Speech Bubble

On this episode of Speech Bubble, we have one of Canada's most fashionable males of 2018 – just read The Globe and Mail, where he was voted best dressed. Aaron and Evan go back a long way, to the days when Aaron first moved to Toronto and was just getting into the comic scene and Evan was part of a long-retired artist collective Sketchkrieg with past Speech Bubble guest Jason Loo where he was peddling his own self-published comics, like Amazing Challengers of Unknown Mystery (starring Avril Lavigne) and Quarter-Life Crisis, on the convention circuit. At some point though, he had greater ambitions. This book publicist decided he could write a better children's book than the authors he represents and would you believe it actually worked out? Now, he's the author of a popular young adult novel series called The Dead Kid Detective Agency, which combines ghosts and ghouls with a little Canadian history. For example, right now Evan is on tour in Ontario and Alberta until November 22, 2018 promoting the newest book

Jason Bone was comics' golden boy following his very first professional work. The Toronto artist was nominated for an Eisner Award (work deserving of wider recognition) in 2001 for his first comic Solar Stella. His very next project Alison Dare (with past Speech Bubble guest J. Torres) was also Eisner-nominated. Both works drew the attention of the late, legendary Canadian comic artist Darwyn Cooke (DC: The New Frontier, Catwoman) who took J under his wing as his inker until Cooke's death from cancer in 2016. J. spends much of this episode reminiscing about what it was like to work with Darwyn and the other famous comic pros he has worked with in the past, including Paul Dini (Batman the Animated Series) and Mike Allred (Madman, X-Statix). We then get into why the idyllic pop culture of the 50s and 60s influences his art style and dissect the clandestine gayness of the era. We'll hear about his latest work inking Dan Parent on Archie Meets Batman '66 and his last fully-pencilled work on The Saviors with writ

This week's episode is a twofer. First, Aaron's got a short interview with writer, comics scribe (Star Trek: Waypoint, Jem and the Holograms) and geek girl personality Sam Maggs live from Fan Expo Canada spotlighting the launch of her new book, Girl Squads: 20 Female Friendships that Changed History, which comes out Oct. 2, 2018 from Penguin Random House Canada and Quirk Books. Then, Aaron comes back to the studio and sits down with comic industry journalist and editor Megan Purdy, founder of Women Write About Comics, Bleating Heart Press and The MNT and co-editor of The Toronto Comics Anthology: Osgoode as Gold and Called Into Being: A Celebration of Frankenstein, which is on Kickstarter as of the release of this episode. Both the women featured here work very hard to amplify female, non-binary and other minority voices in comics and in the comic convention scene. With Sam, Aaron talks about the ways comic shops and comic conventions are changing to become more welcoming to women and other minorities, while

As part owner of Comic 1 Books in Stoney Creek, Ontario, Casey Parsons in one of the few artists who can say he has actually sold a comic book he worked on in his own store. Classically trained in art at Sheridan College but disillusioned by the business, it took him until his 40s to really embrace comics as his chosen art form – always reading as fan, but never creating them -- until now. Now, he's figuring out how to balance comic book mechanics with a fine art look, a marriage he showcased as one of the founding artists on Cauldron Magazine. Newly launched in September 2018, Cauldron is the first Canadian-made, adults-only, fantasy and horror anthology magazine in the spirit of Heavy Metal, Creepy, Eerie and Sword of Conan. Casey's art is featured on a cover that has three stories from Casey and past Speech Bubble guests Ricky Lima, Sam Noir and Shane Heron, all of whom do nothing but sing Casey's praises. Aaron and Casey discuss how Cauldron came to be, the connection Casey's other project Blood Moon has

Mike went to art school at Sheridan College, but was too chicken to pursue a career in comics, so he put his dreams on hold and picked up odd jobs doing menial labour until a work site accident almost crushed his hands. It was the bell he needed to hear and from then on he vowed to dedicate himself to his art or starve doing it. Work with big publishers like Scholastic and Rubicon started paying the bills, but it wasn't until a few local comic shops gave him a chance drawing their store exclusives that the variant cover world came calling. Now, he has done variants for all kinds of titles like Kick-Ass, The Wicked + The Divine, Quantum and Woody, Baby Teeth and Animosity, to name a few. It was from this incredible exposure that he finally grabbed his first assignment as the main illustrator on an ongoing title. As of this recording, Mike is working on Dodge, a prequel to Matt Nixon's Retcon series. It's a great honour and a gargantuan challenge for him and yet, he explains on this episode how difficult it was

It's our first ever clip show live from a back storeroom inside Paradise Comics at Yonge and Lawrence during a very special fundraiser. Sketches for Pledges was organized by past Speech Bubble guest Shane Kirshenblatt to benefit The Canadian Cancer Society in honor of the legendary Toronto born comic artist Darwyn Cooke (Batman: Ego, Justice League: The New Frontier) and, friend of the Toronto comics community, Brendan Yapp. Local artists including the three guests on this show -- Steve Bynoe, Jason Roussel and Nik Zezos -- raised $3297.20 -- by sketching for a very generous public. Now, listen as they discuss everything from their latest projects to their artistic style and how they too were touched by cancer as we follow their efforts to break in to the comic industry as part of this fundraiser and beyond. This podcast sponsored by our friends at Hairy Tarantula. Steve Bynoe Instagram Twitter Facebook latest comic book - Chronokari Alpha Website Instagram Editorial director of Comix Asylum Web

For his entire childhood Yvan Alagbé wanted to be a pilot, but by the time university rolled around, an eye problem put that future in doubt and he didn't want to do it anymore anyway – he wanted to be comic artist and eventually he became quite a prolific one. Someone who is highly influential in Paris's avant garde bande desinée scene. It started when, while studying physics and mathematics at the Université de Paris-Sud, where he met Olivier Marboeuf. Alagbé and Marboeuf founded a contemporary visual arts review called L’oeil Carnivore and the magazine Le Chéval Sans Tête (“The Headless Horse”), which gained a cult following for its publication of innovative graphic art and comics. Labelling these artistic collaborations as “Dissidence Art Work,” Alagbé and Marboeuf soon founded their own publishing house, Amok, drawing from the material serialized in Le Chéval, including the first version of Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures. In 2001, Amok partnered with the publishing group Fréon to establis

In 2005, former Speech Bubble guest and legendary Canadian cartoonist Seth wrote an appreciation of Chris Reynolds' work in The Comics Journal calling him, “The most underrated artist of the last 20 years.” Prior to that essay, Reynolds' distinct heavy black and white cartooning style and indescribably bizarre, but also greatly nostalgic and reminiscent stories remained in relative obscurity as he toiled on them from across the pond in the UK. Now, thanks to a May 2018 reissue of his work in a beautiful graphic novel from the New York Review of Comics designed by Seth himself, North America will finally get to experience the melancholy of Reynolds' Mauretania Comics. Called The New World: Comics from Mauretania, it's the complete collection of Reynolds' work that began in the 1980s and features some of the greatest touchstones from that world, including The Monitor, Cinema Detectives and Rational Control. Mauretania looks a lot like the English countryside of our world, but in the background it appears there

A true renaissance woman, Cecil Castellucci's work spans mediums. The New York-born, Montreal-raised writer is currently best known to comic book fans as the writer behind the latest reinterpretation of the late Steve Ditko character Shade – Shade the Changing Girl and now, Shade the Changing Woman as part of DC Comics' Young Animal imprint, spearheaded by Gerard Way – lead singer of My Chemical Romance. Fitting, since Cecil tells us why making comics is like being in a rock band. She would know since she was better known as the lead singer of Nerdy Girl in the early '90s and later as the solo artist Cecil Seaskull. These days, her involvement in music has turned to opera as the librettist behind the comic book themed Les Adventures des Madame Merveille and her latest, Hockey Noir, which recently came to Montreal and Toronto before heading to Europe in October 2018. If that weren't enough, Cecil is a young adult novelist and up for a “Best Short Story” Eisner in 2018 for Ethel Byrne, a short comic inside Mine

Aaron is live from the Toronto Comics Art Festival 2018 serving as the moderator for a Spotlight Q & A on this episode's guest. If you couldn't be there live, now's your chance to eavesdrop on this sit down with Toronto's own Ho Che Anderson. The writer and artist talks about what it was like to go from an admirer of Jack “King” Kirby and Howard Chaykin to aping Chaykin's style before coming into his own on the definitive Martin Luther King graphic novel, King: A Comics Biography for Fantagraphics. He tells of his unlikely route into comics through the broken promises of former Canadian publisher Vortex Comics (Mister X) and his debut in the porn comic I Want to Be Your Dog. Meanwhile, it's touched on how his portrayals of both MLK and the black female lead in his horror comic Scream Queens were miles ahead of their time. Finally, the implications and influences behind his latest work God Head are discussed, including the intersections of capitalism and religion and why its okay to copy your heroes until

This time we're blessed to have a cartoonist laureate on the show. Fom Burlington, Vermont best known for his daily autobiographical strips between 1998-2012 called American Elf. He also publishes the superhero frathouse comedy Super F*ckers which was adapted into a cartoon on the online channel Cartoon Hangover. He has also created Monkey vs. Robot and a number of other comic series for kids, including Dragon Puncher and the Johnny Boo series. He's also a darling of college radio fronting his own alternative punk band James Kochalka Superstar. Aaron caught up to him at The Toronto Cartoon Art Festival TCAF where he debuted the latest Johnny Boo, Johnny Boo and the Ice Cream Computer and Mechaboys - a NSFW comic featuring two teenage boys who plot to kill everyone in their school with a mechsuit. In an extremely candid interview, Kochalka reveals that as teens, he and his friends used to be those kids, fantasizing about killing everyone in the sleepy, dead-end town they grew up in. James also talks about ho

Eddie Campbell's Alec series of quasi-autobiographical comics has been called "one of the most important graphic novels of the 20th century" While his fictionalized comic memoirs Alec and later, Fate of the Artist, have become his trademark style where he interrogates his own life through an avatar, he is best known as the artist behind From Hell with legendary comic scribe Alan Moore. Set during the Whitechapel murders of the Victorian era, the story speculates on the identity and motives of Jack the Ripper and was later adapted into a lesser movie of the same name starring Johnny Depp. Not only did Eddie reveal exclusively on our podcast that he's currently colouring From Hell for a serialized re-release from IDW, but he has recently joined forces with his equally talented wife, best-selling author of The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger to release a new graphic story collection called Bizarre Romance. The collection features 13 of Audrey's short stories (some previously published) illustrated and re

Kyle is a member of Toronto's RAID Studio along with past Speech Bubble guests Ramon Perez, (Jane, Nova) Scott Hepburn, (Spider-man/Deadpool) Marcus To (Justice League: No Justice) and Gibson Quarter (Undertow). Kyle's past credits include Scare Tales with friend and fellow RAID member Gabe Sapienza and RAID.One, an anthology with contributions from each RAID member. He comes to the podcast to promote his latest project, BlackMouth – a coming of age, horror webcomic featuring a man named Eric investigating his mother's death after she was banished by their village to a forest that is alleged to hold all kinds of witches and other black magic denizens. On the show, Aaron gets the low down on what really goes on at the annual RAID Retreat Weekend, finds out how and why Kyle joined with such a critically-acclaimed pack of miscreants and what went in to constructing the extensive lore and world building behind the innovative BlackMouth. @kjswithabeard BlackMouth Webcomic Scare Tales (with Gabe Sapienza) Kyle'

Sometimes when an Aussie and a Canadian who has a hardcore love for Aussies get together, magic happens. That's what happened when Caitlin Major immigrated from Australia with her boyfriend for better comic-making opportunity in Canada and met Canadian Kelly Bastow at a Drink & Draw. Kelly is an artist on the rise, having done variant covers for titles like Lumberjanes and Adventure Time and having been nominated twice for an Ignatz Award (honouring small press comic creators) including for her graphic memoir Year Long Summer. Caitlin is no slouch either, already having two published graphic novels under her belt, including Space Pyrates with partner Matthew Hoddy and Seeds of Svalbard with Alisha Jade. But the alchemy of these ladies coming together is something special. Written by Caitlin with Kelly on art, Manfried the Man (Penguin Random House Canada, Quirk Books) takes place in an alternate universe where cats who behave like humans own men who behave like cats. Amidst the talk of the near-parallel

Willow Dawson is a critically-acclaimed illustrator for comics, graphic novels and picture books for kids and adults. She was a finalist for the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award in 2016 for her picture book about the way wolves and ravens hunt together called The Wolf-Birds. She was also nominated for a 2008 Joe Shuster award for No Girls Allowed, a graphic novel chronicling women who had to pose as men throughout history. Willow comes to Speech Bubble to promote her newest effort White as Milk,Red as Blood an evocative illustrated collection of uncensored, adult fairy tales translated from the original German written by Franz Xaver Schonwerth, a contemporary of The Brothers Grimm. Together Willow and Aaron spool out the incredible discovery of this collection 150 years after it was first locked away in a German archive. They parse out how Willow flipped literary tradition on its head by using her amazingly layered, sometimes sinister, sometimes whimsical illustrations to give context and meaning to t

Andrew is a comic book writer, podcast host and former Eisner award-winning comic industry journalist who came to Toronto by way of Hastings, England. He was the last editor-in-chief of Comics Alliance, shepherding it towards its 2015 Eisner win for “Best Comics Journalism.” As part of the LGBTQ community, Andrew has always championed representation for all minorities in all of his comics work, starting with Another Castle from Oni Press and continuing with his current work on Freelance from Chapterhouse Comics. Formerly co-written with Jim Zub, (Wayward, Avengers: No Surrender) Freelance re-imagines Canada's oldest superhero swashbuckler as a same-sex love triangle. In studio, Andrew talks about why attracting a diverse readership is integral to the health of the comic book industry as a whole, what creative considerations need to be made when writing a same-sex relationship, as opposed to a hetero one and later he breaks down some of his favourite 2017 Oscar nominees telling listeners what worked narrativel

Sam Beck is certainly a comic artist to watch for these days, as her career coalesces to its first major apex. At the time of this episode, Songs for the Dead – the comic she draws for writers and past Speech Bubble guests Andrea Fort and Michael Christopher Heron – has just been picked up by publisher Vault Comics and is now available at comic shops everywhere. Her work is also featured in the 2018 edition of the Toronto Comics Anthology, Osgoode as Gold, she also contributed a story to the upcoming Wayward Sisters Anthology and that's just for starters. She also writes and draws her own fantasy webcomic called Verse and another project based on Greek mythology called Cadmus from Antarctic Press. On this episode, she talks about how role-playing games influence her comics work, what draws her to fantasy narratives in the first place and how Neopets – a place where users can own and raise virtual pets – fostered her creativity and storytelling abilities. This episode sponsored by Hairy Tarantula. Get 10% off

Matthew is the former long-running artist of the Mr.Monitor comic strip in Broken Pencil Magazine – Canada's national magazine for D.I.Y. Arts and zine culture. He and his long-time collaborator Cory McCallum (known collectively as Pier Pants Productions) won a Joe Shuster award in 2013. called the Gene Day award, denoting their Mr. Monitor short comic, The Pig Sleep, the best independent comic of that year. They've also collaborated on a number of other comics, including Errol Dynamic – a scifi space adventure with a theme song you can hear as part of this episode. Speaking of music, in this episode Daley reveals how he and McCallum made mini comics breaking down different styles of music – effectively blowing Aaron's mind. Daley also talks about how he found his surrealist geometric drawing style and how teen angst and resentment of Batman bandwagon jumpers in 1989 led him to move away from being influenced by Superhero comics into being influenced by indie work like Chester Brown's Yummy Fur and Mike Kalu

Diana is one half of the duo behind From Superheroes – the brand that brought you Texts from Superheroes (funny text conversations between your favourite superheroes and supervillains) and the superhero media review podcast, Talk from Superheroes. She founded the site in 2012 with her boyfriend, Comedian Andrew Ivimey and now they have millions of fans around the world. Diana also occasionally writes comics. She's currently featured in the Secret Loves of Geeks graphic anthology, the much anticipated sequel to The Secret Loves of Geek Girls edited by past Speech Bubble guest Hope Nicholson and published by Dark Horse Comics. Along with Diana, the sequel features contributions from Margaret Atwood and Gerard Way with a cover from Becky Cloonan. On the podcast, Aaron and Diana geek out on their mutual love of Batman, (and hatred of Damian Wayne) reveal how Texts from Superheroes began, define the term “Jedi Stick” and discuss those times Diana got “geek credded,” and she thought her testers were just making co

Timmins, Ontario native Brendan Montgomery was a Queen's University student who thought for sure that a campus with over 200 student groups would certainly have a club for comic book fans. When it turned out that wasn't the case, he started a club himself. The Queen's Comic Book Legion meets every week on campus to discuss the latest issues coming out that week, they sell comics at an on-campus comic shop and they've even published their own graphic novel featuring Queen's very own superhero team. Gael Force is a fully Kickstarter backed graphic novel featuring a superhero team of the same name that protects the student body and reflects the diversity among them. In promotion of the book, Brendan started going to comic conventions and discovered there were a ton of self-published Canadian comic books out there, but no central resource to learn more about them, so he started the Canadian Independent Comic Book Wiki where anyone can contribute information about Canadian independent comics past and present. Thi