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.

One major role of the comic book artist is to bring a world that would otherwise exist only in the imagination to visual, almost tangible, life.  When countless fans have a very fixed preconceived idea of what that world consists of, based largely on the hundreds of books of literature that have documented it in the past, the artist’s task becomes that much more daunting.

Doug Wheatley, who has been a professional comic book illustrator for fifteen years, faces that task on a regular basis. The Winnipeg-based artist, who has in the past done work on such titles as Superman: Last Son of Earth and Blade: The Vampire Hunter, has spent the last six years working heavily on one of the most well-known franchises in the world – Star Wars.

“Dark Horse first contacted me to do a Star Wars cover,” says Wheatley of his beginnings on the legendary franchise, “then about a year and a half later they got back in touch with me and I talked to them about doing more Star Wars work. I had already done some work for Dark Horse on Aliens, and a while before that on a comic series they put out based on the videogame Mist.”

In the time since then, Wheatley’s Star Wars credits have included work on the titles Star Wars: Empire, Star Wars: Republic, Star Wars: Dark Times, Star Wars: Legacy, and an official comic book adaptation of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. This is in addition to several other one-shots and covers he has done within the franchise.

Though Wheatley didn’t get into the Star Wars novels growing up, he credits the movies as having a significant impact on him when he was a kid.

“Just like there’s a Y generation and an X generation, I think there’s a generation that should rightfully be called the Star Wars generation,” says Wheatley, “Since I’ve been working on Star Wars, I’ve ran into a lot of people that saw the original movie at the same time I did, which was around age eight. Seeing it at that age has a profound effect on the rest of your life. If you can imagine something so new and fresh that captures the excitement of Flash Gordon and the sci-fi trends of the day in film form – it’s huge.”

If indeed there is a Star Wars generation, they have never been found wanting for more content.  There has been more Star Wars media – be it in books, comics, cartoons,  etc. – than almost any other franchise in history.

“By nature, I research what I do,” explains Wheatley, “If I’m working on Superman, I research Superman. When I did Aliens, I was working on a title that had its own fan base that would cite you if you didn’t do the right thing at the right time. But none of that was like working on Star Wars. The reality of what happened to me with the Star Wars gig, is that I found out really quick that I had a lot of catching up to do.”

According to Wheatley, working on the Star Wars titles for Dark Horse has been like a crash course in how to effectively illustrate what is, essentially, historical fiction.

“Almost every time I got a new script, the writer would lift this rare alien race that was used in some minor novel way, way back when. There’s no real visual reference for something like that, so I’d have to get on the net and look for somebody who did some sort of drawing based on that alien, or somebody who had a more detailed description about it. Just something that would give me a clearer path to getting it right, so that I didn’t have to hear from the fans later saying, ‘you got it wrong’.”

Wheatley says that the biggest baptism for him (working in the Star Wars universe) came when he did the Episode III comic book adaptation. He was involved in the project from a very early stage, and became immersed in the creative process as long as a year and a half before the movie actually hit theatres.

“Having the privilege to see it develop, and to be in the middle of drawing something and get a call from someone saying, ‘this character has changed, we’re sending you the new design’ – you learn a lot about how it’s all put together.”

On the flipside of this coin, Wheatley says that it was occasionally intimidating to pencil characters that had yet to be even seen in a film. At one point he was actually instructed to illustrate General Grievous, before he had seen any point of reference. This would have required him to literally make up an image of one of the main villains that would be in Episode III. Fortunately for Wheatley, he was able to push for some solid visual cues before committing to a drawn character design.

Skipping forward to his current work, the latest book that Wheatley has been working on is Star Wars: Dark Times. Dark Times is an ongoing series that has been written by Mick Harrison since its debut in 2006. The series, now in its fourth plot arc titled Blue Harvest, has received steady critical acclaim since its inception – thanks both to Harrison’s creativity and Wheatley’s incredibly detailed art.

“I honestly think Mick is a brilliant writer,” says Wheatley, “Every time I get one of his scripts, he breathes so much life into these characters that I feel very challenged attempting to even come close to interpreting everything. Time is not on my side, and I often think to myself that in order to capture everything he’s got in there I would need at least two years per arc.”

Wheatley isn’t exaggerating when he says that time is a luxury he doesn’t have. Between his work on Dark Times, his work on a few other projects that he can’t speak about yet, and time set aside for his kids, he often finds himself stretched pretty thin.

“I have two kids that I absolutely love, and any free time that I can pull out of every week goes to them,” says Wheatley, “and it is a challenge. One thing that I’m working very hard on is resolving some deadline issues I’ve had with Dark Times. I am frantically and very intently working on ironing those out, and I’m very close to doing that – it all comes down to the fact that I want to draw so much from the material, and it being Star Wars means it’s already labour intensive.”

Wheatley is of course referring to the high level of detail and research that goes into a Star Wars comic as opposed to, he gives as an example, a Superman comic.  To do Superman, Wheatley says he would go through two or three seminal Superman books, pull some images central to Metropolis for reference, and, to be thorough, look at some photos of the New York skyline to help with realism.

To do Star Wars, Wheatley often goes through books upon books for reference, pouring through novels and fan illustration, checking and double-checking his sources for detail and accuracy. Tedious? Some might think so, but it’s clear that Wheatley loves what he does.

One thing that Wheatley would like to change in the future, is to break out of the pigeonhole he sees himself as having been put in as an exclusively science fiction artist. With a career that has been spent largely illustrating aliens, space emperors, vampires, and interterrestrial civilizations, Wheatley says that he’d like to have the opportunity to get involved with more superhero fare.

“I grew up on Chris Claremont’s X-Men, on Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, and Marc Silvestri,” says Wheatley, “That’s what I learned to draw from. I would love to do a run on one of the X-Men books, just because that’s what I grew up on. I’ve also been a huge Batman fan, ever since I read Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, which was the first Batman I ever actually read. I would absolutely love to have the chance to do more than just a pinup for that character, for Gotham City.”

Being a Batman fan myself, I feel compelled to say that I’d love to see a Doug Wheatley run on the caped crusader.

For those of you interested in following what Wheatley’s up to in the meantime, you can check out his blog, or Myspace page.

Interview by Kevin de Vlaming

As any indie comic artist will tell you, it’s no easy task to put together your first comic book. Finding the time around working a full time job to draw up some 24 to 32 pages of paneled illustration, finding your own rhythm and process as you go, and teaching yourself the ropes of self publishing – it can be a daunting task, especially when you’re not 100% sure how the finished product will turn out.

Calgarian Chris Johnston did just that with his first foray into comic books, Jet Pack Mike. Fortunately for Johnston, the comic, a black and white sci-fi tale with a decidedly pulp/horror flavour, turned out pretty darn radtastic. Jet Pack Mike introduces readers to the mysteriously tight-lipped, titular character as he attempts to take down the insane (yet incredibly gifted) scientist Dr. Albertson. JPM comes complete with robot fights, mutant henchmen, and a shadowy old classically-English-looking gentleman.

I caught up with Johnston at the Calgary Comic Expo, where we chatted about his experience putting together Jet Pack Mike.

KD: Before we get into the comic, tell me about New Machine Studios.

CJ: We’re a 3D animation studio that’s currently working on a TV series called the Raven Tales. We’ve done about, just over, 24 episodes or so. We’re also currently working on a one hour Christmas TV special called Wizard’s Christmas.

KD: And how long have you been Art Director there?

CJ: For five years.

KD: When did Jet Pack Mike officially release?

CJ: This weekend.

KD: That must be pretty exciting for you.

CJ: Yeah, yeah. It is, it is.

KD: How did the idea for Jet Pack Mike come about?

CJ: About seven years ago I was working at an animation studio called Aurenya, where we internally held a short film competition. Everyone came up with their own ideas, and I came up with Jet Pack Mike. We were going to animate it as a short film about five minutes long, but then the studio fell through. We just ran out of money. So I had the concept sitting around, and then last year I decided to turn it into a comic.

Above: Chris sketching up a storm at the Calgary Comic Expo

KD: How long did it take to put this together and get it out there, from beginning to end?

CJ: I did it over the last year or so, on Saturdays and after work when I had the chance. It was a slow, long, long process. (laughs)

KD: Had you dabbled in comic books at all previously?

CJ: Well, I’ve always been interested in comics and knew that I wanted to make something. I’ve got a lot of stories in my head, and I’m starting to write them down. I’m hoping that every year I can have a new comic come out.

KD: What was the hardest part about putting this one together?

CJ: Probably just assembling it all on the computer to take it for printing. Scanning every single page in, combing over the art and cleaning it up in Photoshop is a long process, and actually very tedious.

KD: The art in Jet Pack Mike seemed to me to be pretty reminiscent of Mike Mignola’s (of Hellboy) stuff. Was he an inspiration for you with this?

CJ: Yeah, my biggest inspirations for the comic were Mike Mignola and Paul Pope. So I kind of mixed their styles together, I guess.

KD: I noticed that JPM, with the exception of the intro, is pretty light on dialogue and has a far heavier emphasis on the art itself. Was there a specific reason you chose to take that sort of direction with it?

CJ: Yeah, like I did want to have some dialogue, but I didn’t want to get too serious or too bogged down with it. So you know, there’s that conversation at the start, but then I just wanted to get into some action and have some fun with it.

KD: Have you had much support from the local comic community with putting this together, or was it pretty much all your own initiative?

CJ: The work was all me. Though I know some of the other guys in town, like Vicious Ambitious and a few others, and we get together at something called Drink and Draw where everyone meets up and chats about their stuff and what’s going on. So in that way, there was definitely support.

KD: What do you have in mind for your next effort?

CJ: The next story that I wrote up is called Jack and Jill. It’s about this guy and a girl who are in this bizarre, sci-fi sort of world where he has to collect these computer chips in order to power this weird 3D TV unit to entertain his girlfriend, or else she gets upset. (laughs)

Chris Johnston keeps a blog at http://jemapellerobot.blogspot.com/ . Check it out to see some of Johnston’s artwork from Jet Pack Mike, alongside samplings of his other work.