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 in the series, Connect the Scots, which showcases The Underground Railroad.

In addition to talking about his latest book, Munday dishes on what it's like going to an author's festival and doing double duty as a publicist and a guest, how children's book illustration works when you're writing a chapter book and what's the more satisfying pursuit, comics or novels. Plus, learn about his slightly unhealthy tie obsession and what he did for Inktober. This episode of Speech Bubble is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

@idontlikemundays

@idontlikemunday

Evan's website

Evan's publisher

The old Sketchkrieg Blog

Amazing Challengers indexed on Comics.org

Quarter-Life Crisis on Goodreads

Quarter-Life Crisis review on the Torontoist

Sponsor

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Coupon Codes

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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 writer James Robinson (Starman, JSA).

You'll learn that Darwyn Cooke designed and cut together the opening title sequence for Batman Beyond, that Batman '66 is just a secret gay bondage fantasy and what happened when Buckingham Palace said an undead Princess Diana couldn't join a mutant superhero team.

This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula

@Originaljbone

J. Bone's original art for sale

J. Bone selling t-shirts on TeePublic

J's old blog

J. Bone on Wikipedia

J.'s old beefcake blog

J's old Cafe Press store

J's old craft blog

Buy Art of the Zodiac by J. Bone

Buy Archie Meets Batman '66 with inks by J. Bone

Buy The Saviors with art by J. Bone

Batman Beyond Opening Sequence by Darwyn Cooke

Princess Diana is Marvel's Newest Mutant Heroine

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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 Aaron and Megan discuss the fraught history publishers and industry journalists have in showcasing minority voices and representing points of view that aren't white and male. Meanwhile, you'll learn about how Sam Maggs navigates wearing so many hats in pop culture fandom and why Aaron and Megan both fear the Canada Goose. This podcast is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula's Hairoween Party from Oct. 26-28, 2018 at 3456 Yonge St.

More Sam Maggs

@SamMaggs - Twitter

@sammaggs - Instagram

Sam's Website

Order Girl Squads

Marvel Fearless Fantastic! Female Super Heroes Save the World – released Dec. 18, 2018

Sam's Moderating Highlights

Sam's Hosting Highlights

More Megan Purdy

@themeganpurdy - Twitter

@themeganpurdy - Instagram

The MNT

The MNT on Patreon

Women Write About Comics

Bleating Heart Press

T.O. Comix

Called Into Being Kickstarter (runs until Oct. 18, 2018)

Sponsor

Hairy Tarantula

Coupon Codes

Enter these codes at checkout when you shop online and we'll get some money to support the podcast.

Geeky t-shirts – Riptapparel.com – 10% OFF – NEVERSLEEPS

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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 with the late zombie godfather George A. Romero and what every fan doesn't really know about running a comic shop.

The Artwork of Casey Parsons

Casey's Portfolio

@caseyarts77 on Instagram

Comic 1 Books

Cauldron Kickstarter - Expired

Blood Moon #1 Kickstarter - Expired

Sponsor

Hairy Tarantula

Coupon Codes

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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 for him to still shed his blue collar past as he met deadlines and tried to finally leave his job as his building's superintendent – easier said then done, it turned out. In addition to that, he explains how he became the unlikely creator of the Canadian indie hero Auric of the Great White North and ends the podcast reminiscing about meeting his hero Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart. The Canadian pro wrestler who passed away the week this episode was recorded.

Mike's website

@uncoothrooth on Instagram

@uncouthrooth on Twitter

Mike's original art at Big Cartel

Retcon

Auric of the Great White North

Mike Rooth on Comic Vine

Sponsor

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Coupon Codes

Enter these codes at checkout when you shop online and we'll get some money to support the podcast.

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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

Website

Instagram

Twitter

Youtube

Facebook

Jason Roussel

Facebook

Instagram

Nik Zezos

Instagram

Facebook

Sponsors

Hairy Tarantula

Coupon Codes

Enter these codes at checkout when you shop online and we'll get some money to support the podcast.

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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 establish the Franco-Belgian collaboration Frémok, now a major European graphic novels publisher.

This episode was recorded during the Toronto Comics Arts Festival where Yvan debuted the first english language edition of Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures. He talks about the genesis of his collaboration with Marboeuf and their first book Ville Prostituée and how the merger with Frémok was kind of a joke. We also talk about what makes the French comic scene distinct from the American comic scene and how superhero comics were packaged in France back in the day.

Plus, how he was influenced by Frank Miller, the bizarre real life story behind Yellow Negroes, a story that confronts the reader with racial dynamics and the migrant experience in modern France, and how he dealt with Negroes as a charged word while on tour in the U.S. even though he says it's not really a book about racism. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Yvan's Lambiek entry

@NYRcomics – Yvan's publisher in North America

@nyrcomics - Instagram

A review of Yellow Negroes from HyperAllergic.com

A profile of Yvan in the New York Times

A review of Yellow Negroes from The Globe and Mail

Sponsor

Hairy Tarantula

Coupon Codes

Enter these codes at checkout when you shop online and we'll get some money to support the podcast.

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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's been a subtle alien invasion that's perhaps is causing people to disappear from photos, buildings to suddenly disappear and people that have previously died to come back to life. But the comics are not really about the plot, but the feelings they evoke in the people who read them. On the podcast, Chris tells us that his work is a response to the changes in life: the moving to a new city, the passing of a loved one and the journey to a new place and reconciling his past with his present. He also frustrates Aaron to know end by letting him know the most bizarre elements of the work serve the story first and there's no over-arching conspiracy.

Seth's appreciation of Chris Reynold's work that originally appeared in The Comics Journal

The official home of Mauretania

Buy The New World from The New York Review of Comics

@NYRcomics

@nyrcomics

A celebration of Chris Reynolds from The Comic Book Evangelist

Sponsors

Hairy Tarantula

Coupon Codes

Enter these codes at checkout when you shop online and we'll get some money to support the podcast.

Geeky t-shirts – Riptapparel.com – 10% OFF – NEVERSLEEPS

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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! -- a comic anthology benefiting Planned Parenthood. You can also find more of her comics writing in the graphic novel Soupy Leaves Home for Dark Horse and Plain Janes for DC's now defunct Minx line.

On this episode, Cecil tells Aaron what it was like to fall in love in the line-up for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and then write about it in the pages of The Secret Loves of Geeks anthology. The two also chat about why the theme of transformation permeates so much of Cecil's work, why for her the creative process is always political and how she is still able to write in the voice of a teenage girl despite the hindsight of adulthood. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

@misscecil

@cecilseaskull

@cecilonthego

Cecil's official website

Les Adventures of Madame Merveille preview

Hockey Noir trailer

Hockey Noir preview

Eisner nominations 2018

DC's Young Animal

Soupy Leaves Home

The Secret Loves of Geeks on Inner Space

Nerdy Girl – A Song About Star Wars

Nerdy Girl – Anne Eliot

Sponsors

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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 you find your footing. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Ho Che Anderson's Instagram

Ho Che Anderson's Fantagraphics page

Ho Che Anderson on IMDB

Ho Che Anderson tells CBC the comics that influenced him most at The Beguiling

Comics Alternative Interviews Ho Che Anderson

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