Speech Bubble

Mark first came to Aaron's notice on the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel. The hosts Jim Rugg (Street Angel) and Ed Piskor (X-Men Grand Design, Hip-Hop Family Tree) did an episode showcasing picture books that spotlighted Mark's underrated classic, “Who Needs Donuts?” On this episode of Speech Bubble, Mark explains the bizarre story of how the book got its non sequitor title among other unlikely tales from his life as a prolific cartoonist for The Village Voice, The Washington Post and other equally high profile American publications of record, including The New York Times Book Review. In all three of the publications named here, Mark wrote and drew long-running comic strips – the most well-known of which was arguably McDoodle Street, which developed quite a cult following in the pages of The Village Voice among the miscreants living in 1970s New York. He tells Aaron that inspiration for the content of such a thing came on long meandering walks through the city streets at all hours of the night where he wo

Twin brothers Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá are international comic book powerhouses whether doing a project together or apart. The two artists have collaborated on comics like the Eisner-award-winning Day Tripper and Two Brothers and the comic book adaption of Neil Gaiman's How to Talk to Girls at Parties. They are equally potent as separate entities (although, they're never really separate since they share a studio). Of course, you know Gabriel as the co-creator of Umbrella Academy with Gerard Way (lead singer of the band My Chemical Romance) and Fabio as the co-creator of Casanova with Matt Fraction (Sex Criminals, Hawkeye, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen). The twins came to Speech Bubble's Never Sleeps Network studios in Toronto all the way from São Paulo, Brazil, as a stop-over before 2019's Toronto Comic Art Festival, for a rare and exclusive long-form interview together. During the interview they discuss their special bond as twins, doing everything together, including living together and sharing the same bedr

Scott has approached rarefied air that very few Canadian cartoonists have ever reached. His historical graphic memoir Two Generals was nominated for two Eisner Awards, named one of Chapters-Indigo’s best books of 2010, selected as a Best American Comics in 2012 and named by CBC as a “Canada Reads” selection and one of the 40 best Canadian non-fiction books of all-time. Not to be out done, his book Northwest Passage also has Harvey and Eisner nominations to its name. Plus, his young adult comic Three Thieves won a Joe Shuster award as The Best Canadian for Comic for Kids. He's a contributor to the Canadian superhero anthology, True Patriot, which was edited by past Speech Bubble guest J. Torres and he's currently doing covers for the Bettie Page comic published by Dynamite Entertainment. The project he's working on (as of this recording) is a graphic biography of a jazz cornet player Bix Beiderbecke aptly named, Bix. On the pod, Scott comes to the recording session, fresh off his stint as a panelist on Librar

You probably don't know Ben by name, but if you live in Toronto and you've had ice cream at the Sweet Jesus Ice Cream Parlour you've definitely seen his work. He's the artist behind the original look of Sweet Jesus and now he has launched his first graphic novel, Apologetica. Published by past Speech Bubble guest Mark Laliberte's publishing imprint Popnoir Editions, Apologetica takes the state of the world to its environmental extremes. Ben talks about what influenced his vibrant, kinetic drawing style that seems to melt off the page at times and talks about his fascination with the aesthetics of activism. Apologetica is very much a lampooning of not just the state of our world, but the way the emotional millage one can get from the appearance of encouraging change means more than creating actual change in the age of social media. Sponsored by Hairy Tarantula Ben O'Neil's Website @yung.restless Ben's work with Sweet Jesus Aaron's review of Apologetica in Sequential Magazine #2 The trailer for Buzzard – T

Winnipeg's Jamie Michaels is arguably the best self-promoter we've had on the podcast and what he's promoting is a graphic novel about a little known happening in Canadian history at the height of fascism's march across Europe in the years before WWII. Christie Pits is a graphic novel detailing the little-known happenings behind Canada's only race riot – when Nazi sympathizers unfurled a Nazi flag during a public baseball game and Jews and Italians united to throw down against them in Toronto's Christie Pits Park. Coming out now, the work seems more relevant than ever with Trump in office and fascism seemingly getting more of a foothold than it has ever had since the Second World War in governments around the world. We talk about that on this podcast and why Jamie Michaels decided to make a little-known moment in Canadian history the subject of the second graphic novel he has written with art by Doug Fedrau. The first was Canoe Boys the story of how he and his friends canoed to Mexico for a bet and this pod

Mrs. Zubkavich's baby boy is the busiest Canadian comic book writer not named Jeff Lemire. His credits include Rick and Morty vs. Dungeons and Dragons, Thunderbolts, Glitterbomb Skullkickers, Wayward, Champions, Uncanny Avengers, Avengers: No Surrender and Avengers: No Road Home, but that barely scratches the surface of his illustrious career. As if writing comics didn't take up enough of his time, Jim is also the animation program coordinator at Seneca College where, as he told our host Aaron Broverman on this episode, he actually has time to keep office hours. In his “spare time,” he co-hosts a live role-playing game podcast called The Danger Dice Gang featuring past Speech Bubble guest, and Jim's co-collaborator on Freelance, Andrew Wheeler. Jim has been on over 100 podcasts, so appearing on Speech Bubble is old hat for him. He tells Aaron how he broke into the comic industry through web comics and some help from Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics) while doing animation as a day job. He eventually got a

Richard Pace is a long-time veteran of the comic book industry, having either been written or drawn for every major comic company in the industry. Career highlights include his mainstream comics art debut on Terror Inc. for Marvel, writing Pitt Crew and the last few issues of Dale Keown's Pitt and co-writing Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. He also had the honour of bringing the legendary Alan Moore's songs to life as one of the artists on Alan Moore's Songbook. More recently, he's the well-known cover artist for the DC/Vertigo series Imaginary Fiends and with soon be launching an ongoing series on which he takes care of the art duties called, Second Coming featuring a story where Jesus rooms with a Superman archetype. The series is to be released on July 10, 2019, by Ahoy Comics. In an exclusive interview with Speech Bubble, Richard explains why Second Coming was canceled by DC/Vertigo and picked up by Ahoy. He also reveals how he avoided the slush pile at Marvel Comi

Jason Kieffer Jason Kieffer was recommended for this podcast by the legendary Chester Brown and it's with good reason. The young cartoonist is best known for his self-published graphic biography of Toronto street legend Zanta and is one of the only people to ever get the full story straight from this muscle-bound mystery wearing a Santa hat. His penchant for chronicling the characters and oddballs that populate Toronto's has won him equal parts acclaim and scorn. However, at the end of the day, he's just a soft-spoken guy with long-hair and a butcher-boy hat who loves his city and his neighbourhood –Cabbagetown, which is why he writes and draws the ongoing comic of the same name. Some of it is vulgar, a lot of it is bizarre, but all of it is out of love. This episode is sponsored by the iconoclasts at Hairy Tarantula. Jason's website Sponsors Hairy Tarantula

Recorded live at the Toronto Comicon 2019, Salgood talks to Aaron about his colourful father Lionel who inspired him to create the upcoming, Bastards Tale to be serialized in his self-published comic RevolveR. They then move on to how he went from having artists like George Perez fawn over his work, doing sample pages for DC Comics from Neil Gaiman Sandman scripts and being offered to draw his own series for Marvel at 20-years-old under his real name Max Douglas, to drawing one comic issue in nine days and quitting books over personal conflicts with writers and editors. If you want to know how Salgood founded the Sequential Canadian Comix News and Culture blog because of his dyslexia and how it morphed into Sequential Magazine, this is also the place. What about how he goes about teaching creative people the ropes of comics making at Syn Studio in Montreal? Checkpoint Checky! You'll also hear about Salgood's desire to leave a legacy of his own in comics. Perhaps it will be through volume two of his comic Drea

Jahnoy Lindsay Jahnoy is what one might call a comic artist who was never really that into comics. The Brampton, Ontario product is an alumni of the From A Hat Studio collective with Paris Alleyne, (Haven) Jamal Campbell (Naomi) Matt Simas, Te'Shawn Dwyer, (Desert Messiah) and Dylan Burnett (Cosmic Ghost Rider, X-Force). From there, he has gone on to draw for Marvel, starting with a back-up story in Totally Awesome Hulk and then becoming the main artist for She-Hulk's “Jen Walters Must Die” storyline with writer Mariko Tamaki (This One Summer) before going on to release Luke Cage: Everyman as a Marvel Digital Original with writer Anthony Del Col (Kill Shakespeare). But comics were never really his thing, drawing was his thing and what he would draw were anime characters inspired by shows like Naruto. In life, he's a pretty chill and shy kid who mostly keeps to himself, but on the page is where he really feels he can express himself and shine. He tells Aaron that drawing gives him a sense of peace and recoun

Live from Toronto Comicon 2019, Aaron sat down with Marvel inker Craig Yeung. Born and raised in Toronto, Craig is best known as the long time inker of Runaways, written by Brian K. Vaughan with pencils by another Toronto resident, Adrian Alphona. Since Runaways, (now a live action TV series on Hulu in the U.S. and Showcase in Canada) Craig has inked other Marvel comics like X-Men: Gold, The Superior Octopus and Daughters of the Dragon. His pencils have been featured on Riftworld Legends 8, Arrow Season 2.5 and Bitch Planet: Triple Feature. On the podcast, Craig explains what it was like to break into comics before the internet as part of Bright Anvil Studios with Steve McNiven, (Death of Wolverine) a high school age Francis Manapul (Justice League: No Justice) and past Speech Bubble guests Marvin Law (Image's The Pact) and Valentine De Landro (Bitch Planet). Craig's big break on Runaways actually came because without high-speed internet, it was too difficult for artist Adrian Alphona to communicate with the

Mark is the managing editor, arts editor and designer of Carousel Magazine – a Canadian arts and literary journal published twice a year. He's also the curator of the 4Panel Project, which began as a back page supplement in Carousel, and the publisher behind Popnoir Editions' comics and zines. Growing up in Windsor, ON. during the black and white comics boom of the 1980s, Mark discovered that some of his favourite comics were printed right in his hometown. Being the enterprising fan that he was, he decided to call them up and see if he could order his favourite comics directly from the printer and cut out the middleman. Even though the printer explained that's not how things worked, they were still nice enough to show Mark around and employ him as an assistant, sparking his love for self-publishing his own comics and graphic novels to this day. Early on in his career, Mark's self-published zines featured the typical run-of-the-mill nihilism you might see from any punk in their twenties, but they came into t

Jason is a Thornhill, ON. native who always wanted to be a comic artist. He could always draw his classmates under the table, but Thornlea Secondary School was the basis for author Gordon Korman's 1985 novel Don't Care High and the moniker was still true when Lapidus went there. The vibe killed any enthusiasm he had for institutional education and that buzz kill continued in art school where he just couldn't connect painting on wood block and philosphizing about art with the practical skills he wanted to learn in order to make comics. Instead, he leaned into his job at the Royal Ontario Museum teaching comic book classes for kids in informal settings. Ironically, this lapsed art student has made a career out of teaching art in unconventional environments to elementary school and college age students. That seemed like where his art talent would go until a double date he definitely didn't want to be on. That's where he met Chris Sanagan. Their girlfriends (now wives) were already best friends and they were j

It's a jam-packed episode with one returning guest and one brand spanking new one. First, friend of the Show Shane Heron (Morris, Black Have Hunters Club) returns in his capacity as co-editor of Cauldron Magazine to promote the Kickstarter for the Spring 2019 issue. If you haven't heard of Cauldron, this is an adult fantasy-horror comic anthology magazine in the vein of Heavy Metal, Savage Sword of Conan, Creepy and Eerie. The upcoming spring issue has a cover from Toronto's own Adam Gorham (New Mutants, Rocket Raccoon) and if you donate to the Kickstarter before it expires on February 22, 2019 you will have a chance to own Adam's original art for the cover. Once Shane takes his leave, we welcome his actual roommate -- fellow artist Christopher Yao. Chris is a straight-up assassin when it comes to sketch covers. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say but he could draw anyone under the table head to head in a sketch cover duel. As a star pupil of Ty Templeton's Comic Book Bootcamp, Chris showed so much promi

Wes is the cartoonist behind the Prophet of Zoom comic strip on the back page of Zoomer Magazine and he's the president of the Association of Canadian Cartoonists representing some of the finest editorial cartoonists from across the country. Aaron met Wes when the cartoonist moderated a panel discussion featuring the Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man creative team of Chip Zdarsky and Adam Kubert at the Royal Ontario Museum. Since then, he's been wanting to get Wes in the NSN studios and now he finally has his chance. The two begin by paying tribute to Wes's groovy grandma who exposed him to the underground comix of Robert Crumb, Spain Rodriguez and Kim Deitch at a very young age long before he ever knew about superhero comics. Meanwhile his parents took him to the circus and his favourite teacher Mr. Case fostered an advanced talent for drawing. From there, Aaron and Wes talk about his love of British comics from Beano and Dandy to 2000 AD and that time Paul McCartney dropped by Wes's cousin's place t

Jonathan is one of the most multi-faceted individuals to ever grace Speech Bubble. Not only does he both write and draw his own self-published comics, but he also draws album covers and is the lead singer and rhythm guitarist for local Toronto band Summer and Youth. Aaron traces Jon's artist trajectory from childhood to adulthood, as he goes from making comics with his brother in the 90s (long-haired characters with shoulder pads and pouches) to joining forces with past Speech Bubble guest Jason Loo (Pitiful Human-Lizard) in high school to spending one year in illustration at the famed Sheridan College while waiting for his daughter to be born at age 20. Parental responsibilities meant self-publishing comics was put on the back-burner for ten years, but now Jonathan Kociuba is back with a vengeance. First up, was art chores on a body horror story for those who feel they are pulled in multiple directions called All of This written by Suzanne Alyssa Andrew and then, Paperhead -- a story about a comic creator

Jo Lalonde tells Aaron she was an artist since she figured out how not to eat the crayons. First apprenticing as a tattoo artist before learning the chalk art trade under legendary Canadian chalk artist Chalk Master Dave, best known for producing the iconic superhero mural on the outside of Silver Snail's former Queen Street location. Jo tells tales of her own superheroism while dealing with the few pedestrians who don't pay attention and walk over her hands and art. Not to mention dealing with other various street buskers while she plied her trade at Toronto's Yonge-Dundas Square before eventually moving a few blocks up for a safer, more secure place to work. Plus, she tells us her favourite superhero for putting chalk to sidewalk. You'll also learn what it takes to draw a great chalk mural on the sidewalk and why those 3D chalk optical illusions are never done spontaneously and are sometimes more trouble than their hits on social media. She tells us why superheroes get her the most attention and how she got

For this episode Speech Bubble is coming to you live in front of an audience on Halloween Weekend 2018 at Hairy Tarantula's Hairoween Party at their new location at 3456 Yonge Street in Toronto, Ontario Canada. The show is a sort of coming out party for Aaron's guest Attila Adorjany, since a huge re-branding project for a massive corporation took him out of the comic scene for a very long time. Now he's back miking his special effects background with a new custom toy company of his own making called Titly Toys where he's making mini cthulhu figures, zombie Hello Kitty (Goodbye Kitty) and a collection of figures called The Dirty Dozen – an anthropomorphic donut army that's in a lot of ways a G.I. Joe satire (Yo Dough!). His followers on instagram have also been treated to his Kaiju Kars series of drawings mashing popular characters with popular cars from pop culture, like the Demogorgon from Stranger Things driving the Scooby-Do Mystery Machine in a drawing called Stranger Danger. Other artists have been invit

William S. Burroughs once said, “Seize control of the reality studio” and Adam “A.G.” Pasquella has been doing that since he was in second grade. Born in Dallas, Texas but now living in Toronto, he started making comics that ended with him getting all the candy in grade school and just kept right on going through middle school when he sold mini comics through the mail. When the small publisher he sold his first book to went out of business just as the ink was drying on the contract, he once again seized the reality studio and self-published his first two novellas, Why Not a Spider Monkey Jesus and New Town. He comes to discuss the scifi and comic book influences of those two works, a noir chapbook featuring Ms. Pac Man he co-edited with author Terri Favro called Pac N Heat and his latest book – this time for Dundurn Press, Yard Dog – book one in a thriller series featuring a hard luck character named Jack Palace. (A play on Frank Castle) While promoting Yard Dog and its upcoming launch at The Tranzac Club in

Our illustrious audio editor Joseph Ianni makes his long-awaited return to the show. Having listened to and edited every episode of Speech Bubble since launch, he's like our own version of The Watcher of the Marvel Universe: always observing, never interfering...until now. He comes to us for the first time, to pitch a comic of his own to the Toronto comic artists he knows are making Speech Bubble appointment listening every two weeks. The project is called Noon, a horror /teen drama comic where a state-of-the-art high school goes on lock-down, trapping the students inside with the progenitors of a zombie virus that -- like every good virus -- is about to go global. Thankfully, the students employ their own set of unique skills and abilities to fight back against the zombie horde and hopefully escape the school before they themselves succumb to the curse of the undead. Those who heard Joe's first appearance on the show may remember that this is not his first foray into self-published comics. Past Speech Bubb