luthor showdown’ and a collection of stories from a wicked-cool lineup of guest authors. The author lineup includes David Goyer, screenwriter of The Dark Knight; Damon Lindelof, writer and co-creator of Lost; Geoff Johns, current Chief Creative Officer of DC Comics; Paul Dini, prolific writer for Batman: The Animated Series and a host of other animated series’; as well as Richard Donner.

Yes, legendary director Richard “Superman I and II” Donner. This wouldn’t be his first time writing for Action Comics either – you may recall, back in 2006 he and Geoff Johns teamed up for a run on the title.

I guess all of the kerfuffle is because this issue means Action Comics is the first and only comic series to have published 900 issues. So buying it is like participating in history… but then, technically, so is existing at all…

In conclusion, The Goonies is a wonderful film.

-written by Kevin de Vlaming

2009 was an eventful year of Canadian comic releases, major label crossover events, and comic industry developments that will have huge ramifications for years to come.

It was also the year that The Fabler, founded by Bruno Steppuhn, was birthed into existence. Which, if you were paying any attention, also meant the launch of the Fabler Blog last May.

Since, as the old adage goes, ‘to know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been’, I think it’d be an ideal time to look back at the past year in review.

At least I think that’s how I think the adage goes. I’m not very good with adages. It might alternately be, ‘forget the past and the future, live in the now’. But that works less with what I’m going for here.
Let’s start by taking a brief glance at the Canadian comic landscape in 2009.

Jeff Lemire had a fantastic year. Hey, that rhymes! 2009 saw the release of Jeff’s original graphic novel The Nobody, as well as the launch of his own Vertigo series, Sweet Tooth. As if that wasn’t enough, he also released the collected version of his much acclaimed Essex County Trilogy.

Mariko Tamaki pulled in double honours, winning the Doug Wright Award for Best Book with Skim as well as the Shuster Award for Best Writer for her work on Skim and Emiko Superstar.

Jesse Jacobs and Kate Beaton each also ‘double-dipped’ from the Canadian recognition pool, both earning accolades from each of Canada’s two top comic award organizations. Jacobs won the Gene Day Award for Canadian Self-Publishing at the Shuster Awards, and saw his book Small Victories nominated for a Doug Wright Award earlier in the year. Beaton, the more-internet-famous-every-year creator of Hark! A Vagrant, was nominated for a Best Webcomic Shuster Award and won the Doug Wright Award for Best Emerging Talent.

While new series’ featuring Canadian talent emerged regularly throughout the year, there were three in particular that I feel were especially worthy of mention.

The first was North 40, featuring art by Calgary-based Fiona Staples. This limited series launched in July and concluded in December, and featured a midwestern town overrun by supernatural forces. Aaron Williams wrote a clever story of Cowboy-Western meets Lovecraftian Horror, and Fiona did a fantastic job of bringing those elements to action-packed, panel popping life.

Second would be James Turner’s Warlord of Io. Originally slated for print by Slave Labor Graphics, Warlord of Io wound up as a digital exclusive. You can pick up the first two issues of this uniquely conceptualized space adventure via Comixology, among other places.

Third is, naturally, Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth. As one of the most hyped titles of 2009, the Vertigo-published tale of a young human/deer hybrid in a post-apocalyptic landscape certainly hasn’t disappointed. But then, Lemire isn’t an artist prone to disappointing his fans.

Unlike Jeph Loeb. But that’s another, completely unrelated conversation.

But of course, all of this just barely skims the surface of what 2009 held for the Canadian comics industry.

For all of you non-Canuck Fablers, 2009 has seen its fare share of news in the wider comic industry in general.

The year kicked off with a major announcement from Diamond Comics that some would deem controversial; they were raising their minimum purchase threshold, which would force some of the smaller-name titles out of distribution. The aforementioned Warlord of Io was one of the first comics cut as a result of this action.

Another of the year’s biggest headlines (if not the biggest headline) was Disney’s acquisition of Marvel. Certainly it was one of the most blogged about, with industry commentators putting forth banter as to whether the move would seriously impact the Marvel U, or merely improve distribution options while allowing Marvel complete creative control over its properties. Proponents of the second opinion pointed to Disney’s treatment of Pixar after it bought out the award-winning animation studio as an indicator of how Marvel would also likely be left to its own creative devices.

Both Marvel and DC ramped up the competitive status quo this year as well, each conspiring to use more event titles and ‘major title’ launches to enhance its own share of the comic market.

Marvel re-launched its fan favorite Ultimate Universe, in wake of the cataclysmic events of Ultimatum, while its 616 universe titles spent a year slowly (almost casually) dealing with Norman Osborne’s rise to power with the Dark Reign Event.

DC segued from Final Crisis into its inspired (and highly financially successful) Blackest Night crossover, and while a new Batman emerged in the form of Dick Grayson, Marvel brought the original Captain America back from the dead.

Bringing it closer to home, The Fabler launched at the Calgary Comic Convention in April of this last year. Since its launch as a service geared to help independent comic creators get their work seen on the web, it has built a small (but dedicated) community of initial artists, seen its share of major revamps, and started to find its footing as a long-term platform.

The Blog side of things attempted to establish itself as a news source for interviews with Canadian comic talent, while also providing unique perspectives into the industry and spotlighting the members of its own community whenever possible.

In case you missed any Fabler Blog interviews from the past year, collected for your handy reference below is a list of all of the artists/writers/creators/industry insiders we’ve spoken with to date:

Andrew Johnson (Kingdom, Golem: Small Town Massacre)

Eben Burgoon (Eben 007)

Alison Acton (Bear Nuts, The Faerie Path)

Jesse Jacobs (Small Victories, Blue Winter, Shapes in the Snow)

Joey Comeau (A Softer World, Overqualified)

Simon Roy (Jan’s Atomic Heart)

Jake Ekiss (of Indy Comic Book Week)

Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics)

Jordyn Bochon (The Day After V-Day)

Kate Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant)

Jason Turner (True Loves)

Michael Cho (Papercut)

Steve Rolston (Emiko Superstar, Ghost Projekt)

Doug Wheatley (Star Wars: Dark Times)

James Turner (Nil, Warlord of Io)

Lar deSouza (Looking for Group, Least I Could Do)

Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth, Essex County Trilogy)

Jay Bardyla (Owner of Happy Harbor Comics in Edmonton)

Fiona Staples (North 40, Secret History of the Authority: Hawksmoor)

Troy Little (Chiaroscuro, Angora Napkin)

Gareth Gaudin (Perogy Cat, Owner of Legends Comics in Victoria)

Richard Grzela (14u Comics)

Chris Johnston (Jet Pack Mike)

Vicious Ambitious (Calgary Indie Comic Company)

Stay tuned to the Fabler Blog for more 2010 comic goodness! (And more jabs at Boise, Idaho!)

-Written by 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?

Communist robots, Lunar terrorists and a modern Cenozoic age. These are just a handful of the thoughts swirling around in West Coast comic creator Simon Roy’s brain.

Still fairly new to the business of comic-making, Roy emerged on the national scene this past summer with the release of Jan’s Atomic Heart. The title, which Roy wrote and illustrated, was distributed by Vancouver’s New Reliable Press (for more from New Reliable, check out the Fabler’s Jason Turner interview!).

While the title might sound like the name of an eighties synth post-punk band, Jan’s Atomic Heart is actually a sci-fi thriller set in Germany in the distant future.

“It’s about a guy who gets caught up in a terrorist plot in the future,” says Roy, “I’ve had a variety of ways to sum it up, but that’s the most concise, I think.”

The individual Simon is referring to is the titular Jan, who is temporarily inhabiting a robot frame while his real body heals from a particularly nasty automobile accident.

The book follows Jan as he attempts to discover the mysterious significance his robot body has to a serious of terrorist attacks perpetuated on the UN by Lunar separatists.

So all of the elements of an insanely action-packed science fiction adventure are there, right? Cue explosions and exaggerated robot laser battles?

Roy could easily have taken this route with the title, but where Jan’s Atomic Heart shines is actually in its understated, realistic dialogue and soft-lined, poignantly simple artwork. The sincere, straightforward language exchanged by the characters of Jan’s Atomic Heart give it a depth not always present in sci-fi genre work.

Clearly something about the title has resonated with more than a few other comic fans – Jan’s Atomic Heart has been featured favourably on Comic Book Resources, Are You a Serious Comic Book Reader?, and a miscellany of other comic book blogs (such as this one, this one, and this one).

Not bad for a newcomer to comics. Roy credits the positive attitude of peers in the industry as being hugely encouraging in getting the comic out there.

“Everybody’s nice, everybody’s helpful, and everybody’s got something good to say,” says Roy, “It’s been really cool. I’m really impressed just by how friendly everybody is.

Roy, who is originally from Victoria, BC., had little to no experience with Canadian comic communities to speak of prior to his involvement with New Reliable Press. This is a fact he attributes in part to a lack of cohesive comic scene in Victoria (something Gareth Gaudin of Legends Comics has mentioned before on the Fabler Blog)

“I’ve always bought comics and read comics,” he says, “but you know I was never really motivated to even go as far as Vancouver (before doing Jan’s Atomic Heart). It’s been neat meeting all the different cartoonists across the country, and I’m starting to feel a little bit more like part of the community, which is nice.”

For Roy, making the leap from illustrating his ideas into fifty-six pages of comic goodness to actually publishing and distributing his work was a relatively painless process.

“I basically just sent it to Ed (Brisson, owner/operator of New Reliable Press), and he was impressed enough with it to take a risk and publish it. So that part of the publishing process  wasn’t too hard but from there on in it got a little more interesting – just designing all of the covers and the inside covers and, you know, going through different cover designs and trying to fit it more toward what would be appealing to have in the Diamond preview catalogue.”

If you thought the premise for Jan’s Atomic Heart was singularly unique, wait till you hear what Roy’s up to next.

Presently he’s working alongside Turkish artist Nemo Ramjet on a serious of collaborative illustrations based around the  idea of an alternate modern age.

“I’m doing watercolour illustrations,” says Roy, “and an artist that I met over the internet who lives in Istanbul (Ramjet) is doing cave painting versions of those. The art that we’re doing is kind of like, cave painting scenes from an alternate modern age where the dinosaurs didn’t die out and in fact grew to be intelligent.”

Roy explains that in 1982, a palaeontologist named Dale Russell made his own depiction of a ‘dinosauroid’, which is a hypothetical, uber-evolved form of dinosaur. Russel  used the Troodon, an actual dinosaur that lived 75 million years ago in Canada, as a base for the model due to its above average brain size.

“He made this hypothetical intelligent dinosaur look kinda like a scaly green dude,” says Roy, “and basically I met this Turkish artist because he had done a redesign of that. Instead of shaping it like a humanoid, he shaped it more like a dinosaur. I was very inspired by that, and started doodling in my spare time. As the doodling picked up steam, I sent some illustrations to him, and then we started collaborating.”

Roy says that the collaborative illustrations have been coming along at a steady pace, though as of yet they’re undecided on what they’d like to do with the finished products.

“Maybe a book, or something like that,” he speculates.

Somehow, Roy is managing to balance the above project with finishing his second year of the Design Program at Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, and he’s still actually finding the time to work on something else – a seven page story that he intends to submit to Heavy Metal upon its completion. He has a preview of the latter project on his Flickr account here.

When asked if he has any ‘dream franchises’ he’d like to work on in the future, he gives an unexpected response:

“This is going to sound strange, since I don’t really like drawing superhero style content, but the thing I’d like to draw the most would have to be a Dr. Doom story.  I think there’s a lot of cool places that could be gone with Dr. Doom that haven’t even been touched yet. Lots of fun post-soviet stuff with communist robots. It could really be a lot of fun.”

Click here for an in-depth, 22 page preview of Jan’s Atomic Heart. For more from Simon Roy, you can check out his blog and deviantArt.

Vancouver-based artist Jason Turner has been working in webcomics for longer than many even knew the industry existed.

Turner, whose online work gained first gained attention thanks to early endorsement by Scott McCloud, (of Zot! and Understanding Comics fame) is perhaps best known for the graphic novel True Loves. The two volumes of True Loves, which were originally published as weekly webcomics, tell the story of a modern romance between two Vancouverites. Both volumes were co-authored with his wife, Manien Bothma, and published by New Reliable Press.

The second volume can currently be seen in its entirety on Turner’s website, the jason turner project – alongside an impressive array of additional comics that he has published exclusively online.

When Turner began posting his first comics online back in 2000, titled Down at the Black Box, webcomics were far from the mainstream-celebrated that phenomenon they are today. The concept had been around since the early nineties, though for the better part of the decade the audience was largely peer-based, and the online communities growing around them were still relatively small.

At the time, Turner had been independently producing comics for already almost a decade. His body of work consisted of fifty or so zine comics, many of which he often exchanged with others in the zine community via mail. His leap from offline to online comic publishing came roughly at the same time as Scott McCloud’s Reinventing Comics, which led to Turner’s involvement in the online community surrounding McCloud’s experiments in webcomics. Sharing links to his work with that community are what originally brought him McCloud’s attention, and subsequent ongoing encouragement.

Since then, as webcomics have grown into the pop culture mainstay that they presently are, Turner has had ample opportunity to build on his own ideas about webcomics and carve a niche for himself in the world of digital sequential art.

Turner was kind enough to indulge The Fabler with an interview about (among other things) the release of the second True Loves graphic novel, how he manages to keep the digital content he churns out fresh, and what we can expect next from the prolific creator.

The interview is below:

KD: To start somewhere recent, you just finished your collection of online two-panel comic strips titled ‘Another One Hundred Page Project‘. Can you tell me a little bit about the One Hundred Page projects, and the idea behind them?

JT: In general I enjoy doing these projects, doing “x” each day. It is a way to get myself to do something, and gives a structure for me to work within. So for instance at one point I did these tarot-ish cards, and would draw one each day on my break at work, about the general themes of my day, and I kept going until I had a deck’s worth of them.

The One Hundred Page Project came out of seeing a nice little sketchbook at an art store, noticing it was 100 pages, and thinking it would be perfect for a “project”, as 100 pages is a good amount. Substantial, but not impossible. I didn’t really have a clear plan of what I would draw, just whatever came into my head when I sat down to draw. Like many of my projects, I draw straight into ink, which is a little like drawing without a net. Often I would just draw things that happened to be around me. Or like with my card project, try to draw something to represent the essence of important events from the day. Later on I got on a roll of drawing ideas from a comic story I was building in my head.

KD: The Another One Hundred Page Project and its predecessor are obviously just two parts of a bigger body of online work you’ve been building with ‘the jason turner project’.

Say someone who isn’t familiar with your work expresses an interest in what you do, and asks you what webcomic you would recommend they start with. What do you tell them?

JT: Well, some of the older autobiographical things I did are pretty accessible, like Cooler, the Cottage or My Stupid Week. I suspect quite a few people end up starting with the two Blue comics – Bright Morning Blue and Blue Double Double, due to Scott McCloud’s endorsing them. I am pretty happy with how those two came out (although I always pictured them as being just the first two parts of a larger epic). Or something like the 24hr comic Ditched, which has a self-contained complete narrative. And people tend to enjoy True Loves, though only the second volume is currently online.

KD: Looking back at the sizeable collection of webcomics you’ve created over the past few years, the first word that comes to mind about your approach to online publishing is ‘relentless’. (This is followed closely by ‘inspired’).

Where do you turn to for inspiration? How do you keep churning out fresh ideas for comic content?

JT: I certainly don’t feel relentless! I am always feeling like I haven’t been drawing nearly enough! Also, I have quite a few things from my old site that I haven’t transferred over…

For inspiration I look at the things around me. I roll things around in my head when I walk especially, so my walking to work is a fertile time for me (especially if I have already had some coffee). The story I mentioned drawing scenes from in Another One Hundred Page Project was inspired by my fascination with alleyways. I walk down the one behind my house each day on my way to work, and so that is more or less where this fantastical story would take place. I enjoy twisting and transmuting things in my life into a more fantastic form.

KD: Earlier this summer you and your wife celebrated the release of a collected edition of True Loves Vol. 2 through New Reliable Press.

I’ve heard True Loves called “one of the most Vancouvereque comics you could ever come across”, and you and Manien yourselves have acknowledged the importance of the locale in the narrative. What is it about Vancouver that makes it such a perfect place to tell the story of (central protagonists) True and Zander?

JT: Actually Vancouver came to True Loves before True and Zander! I had been trying to think of very Vancouver-specific comic to pitch as a weekly strip for a local paper. One day I asked Manien if she wanted to help me come up with characters for this Vancouver romance story I was thinking of, and there our writing collaboration started.

Many people have asked me if the story is autobiographical, and it is not. It is however very much set in the parts of Vancouver we have lived in, the places we enjoy going to, “our Vancouver.” So it is a perfect place for the story because it is a place we know and love.

KD: As I understand it, you’ve already begun writing the third volume of True Loves. With the first volume about True and Zander getting together, and the second about their later-relationship trials living together, can you shed a little light on where yourself and Manien aim to take the next chapter?

JT: We are still pretty early in the scripting right now, and I never like to say too much about what is going to happen. Some life changes occur which will make True and Zander do some stock-taking and soul searching.

I will say that as we continue writing together our stories are getting better, and each time in we get to know the characters better. We are also trying to have a clearer idea of the overall shape of the book this time.

KD: Based on your own experience working with webcomics, what are some ways that you would say the transition from physical minicomic to online webcomic has affected the average Canadian indie comic creator?

JT: It just allows more people access to your work, and makes it easier to connect with like-minded people. In the zine days the connections were through magazines, or reviews in other people’s zines, or zine fairs. It was all much slower! And so with the internet it is easier to find comics to read, though a little overwhelming, since there are so many out there. Also you can do colour for no extra charge online.

KD: Do you foresee yourself anytime in the future ceasing to produce print versions of your comics altogether?

JT: To a large extent I have. Since I started putting my comics on the internet I have only produced a few zines. Though print versions do allow you reach different people. A lot of folks I know don’t read comics online, and so if I don’t do print editions of things, they lose touch with what I am doing. So it is good to have something in print for local conventions, and for bigger shows like APE, SPX and TCAF. And having the True Loves book out there reaches different people too. People get it from the library, which is exciting to me.

KD: To bring the interview to a close on a note more directly related to your own material, what new directions would you like your work to explore in the future?

JT: Working on True Loves has taken up most of my drawing time for quite a few years now, and so I do have quite a backlog of ideas that I have not been getting to. I have various things from a low key story about comic fans, to a fantasy story, to a science fiction thing, to a Twin Peaks-y story. Many different things! Also Manien and I are always threatening to do a “sexy thriller” after True Loves is done.

To find out more about Jason Turner, check out his webpage at the jason turner project.