For the subject of this interview, we chose an extremely talented, Montreal-based comic artist who has previously had an established degree of familiarity with The Fabler.  The first 16 pages of his comic collaboration with John O’Brien, ‘The Rise and Fall of it All’ is currently among the roster of showcased comics on the main site.

In addition, he is the creator of Sequential, the Canadian comic book newsblog. Since we often feature Canadian comic book creators and/or news pertaining to the Canadian comic industry here on the Fabler Blog, there is often some overlap between content on the two sites. To further expand on that connection, he actually interviewed Fabler founder Bruno Steppuhn for a post on Sequential back in August.

I am speaking, of course, of Salgood Sam. To give Salgood a brief bio, he is a former Torontonian who became involved in the comic industry at a very young age. Much of his early twenties were spent illustrating titles for Marvel, including Clive Barker’s Nightbreed, from their  Epic Comics’ imprint, and Saint Sinner, under Marvel’s Razorline imprint.

From there, Max left comics for a while to work in animation at Nelvana Studios  (also based out of Toronto) and Cine-Group (in Montreal). Around the late 90’s he became involved with organizing local Toronto Comic Jams, a tradition he brought with him to Montreal in 2000. Sequential itself was born in 2002 as an evolution of his then-blog about the Montreal Comic Jams, NonSequiturs.

He self-published a (Doug Wright Award nominated) anthology of stories called RevolveR in 2004, and in 2007 he illustrated Therefore Repent!, a graphic novel written by Jim Munroe. You can also find his work in the comic book anthologies Comic Book Tattoo, Popgun 4, and Awesome 2: Awesomer.

For the purpose of this interview, I wanted to speak with Salgood about two of his current projects, The Rise And Fall Of It All and Dream Life. As I mentioned, a segment of The Rise and Fall Of It All can currently be seen on The Fabler, and it is a collaborative project with John O’Brien that has been in the works for some time now.

It focuses on the story of Eliot, a Chicago-based office worker who, after he loses his job and joins the ranks of the unemployed, is faced with the knowledge that he has no real, tangible sense of identity. Eliot forms a connection with a jazz musician named Elmo on the streets of Chicago, and through their friendship gleans a greater understanding of where he fits into the world. New colored pages of The Rise And Fall Of It All are currently being posted on Salgood Sam’s RevolveR blog.

Dream Life marks Salgood Sam’s contribution to the Transmission X webcomic collective. Though it is currently on hiatus until January 15th, (Act 1 finished on Dec  18th, Jan 15th is the beginning of Act 2) Dream Life is a regularly updated webcomic with some seriously surreal undertones about the subconscious and an interesting initial concept. In Salgood’s own words:

“Dream Life began as a conversation between friends…  Cracking wise about what kind of adults (Charles M. Schulz’s) Peanuts characters might make we were inspired to play with the idea of using the cast as a constraint for a contemporary black comic narrative about our peers, and ourselves; Each character beginning as a Peanuts archetype that we would then age and play with, borrowing from our own lives and our friend’s to flush them out.”

An interesting premise, to be sure. As the project evolved, the story came to be told in a shifting perspective between five core characters as they weather their own miniature, individually-tailored life crises.

Artistically, Dream Life represents Salgood Sam at the top of his game. Each page is really a pleasure to take in, whether it be a lovingly-crafted rendition of something as mundane as a late wake-up call or an extravagantly fantastic image from one of the characters’ diverse dreamscapes.

Ah, but enough preamble. The interview itself is below:

KD: I understand that you originally planned Dream Life as a graphic novel. What can you tell me about that, and how it came to evolve into the regularly updated webcomic it is now?

SS: It’s still meant to be a graphic novel, but doing it also as a webcomic seems to be the most efficient way to get it out there and get it seen. Trying to sell a graphic novel is always a challenge, particularly so with this book. Whenever I talked about it to a publisher, it was difficult to get them to take it very seriously because the first act is pretty much thirty pages of silent dream sequence before anybody even says anything.

So that element of Dream Life has made it difficult to get publishers on board, and I thought, if I’m going to be doing it on my own anyway, it would be nice to get some form of immediate, ongoing response to my work on it as I go.  There was a brief period where I thought to myself, do I want to play it close to the chest and keep it to myself until it’s done, or do I want to put it out there?  The fact that it’s a three hundred page book, which would mean it would be a long time spent keeping it to myself, plus I don’t particularly enjoy working in a void like that, led to my decision to put it online as a webcomic. It was the combined incentive of having a discourse with an audience, building an audience as I go, and possibly attracting the attention of a publisher just by putting it out there.

KD: How did you end up connecting with Transmission X to release Dream Life under the TX collective banner?

SS: I’ve known them for quite a while. I believe I initially met them through Steve Murray and Ben Shannon, who used to share space with them at RAID studio. They’re all incredibly talented individuals, and even though I left Toronto we all kind of came up in the same scene there with a lot of common perspectives and common connections. When the TX thing started, I was really interested in jumping in with them, it was just a question with what. Plus at that time, it was just the people who were physically in the studio and I was no longer in the same city.

Then as they expanded, and as I came to the point where I had something, I talked to them a lot and the interest was there. Then Ramon Perez told me, ‘you know, we’re totally into it, you just have to be ready to post something every week’. Which was just intimidating enough to make me hesitate at first, so I went ahead and completed the first big chunk on my own to get the point where I felt confident enough to say, okay, I could deal with that sort of commitment.

KD: That’s right, by last year’s TCAF you already had the first act out published as a forty page minicomic. At the time you did that, you were actually months ahead of your update schedule with the webcomic. What sort of buffer are you running these days?

SS: Right now I’m pretty much right on top of it, and I’m working on the end of this chapter. I’m trying to hopefully stay four or five pages ahead of myself, which is about a month of updates.

KD: Getting a bit more into the content of Dream Life, the story you’re telling rotates through a group of core characters under the initial concept that they would represent archetypical future versions of the core Peanuts cast.

As you worked further on the project, was it any harder to stick to that original character concept? Where else did you pull inspiration from in defining the traits of these characters?

SS: I like the idea of playing with that constraint to a certain degree, but it’s a self-imposed constraint and I’ve never been that much of a stickler. So I didn’t try to be absolutely faithful to it, instead using that concept as a source of ideas. Also, originally when I came up with the concept for this project it was myself and a collaborator, my friend Jonathon. The two of us started satirizing ourselves and our friends by playing off of the Peanuts archetypes and saying, ‘well who do we know that’s like Linus, or who do we know that’s like such-and-such?’

Then we borrowed character traits from ourselves and our friends and added those to the characters. It ended up as a hybrid between something that satirized Peanuts, and something that satirized our friends.

KD: It seems that Dream Life has allowed you the opportunity to really have a lot of fun experimenting with your approach to sequential art in itself. Your layout rarely follows a set pattern; I get the feeling you revel in utilizing nifty devices like different color schemes to indicate different character perspectives, or creative angles for panel perspective.

To what degree for you is Dream Life an exercise in experimenting with different sequential techniques?

SS: On the topic of color, his was originally going to be a black and white project. One of the reasons it ended up color is because a lot of the book is about different states of mind, and I found that the most powerful tool I had to indicate that was with color.

Experimenting with my art is something I’ve always done, quite compulsively, actually. Early on in my career when I worked for commercial publishing, that was a problem for me.  I never liked doing things in some sort of set, inflexible way – which strictly speaking, is a lot more efficient when you have to meet a deadline. If you do four versions of a page trying to figure out how to approach it from a creatively different angle that still works, deadline issues become a problem.

Dream Life is a very personal project, and since there’s no editor involved, I get to make my own calls on how I would like to experiment with it. I have no problem using a strict grid or a conventional tool, but if I think there may be a way to do the job better, I’ll take the time to explore my options.

KD: Dream Life deals extensively with realms of the subconscious, a fact that is reflected in your fluid, shifting, often surreal approach to its art. Where did you pick up this interest in exploring the latent and manifest elements of the human psyche?

SS: It probably had something to do with my upbringing. Carl Jung was a huge interest of my father’s,  and to quote one source, he was a ‘legendary acid dealer’, so the whole ‘consciousness-twisting’ thing was a pretty big part of my landscape growing up. My father died when I was really young, and there’s a whole host of ideas that he was really into that I was sort of indoctrinated in before having a chance to be conscious of that. Later in life when I started reading up on this stuff myself, it was kind of weird recognizing the stuff I read from my Dad talking about it when I was a kid.

KD: Let’s move into The Rise and Fall of it All. This project is a collaboration between yourself and John O’Brien, and from what I read about it on RevolveR, you began work on it back in 2006. Can you briefly go over the history of that?

SS: I think it goes back even further than that. John’s a jazz musician and multimedia artist originally based out of Chicago, though I think he’s in Minnesota now. During the nineties, he ran a headhunting agency and paid his bills being a talent scout for IT companies. The IT industry apparently experienced a boom in the late nineties in anticipation of the ‘millenium bug’, which then busted at the turn of the decade. So he saw a lot of people lose their jobs, and while some people can bounce back from that, some others – depending on their circumstance or inclination, can get lost in the cracks.

John wanted to tell a story about someone who fell between the cracks. Someone who didn’t have a clear role of who he was to begin with, but after he loses his job, he winds up directionless and on the streets of Chicago. It’s there that he meets a Jazz musician named Elmo. One of the touchstones for Elmo is based on this group (that isn’t that well documented) called “The Ben-Ishmael Tribe,” a tri-racial tribe of people who made a home around Lake Michigan before it was colonized. These are displaced native groups, escaped slaves, and indentured servants who bonded together to make this amalgamated group.

Chicago was built somewhat around this tribe, who refused to work day jobs and weren’t really interested in a paycheck, but would still exchange their services for food or necessities. They later became targets of the eugenics movement, and many were sterilized. Over time, the tribe dissipated and ceased to be known as the Ben-Ishmaelites, and their culture effectively became lost.  This jazz player on the street, Elmo, is portrayed as a surviving descendant of this group.

KD: What appealed to you about this story?

SS: I like the story because it is about someone defining their relationship with society on their own terms, rather than the terms that society presents to them. The story is about Eliot, a lost person who doesn’t know how he fits into society, and Elmo, who through meeting him helps Eliot redefine his relationship to society and build and identity that he can have pride in.

For me, creatively it’s also interesting because all John gave me was a long piece of prose. There’s no script, so I can just take his prose -which almost has a lyrical quality – and come up with my own visuals for them. And the research has been really interesting, I mean I didn’t know who the Ben-Ishmael Tribe was at all before reading about them for this project.

KD: I also noticed that some of the finished work has a set of companion audio files that can be played along with it. Is that just the original prose that he wrote for The Rise and Fall of it All? And is that John doing the reading himself?

SS: The first main one, for the first completed fifteen pages, is actually an actor that John O’Brien used to employ back when he was a headhunter in the kind of jobs that the character Eliot has.  His name is John Fuhr, and he’s also the physical model for Eliot.

Part of the concept for this was for it to be a multimedia project with a projectable version with crudely animated art, and the idea was for John O’Brien to go on tour with John Fuhr, who would provide a live action performance while the projected component was played. Originally, John wanted me to do this entirely as a projected version, and I said I would be interested in doing it also as a book. Done in such a way that it could also be projected, so that we could all sort of have our cake and eat it too.

John is currently working on the project in a live-action film format, and he’s also rewritten the script multiple times. I’m still working with the original prose, which means that there are now multiple permutations of Rise and Fall of it All in existence.  John, being a jazz musician, has been very open and encouraging about me taking the ball and running with it for my own version of the project.

For more from Salgood Sam, you can check out his blog, Facebook Page, or follow him on Twitter.  You can find Sequential here.

-Interview 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

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

Michael Cho is a pretty awesome guy.

After pondering how to write an introductory statement about the Toronto-based illustrator and cartoonist for several minutes, this is what I’ve come up with. And it probably fits better than anything else I could have started with.

Speaking to him for just thirty or so minutes, his energy and optimistic outlook become readily apparent and, in fact, contagious. A new Dad and a fantastically gifted illustrator, between these two things and his successful foray into online comics, it’s not difficult to see why Cho is smiling in most of his gouache-and-ink self portraits.

Michael Cho has made name for himself in webcomics with the beautifully drawn Papercut, which presents a series of short comic stories each uniquely separate from the other. A Papercut story could come in any form, from historic non-fiction to a poetically-told lament on giving up smoking.

He is also a member of the Transmission X collective of webcomic creators, and has a frequently-updated sketchbook blog which showcases his comic art as well as some of the work he does in his day job as a professional illustrator.

Cho, who has been working as a full time illustrator for over ten years, didn’t always imagine he would find himself in this line of work.

In fact, after graduating from the Ontario College of Art, he tried his hand at a variety of different professions – each of which he describes as being ‘blazing failures’. Some of these ventures into the wonderful world of post-art-school careers included a storyboarding stint, post-production work for special effects companies, and painting ten foot by ten foot wall paintings that didn’t seem to be selling as well as Cho would’ve liked.

He was able, however, to make some money mural painting – a profession which required climbing scaffoldings at night to paint giant pictures on the sides of walls.

“I basically hated all of those careers,” says Cho, laughing, “Then one day a friend of mine asked me to apply at a theatre company that was looking for an illustrator. They wanted someone to do designs for the backdrops that were going to be projected onto the stage. So I went in and did some drawings, and I had a pretty good time doing the job. Then they gave me tickets to the show, and I remember being just floored because they had taken some of the drawings I had done in gouache and they had painted them onto the set. I used to be the guy who had to do that. I used to be the guy on scaffolding painting according to the plans given to me by the designer, and instead now I was on the other side doing the little drawings on paper.”

Cho says that was the point where he realized professional illustration was something he wanted to do for the rest of his life.

Fans of Cho’s work will note that his illustrative style is very uniquely identifiable. He works primarily with gouache and ink, using the two to create fundamental, two-tone images which possess a high impact, almost retro sort of feel.

“I’ve been doing two-tone gouache and ink drawings more or less since the beginning,” he says, ” One of the very, very first illustration assignments I did was for an autobiographical book that a friend of mine had written to be published through a small press in Toronto. Because he was a friend of mine, he gave me carte blanche to do whatever I wanted, and so I ended up doing fifty drawings in gouache and ink over the course of a month, and those were done in two-tone with those basic elements. Also when I came out of school, gouache was one of the few things I had going for me. These days when you go to art school they don’t teach you fundamentals, they teach you concepts. ”

Though Cho has been using gouache and ink throughout his career as an illustrator, Cho acknowledges that his style has definitely matured with time. He points out that back when he first started, he focused heavily on line art and used gouache primarily as tone, whereas nowadays the line art emphasis is gone and it’s more of a painterly process.

When asked about his top artistic influences, Cho is hesitant to narrow them down. Reluctantly, he manages to whittle the wide range of artists who have inspired his work down to just three: Noel Sickles, Roy Crane, and Jaime Hernandez.

“Noel Sickles is definitely number one. He’s the guy who invented the comic book style. Way before Kirby, way before Will Eisner or anybody else, the comic book artists all learned their crafts from looking at the comic strip artists – and the comic strip artists learned their craft from Noel Sickles. He pioneered this high contrast, chiaroscuro style of putting down black brilliantly on a page to make his drawings pop. For me, Sickles was really important because when I was trying to figure out how to do lighting and how to spot black properly, he was the guy I learned the majority of my stuff from.”

Samples of Cho’s work can be found in abundance on his sketchbook blog, which he has been updating regularly for three and a half years. Cho credits his online sketchbook (also known as a sketchblog) as being hugely helpful in bringing in exposure for his work.

“I originally set up a website for myself as an illustrator in like 1995, and I coded it myself,” says Cho, “But back then if you wanted to update it, it would take forever – you’d have to write the code, and you had to wait for the images to upload, and all this junk. So I left that website static for like six years, with a message saying one day I would update it – because I just didn’t want to do it, man. Then one day I was checking out the blog of buddy J. Bone, who’s also a very talented artist, and I wanted to leave a comment on one of his posts. Blogger at the time wouldn’t let you make a post on someone else’s blog unless you had one of your own, so I created one and it took five minutes – it was the perfect solution to the problem I’d had where I wanted to update regularly, without it taking forever to do.”

In addition to maintaining a regular sketchblog, Cho also utilizes Twitter to stay connected with fans and peers in the comic book and illustration industry. He acknowledges that social media is something that many contemporary comic artists have jumped on as a useful tool in building a name for themselves in the industry.

“We’re, like, total internet hoes,” he jokes, “I think social media has become a big thing especially for Canadian artists, because we’re so spread out. It’s a little different with Toronto, which I bet if you mapped out would have more comic creators per capita than almost any other city out there.”

You could say that Michael Cho has more than a passing familiarity with the Canadian comic community, between his sketchblog, webcomic, and membership in the widely successful webcomic collective Transmission X. Transmission X is in itself a unique example of Canadians finding new ways to come together in an era when digital media is fast becoming the standard for modern artists to promote their work within.

Cho agrees that the progressive attitude of Canadian artists in this regard is one factor that has led to the current popularity of many Canuck webcomics across North America. He is quick, however, to add that there are many other significant reasons behind this trend.

“In terms of comics, Canadians are confident in their own voice,” says Cho, “They’re not afraid to do their own thing and put it out there. Canadians are also very diverse in the comics that they read, and that shows up in their approach to webcomics as well. For example, everybody at Transmission X works on different kinds of stories – my stories are very different from, say, Ramon’s stuff, which is very different from McLachlan’s stuff. But when we were starting up, when we were initially showing each other the mock-ups and the layouts for our work everybody was able to critique and contribute ideas in a very balanced way.

You get the stereotype sometimes where the guy who likes superheroes looks at indie stuff and goes, ‘I don’t get it man, why do you want to write this crap’, and the indie guy goes ‘well screw you superhero guy, life isn’t all about punching lizard men!’ I’m always gratified that the guys at Transmission X all read a wide variety of comics, and they can appreciate good quality work regardless of what genre it’s in.”

Cho originally became involved with Transmission X as a means to create an outlet for his own creative illustration which would be purely whatever he wanted it to be, with no real thought towards making money from it.

“When I made Papercut for Transmission X, it was for me to create the stories I wanted to create and put them out there to see if other people would like them,” says Cho, “It was never about turning it into merchandise, or hoping to one day option it as a film. Webcomics for me was not really an alternate publishing route to owning my material and gaining a bigger slice of the profit pie. Webcomics for me was just a natural extension of me doing zines as a kid – instead of going to Kinko’s and photocopying a comic and going around distributing it, I could put it online and get feedback on it right away.”

If you’ve been to check out Papercut recently, you probably noticed that Cho is currently on hiatus from the webcomic. The reason for this was an important development in his personal life – last year, Michael Cho became a Dad.

“Being a Dad has been an adventure, man,” says Cho, “I had to go on hiatus because I just couldn’t devote the time needed to a webcomic with a new baby daughter. It’s kind of like being in the best army of all time, in that you get more done by 7am than most people get done in their entire day. It’s been a wonderful, awe-inspiring, and at times, a little bit frightening of an experience. The best quote I’ve heard about being a Dad is that having a baby girl will give you a reason to smile every day, and it’s absolutely true. It just gives you a hell of a lot of perspective.”

Cho is planning on ending the hiatus sometime early next year. He’s currently working on building several stories in whatever free time he can scrounge in between spending time with his daughter, and doing the illustrative work he does for profit.

For more from Michael Cho, you can visit his sketchblog, Twitter feed, Illoz portfolio, and the Papercut webcomic.

The exact amount of published art that I have distributed is zero, and I have yet to write a comic of my own.

With these qualifications in mind, I am now going to presume to tell you how to be successful in comic books.

Well, I’m not actually going to tell you that. No one can tell you that. If there was a magical club secret to finding success in sequential art and storytelling, it would have been leaked on a messageboard somewhere long ago. Then flamed. Then defended, flamed again, and, if it this hypothetical leak occurred anytime in the last year or so, tweeted.

Then it would have gone from tweeting to trending, and been retweeted and subsequently reposted across the blogosphere. The indie comic scene would have exploded overnight in a glorious flash of social-media-fuelled industry enlightenment.

…But, seeing as how that did not in fact occur, we’ll assume that if there ever was such a secret, it died sometime before the age of digital technology.

Instead, I would like to take this opportunity to spout some thoughts at you, the reader, regarding observations I’ve made about the industry. With the disclaimer intact that I am neither a successful writer of comics nor an artist myself, I daresay that some of these observations might still be helpful to those aspiring to be the above.

(Don’t worry, the creator interviews are still an ongoing feature – posts like this aren’t the new exclusive standard for The Fabler Blog. In fact, in the coming weeks we’ll have some lovely interviews posted with such talent as Michael Cho and Jordyn Bochon.)

In my opinion, one of the single most impressive things about the Canadian comic book industry is its ability to generate self-sustaining communities. Be they online forums like Canadiangeek.com or Maple Ink Comics, collectives such Transmission X, or simply groups of artists getting together for their local Comic Jams – community is at the heart of Canadian indie comics.

Rightly so. It makes sense for individuals with any form of shared interest to find ways to grow through interaction with each other. Writers’ circles meet to bounce ideas off of each other when hammering out new prose, structural engineers rub shoulders at conventions to network, and anarchists hold book fairs to exchange perspectives. Well, anarchists of the Western post-modern variety, at least.

With indie comics, community is less of a supplementary tool, and more of a basic necessity. Independent comic books still lack the large, varied market that, say, indie music or even small press novels attracts. Without that market, and without an adequate distribution system beyond Diamond, (which is balanced very much against new indie creators) it’s no easy task to get your work out there and seen. This is especially difficult for those looking to produce traditional, physical copies of their work rather than operate solely in a digital medium.

The best route an aspiring indie comic artist can take, (providing that artist is set on paper copy publication) is to find other artists and collaborate on an anthology. A comic anthology is easy to flip through, relatively cheap to mass produce when you have a group of people pooling funds, and it introduces you to other local writers/artists, opening the door for future collaborations. Regular collaborations with the same individuals might lead to the founding of a local publishing company, like Calgary’s Vicious Ambitious.

Forums such as the ones I listed above are making it far easier to track down local creators than ever before; as are individual blogs, Facebook groups, and collectively maintained news blogs such as Sequential. As more and more artists realize the importance of maintaining an online presence, it’s near impossible to find comic creators that are totally unreachable via the web

As comic artists increasingly turn towards webcomics as a more financially viable mode of publishing effectively, you might think that the importance of community lessens. It doesn’t cost a ton of money to get a website up and running, complete with a unique domain name and a decent amount of server space. And once it’s up there, it’s there to be searched the world over, transcending the geographical limitations of small press print runs.

This is, of course, incomplete logic. Why would people search for it in the first place? How would you pull in enough initial traffic to generate buzz about your webcomic and get that initial word of mouth going?

The talented artists over at Transmission X have found a collective approach to solving this problem. In 2007, a pool of top-notch Canadian illustrators and cartoonists founded the organization to jointly promote each other’s work on the internet. Many of them, such as Karl Kerschl and Cameron Stewart, had already achieved a significant level of popularity in the industry – but by joining up with other creators to form the Transmission X webcomics portal, they combined their individual fan bases into a larger audience.

In this case, the fans themselves benefit just as much as the comic creators. Where once they would have had to rely on word of mouth to discover new artists and their work, by visiting any one of the TX artists’ sites they now gain access to a full range of varied, quality webcomics served up on a virtual platter.

You may have noticed that I’m pretty optimistic about the sense of community in Canadian comics these days. Examples like the Transmission X collective, social media bridging ties between artists, the increasing popularity of regional cons and expos, and the ongoing dedication of blogs like the Shuster Awards and Sequential make a pretty good case for a positive perspective of the industry. But don’t get me wrong, it isn’t all daffodils and shiny pennies. (Is that even an expression?)

In fact, if you wanted to hear another point of view about the industry, I could direct you over to The Comic Book Bin to a post Hervé St-Louis wrote last October titled, “The State of the Canadian Comic Book Industry“. In it, St-Louis laments a lack of unity between the individual, geographically divided communities across the country. There is definitely some truth to this, as well as to his assertion that there is still a sense of division between Anglophone and Francophone comic networks.

I guess my optimism comes from the unabashed enthusiasm I often hear from Canadian artists when the subject of community comes up. After all, that’s where my views in this column are largely coming from – the impressions I’ve been getting from the talented Canadian illustrators and cartoonists that I’ve talked to who are trying to make some niche for themselves in the comic book industry.

Whether you’re in Gatineau, Guelph, Victoria, or Edmonton, and whether you’re printing small run minicomics or e-marketing your webcomic, community is an important ingredient to your success. In Canada, it seems to me that we’re lucky to already have a number of successful comic-related communities, and a growing number of tools and resources to help build more.