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Graeme MacKay

Mon, 18 May 2020 18:30:00 -0000

This conversation with The Hamilton Spectator's resident editorial cartoonist runs the gamut. Graeme Mackay (as Aaron learns, pronounced Mac-kai) is "The Last of the Mohicans." He has held his position since 1997 and,pre-COVID-19, was actually still been going into a newsroom when many of his editorial cartoonist colleagues either have been working from home for years or their positions have been eliminated entirely as newspapers tighten their belts.

It's actually COVID-19 that forced Graeme to finally work from home and switch to digital drawing (something he would've had to do anyway as The Spectator was set to move offices later this year) and he and Aaron talk about that transition to digital and how Graeme is finding adjusting his technique after years of using traditional pen and ink.

The two also talk about Graeme's serpentine route to working at The Spectator, from his interest in politics and glad-handing those in power to a brief stint in the deli section of Harrod's Department Store in London, England (and that time the late Dodi Fayed landed on the roof in his helicopter because he just had to have his favourite brand of mustard) to finally sending cartoons to various newspapers across Canada and being syndicated in many of them.

They also talk about his earliest influences in cartooning, including the drawings of Richard Scary, and Graeme's uncanny ability to draw city skylines at just three years old. They talk about his earliest cartoons in the pages of Carelton University's student newspaper, the genius of Gary Larson's Farside and of course, Mad Magazine. The recent passing of Mort Drucker of The Usual Gang of Idiots there comes up as well.

Meanwhile, both Aaron and Graeme share the fact that they were raised by television in common, which was another heavy influence on Graeme's career both in comedy with SCTV and in watching the news at a very early age.

The two also discuss Graeme's favourite cartoons from his own work and the possibility of doing anthology or a "Best Of" somewhere down the line. Graeme talks about how supportive his editors have ever been and also those rare times his cartoons were spiked from publication. They discuss the fact that despite the fact he fears that the other shoe may one day drop and he may lose his job, he is a well respected cartoonist, having been featured in the "This Is Serious: Canadian Indie Comics" exhibit in early 2020 alongside Canadian comic book legends like Chester Brown, Seth and Fiona Smyth.

Finally, not only do they talk about the way COVID-19 and the way the stay at home order is affecting Graeme's work, but also his part in "The Cartoonists Against COVID-19" social media exhibit spearheaded by The Association of Canadian Cartoonists to show solidarity with front line workers and to promote the work of the famous Canadian editorial cartoonists who may have lost work due to the pandemic. Then, the two wonder about whether maybe this pandemic will shake up the capitalist system in a good way. This episode is once again sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Graeme Mackay's Website

Graeme Mackay on Facebook

Graeme Mackay's YouTube Channel

Graeme Mackay, Wes Tyrell, Matt Weurker and Cartoonists Against COVID-19 on Politico

#cartoonistsagainstcovid

The Association of Canadian Cartoonists

Our conversation with Graeme's friend and fellow editorial cartoonist Wes Tyrell

Sponsor Hairy Tarantula - Buy Comics online

Chris Sanagan

Mon, 04 May 2020 04:04:00 -0000

If you recently watched the mailbag episode of Cartoonist Kayfabe spotlighting Group of 7 off the top or you listened to our episode with Group of 7 artist Jason Lapidus, this is the episode that will complete the Group of 7 trifecta because Chris Sanagan is the writer of Group of 7.

Chris lives in Guelph, Ontario but spent many of his younger years as a Bay Street broker in Toronto before persuing a career as a historical achivist. You'll learn from this episode that Chris came up with the idea for Group of 7 after realizing that seven legendary Caadians were all fighting in Europe during WWI at the same time. With those Canadians as chess pieces, a sensibility taken from works like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the artistry of one of his best friends in the world, he's able to put together a pretty compelling package for any comic fan who also digs Canadian history.

In the coversation, Chris highlights how all those elements came together – in particular, how he and artist Jason Lapidus first met – and their plans for the next Group of 7 storyline after the first six issues, which have recently been collected into graphic novel form as, Group of 7: A Most Secret Tale. It's available for purchase in May 2020. This episode of Speech Bubble is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula – check out their online store Speech Bubble is on Patreon Donate and support us now

@chrissangan

@groupof7comics

@ChrisSangan

@groupof7comics on Twitter

Group of 7 Online

Buy the Graphic Novel

Group of 7 on Facebook

Where Chris Sanagan Works – Archives Ontario

Group of 7 artist Jason Lapidus on Speech Bubble

Group of 7 on Cartoonist Kayfabe with Jim Rugg and Ed Piskor

Sponsors Hairy Tarantula

Al Ewing

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 10:00:00 -0000

Al Ewing is best known as the writer behind the critically-acclaimed comic series Immortal Hulk. It's a comic nominated for the Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series in 2019. In the time before proximity precautions and the COVID-19 pandemic, Al Ewing was booked to appear at the Toronto Comicon. The convention was eventually postponed – along with every other public gathering – but before it was, Aaron had this conversation with Al in promotion of his con appearance.

As a result, it's a little different than the typical conversations Speech Bubble fans have become accustomed to. Since Al lives across the pond in the UK, this chat is the first this podcast had recorded over the phone and Aaron was given a tight 20 minutes to speak with him. (obviously, Al Ewing is a very busy man)

Never the less, when you get an opportunity to speak with Al Ewing, writer of, in Aaron's opinion, the best comic book Marvel is publishing right now and, as he told Chip Zdarsky, one of the top three writers working at Marvel – you don't say, no.

So here we are. Though his accent can make him difficult to understand at times, you're in for a great and rare conversation. Obviously, the two talk about Immortal Hulk, and how the decision to make the big green monster immortal came to be, but they also dive into Ewing's earliest relationship with comics and his transition from fan to professional. You'll also hear what he actually thinks about the comparisons between Immortal Hulk and Alan Moore's classic, Saga of the Swamp thing?

Plus, get a little taste of what it's like writing the next big Marvel Event – Avengers/Fantastic Four Empyre – with Dan Slott. (Iron Man, Fantastic Four)

This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula and Project I.M.P.A.C.T. – a new Canadian superhero comic with issues #1 and #2 available on Comixology.

Speech Bubble is also now on Patreon

@Al_Ewing

Al Ewing on Marvel

Al Ewing on Wikipedia

The interview with Jim Zub referenced on this episode

Sponsors

Becka Kinzie on the True North Country Comics Podcast

Project I.M.P.A.C.T.

Becka Kinzie

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 04:57:59 -0000

In the first Speech Bubble podcast episode during the COVID_19 Pandemic, (complete with social distancing essentials like Zoom) Becka Kinzie joins our show. Becka is directly connected to our last guest Chip Zdarsky and his friend, previous Speech Bubble guest Kagan McLeod, since she was the colour flatter on Kaptara.

Becka explains what a colour flatter does on this podcast, but that's not her only gig. She hails from Kitchener-Waterloo where she shepherds the web comic turned graphic novel Gehenna. The first, of what she reveals on this episode is a planned series of Gehenna comics, is called Death Valley. Think Scooby Do and the mystery gang with actual horror and violence thrown in. (at least, that's how Becka describes it)

Her fascination with, and love of, horror comes from being raised in a conservative household and not being able to watch anything that was deemed too scary or too violent and then going hog wild on that stuff in her adulthood. In her teens, she was heavily influenced by things like Lenore: The Cute Little Dead Girl by Roman Dirge and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez and those influences definitely seeped into her work, along with a splash of anime, manga and Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

Along with talking about Gehenna: Death Valley, Becka gives us a sneak preview of her upcoming project co-written with Speech Bubble “almost” guest Bob Salley. It's called The Beholden and will be published by Source Point Press, an independent publisher out of Detroit, Michigan. This episode of Speech Bubble is sponsored as always by Hairy Tarantula and Bam Coffee Co..

Speech Bubble is also now on Patreon where you can get audio blogs from host Aaron Broverman and a breakdown of Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #310 by Chip Zdarsky for just $3 per month at www.patreon.com/speechbubblepod.

@the_becka on Instagram

@the_becka on Twitter

Becka Kinzie's website

An Elegant Weapon Podcast (Mentioned on this episode)

Sponsors Hairy Tarantula

ZDARSCO INC. -- What Do You Want™

Find us on Patreon www.patreon.com/speechbubblepod

Chip Zdarsky (Again!)

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 10:39:14 -0000

Chip Zdarsky Returns to Speech Bubble! Last time host Aaron Broverman and writer/artist Chip Zdarsky got together on the podcast it was for a live episode celebrating podcast sponsor Hairy Tarantula's 25th anniversary in 2017. Let's just say...he's done a lot since then. When last we left Zdarsky, he was just about to release the first issue of Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man in two months. Since then, Peter Parker: Spider-Man has concluded, (and Zdarsky won an Eisner for his trouble) Sex Criminals is about to end its seven year, 32 issue run with a final, seven issue arc and Zdarsky is writing Daredevil and X-Men/Fantastic Four, as of this recording.

He and Aaron talk about it all and literally everything in between (Invaders, Namor: The Best Defense, Marvel 2-in-1 and Spider-Man: Life Story). Listeners will learn how the pitch meeting for Daredevil at the Marvel Summit actually went, why Spider-Man: Life Story wasn't Marvel Universe: Life Story and what he thinks of people saying he should write the ongoing Fantastic Four title currently being written by Dan Slott. Plus, find out why Daredevil made it to the top of his “Character I'd Most Like to Write” list, how he feels about Sex Criminals ending (and what he and Matt Fraction might do when it does) and what lead to J. Jonah Jameison learning Spider-Man's secret idenity on his watch. Oh, and find out whether Kaptara with Kagan Mcleod will ever come back. Speech Bubble is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula, where you will find comics and role-playing games at 3456 Yonge Street, and Bam Coffee Co. where you can get 15% off your first Bam Box of freshly ground coffee, comics, prints and a mug by typing SB15 at checkout.

SPEECH BUBBLE IS NOW ON PATREON - Sign-up to hear Chip Zdarsky break down the Eisner award-winning Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #310 (#21), which he wrote and drew. www.patreon.com/speechbubblepod

@zdarsky on Twitter

@zdarsky on Instagram

Subscribe to It's a Chip Zdarsky Newsletter, Okay?

Chip's Tips

Chip Zdarsky wants you to buy Daredevil

Chip Zdarsky on CBC

Chip's first appearance on Speech Bubble

Sponsors Hairy Tarantula

Buy Michael DeForge's latest, Familiar Face

Michael DeForge

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 17:36:06 -0000

Born in Kingston, raised in Ottawa and living in Toronto, Michael DeForge is a multi-Ignatz and Doug Wright award winning and Eisner nominated alternative cartoonist. His body of work numbers many web comics, zines, mini comics, graphic novels, anthologies and gallery shows. He's also a prolific commercial illustrator, having done many gig posters, media illustrations, film screening announcements and album covers. He is so prolific that he's often publishing at least two comic works a year either with Koyama Press or Drawn and Quarterly, including the award-winning series Lose, as well as graphic novels Ant Colony, Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero, Brat and more recent works like Stunt, Leaving Richard's Valley and his latest work, coming out the day after this Speech Bubble episode's release, from Drawn and Quarterly – Familiar Face.

Michael sits down with Aaron to talk about the issues brought up by Familiar Face, including its inspiration – the simple fact that much of our lives are at the mercy of technology whether we want it to be or not. DeForge also takes Aaron inside his early work drawing gig posters for the Ottawa punk scene for free concert tickets and tells him how he illustrated the music he heard. You'll learn what and who influences his signature art style, from pencils to inks, colours and panel construction. You'll hear his thoughts on the impending closure of Koyama Press and the story of how he first met its namesake publisher “Saint” Annie Koyama. Oh and how could we forget, his work as a designer on the Adventure Time cartoon. Michael tells the story of how he got the job and what he actually designed for each episode and he lets us know that his last work for the series will be found on the mini series, Adventure Time: Distant Lands. This episode of Speech Bubble is brought to you by Hairy Tarantula at 3456 Yonge St. for all your comic and role-playing needs and Bam Coffee Co. where you can get a Bam Box full of freshly roasted coffee and geek swag like prints and mini comics for 15% off by entering SB15 at checkout.

@michael_deforge

@michael.deforge

MichaelDeforge.com

Join Michael DeForge on tour March 2020

Familiar Face Publisher, Drawn and Quarterly

Stunt, Publisher Koyama Press

Buy the Seripop gig posters that influenced Michael DeForge

Michael DeForge on IMDB

Michael DeForge on Chapters.Indigo.ca

Michael DeForge's All Dogs Are Dogs at Saw Gallery 2015

Sponsors Hairy Tarantula Bam Coffee Co.

Te'Shawn Dwyer

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 01:42:03 -0000

Te'Shawn Dwyer is the co-founder of the From a Hat Studio artist collective with former Speech Bubble guest Paris Alleyne. Te'Shawn details the origins of the group, which was inspired by R.A.I.D. Studio -- another group of Toronto artists who pooled their resources to great success. On this episode, Te'Shawn talks about how the group was started by he and Paris as they were graduting from Max the Mutt College of Art and Design as a way to stay in touch and keep drawing on a regular basis. Soon they were joined by Matt Simas, Dylan Burnett (Interceptor, Ant-Man, Cosmic Ghost Rider, X-Force) and former Speech Bubble guests Jahnoy Lindsay (Luke Cage; Everyman, She-Hulk) and Jamal Campbell. (Naomi, Far Sector)

From a Hat had them pick a character “From a Hat” and each draw it in their own style. These pieces became super popular online and on the comic convention circuit. Soon they were pushing each other to go up to have portfolio reviews from “The Big Two”: Marvel and DC. On the podcast, Te'Shawn details how the portfolio review process works and how eventually showing his portfolio and pitching creator-owned comic series concepts to independent publishers like Image Comics became discouraging enough that he eventually decided to stop waiting around for someone to give him an opportunity and instead created his own. What that became was his current self-published comic series Desert Messiah. Hear about how it's very much inspired by Te'Shawn's childhood love of anime and manga, including the seminal work, Lone Wolf and Cub. Te'Shawn gives a sneak preview of his plans for the series on this episode and explains why after two single issues (out now) he decided to work towards a full graphic novel, rather than put out issue three right away. This episode of Speech Bubble is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula and Bam Coffee Co. where you can get 15% off your first Bam Box of fresh roasted coffee and geek swag like prints and a limited edition mug when you type SB15 at checkout. This episode of Speech Bubble is also dedicated to the memory of Toronto artist and friend Lamin Martin.

@TeShawnDwyer

@teshawndwyer

Te'Shawn's Website

Buy Desert Messiah #1 and #2

Buy the Black Comix Returns Anthology

Sponsors

Conundrum Press – Kat's publisher

Kat Verhoeven

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 02:31:29 -0000

Kat Verhoeven grew up in Canada's original capital of Kingston, Ontario in a single-parent household that encouraged artistic talents.Thanks to this, both she and her sister Mary Verhoeven grew to push each other in a friendly competition to see who between them was the better cartoonist – a jockeying that Kat says continues to this day -- with each taking a turn in the spotlight.

For Kat's part, she put her drawing talents towards an innovative food blog called Drawn and Devoured, which came out along with her initial sensual food poetry zine, The Artichoke that she published in her final year at the Ontario College of Art and Design. But for as much as she loved food and exploring all the culinary culture that Toronto has to offer, Kat reveals on the podcast that her relationship with food and her own body image was a destructive one for a time and through that struggle came her life's work so far, Meat and Bone from Conundrum Press.

We explore what's truth, what's fiction and what's somewhere in between in Meat and Bone, as Kat confronts her own struggles and polyamourous leanings in a fictional reality with an ensemble of fully realized and diverse characters that has never been seen to this degree in comics before and will stick with you. We talk about why both Barbarella and Toronto play such important roles in Meat and Bone and we dive deep on Kat's technique, tools and purposeful decision making that lead her to convey emotion using a different tonal colour palet for every strip and slight alterations to the look of each character. Fan People, this is when not drawing “on model” can pay dividends. If you listen to the episode, you'll understand why. We also don't forget discussing Kat's pre-Meat and Bone project, the Doug Wright and Ignatz nominated TowerKind, which exposes the fallacy of racially-profiling neighbourhoods in a post-apocalyptic Toronto seen through the eyes of children. Plus, we preview the upcoming Friendship Edition Anthology. (launching at TCAF 2020)

This episode of Speech Bubble is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula where a state-of-the-art coffee shop is about to be unveiled and Bam Coffee where you can get 15% off your first Bam Box of coffee, comics, prints and a limited edition mug when you type SB15 at checkout.

Drawn and Devoured – Kat's old critically-acclaimed food blog

Towerkind

Kat's equally talented cartoonist sister

Frienship Edition

Sponsors

@AdamTGorham on Instagram

Bam Coffee

Adam Gorham

Mon, 20 Jan 2020 03:41:48 -0000

Adam Gorham is a comic book artist on such titles as TMNT Universe, Jughead: The Hunger, James Bond 007, Power Rangers, Marvel's Contagion and Rocket (starring Rocket Raccoon from Guardians of the Galaxy). He is currently drawing Punk Mambo for Valiant. Adam was born in Perth, Ontario but was raised in Mississauga, Ontario and still makes his home there now with his family.

On the podcast, Adam goes through his long, strange trip from art school drop-out and disgruntled grocery store warehouse employee to working for major comic companies like Marvel, Image and Valiant. This includes finding his first gig as a comic artist on Craigslist, working with Toronto radio personality “Fearless” Fred Kennedy on Fred's self-published, three volume indie book Teuton, and eventually breaking out as the artist on The Violent, a creator-owned gritty crime book published by Image and written by Ghost Rider and Old Man Logan scribe Ed Brisson.

Aaron also gets Adam's take on the New Mutants trailer since he worked on New Mutants: Dead Souls with writer Matthew Rosenberg (4 Kids Walk Into a Bank) which was the book that was likely going to launch as the movie came out before the film got delayed. Adam also tells a wild story about randomly discovering his letter envelope art in a Wizard Magazine years after the fact. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula and Bam Coffee Co. If you want 15% off your next Bam Box of coffee and geek swag, including prints and a limited edition mug, use code SB15 at checkout.

@AdamTGorham on Twitter

Adam's Portfolio

Adam's Princely Dreadful Blog

Buy Adam's original art

Buy Adam's TMNT sketchcovers or Inktober sketches

Adam's Modern Mythology Original Art Page

Adam's page on Marvel.com

Sponsors

Fiona's Giants of the North Hall of Fame Write-up

Fiona Smyth

Mon, 06 Jan 2020 05:08:00 -0000

Fiona Smyth is a legend of the Toronto arts community. A true renaissance woman, she's a sculptor, a muralist, a book illustrator an animator, an art teacher and an independent comic book artist. If you're a Toronto resident, you've probably seen her work without even realizing it. Her murals adorn iconic locations like Lee's Palace's Dance Cave and Sneaky Dee's (which is known to Scott Pilgrim Fans) where she designed their sign and bonehead cow logo. In 2019, she was inducted into The Giants of The North Hall of Fame as part of Canada's Doug Wright Awards for indepedent cartooning along with the late Inuit cartoonist Alootook Ipellie (1951-2007).

Her psychadelic and fluid drawing style has graced a who's who of Canadian publishers, newspapers and magazines since the time she was a student at the Ontario College of Art and Design, (now OCAD University) where she now teaches a new generation of students how to make comics. She is best known for tackling feminist issues, including issues of sexuality, gender and idenity throughout her entire body of work, which spans 30 plus years. In 2018, Koyama Press published a retrospective of her career from 1985-2018 called Somnambulance, which features excerts from her comic Nocturnal Emissions, published by Vortex Comics, as well as work she did for Vice, Drawn and Quarterly, Exclaim! Snipe Hunt, Taddle Creek and even Urban Outfitters' Slant Magazine, among others. Other work includes Cheez 100, collecting the first 100 strips of her series Cheez that was published in Exclaim! Magazine, her first and only graphic novel, The Never Wheres and two critcally-acclaimed sex education books for kids written by renowned sex educator Cory Silverberg, What Makes a Baby? and Sex is a Funny Word.

On the podcast, Aaron finds out how Fiona was recruited to create the Sneaky Dee's sign, what about her childhood and catholic upbringing pushed her to explore feminism in her art, what makes her work for kids different than her work for adults, what her southern good ol' boy pen name is and how it felt going from a punk student with a D.I.Y. ethos that's skipping class at OCAD to teaching at OCAD and becoming the authority she used to rebel against. Plus, find out if Seth lived with her, where she saw herself among the “Holy Triumverate” of Toronto's autobio artists (Seth, Chester Brown and Joe Matt) in the 90s and what it's like to be featured as one of Canada's Big Four comic artists in the recently closed This is Serious: Canadian Indie Comics at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Oh, and she reveals that she and Cory Silverberg are working on a third sex education graphic novel covering puberty. Also, did you know she wanted to be a realist painter?

This episode of Speech Bubble with Fiona Smyth is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula and Bam Coffee Co.

Fiona's Zines Online

What Makes a Baby?

How to Comission Fiona Smyth for a Project

Learn How to Make Comics from Fiona – Starts Jan. 25, 2020

Society of Illustrators

Weird Things

Albatross Soup – a short film by Winnie Cheung with illustrations by Fiona Smyth

Bradley of Him by Connor Willumsen – Koyama Press

Mariel Ashlinn Kelly

Mon, 09 Dec 2019 03:11:35 -0000

Mariel Ashlinn Kelly

Mariel comes from the world of zines. Those hand-stapled, photocopied and folded masterpieces of the small press that made her a BlogTO Zinester to watch in 2016. Mariel is still setting Toronto on fire with her work, but this time it's as one of the contributors to the Drawn Poorly anthology, published out of Manchester, UK. The project is a zine focusing on stories of mental illness, chronic illness and disability.. While doing small groundbreaking zines of her own like Pixie Dream Ghoul and Moth – a true story about the time she chased a moth around her dad's home – she is currently working on her own long-form graphic novel that has been a number of years in the making. Mariel drops some hints right here as far as what readers can expect when it comes out.

Mariel is someone that has drawn her entire life and dabbling in publishing gave her all the skills she needed to publish her own comics. With a style that Aaron compares to Emily the Strange and a heavy influence from the New Yorker covers of Adrian Tomine, Mariel has always been drawn to telling her own personal stories, rather than working for Marvel or DC. On the pod, she discusses how her subject matter focuses on relationships – even the lack of one and the relationship with one's self – thanks to her early love of Archie Comics.

Aaron and Mariel also go deep on a brief history of Toronto's zine scene and zines in general. They go back to the well on graphic medicine and Mariel's recent discovery that she had bipolar disorder and they talk about why a lot of Mariel's comics take place in the bathtub. Plus, for the movie lovers out there, the two do a small tribute to Toronto's Revue Cinema since Mariel draws posters for many of its screenings and does an ongoing comic strip for its program about the lonely life of a projectionist.

This episode of Speech Bubble is sponsored by the Geek Gods at Hairy Tarantula and the comic book coffee stylings of Bam Coffee Co. Don't forget to use SB15 at checkout and get 15% off your first Bam Box of coffee and comic swag from Canada's best indie comic artists.

@marielashlinn

Marielashlinn.com

The Department of Lost Things

@MarielAshlinn

Mariel Ashlinn Kelly on Facebook

Sponsors

Jenn Woodall

Mon, 25 Nov 2019 05:02:00 -0000

Jenn is what you get when you cross a love for 80s and 90s manga like Akira and Sailor Moon with a passion for groundbreaking indie comics like Dirty Plotte, Eightball and Optic Nerve with some “take no shit” feminism thrown in. This Brampton-raised Toronto resident is best known for her self-published comics Magical Beatdown Volumes one and two and Marie and Worrywort: Comics About Anxiety. Both works won the Gene Day Award for outstanding self-published comics at the Joe Shuster Awards, as well as the Spotlight Award, honouring the identical circumstance, at the Doug Wright Awards – both in 2018.

In this episode, Aaron and Jenn geek out over Jenn's love of manga and anime, especially the magical girl genre, which was a heavy influence on Magical Beatdown. They talk about why the comic is such a local phenomenon in the indie comics scene, juxtaposing whimsical fantasy with over-the-top violence and gore. They also reflect on why the work often serves as a powerful catharsis for all women who have been catcalled and harassed by entitled men. They then move on to Marie and the Worrywort by tracing Jenn's ongoing battle with anxiety and depression and answering why she decided to go public in this comic. They talk about the emerging graphic medicine genre (comics covering mental illness, trauma, grief, disability and overall experience with the medical system) and why comics are one of the most effective ways to bring awareness and relatability to these still misunderstood issues. Plus, if you're an artist who also struggles with anxiety, Jenn has some great advice for you.

This is episode of Speech Bubble is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula where you can get 50% off graphic novels, trade paperbacks art books and manga for the entire month of November. Take advantage at 3456 Yonge St. This episode is also sponsored by Bam Coffee Co. where you can order freshly roasted coffee and comic book swag, including a limited edition mug delivered right to your door as part of a Bam! Box. Listeners use code SB15 at checkout and get 15% off your next Bam Box.

@funeralbeat

@jenn_woodall

Jenn Woodall's Big Cartel Store

Jennwoodall.com

Jenn on Gumroad

Jenn's publisher Silver Sprocket

Jenn's artist collective Friendship Edition

Sponsors

Princess Bunyi on Patreon

Emmanuelle Chateauneuf

Mon, 11 Nov 2019 01:37:59 -0000

Emmanuelle's story is an epic one. Perhaps that's why when she was connected with Ramon Perez (Jim Henson's Tale of Sand, Marvel Two-in-One) and was mentored under his tutelage with an eye to creating comics of her own, she came up with the beginnings of what would become her fictionalized autobiographical masterpiece Queen Street instead of the few drawn pages he requested. Aaron and Emmanuelle go deep on this story (her story) and all the multi-layered implications that as an exceedingly precocious 7-year-old she didn't truly understand, but as an adult in retrospect, had far reaching consequences on the rest of her life – both greatly positive and darkly negative in equal parts

Aaron learns that Emmanuelle is exceedingly self-aware, but also still that gifted dreamer with a hugely developed imagination that she was as a child. Her inner child is still active and it's what makes her such a lush creator and artist. They talk about the influence of growing up in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario as a half Filipino, half French-Canadian who used ballet as her first gateway to putting her creative energy to use in the physical world. Speaking of the physical world, the idyllic time of Queen Street eventually gave way to the grey of adolescent reality. Emmanuelle addresses what became of her in those grey times as the recession loomed, addiction touched her life and she grew into the adult she is today.

Emmanuelle unpacks the spoken and unspoken barriers she faced as a women of colour of lower middle-class and how her unspoken personality sometimes comes directly in conflict with outdated societal expectations and assumptions about how woman are supposed to act.

Then, we talk about her chaste christian-catholic upbringing and how she balances that with a modern culture that is very open with sex and sexuality. She explains how she walks that emotional tightrope as part of her new adult's only erotic comic (exclusively available on Patreon) Princess Bunyi. With a strong manga influence ala Rumiko Takahashi, a heavy romance novel bend and a little dose of straight-up sexual fantasy. Princess Bunyi is now published monthly for Emmanuelle's Patreon supporters, so go check it out!

This episode of Speech Bubble is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula, which is having a 50% off sale on all trade paperbacks and graphic novels all through the month of November. Go grab these perfect stocking stuffers at 3456 Yonge Street. This episode is also sponsored by Bam Coffee Co.. Their Bam Box combines amazing locally-sourced coffee roasted in Canada with comic art from some of Canada's greatest up and coming indie talents. Get 15% off your next Bam Box on their website by entering SB15 at checkout.

@emmanuellechateauneuf

@TheBatmanni

@princess.bunyi

Buy Queen Street

An interview with Emmanuelle on Canadian Filipino Net

Sponsors

Nick Maandag at Drawn and Quarterly

Nick Maandag

Mon, 28 Oct 2019 01:39:01 -0000

Nick Maandag is a straight-laced accountant by day and a Joe Shuster and Doug Wright nominated cartoonist with a bizarre sense of humour by night. Early influences include the gross out humour of Ren and Stimpy and the subversive satire of The Simpsons. In comics, he moved on to the work of Robert Crumb and other underground cartoonists like Julie Doucet, Dan Clowes, Peter Bagge and Chester Brown and through their inspiration, decided to dedicate his life to making comics after a brief foray in animated film.

His first project of note was Streaker's, which won Peter Laird's Xeric Grant in 2010 about three men who are connoisseurs of streaking and treat it like an obscure high art form. It was distributed by John Porcellino (King-Cat Comics and Stories) through Spit and a Half and Diamond and was his breakout work when the late publisher Alvin Buenaventura of Pigeon Press took an interest and commissioned his two follow-ups, Facility Integrity – about a corporation that controls its employees' bathroom breaks to up efficiency – and The Libertarian -- about a libertarian that becomes infatuated with a socialist and must compromise his ideals as a result. Alvin also featured Maandag's work when he edited “Comics” in The Believer Magazine.

Now, with Drawn and Quarterly, Maandag has released his first full-length graphic novel featuring three stories that highlight his absurdist sense of humour, including the title story, The Follies of Richard Wadsworth about a dimwitted philosophy professor. In this more than an hour conversation, Aaron unpacks how such a bizarre sense of humour can come from such a straight-laced individual. They also talk about how Maandag's style means the art is just a vehicle to serve the jokes and the writing, but is otherwise pretty minimalist. Plus, Maandag details his earliest interaction with Chester Brown and what it's like to be friends with him now. Maandag also explains how he always felt that he was always going to be successful at doing comics for a living.

This podcast is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula and Bam Coffee Co. Don't forget to type SB15 at checkout to get 15% off your Bam Box featuring finely roasted coffee, a limited edition mug and more geektacular swag comic fans will dig.

@nick_maandag

Nick Maandaag at Spit and a Half

Nick Maandag interview in Broken Pencil Magazine

Nick Maandag in The Comics Journal as featured in Jeet Heer's The Comics Chronicles

Nick Maandag in The Believer

Alvin Buenaventura Obituary from The Comics Journal

Jay Stephens

Mon, 14 Oct 2019 04:01:00 -0000

Jay Stephens is a Guelph, Ontario-based and Toronto-born comic artist and cartoonist who joins Aaron for a live episode from The Guelph Comic Jam on the day of the 2019 Joe Shuster Comic Book Awards, which honours Canadians like Joe Shuster – the co-creator of Superman – who make their living in mainstream comics. Jay began his career getting bankrolled by a Guelph comic shop called Collage, under Tragedy Sucks Comics, to create his own indie and underground comic anthology called Sin where many of his most well-known characters first appeared. These are characters like The Nod, (not to be confused with Domino's Pizza's The Noid) JetCat and Tutenstein. The Nod would go on to be the title character in The Land of Nod – Stephens' most critically-acclaimed comics work to date, having been nominated for both an Eisner and a Harvey Award. Meanwhile, Tutenstein would live on in a cartoon of the same name on Discovery Kids and JetCat would be part of Nickelodeon's KaBlam! segments.

Speaking of animation, thanks to his underground comics work on Sin, Stephens was soon plucked from that realm to work on a favourite of Aaron's childhood – YTV's absurdist '90s sketch comedy show, Squawk Box starring the very underrated, but never imitated child actor Dov Tiefenbach. Not only did Stephens write on the show, but he also created the animated short Wonder Duds about a hapless superhero who only ever did the bare minimum necessary to call himself a hero. In addition to being influenced by classic Hanna Barbara cartoons and Harvey Comics like Casper, Richie Rich, and Hot Stuff, he was also fascinated by creepy horror comics and monsters of legend, which was a heavy influence on his Cartoon Network show, The Secret Saturdays, which featured its own toy line from Mattel.

As an artist who tells Aaron that he peaked kind of early, his latest work, Dejects, represents a revival of sorts featuring lost and rejected stories starring his most well-known characters: Tutenstein, The Nod, Wonder Duds and JetCat. It also marks a reunion with his old Tragedy Sucks editor Michel Vrana who has revived his old publishing outfit Black Eyed Books to put out Dejects. On the pod, Aaron and Jay get personal to talk about the ups and downs of his career. They answer where he has been and what he has been doing since his peak? They talk about his occultist upbringing, which had a huge influence on his art, what the comic scene is like in Guelph and his mainstream comics work with the original co-creator of the Teen Titans Bob Haney in what would be his last and lost Teen Titans script – eventually released in 2008 (four years after Haney's death) as Teen Titans: The Lost Annual.

This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula at 3456 Yonge Street in Toronto and Saskatchewan's Bam Coffee Co. Don't forget to go to bamcoffee.ca and use SB15 at checkout to receive 15% off your own Bam Box, which combines coffee and amazing geek swag our listeners drool over.

@Jaypopgun

Buy Dejects

Jay's old archived website

Jay's old Monsterama blog circa 2010

Jay Stephens entry on Lambiek's Comiclopedia

Buy t-shirts with Jay's design

Buy Welcome to Oddville

Owl Magazine – Arrowhead (Jay's creation from the True Patriot Canadian superhero anthology)

Black Eye Books – Jay's Publisher

@blackeyebooks

The Interesting Case of The Secret Saturdays

JetCat on Nickelodeon's KaBlam!

Sponsors

International Wrestling Syndicate

Andy Belanger

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 02:23:10 -0000

Comic artist Andy Belanger (Swamp Thing, Vampirella, WWE Comics) is an absolute wild man. His ambition knows no bounds and he's always been a highly competitive person in his field. Maybe that's why he has done so much. From talking his way into a gig drawing Friday the 13th for Wildstorm, and in doing so achieving his lifelong goal of working for DC Comics by age 27, to being the artist on the critically acclaimed Southern Cross for Image Comics and now being a professional wrestler for Montreal's International Wrestling Syndicate as Bob “The Animal” Anger.

Aaron and Andy talk about it all, including how they met 16 years ago when Andy was in his rockabilly phase promoting his first ever self-published effort, Dead End 56 by selling comics out of the back of a classic car while flanked by rollergirls. They talk about Wolf for a little publisher that didn't last called Moonstone and his first real ongoing title as the primary artist, Kill Shakespear. Did you know that Steve Niles (30 Days of Night) almost wrote Southern Cross? Speech Bubble is the only place you'll find out why he didn't.

Somewhere in there, they also talk about what it was like to work with Duncan Trussell and Donny Cates on The Simulationists for Heavy Metal Magazine and how that lead to illustrating a Tijuana bible that Trussell can hand out at shows. Plus, his plans to found a new Montreal studio space with Isola's Karl Kerschel, a sneak peak of his new comic project coming in October 2019 from TKO Studios, Pound for Pound with writer Natalie Chaidez (showrunner on USA Network's Queen of the South) and how he found his new found love of professional wrestling – a place for all that wild energy to go and possibly the greatest feat of embedded journalism known to man for what may be his most ambitious comic project yet.

This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula and Bam Coffee Co.. Don't forget to use SB15 at checkout to receive 15% off your Bam Box of coffee and geektastic swag.

@AndyBelanger

@Andy_Belanger

Andy's Blog

Buy Andy's original art

Bob “The Animal” Anger in action

Buy Pound for Pound

Buy Southern Cross

Buy Kill Shakespeare

The Simulationists interview in Paste Magazine 2016

Sponsors

The Comics Journal interviews Joan

Ken and Joan Steacy

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 04:01:00 -0000

Comics power couple Ken and Joan Steacy ring in their 40th wedding anniversary with a live interview on Speech Bubble during TCAF weekend and a graphic novel each. The first, Aurora Borealice from Conundrum Press made its debut at TCAF and is the first part of a three-part fictionalized memoir from Joan Steacy following Alice (standing in for Joan) and her struggle with illiteracy. As Joan says on the podcast, “I graduated high school functionally illiterate and I knew I had to do something about that.” The memoir also documents how meeting legendary media theorist Marshall McLuhan and his son Eric changed her life. How having people of that calibre believe in her gave her more confidence and how she embraced new technology to help overcome her struggles with reading. Meanwhile, she had to overcome being perceived as a dummy in her own family and she explains what it's like to be failed over and over again in school and then overcoming that to go to university. The graphic novel she releases now helped her accept her own personal style and embrace who she is as a cartoonist.

Ken began his career working for Marvel as an inker right out of school, but it wasn't the dream he thought it would be. He talks about having to carve his own path through the comics industry as a military brat. He went to Sheridan College and learned art fundamentals and basically started again to unlearn bad habits and learn good habits. He eventually would go on to win the Governor General's medal for his work in sequential art and draw books like Iron Man and Astro Boy. He talks about his journey toward authorship and away from being a cog in a wheel.

His latest project War Bears happened thanks to an article he illustrated written by Margaret Atwood that takes place during the golden age of Canadian comics -- The Canadian Whites. The article was published to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday and War Bears is its continuation – a further exploration of the story. He talks about what it was like to work with Margaret Atwood and the creation of Oursonette – a fiction hero of the Canadian Whites period. The two Steacys pack a great one-two punch as you listen to them react to each other's work as Joan explores her own history and Ken explores Canadian comics history both real and fictional. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

@joansteacy

Joan's blog

Conundrum Press

The Comics Program that Ken and Joan teach at Camosun College

Joan and Ken's son Alex's forthcoming webcomic Drainers

Buy War Bears

Buy Aurora Borealice

Sponsor

Buy Draw People Every Day

Kagan McLeod

Mon, 02 Sep 2019 04:01:00 -0000

Kagan is a Toronto comics forefather, having founded RAID Studio with Ben Shannon, Cameron Stewart and Chip Zdarsky. He continues to be a fount of knowledge for artists coming up through the local scene, opening his studio for weekly life drawing nights. His latest book, Draw People Everyday from Penguin Random House Canada, comes from these life drawing sessions and the techniques he has picked up after years of drawing the human form. Kagan is probably best known for his magnum opus, Infinite Kung Fu – a mash-up of Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest 1970s kung fu movies with blaxploitation, zombie horror and spaghetti western films. He also teamed with Chip Zdarsky on the scifi romp Kaptara about a gay space explorer that crash lands on a planet right out of a Playmates action figure catalogue.

Kagan gives Aaron the inside scoop on all this, including the status of Kaparta and why it stopped. Plus, he reveals an exciting new project that will mark his return to comics after a long hiatus. If that doesn't float your boat, find out what it was like for him to be a courtroom illustrator for some of the most high profile cases in Canada, including The Toronto 18, serial killer Russell Williams and disgraced former CBC Radio host Jian Ghomeshi. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

@kaganmcleod

@KaganMcLeod

Kagan's Website

YouTube Review of Draw People Every Day

Buy Kaptara Vol. 1: Fear Not, Tiny Alien

Buy Infinite Kung Fu

Infinite Kung Fu Trailer

Infinite Kung Fu Launch Party Video

The History of Rap Video

The History of Rap Poster

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Cartoonist Kayfabe – Show and Tell 04: Picture Books feat. Who Needs Donuts?

Mark Alan Stamaty

Mon, 19 Aug 2019 04:01:00 -0000

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 would just let his mind wander into all manner of dreamy tangents. Later, in his rent-controlled apartment – where he once heard the music of Kris Kristofferson wafting through the floor boards – he would draw what he saw. What came out was often a Where's Waldo-esque acid trip where every inch of the panels were covered in a warped-ly detailed cityscape with sight gags strewn throughout. Maybe this was at least partially due to the fact that both Mark's parents were gag cartoonists themselves. In fact, growing up he sometimes found himself playing in the backyard with the real Dennis the Menace (son of the strip's creator Hank Ketcham).

In addition, to its busy pages, McDoodle Street gained attention for its biting social commentary and satirism. A combination Mark was later asked to repeat when targeting America's seat of power for his Washingtoon Strip in the Washington Post and then his Boox Strip for the New York Times Book Review. Though special in their own right, these two strips never quite captured the imagination like McDoodle St., which ended abruptly, without explanation. Mark offers that explanation here and in the pages of the newly published McDoodle Street collection from The New York Review of Comics and Penguin Random House Canada, which he came to the Toronto Comics Art Festival to promote at the time of this interview. This episode of Speech Bubble is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Mark's website

Mark's Wikipedia entry

The publisher of the re-issued MacDoodle St. New York Review of Comics

Penguin Random House Canada

Yellow Yellow reissued by Drawn and Quarterly

Mark Alan Stamaty on Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Mark Alan Stamaty on All of It with Alison Stewart

Mark Alan Stamaty on Leonard Lopate At Large on WBAI

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Fábio and Gabriel's Facebook Page

Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 04:01:00 -0000

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 bedroom until they were 23, and explain how drawing became their twin special language from a very early age. They also explain that because they are so bonded, personal relationships are a key part of what they like to unpack and explore when doing comics together. It was their fascination with the way stories unlock a person's imagination, in conjunction with the art, that turned them toward comics as an interest and eventual career.

They chronicle their rise from doing fan zines in Brazil to working on some of the American comic industry's hottest projects with some of its best known creators and how hard, but also necessary, it was to break into the American market if they were ever going to be successful as comic artists. Listeners will also hear about how reflecting on his own death in the shower and how fleeting life actually is, lead to Gabriel coming up with the concept for Day Tripper and how that subsequent Eisner win put both brothers on the map. They also share how being twins and growing up consuming the same media influences their process, with the story always being at the centre in governing who will draw what and their distinctive drawing styles (Gabriel inks with a pen and Fabio inks with a brush) fitting each story differently.

Of course, you'll hear about Umbrella Academy too. You'll learn how Gabriel feels about the comic being adapted by Netflix and whether the two are competitive with each other about their different levels of success and fame. This episode of Speech Bubble is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula and Oldtown Bodega.

Fábio and Gabriel's blog

Fábio and Gabriel's YouTube Channel

Fábio and Gabriel's Canadian publisher

Sponsors

@scottchantler (Instagram)

Oldtown Bodega

Scott Chantler

Mon, 22 Jul 2019 04:01:00 -0000

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 Librarian and Educator Day at the Toronto Comic Art Festival, carrying All-Stars, a mini-comic he put together with University of Windsor librarians and history professors Heidi Jacobs and Miriam Wright about the Chatham [Ontario] Coloured All-Stars and their victory in 1934, as the first black team to win the Ontario Baseball Association title. Aaron and Scott cover the Chatham All-Stars and their star player Wilfred “Boomer” Harding, but not before bonding over their mutual love of the Batman 1966 TV show and chronicling Scott's path to professional comics making through animation. His early influences include the great Will Eisner, Canadian legend Ty Templeton and Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics – all of which put him on a path toward cartooning instead of drawing superheroes. He talks about what attracts him to simple storytelling and that mid-century design style that has become a bit of a calling card for him. Plus, he goes behind-the-scenes on the development of Two Generals – a highly personal project for him. This podcast is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

@scottchantler (Twitter)

@Scottchantlercartoonist

Scott's Website

Buy Scott's Original Art

Scott on Amazon

Scott in Maclean's as The University of Windsor's Cartoonist-in-Residence

Scott's TEDx Talk

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Ben's work with Sweet Jesus

Ben O'Neil

Mon, 08 Jul 2019 04:01:00 -0000

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

Aaron's review of Apologetica in Sequential Magazine #2

The trailer for Buzzard – The film Ben co-wrote with Joy Webster

The trailer for The Sunset Channel – The film Ben co-wrote with Matthew Kinahan

Speech Bubble's interview with Ben's publisher Mark Laliberte

Sponsor

Christie Pits Kickstarter (archived)

Jamie Michaels

Mon, 24 Jun 2019 04:01:00 -0000

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 podcast addresses that too. We also talk about why he founded his independent comics company Dirty Water Comics and what it's like trying to make it in the independent comics game outside a national centre like Toronto and do a deep dive on the comic scene in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This podcast is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

@dirtywatercomic

@dirtywatercomics

Dirty Water Comics

CBC article on Christie Pits

Sponsor

The Danger Dice Gang Podcast

Jim Zub

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 04:01:00 -0000

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 job colouring comics for Udon and the rest is history. He also goes behind the scenes on Avengers: No Surrender and No Road Home explaining what it's like to do those weekly Marvel events co-written by Mark Waid (Kingdom Come, Daredevil) and Al Ewing (The Immortal Hulk) while keeping the story cohesive.

If you've ever wondered how he balances it all, this is also the podcast where he gives a play-by-play on his typical day. He also hypes his new Comixology digital exclusive Stone Star and explains why he went digital without the kind of marketing his stories with Marvel typically get. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

@JimZub

@jim_zub

Jim's website

Stone Star

Seneca Animation

Jim's first webcomic Makeshift Miracle

Sponsor

Original art from Richard

Richard Pace

Mon, 27 May 2019 04:19:39 -0000

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 Comics and why he became a primary target of the alt-right Comicsgate movement. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Richard's Instagram

@rpace

Second Coming Comes to Ahoy Comics

Imaginary Fiends

Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham

Sponsor

Jason Kieffer

Mon, 13 May 2019 04:11:22 -0000

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

Dynamic Drawing with Salgood Sam at Syn Studio Concept Art School

Salgood Sam

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 03:05:44 -0000

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 Concept Art School 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 Dream Life

Smaller bits include a story about an unpublished Ghost Rider project written by Warren Ellis, his one interaction with Clive Barker on Saint Sinner, the story of quitting a disaster Morbius: the Living Vampire script and....PIG SEX!!!! This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

@salgoodsam

@salgood

Salgood's Website

Salgood Sam's Spilt Ink

Buy Salgood's work

Salgood's Patreon

Sequential – Canadian Comix News & Culture blog

Sequential's Facebook Page

Sequential Magazine

Lionel Douglas's Photography

Sponsors

Jahnoy Lindsay on Deviant Art

Jahnoy Lindsay

Mon, 15 Apr 2019 04:05:42 -0000

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 recounts that breaking into Marvel came down to a healthy competition between From A Hat members to try and score C.B. Cebulski's business card (then one of Marvel's most renowned talent recruiters) during a portfolio review at a convention. A year of sending samples via e-mail later and he had his first mainstream comics art assignment. Soon he found himself learning to draw comics while he was actually drawing comics.

Inside the pod: We gain insight into the formation of From A Hat, discuss how to gain the confidence to show a Marvel editor your art, why it's really hard to draw comics, especially at a high level and the importance of finishing over perfection.

This episode of Speech Bubble is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula, Adaptdefy and The Amok Podcast Fundraising campaign

Instagram - @jahnoyl

Twitter - @jahnoyl

Buy Luke Cage: Everyman on Comixology

Sponsors

The Amok Podcast Fundraising Campaign

Craig Yeung

Mon, 01 Apr 2019 04:05:04 -0000

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 original inker what he wanted and with Craig right there in the studio, it became right place, right time.

Aaron also goes over Craig's process using India ink with tips for aspiring inkers to make the work go a little faster and they touch on what its like to see a comics Craig worked on (Runaways, Legion, Daughters of the Dragon) be adapted for TV. Finally, Craig shares his hopes for the upcoming Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu movie adaption and gives his own martial arts movie recommendations, including Kill Zone starring Donnie Yun and Sammo Hung.

This episode of Speech Bubble is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula, Hastings Barbershop and the AMOK Podcast Fundraising Campaign.

Instagram - @craigyeung

Twitter - @csyeung

Facebook - @csyeung

Craig's Deviant Art page

Craig's Blog

Buy Riftworld Legends 8 on Comixology

Kill Zone (SPL) trailer

Sponsors

The Amok Podcast Fundraising Campaign

Hastings Barbershop

Mark Laliberte

Mon, 18 Mar 2019 04:05:54 -0000

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 the notice of the wrong authorities sparking an infamous obscenity trial knows as the Head Trip Scandal and a landmark obscenity verdict in Mark's favour that set precedent for obscenity cases in Canada for all time.

On the podcast, Mark admits that winning the case put a certain attention on his career that many independent artists only dream of, including a write-up in The Comics Journal. While spearheading his own experimental indie books like BRICKBRICKBRICK, Grey Supreme 01 r and Suture Series Fragment A: It Looked Like Rain, along with curating avant garde comic anthologies like Dehuman and Sequential Desire, he became the main man at the Canadian literary arts magazine Carousel.

Needing a back page supplement for the magazine, but wanting to stay away from the already played out comic strip, Mark issued a challenge to people he knew in the art scene: take the four panel comic strip format, but stay away from the set-up punchline of the traditional newspaper funnies and experiment.

What he got were four panel strips that pushed the boundaries of the form. Sometimes the four panels simply acted as windows into another world beyond with the panels barely containing what was within them. This challenge became extremely popular, so popular that it quickly moved beyond the carousel back page and was soon published online as the 4 Panel Project and in two anthologies featuring artists like Fiona Smyth, Jessica Bartram, Jesse Jacobs and Hartley Lin.

Mark was so taken by the work of the artists who contributed to the 4 Panel Project that his publishing company Popnoir editions has begun publishing these artists own graphic novels. Jessica Bartram's Ghost Water Kiss and Ben Oneil's Apologetica arrives from Popnoir Editions in Spring 2019, making their debut at the 2019 Toronto Comic Arts Festival.

Mark Laliberte's website

Jason Lapidus

Mon, 04 Mar 2019 05:05:49 -0000

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 just dragged along for the ride. Thankfully, they had the same interests: comics, Wilco, the Leafs, Batman the Animated Series and more. It was enough to hit it off, so when Sanagan proposed this crazy idea for a comic he had to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Canada's involvement in World War I, he went with it.

This is what eventually became known as The Group of 7 – a historical fiction comic centring on the real life convergence of several Canadian historical figures in Europe during WWI, except in this version they're all recruited for an off book secret mission. Think a Canadian League of Extraordinary Gentlemen featuring Conn Smythe, John McCrea, Lester Pearson, Frederick Banting and more.

Jason explains how this project has pushed and challenged him in several unexpected ways and he gives a sneak peek of a spin-off comic coming out of the same alternate history called Peregrines.

This podcast is sponsored by the good folks at Hairy Tarantula and Strangers, the new album from Summer and Youth.

Group of 7 on Facebook

Sponsors

Strangers, the new album from Summer and Youth

Christopher Yao/Shane Heron

Mon, 18 Feb 2019 16:30:28 -0000

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 promise. But a series of personal setbacks and a lack of proper motivation, meant that many of his personal ongoing comic projects didn't make it past the first issue. Then he moved in with Shane and in an environment where everyone around him was constantly drawing, a renewed fire was lit within him. Now, he has a new comic out called Greylight with issue one already on its second print as he works diligently on issue three. Aaron and Chris do a deep dive on Greylight as they trace Chris's emotional comeback in the sequential arts. They highlight several ways he has been able to up his game, including the often underrated skill of drawing background elements like buildings and vehicles to give the comic a sense of time and place. Plus, they reveal a project that marks the comeback of the Canadian superhero he co-created with Cauldron co-editor Sam Noir -- Major North. This podcast is sponsored by the good folks at Hairy Tarantula and Sequential Magazine.

Donate to the Cauldron Magazine Spring 2019 Kickstarter now until February 22, 2019

@yaozagraphx

Yaoza Studio

Chris Yao on Facebook

Chris Yao on Twitter

Sponsors

Sequential Magazine

Idea City 2015 Charlie Hebdo discussion

Wes Tyrell

Mon, 04 Feb 2019 05:05:59 -0000

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 to ring in the new year. As a political head, Wes talks about his time working on a kibbutz in Israel, his four years in Cuba and how political cartooning pushes the envelope internationally way further than your ever allowed to in English Canada where you're much more beholden to the whims of the readership.

Speaking of Cuba, Wes talks about that time he almost died in a car accident there and when his phones were bugged because everyone thought he was an American spy. Wes also breaks down the fundamentals of caricature for Aaron, the dangers of censorship -- including his thoughts on the Charlie Hebdo Massacre and when he learned to dodge bullets – and the disrespect of creative industries, especially cartooning with the death of newspapers.

This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula and Sequential Magazine.

Wes' website

Wes on Twitter

Prophet of Zoom

Wes' books with Neil Crone and David Roth on Goodreads

Association of Canadian Cartoonists

Jonathan Kociuba

Mon, 21 Jan 2019 03:03:03 -0000

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 who literally gets absorbed into his creation following a break-up. Even his band, Summer and Youth, has a new album on the horizon and he's got a new comic he's working on now that marries music with the medium.

Find out what it's like balancing single fatherhood with artistic pursuits, how writing a comic is like writing a song and the origins of the safety coffin.

This podcast is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula

@j.s.kaye

Jonathan's Website

Jonathan's Tumblr

Summer and Youth on Facebook

A Review of Paperhead

Jo Lalonde

Mon, 07 Jan 2019 02:33:50 -0000

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 the opportunity to draw an Overwatch mural for Activision. This episode is the fate of the artist writ large with an unvarnished look at all the blood sweat and chalk dust it takes to nurture and live off such talent. This episode was sponsored by and recorded at Hairy Tarantula during their Hairoween Grand Opening Celebrations on Halloween Weekend 2018.

TheChalkChick.com

The Chalk Chick's Facebook Gallery

The Chalk Chick's Instagram

A blog about The Chalk Chick

Attila Adorjany

Mon, 10 Dec 2018 05:00:58 -0000

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 invited to contribute and these drawings will be made into collectible cards akin to Garbage Pail Kids and may one day be made into Hot Wheels like toys themselves.

Before corporate work took him away from comics, he'd worked for independent publishers like the now defunct Speakeasy on various comics and covers. He'd worked on comic adaptions for Planet of the Apes, Beowulf and Warhammer. His Shuster nominated webcomic Metaphysical Neuroma was best known for breaking the form of comics and they could be read -- sending readers down various, interactive, “Choose Your Own Adventure” rabbit holes. Now he's doing a new comic spinning out of the pages of the Monstrosity anthology called XuluKhan.

In the pod we talk about all of these projects, as well as his take on artistic toys from artists like Ron English, his fascination with diner culture, his appearance as a goon in movies like Dirty Work starring Norm MacDonald and his background being raised by two amazing artists himself. He wanted to be a stuntman, he worked in a mannequin factory and that lead him to special effects, storyboarding and motion graphics. Attila is a true artist --- in the sense that he has done a little of everything – and we get cerebral in tracing his artistic journey and parsing out the importance of impermanence in his artistic philosophy. This podcast is sponsored by and recorded at Hairy Tarantula.

Attila's Facebook Page

Attila on Comic Vine

Hairy Tarantula's Flashback Podcast

Sponsors

Yard Dog on Dundurn Press

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A G Pasquella

Mon, 26 Nov 2018 05:00:54 -0000

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 Toronto on Nov. 29, 2018, Aaron and A.G. go on a long, strange trip that features Adam selling his Marvel stock, just before they were acquired by Disney, Carl Barks and Uncle Scrooge, The Air Pirates and a nearly endless quest recapturing the Texas burger of Adam's youth. Plus: Michael Kupperman of Tales Designed to Thrizzle draws Adam's book covers and the Incredible Hulk's possible current connection to The Synthetic Men of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs is ruminated on. This episode sponsored by Hairy Tarantula and dedicated to Stan Lee.

@agpasquella

A.G.'s Facebook Page

A.G's website

The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library

Michael Kupperman – Tales Designed to Thrizzle

The Air Pirates

Terri Favro

What Mad Universe!?! Podcast

Synthetic Men of Mars

Review of Durango Street

Sponsor

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Joe I the Editor Guy

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 05:00:15 -0000

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 Bubble guest, Shawn Daley (Samurai Grandpa) actually assisted Joe with the art chores on his first comic book, The Iamgrim long before Speech Bubble existed.

So he has the pedigree, but does he have the pitch? We'll let you know if an artist comes forward to make Joseph's comic book dreams come true.

If you are interested in working with Joe, please e-mail him at joe_ianni@hotmail.com

This episode of Speech Bubble is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula

Giant Enemy Comic

Joseph on Twitter

Joseph on Instagram

Echopodcasting.com (Joseph's podcasting portfolio)

Sponsor:

Amazing Challengers indexed on Comics.org

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Evan Munday

Mon, 29 Oct 2018 14:03:05 -0000

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.

The old Sketchkrieg Blog

Quarter-Life Crisis on Goodreads

Quarter-Life Crisis review on the Torontoist

Sponsor

J. Bone's original art for sale

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J Bone

Mon, 15 Oct 2018 04:00:58 -0000

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 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

Sponsor

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

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Sam Maggs/Megan Purdy

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 02:47:38 -0000

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

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

The Artwork of Casey Parsons

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Casey Parsons

Mon, 17 Sep 2018 04:00:19 -0000

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.

Casey's Portfolio

@caseyarts77 on Instagram

Comic 1 Books

Cauldron Kickstarter - Expired

Blood Moon #1 Kickstarter - Expired

Sponsor

@uncoothrooth on Instagram

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Mike Rooth

Mon, 03 Sep 2018 04:00:16 -0000

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

@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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Pages for Pledges

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 04:00:44 -0000

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

Twitter

Facebook

latest comic book - Chronokari Alpha

Website

A review of Yellow Negroes from HyperAllergic.com

Editorial director of Comix Asylum

Jason Roussel

Nik Zezos

Sponsors

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Yvan Alagbe

Mon, 06 Aug 2018 04:00:19 -0000

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 profile of Yvan in the New York Times

A review of Yellow Negroes from The Globe and Mail

Sponsor

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

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Chris Reynolds

Mon, 23 Jul 2018 04:00:13 -0000

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.

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

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Les Adventures of Madame Merveille preview

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Cecil Castellucci

Mon, 09 Jul 2018 04:15:18 -0000

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

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 Hairy Tarantula

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Ho Che Anderson

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 04:05:53 -0000

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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James Kochalka

Mon, 11 Jun 2018 04:00:42 -0000

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 how his childhood anxiety meant only rediscovering superhero comics in his 40s and throws down the gauntlet to any kid who thinks they can make up a better kids comic than he can. Plus, if Ben and Jerry are listening to this, we want to know which one of you gave James a hug.

@the_kochalka

Mechaboys

Johnny Boo and the Ice Cream Computer:

Jame's Music

YouTube Channel:

James supports Zeno Mountain Farm - a summer camp for aspiring filmmakers with disabilities

Eddie Campbell and Audrey Niffenegger

Mon, 28 May 2018 05:32:03 -0000

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 remixed into comics by Eddie. Audrey also joins the interview to reveal secrets of their relationship, her own connection to comics and that she's working on a sequel to The Time Traveler's Wife called The Other Husband. Meanwhile, Eddie is once again stretching his comics journalist muscles previously employed in The Lovely Horrible Stuff for his own new release, The Goat Getters: Jack Johnson, The Fight of the Century and how a bunch of Raucous Cartoonists Reinvented Comics from IDW. The $50.00 USD tome chronicles early comic strip history and looks at early 20th century events through the comic strips that made fun of them in the newspapers of the day. This episode sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

eddiecampbelldammit.com

@ecampbelldammit

audreyniffenegger.com

@AANiffenegger

Buy Bizarre Romance

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Kyle James Smith

Mon, 14 May 2018 04:00:26 -0000

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)

Sponsor

Don’t miss the Amazing Spider-Man #800 signing

Caitlin Major and Kelly Bastow

Mon, 30 Apr 2018 04:31:51 -0000

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 genesis of this latest project and Kelly and Caitlin's friendship, Aaron overshares his his love for his own cat and the lengths certain relatives of his will go to have one. We also learn about the comic scene in Australia and stay tuned until the end for an exclusive Caitlin Major- themed freestyle featuring MC Lil' Spitta! This podcast is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula. Get 10% off geeky t-shirts at riptapparel.com by entering NEVERSLEEPS at checkout.

Buy Manfried the Man The Original Manfried Tumblr Manfried's Instagram Manfried's Facebook Manfried's Twitter Caitlin's Portfolio Caitlin's Twitter Caitlin's Instagram

Kelly's Twitter Kelly's Etsy Kelly's Deviant Art Page Kelly's Tumblr Kelly's Instagram

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Willow Dawson

Mon, 16 Apr 2018 04:08:18 -0000

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 these raw, unfiltered fairy tales where often there was none. Plus, they discuss how fairy tale plagiarism is possible in the time of the oral storytelling tradition.

You'll also hear how the dichotomies in Willow's life: a lover of nature with deathly allergies and a figure skater with serious asthma -- along with a sometimes scary upbringing in an overgrown city full of stranger danger -- came to inform why she took on this project as a mother herself and why she believes the media kids consume has a responsibility to scare them from time to time. This podcast is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula Join us for Sketches for Pledges to benefit cancer research April 21, 2018 at Paradise Comics. Get 10% off geeky t-shirts when you go to riptapparel.com and type NEVERSLEEPS at checkout

Willow's Website @willowdawson Willow's Wikipedia White As Milk, Red As Blood The Guardian Article that Started it All Where Willow used to Work Willow's Favourite Grimm's Fairy Tales Edition Willow's Favourite True Crime Podcast Willow's Favourite Podcast Episode on Fairy Tales Willow's Favourite Podcast Episode on The Brothers Grimm

Sponsors: Hairy Tarantula Sketches for Pledges April 21, 2018 Get 10% off geeky t-shirts when you go to riptapparel.com and type NEVERSLEEPS at checkout.

Andrew Wheeler

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 04:00:19 -0000

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 narratively-speaking, just like his podcast Story Beater, which he hosts with fellow comic scribe and past Speech Bubble guest Anthony Falcone. This podcast is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula Also, please join Speech Bubble host Aaron Broverman at Sketches for Pledges in support of cancer research at Paradise Comics on April 21, 2018 from 10am-6pm. Go to Riptapparel.com and enter NEVERSLEEPS at checkout for 10% off geektastic t-shirts.

Andrew's Story in Osgoode as Gold is called Cenotaph

Read Andrew's New YA Novel For Free!

Andrew's D&D podcast DM'ed by Jim Zub

Story Beater co-hosted with Anthony Falcone

Valentin and the Widow

Andrew's Comics Alliance Archive

Sponsors

Please join Speech Bubble for Sketches for Pledges at Paradise Comics April 21, 2018

Sam Beck

Mon, 19 Mar 2018 04:00:11 -0000

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 geeky t-shirts at riptapprel.com by ordering using this link.

Toronto Comics Anthology Kickstarter (Contribute until March 31, 2018)

Wayward Sisters Anthology

Cadmus

Sponsors Hairy Tarantula

Get 10% off geeky pop culture t-shirts from Riptapparel.com by entering NEVERSLEEPS at checkout

Matthew Daley

Mon, 05 Mar 2018 05:00:13 -0000

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 Kaluta's Metropolis. This episode sponsored by Hairy Tarantula. For 10% off geeky pop culture t-shirts visit www.riptapparel.com and enter code NEVERSLEEPS at checkout.

Twitter: @shinypliers

Instagram: @shinypliers

www.shinypliers.com

Matthew Daley's Etsy Store

Plier Pants/Mr. Monitor

The Errol Dynamic Theme Song (heard in this episode)

Broken Pencil presents Mr. Monitor

Buy Plier Pants Comics at Comixology

Episode Sponsors:

The Secret Loves of Geeks

Get 10% off Geeky Pop Culture t-shirts at Riptapparel.com by entering NEVERSLEEPS at checkout.

Diana McCallum

Mon, 19 Feb 2018 05:00:04 -0000

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 conversation. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula. Buy geektastic t-shirts at riptapparel.com and receive 10% OFF when you enter code NEVERSLEEPS at checkout.

@WordsofDiana

@picsofdiana

From Superheroes

Sketch from Superheroes

Sponsors: Hairy Tarantula

Ript Apparel – Click here to receive 10% off when you buy a geektacular t-shirt

Brendan Montgomery

Mon, 05 Feb 2018 05:00:07 -0000

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. This episode sponsored by Hairy Tarantula

@cancomicswiki

Canadian Independent Comic Book Wiki Homepage

@cancomicswiki (Instagram)

@Mongomerydigital

Brendan Montgomery's Art

Gael Force Kickstarter

Queen's Comic Book Legion Homepage

Queen's Comic Book Legion Facebook Group

Steve Kerzner

Mon, 22 Jan 2018 05:00:17 -0000

Hey, Fan Persons! In another installment of our Comics on Comics series, Steve Kerzner is the creative force and executive producer behind the big personality that is Ed the Sock. Children of the 1990s to mid 2000s will remember Ed as the acerbic and outspoken puppet hosting programs on MuchMusic like Fromage - his annual take down of pop culture and Ed and Red's Night Party, his late-night show with co-host and co-creator Liana K on CityTV. Steve comes to Speech Bubble to let his geek flag fly, revealing that his house is decked out with all kinds of comic book memorabilia and his wedding band is the jewel encrusted crest of his favourite hero – Superman. He talks about the opportunity Ed gave him to meet his heroes including Stan Lee – who he pitched a comic about his superhuman childhood cleaning lady. We also talk about why, for him, DC heroes are heroes thanks to the purity of their morality and why the moral ambiguity of the largely failed DCEU doesn't work for him. Plus, here the true story of how Triumph the Insult Comic Dog ripped him off, his take on the #MeToo and “Cosplay is not Consent” movements and the genesis of the new YouTube show Ed the Sock Lives! This episode sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

@stevenjkerzner

Stephen & Steven Talk Politics podcast

Steven Kerzner on IMDB

@EdtheSock

EdtheSock.com

FU Network Fan Page

Ed the Sock Lives! (Ed's new show on YouTube)

Ed the Sock webstagram

Episode Sponsor: Hairy Tarantula

Keith Grachow

Mon, 08 Jan 2018 05:00:45 -0000

Recorded live over breakfast at the Halibut House in Burlington, Ontario Canada, Keith Grachow is an independent comic artist whose credits include Concrete Martians, Saltwater, Polybius Dream and the independent children's book series Up in the Sky written by his mom Amy. Exposed to comics and graphic design at a very young age, he didn't start embracing his artistic side until the final year of high school. He talks about overcoming his hangups and fear around doing comics professionally and what it took to fully commit. Though he'd joined Bright Anvil Studios, it wasn't until he moved to Japan that his desire to do comics kicked into high gear. He also talks about letting go of the dream of working for DC and Marvel and what it takes to finance his indie work. Plus, he talks about what it's like working with his mom and with a 13-year-old on a comic called Weapon Warriors. Oh, and he loves craft beer!

Keith Grachow's Website

Keith Grachow's Facebook

@keith_grachow (Instagram))

@kgrachow (Twitter)

Order Concrete Martians (Part 1) (Part 2)

Polybius Dreams

Saltwater

Order On a Planet Named Up in the Sky

Weapon Warriors

JnK Imagery (the business Keith owns with his wife Jenn)

Ed Brisson

Mon, 18 Dec 2017 05:00:15 -0000

Born in Toronto, grew up in Oshawa and now living in Kelowna, B.C., Marvel writer Ed Brisson (Old Man Logan, Iron Fist) regales us with his 18-year odyssey trying to break into comics. Even after he seemingly broke in with The Comeback for Image Comics, there was still a period where he was being rent-evicted from his home in Vancouver, all his comics work had basically dried up and he was mere moments away from taking on a full-time job before Marvel offered him a solo title starring the Daredevil villain Bullseye. Thankfully he hasn't looked back since, but his harrowing experience with Vancouver real estate inspired the Vancouver-centric noir, The Violent, which exposes the seedy underbelly of a city on many top ten destination lists. Recorded on location from The Pan Pacific Hotel during Fan Expo Vancouver, Brisson discusses the pressure of taking over Old Man Logan from Jeff Lemire and what speaks to him about an older Wolverine. He also talks about how his dad's position as a karate teacher and Shaw Brothers Kung Fu movies influenced his run on Iron Fist. Episode Sponsored by Hairy Tarantula

Ed Brisson's website

@edbrisson

Ed Brisson's Instagram

Episode Sponsor:

D.A Bishop: Morte

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 05:00:39 -0000

D.A. Bishop returns to Speech Bubble from his basemment studio in Pickering, Ontario to promote his groundbreaking co-creation with writer Kevin Joseph, Morte published by Source Point Press – a silent one-shot comic starring a man who is presumably the last human on earth in a post-apocalyptic future living out his days performing a seemingly monotonous but necessary task. In this short episode, Aaron and David debate who is more important in the production of a silent comic – the writer or the artist? They briefly discuss other occurrences of silent comics in the mainstream industry before dissecting how Bishop became involved in Morte and where an idea that's such a profound meditation on what it means to be human came from.

@Renerd

www.renerd.com

Source Point Press

Bishop's Facebok Fanpage

Rogues Portal's Advanced Review of Morte

Todd Sullivan and Miike

Mon, 20 Nov 2017 05:00:25 -0000

Malcolm Derikx aka Miike and Todd Sullivan met as classmates at Ty Templeton's Comic Book Bootcamp. Both fans of old gangster movies and noir, they always wanted to work together, but other projects got in the way. Malcolm helped found the Toronto Comics Anthology and Hogtown Horror and Todd was teaching animation as a former animator on Tiny Toon Adventures and Darkwing Duck. Eventually they did come together for a gangster romp called Tommy Gun Banshee featuring an assassin named Nicky who is haunted by a whaling banshee who can only be drowned out by the Rat-tat-tat of his Tommy Gun. The two come to Speech Bubble to pimp their Kickstarter for the project and geek out over how war always seems to spawn a criminal element throughout history.

Tommy Gun Banshee Kickstarter

@MiikeSomething

@ToddSullivanArt

artoftoddsullivan.blogspot.ca

Toronto Comics Anthology

Hogtown Horror

Wayward Sisters: Allison O'Toole, M. Blankier and Lorena Loaiza

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 05:05:51 -0000

Former Toronto Comics Anthology and current Chapterhouse Publishing editor Allison O'Toole returns to Speech Bubble with a groundbreaking new project. Wayward Sisters: An Anthology of Monstrous Women features an all-female and non-binary cast of comic creators telling monster stories from their own perspectives. Following in the footsteps of other recent comic anthologies written and drawn from a minority point-of-view, Wayward is still something the mainstream comic industry has never seen, much less attempted, at a time when new readers are hungering for something more. Allison brings her assistant editor and former Marvel intern Margot Blankier and contributor Lorena Loaiza to the studio and the three discuss their love of The Gothic, why work like this is needed now and has already proven profitable and how this anthology widens the definition of monster to those who are already perceived that way by society. The Wayward Sisters Kickstarter is live until Nov. 10, 2017. The episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Wayward Sisters Kickstarter (Donate until Nov. 10, 2017)

@wsanthology Instagram

@WSAnthology Twitter

Wayward Sisters Website

Lorena's Instagram

BBC article on The Castle of Otranto (The first Gothic Tale)

Manhwa (Korean Manga)

The Shadow Over Innsmouth (The H.P. Lovecraft story that inspired M. Blankier's story “Low Tide”)

The H.P. Lovecraft Archive

The Lives, Deaths and Afterlives of Judy Garland (This changed M. Blankier's Life)

Guillermo Del Toro: At Home with Monsters

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Millarworld 2017

The Secret Loves of Geek Girls

Wayward Sisters

Blocked

Talking Comics Podcast Archive

Anthony Falcone

Mon, 25 Sep 2017 04:44:31 -0000

Last episode we talked to artist Gibson Quarter and this one features his Quid Pro Quo collaborator and fellow RAID studiomate -- writer Anthony Falcone. Anthony has written everything from novels to screenplays, but he is perhaps best known as the writer of the Northguard comic book for Canadian publisher Chapterhouse. Find out how original Northguard co-creator Mark Shainblum passed down the writing chores of the newly rebooted series to Anthony and how integrated the hero into the Chapterhouse Universe. Then we discuss what it's really like to work at RAID and the new studio anthology RAID.ONE where Anthony also collaborated with Marcus To (Nightwing, Guardians of the Galaxy) and Ramon Perez (Jim Henson's Tale of Sand) on some original stories he has big plans for. Finally, we discuss his first novel Comic Con-men, its planned sequel and the true keys to his prodigious productivity. After you listen to our conversation, don't forget to check out Anthony's own writing podcast, Storybeater with fellow Chapterhouse scribe Andrew Wheeler (Freelance).

Anthony's Website

@anthonyfalconewriter – Instagram

@Afalconewriter – Twitter

Gibson Quarter

Mon, 11 Sep 2017 04:28:54 -0000

Another member of the RAID Studio graces the Never Sleeps Network Studio in promotion of the group's RAID.One anthology featuring original work from celebrated artists Francis Manapul, Ramon Perez and this man, Gibson Quarter. Gibson's name may not be as familiar yet in North America because a lot of his work is published in Europe. On this episode, Gibson describes how his love for the work of famed Scottish comic artist Frank Quitely lead to him breaking into the European comic market working for Quitely's first publisher and then later signing comics beside him at the Glasgow Comicon. Though Gibson loves that he's known in Europe, he reveals that having published work only available across the pond has hurt his career stateside a little bit. Still he perseveres, supplying covers and interiors for some issues of Canadian hero, Auroraman, Frogman #3: The Death of Frogman and working as the co-creator of The Organ Grinder, a character that first appeared in the independent anthology series Undertow published by 7th Wave Comics based in Seattle. This episode sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Frogman 3: The Death of Frogman Kickstarter

Wasted

Auroraman

Episode Sponsor:

Drawn and Quarterly (Seth's publisher)

Seth

Fri, 01 Sep 2017 04:00:00 -0000

Aaron journeys to Inkwell's End, the home and studio of Canadian award-winning cartoonist Seth (Palookaville, Clyde Fans, It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken, Wimbledon Green, George Sprott) in Guelph, Ontario Canada. In doing so, he steps into a time-warp and a space Seth best describes as, “post war-kitsch.” Think your grandma's house if the furniture was still pristine, the radio still worked and toys from the early 20th century lined the walls. It's all just another aspect of the extremely well-crafted and curated personal brand that is Seth – a man who consciously harkens back to a certain formality in the way he dresses and conducts himself. Seth reveals how his love of this early 20th century aesthetic is rooted in his relationship with his older parents. He also discusses what it was like to not like who he was as a young person and consciously build a new identity for himself. Then, what he went through training others to accept that new identity. Even now he struggles with being an attention seeker who doesn't like attention. A true iconoclast, Seth details his artistic influences in comics, but also emphasizes the importance of having artistic works that aren't for public consumption. Meanwhile, Seth is constantly interrogating his own artistic process and deeply questions why he likes what he does and why he does what he does at all times. This episode sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

A video tour of Inkwell's End (Macleans Magazine)

Seth's Dominion (A National Film Board of Canada documentary on Seth)

Mr. X (Vortex Publishing)

Renann Isaacs Gallery of Contemporary Art

Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood (an exhibition featuring Seth at the Art Gallery of Ontario June 29 – February 18, 2017)

Crown Barbershop (Owned and operated by Seth's wife Tania Van Spyk)

Seth's Influences Mentioned:

Love and Rockets

The New Yorker Cartoons (Peter Arno, Charles Addams, etc.)

Episode Sponsor:

Drawn and Quarterly (Chester's Publisher)

Chester Brown

Fri, 18 Aug 2017 04:00:00 -0000

Inspired by Robert Crumb, Crad Kilodney, Art Spiegelman, Seth and other alternative cartoonists, Chester Brown uses his autobiographical comics work to confront issues that he's currently wrestling with or make him uncomfortable. Whether it was the use of scatological humour in Ed the Happy Clown, his relationship with women and his own mother in I Never Liked You or his journey to becoming a John in Paying For It, it's easier for him to unpack his own hang ups when they're made public. Brown talks about how he initially broke into comics with the self-published Yummy Fur, why his art style owes a lot to Harold Gray, the man who behind the Little Orphan Annie comic strip and why being a John makes him more comfortable than being a boyfriend, even though his current arrangement isn't all that different from the traditional relationship he's trying to avoid. Plus, Brown teaches Aaron how he deals with negative self-talk and criticism of his work.

Chester Brown's Patreon

NPR Review of Chester's Latest, “Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus”

Yummy Fur on Wikipedia

@DrawnandQuarterly

Philosophers that inspire Chester:

Robert Anton Wilson

Colin Wislon

Byron Katie

This Episode is Sponsored By Hairy Tarantula!

Peter Birkemoe and Christopher Butcher

Fri, 04 Aug 2017 04:19:00 -0000

The Beguiling Books & Art is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2017, so Aaron welcomes its current owner Peter Birkemoe and outgoing shop manager and current Toronto Comic Art Festival artistic director Christopher Butcher. Together they trace the shop's history from its beginnings on Harbord Street to its current status as Toronto's destination for independent comics. We discuss how both Chris and Peter grew to mostly detest mainstream superhero comics in favour of the more intellectual and independent fare, before discussing the evolution of the Toronto Comics Art Festival from a small comic convention in the Honest Ed's store parking lot to a showcase of comic art from around the world at the Toronto Reference Library. This conversation finds The Beguiling in a state of transition, as they just moved from their long time location in Toronto's Mirvish Village to a new location on College Street. If that weren't enough, Chris is leaving his post as store manager to become Viz Media's man in Canada. Needless to say, there's lots to talk about. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Page & Panel Online Shop

Toronto Comic Art Festival

Studio Comix Press's Official Website

Alfonso Espinos

Fri, 28 Jul 2017 04:00:00 -0000

Alfonso Espinos was born and raised in Mexico where, over 20 years ago, he launched Studio Comix Press to self-publish The Night Spike, a cartoon, superhero parody comic. It could've just been another obscure Spanish-language imprint, but then he met his wife and moved to Kitchener, Ontario where things got a lot more challenging. The jokes in The Night Spike didn't immediately properly translate from Spanish to English, so he sat watching Canada's Comedy Network for hours taking notes just to understand Canada's sense of humour. His drive did not end there. Most comic creators rest on one successful comic, but now there's 12 being published under the Studio Comix Press banner. Espinos didn't rest on his laurels there either. He prints comics for fellow creators, including some non-Cerebus work from Dave Sim, produces educational colouring and activity books for children and will soon open a comic shop selling only Canadian independent comics. How does he do it all? Listen and find out. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula. Want to win some Studio Comix Press comics? Like or Follow @SpeechBubblePod on social media and comment #StudioComixPress for your chance to win.

@studiocomix

Studio Comix Press's Instagram

Studio Comix Press's Facebook Page

The Night Spike

Heroes Manufactured starring Alfonso Espinos

Alfonso Espinos's Heroes Manufactured bio

Andrew Thomas

Fri, 21 Jul 2017 04:00:00 -0000

Andrew Thomas lucked out. Just as his indie comic Post-Human (kind of Inspector Gadget meets film noir) was disintegrating because of creative differences with the writer, the Northern Ontario Comicon in Timmins, Ontario contacted him about developing an ongoing superhero series featuring its mascot – an anthropomorphic lion in medieval garb named Auric of the Great White North. The local media latched on to the hero they could finally call their own and the title has been a hit ever since -- already on issue three and having made multiple printings of the prior issue zero mini comic. Meanwhile, as a talented and fast letterer, he soon found himself lettering all the comics printed by Chapterhouse Publishing, including Captain Canuck, Northguard, Freelance, The Pitiful Human-Lizard and Agents of P.A.C.T. to name a few. He even gets to illustrate a variant cover or two for them now and then (not a bad gig). We talk about all of it, as well as why it's so important to spread comic book culture through small town Ontario. This Episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Andrew's Site

@mr_andrewthomas

post-human

Auric of The Great White North

Chapterhouse Publishing

@val_delandro (Instagram)

Valentine De Landro

Fri, 14 Jul 2017 07:26:44 -0000

As the co-creator of Bitch Planet, comic artist Valentine De Landro gets to explore intersectional feminism and build a world representing all kinds of women of all kinds of races, minorities and body types, a far cry from his days as an African-Canadian comic fan when he didn't often see himself represented and had to tolerate a spate of heroes with “Black” in front of their name. We talk about that awkwardness and the eerie way Bitch Planet's second arc began to allude to Hilary Clinton's defeat in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election without really meaning to. While De Landro thanks fans for their overwhelming support of the series and the way they've created a family in the comic book's back matter, we openly wonder whether society is really as woke as it purports to be with incidents like the shooting of Philandro Castile still happening at an alarming frequency. This episode sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

@val_delandro (Twitter)

Valentine's Website

Bitch Planet's website

The Pushpin (Buy a Valentine De Landro print)

Milk Fed (Kelly Sue Deconnick's company)

Image's Bitch Planet Page

#noncompliant

#visiblewomen (send your portfolio to Kelly Sue Deconnick)

The Asylum Squad Webcomic

Sarafin

Fri, 07 Jul 2017 04:00:00 -0000

Sarafin is the writer and artist behind the independent webcomic and graphic novel series Asylum Squad. The fictional story is very loosely inspired by Sarafin’s own experiences during a year an in-patient facility where she was receiving treatment for mental illness and follows four teenage patients drafted into an experimental drug trial that allows them to battle their inner demons like a psychiatric Justice League. This episode delves into what lead to Sarafin being institutionalized and why she began her comic as an outlet for what she was experiencing. We also explain the Mad Pride movement and why Sara considers herself a mad-identified person as an unintentional celebrity within that community. You will also learn why those who’ve gone through the mental health system often have a problem with Bell Let’s Talk Day – a mental health awareness day and fundraiser spearheaded by one of Canada’s leading telecommunications companies. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

@Asylum_Squad

Buy Asylum Squad Graphic Novels

Asylum Squad Facebook Page

Asylum Squad: Code White (The Asylum Squad Video Game)

Carl Jung’s Shadow Self (inspiration for Asylum Squad: Jung Ones)

Paul Soles' bio – The Canadian Encyclopedia

Paul Soles

Thu, 29 Jun 2017 04:00:00 -0000

We all remember the original 1967 Spider-Man cartoon (you know the one with the catchy theme song) but did you know that all the dialogue for the series was recorded in Toronto and Paul Soles, the voice of Peter Parker/Spider-Man, is not only still around, but still acting at 86-years-young as the star of the new CBC Comedy web series, My 90-year-old Roommate? The legend comes by to spill secrets from the production of Spider-Man, including the fact that the voice acting company for all the original Marvel cartoons – Spider-Man, The Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man, Marvel Superheroes and more – was originally put together during the production of the Rankin/Bass stop-motion animation classic Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer where Paul starred as Hermey the Elf. Fast forward into the 2000s and Paul inadvertently found himself a member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe thanks to a live-action bit part in 2008's The Incredible Hulk and a prior relationship with star Edward Norton. This episode of Speech Bubble is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Paul Soles' IMDB

Spider-Man (1967) – Full Episodes

My 90-year-old Roommate – CBC Comedy

Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer 1964 TV Special (Full Movie)

Paul Soles and Edward Norton (The Incredible Hulk deleted scene)

The Score – Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Marlon Brando and Paul Soles (Full Movie)

Paul Soles CBC Interview (1987)

CBC's Take 30 – Adrienne Clarkson and Paul Soles in Swingin' London (1966)

Nicholas Brown and Evan Henderson

Thu, 22 Jun 2017 04:00:00 -0000

As regular listeners to this podcast will know, it’s no secret that our host is a huge Sandman fan and works in a Sandman reference in almost every episode. So when he heard Nicholas Brown and Evan Henderson were making a 35-minute fan film adapting Sandman #6: “24 Hours” called Sandman: 24-hour Diner, Aaron had to have them on the show. The film screens on June 25, 2017 at 7 p.m. at Toronto’s Royal Cinema. Then, at midnight, it will be released on Vimeo for the whole world to see. This episode of Speech Bubble serves as a primer for the movie, with behind-the-scenes tidbits, cool on set anecdotes and the story of how the film got made, as only the filmmakers can bring it to you. Plus, learn about Evan’s weird connection to Neil Gaiman and why Ken Lashley (X-Men Prime) was an early mentor to him. This episode sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Sandman: 24-Hour Diner Trailer

BlogTO’s Sandman: 24-Hour Diner Screening Announcement

Sandman: 24-Hour Diner Official Facebook Page

Sandman #6 "24 Hours" Digital Comic

Sandman: 24-Hour Diner Facebook Event

Comic Book Resources names Sandman #6 "24 Hours" scariest comic of all-time!

Sandman #6 DC Comics Wiki Page

Shot at Ted's Restaurant

The Minnesota Wrecking Crew with Kids in the Hall's Kevin McDonald

Nug Nahrgang

Thu, 15 Jun 2017 08:34:17 -0000

Nug Nahrgang’s success as an award-winning sketch comedian and improviser seems like a series of stumbled upon happenstances. First, Nug accidentally got himself hired at Second City, then he somehow scored an audition for Saturday Night Live! He scored memorable bit parts in The Love Guru with Mike Meyers and Owning Mahowny with the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, both at a time when he was sure his scenes would be left on the cutting room floor. Nug has managed to meet Vince McMahon, and William Shatner, and improvise on stage with legends like Colin Mocherie, Catherine O’Hara, and Martin Short. Through it all, his status as a dyed-in-the-wool comic book and sci-fi geek have served him well. He puts together the Illusionoid podcast with fellow improvisers Paul Bates and Lee Smart. Illusionoid is a completely improvised old-timey sci-fi radio play that operates with nothing but the episode title as a suggestion. Nug and the Illusionoid gang will be performing at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema as part of a live episode of CBC’s Podcast Playlist on June 15, 2017 at 6:30 p.m. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

@NugNahrgang

Nug's IMDB Page

Illusionoid

Podcast Playlist Live

Nug on Instagram

Rebecca Diem

Thu, 08 Jun 2017 09:32:09 -0000

Rebecca Diem is a co-organizer of Comic Shop Ladies Night, a pop-up after hours social just for the ladies, held at a rotating list of comic shops across Toronto. She’s also the author of a series of popular, self-published steampunk adventure novellas titled Tales of Captain Duke. After running through the early influences and inspirations that got her into comics and writing, which range from Archie and Saved by the Bell to Neil Gaiman and the Sunday Funnies, her grandma sent her, we get into the process behind and inspiration for Captain Duke. This episode will also give listeners a very layered explanation as to what steampunk actually is. Here we explore its role in reclaiming progressive ideas in a romanticized past and how some with disabilities adopt the aesthetic for empowerment. Then we move on to Comic Shop Ladies Night and dispel the notion that comics were ever or always a male-dominated fandom. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

rebeccadiem.com

@kthnxbex - Twitter

@kthnxbex - Instagram

Rebecca's Goodreads profile

The Stowaway Debutante on Amazon

Bridgehead Coffee Shop

Comic Shop Ladies Night

Altered States Comics (Stephany's the artist in residence)

Stephany Lein

Thu, 01 Jun 2017 04:12:38 -0000

As Wonder Woman hits theaters this week, we present a woman who champions and embodies many of her best qualities as a great admirer of the character. Stephany Lein grew up as a child whose circumstances forced her to be almost completely self-sufficient, independent and strong in the face of familial adversity. She now passes on many of the lessons she learned and the coping mechanisms she had to the children who read her independent all ages comics work. There’s Strays, which is about a girl who finds the love of a dog after being kicked out of the house when she comes out to her parents. Then there’s Shelly, her upcoming project about a rebellious preteen girl who confronts heavy issues like bullying and a friend’s death from leukemia. As Stephany says, “Kids can handle it. We shouldn’t baby them.” This episode is brought to you by Hairy Tarantula.

@jupejuperocket

Stephany's Instagram

Stephany's website

Shelly Patreon

Stephany's Deviant Art Page

Stephany's Comixology

J. Torres DC Comics profile page

J Torres

Thu, 25 May 2017 15:10:12 -0000

Even though he’s written horror comics and Batman: Legends Of The Dark Knight, J. Torres is known best for all ages Comics like Batman: Brave and the Bold, Teen Titans Go! and his current project The Mighty Zodiac. He has also written many Degrassi comics so he has more than a few Drake stories. In this conversation we drill down on why more kids are into comics than ever before, what DC and Marvel can do to attract new readers while keeping their diehard fans and what it took for this former ESL teacher to break into comics and live his childhood dream. Then we geek out even harder, learning why J thinks Cyborg doesn’t belong in the Justice League and that you should always be able to hug a superhero. This episode was recorded in front of a live audience at Hairy Tarantula in Toronto, Ontario Canada for their 25th anniversary.

@jtorrescomics

Jtorrescomics.com

J. Torres' Facebook fan page

J Torres' Instagram

Ally Rom Colthoff

Thu, 18 May 2017 08:00:17 -0000

Ally comes to Speech Bubble while her Kickstarter for volume 3 of her long-running webcomic Chirault is in full swing. Chirault is a high fantasy adventure akin to comic book fantasy classics like Elfquest and Bone. The comic stars Teeko, a girl hit with a wayward shrinking spell who enlists the help of a demon hunter named Kiran. As the two go on a quest to find a cure for Teeko, they uncover a vast conspiracy tied to Kiran’s past. Ally discusses the genesis of Chirault, her role as a member of the SpiderForest Webcomic Collective and her latest contribution to the Toronto Comics Anthology Volume 4.

Steve Murray’s National Post archive

Chip Zdarsky

Thu, 11 May 2017 05:19:00 -0000

Before he was comic industry iconoclast Chip Zdarsky, artist on Sex Criminals and writer on Kaptara, Jughead, Star-Lord, Howard the Duck and Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man (coming: June 2017), he was Barrie, Ontario’s Steve Murray. Growing up as a lonely geek with amazingly supportive parents, including a mother who let him and his brother make fun of his father at will, he would eventually become a cartoonist and humour journalist for The National Post newspaper. Then, an opportunity to watch Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau beat someone up in a boxing match, somehow led to his collaboration with Matt Fraction on Sex Criminals and the rest, as they say, is history … This episode was recorded in front of a live audience on location at Hairy Tarantula in Toronto, Ontario, Canada for their 25th anniversary celebration.

The Applebee’s Exchange

Marvin Law’s Facebook Page

Anthony Ruttgaizer

Thu, 04 May 2017 03:00:00 -0000

On the last day of his Kickstarter for Heroes of Homeroom C, First Hero creator Anthony Ruttgaizer takes aspiring comic creators school. He explains why some creators need a reality check when it comes to their skill level and how being unable to receive such honest feedback from the professionals who know is detrimental to their success. He also explains why the history, legacy and structure of DC and Marvel will always hinder their ability to produce anything authentically diverse. We also touch on his pro wrestling career, why he started his own comic company, Aristocrats Comics and what it feels like to fail at one Kickstarter campaign only to come back and build another one. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Marvin Law

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 22:00:00 -0000

Marvin Law’s first few years as a comic fan were pretty traumatic. As a single digit age kid, he watched Batman beat Superman to a pulp in Dark Knight Returns, his favourite character, The Flash, died in Crisis on Infinite Earths and he read Watchmen way too early. Meanwhile, his father who trained in Wing Chung Kung Fu under Ip Man at the same time as Bruce Lee, exposed him to Hong Kong comics. All of it influenced Marvin’s later career as a comic artist. Somewhat of a local legend in the Toronto comic book scene as a script doctor. He once mentored artist Adrian Alphona (Ms. Marvel) on how to layout the first few issues of the critically-acclaimed Runaways as the editor-in-chief of the now defunct Bright Anvil Studios. These days he is drawing self-published indie comics like Kronk the Neanderthal with writer Phil McClorey and now Zip Kramer. Thanks to a special in-studio appearance from Zip writer Sam Noir, the two discuss the genesis of the project, which is now looking for funding on Kickstarter until May 11, 2017. This Episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Marvin Law’s Deviant Art Page

Zip Kramer Kickstarter

@HeySamNoir

Shawn Daley

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 12:00:00 -0000

Shawn Daley came to comics through the unlikely path of music. As an audio intern at a recording studio, he was exposed to his boss’s comic book collection. While powering through classics like Chester Brown’s Louis Riel, Watchmen and The Walking Dead, he quickly became inspired to create his own comics. Enter TerraQuill, a continent Daley created where his ongoing webcomic of the same name takes place. Completely self-taught, he learned everything he knows about comics making TerraQuill Collected – a collection of short stories all taking place in the TerraQuill universe. Meanwhile, he never completely abandoned music, but these days he composes chiptune soundtracks for 8-bit independent video game projects. Now, he occupies a unique space, as a bridge between Toronto’s large indie comic and indie gaming communities. This episode sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Danny Zabbal

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 22:30:00 -0000

Danny Zabbal was living a largely directionless life until getting the sh— beat out of him, while defending the honour of the girl he was dating inadvertently awakened his true potential. There’s nothing quite like getting punched in the face to make you reevaluate your priorities, so he broke up with the girl, moved to Toronto and met his wife who would eventually become the inspiration for the main character for his comic series Life, Death and Sorcery. Published by and edited by past Speech Bubble guest Allison O’Toole, the critically-acclaimed series follows a teenager who becomes the steward of a magic power at the centre of a conflict between two families of sorcerers that spans across time, space and alternate realities. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Danny Zabbal

Chapterhouse Comics

Danny Zabbal’s Instagram

Life, Death and Sorcery on Comixology

Cosmicon 1972-1975: A Tell-all Expose by Ron Kasman

Scott Sawyer

Wed, 05 Apr 2017 23:00:00 -0000

Scott Sawyer is the writer and artist behind North – an independent comic chronicling the adventures of Canada’s newest superhero team. Think of North as the Justice League if the Justice League were made in Canada and on their first adventure together, they found themselves dangling from the CN Tower. Scott explains why he decided to take unrelated characters he doodled in a sketchbook years ago and use them to turn the typical first issue of any team book – the recruitment – on its head. Then, we talk about his failed pilot for a Canadian superhero show, Split City, starring The Kid’s in the Hall’s Scott Thompson and Geri Hall from This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Plus, if you’ve often wondered why historically there has been more bad than good on Canadian television, Scott may have some answers for you.

This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula. Join Speech Bubble from 2-3pm on location at Hairy T (6979 Yonge Street Toronto, ON.) April 7-9, 2017 to celebrate Hairy Tarantula’s 25th anniversary as we record our first live episodes with guests Chip Zdarsky on Saturday, April 8th and J. Torres on Sunday, April 9th. Signings will follow each appearance, so bring your comics and get them signed by these two Eisner award winning industry behemoths. Chip will sign from 3-5pm on Saturday and J. will sign from 3-4pm on Sunday. Also, the first 25 people in line for the J. Torres signing will get a free comic signed by the man himself.

North’s website

Scott’s Twitter

Scott’s IMDB

Ron Kasman

Wed, 29 Mar 2017 10:00:00 -0000

Ron Kasman is the man behind The Tower of the Comic Book Freaks, a graphic novel and coming of age story of friends who travel from Toronto to a New York City in 1971 for a comic convention and how the events at that convention change their lives. Though the story is fictional, it mimics many of Kasman’s experiences as a comic fan in the 1970s. Ron actually played an integral part in Toronto’s budding comic scene. His first comic shop was Canada’s first comic shop, “Captain George” Henderson’s Memory Lane Books on Markham Street. He also helped organize Cosmicon, what was likely Toronto’s first comic convention, at York University where he watched legendary artist Neal Adams drop acid for the one and only time in his life. If that weren’t enough, Ron served as a reference model for comic artists and worked professionally as a letterer for DC Comics. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Ron Kasman’s Tumblr blog

The Tower of the Comic Book Freaks

Caliber Comics (Publisher of The Tower of the Comic Book Freaks)

Episode Sponser: Hairy Tarantula.

Ramon Perez

Thu, 23 Mar 2017 01:00:00 -0000

Eisner award-winning comic artist and de-facto patriarch of Toronto’s Raid Studio Ramon Perez (Nova, Hawkeye, Spider-Man: Learn to Crawl) comes by to tell us what it’s like to be called an overnight sensation when you’ve been toiling in the industry for years. Thanks to the awards and accolades for his graphic masterpiece Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand, he has now drawn many Marvel icons like Hawkeye, Spider-Man, Nova, Wolverine and the X-Men. He might be in demand like never before, but you’ll hear he has always been uncompromising with his artistic vision, even as a non-name up-and-comer working on his own projects, Butternut Squash and Kukuburi. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

Episode Sponser: Hairy Tarantula.

Megan Kearney

Thu, 16 Mar 2017 09:00:00 -0000

With the live-action version of Beauty and the Beast opening Friday (March 17, 2017) there’s no better time to talk to Megan Kearney (The Secret Loves of Geek Girls). She’s a comic writer, artist and animator who is currently producing her own Beauty and the Beast the Comic Series web comic, but hers is not the Disney version. She tells us how the original fairytale is much more about Belle’s journey, while the Disney version focuses much more on the Beast’s character and why her webcomic tries to give equal time to both. We also discuss the evolution of fairy tales in general, her love of manga and how being the manager of Toronto’s basically made her career. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

@SpookyMeggie

Megan’s Website

The Secret Loves of Geek Girls

Beauty and the Beast the Comic Series

Comic Book Embassy

Once Upon a Winter Wood (Megan’s animated short film)

Fearless Fred Kennedy

Thu, 09 Mar 2017 12:00:00 -0000

If you live in Toronto, you know him as the popular DJ on 102.1 The Edge. But his comic book geek cred is strongest as the writer behind the scifi epic, The Fourth Planet published quarterly by Chapterhouse Comics. He’ll tell us how the idea had its roots in his love of paleo-cultural anthropology (the origins of culture) and how Marvel’s Infinity Gauntlet changed his life. Meanwhile, we discuss why the endless crossover events and relaunches are ruining comics, how Fred got his start in radio and why he entered the ring with his own podcast Issue Zero. This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula.

K Trevor Wilson’s IMDB profile

Comics on Comics: K Trevor Wilson

Thu, 02 Mar 2017 08:26:00 -0000

Speech Bubble: Comics on Comics: K Trevor Wilson

Aaron faces off with the Mountain Man…er…Man Mountain of comedy for this second episode of the Comics on Comics series. Our host gets tips on performing the perfect Letterkenny dialect from Squirrely Dan himself before the two explore the reasons behind K Trev’s love of The Incredible Hulk and Professional Wrestling. Oh, and we also learn that the best way to book a stand-up comedy spot on Jimmy Kimmel Live is by bumping into Jimmy in the men’s room.

@KTrevorWilson

Letterkenny’s Best of Squirrely Dan

Buy K Trevor Wilson’s comedy album SexCop FirePenis

K Trevor Wilson’s performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live

Episode Sponsored by Hairy Tarantula

Daniel Brodie

Thu, 23 Feb 2017 07:00:00 -0000

A backpacking trip through Amsterdam had Daniel Brodie wondering if he was really in control of his body and that led to Morgan’s Organs – his comic that takes a look at the various characters controlling the organs of a college student named Morgan. Touted as Pixar’s Inside Out for grown ups, Morgan’s Organs was meant to be an animated TV show, but is now a comic funding its second issue through Kickstarter as of this recording’s release. Brodie talks about the projects transformation and the deeper meanings that underlie its sophomoric humour. This episode sponsored by Hairy Tarantula — join them for week two of their bye-buy sale at their 354 Yonge St. location from Feb. 17th to 23rd, 2017.

Morgan’s Organs

Facebook

Episode Sponsored by Hairy Tarantula

Tings Chak

Wed, 08 Feb 2017 07:00:00 -0000

With U.S. President Donald Trump writing executive orders outlining his intent to build a wall along the Mexican border and banning all travelers from a number of muslim countries in recent weeks, there seems no better time to talk about migrant detention. It’s under that backdrop that Tings Chak, the writer and artist behind a new graphic novel called Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention, comes to Speech Bubble.

Published by our friends at Ad Astra Comix, Undocumented analyzes how architecture and design are used to reinforce the agenda of the state. Tings explains how she got involved with migrant detention, her own experience with racism as an immigrant herself and why a comic was the best medium to bring attention to this issue. In so doing, she deconstructs the myths of Canadian multiculturalism and puts in fine relief that inhumane policies in regards to immigration are just as prevalent in this country as they are in the U.S., even with Justin Trudeau at the helm.

Undocumented.ca

Ad Astra Comix

@t_ings

Andrea Fort & Michael Christopher Heron

Wed, 25 Jan 2017 07:00:00 -0000

The co-creators and co-writers behind Songs for the Dead – a new indie comic about a young female necromancer who goes on an adventure to rescue a boy from her village – stop by to relay what it was like making and publishing their first real comic book. From how their romantic relationship plays into their professional one to the real stresses and fears behind business incorporation and copyright protection, these two bare it all. It’s a must listen for anyone who wants to get into the business of making comic books.

www.songsforthedead.com

www.comixology.com

Twitter: @songscomic

Shane Heron

Wed, 11 Jan 2017 07:00:00 -0000

Independent comic book artist Shane Heron (Black Hole Hunters Club, Monstrosity) always had a huge talent for drawing, but didn’t actually make his first comic until his mid-twenties. Despite the relatively late start, he made up for it with gusto, collaborating with past Speech Bubble guest Ricky Lima on a 24-hour comic that would eventually become the alien bounty hunters adventure Black Hole Hunters Club. He even created a comic with the host of this very podcast. Now he’s working on a new book of his own called Morris – a post-apocalyptic western featuring a sheriff with more than a passing resemblance to actor Wilford Brimley.

Shane Heron Art

@YoungShaney

Leon Emmett

Wed, 14 Dec 2016 07:00:00 -0000

Leon Emmett, the iconoclast owner of Toronto’s Hairy Tarantula Comics & Games, comes to the Never Sleeps Network Studios at a crossroads: his original store at 354 Yonge St. will be closing at the end of the month after 22 years. Don’t worry, its second location at Yonge and Steeles will remain, but the closure of the downtown store also means Leon needs to find a place to live, since he lives in the apartment above it. As our newly-crowned founding sponsor, he looks back to the beginning of the Hairy Tarantula story and explains why hes having more and more Abe Simpson moments as the comic business evolves.

Episode Sponsor: HairyTarantula

Twitter: @HairyTarantula

Ryan North

Tue, 22 Nov 2016 16:24:00 -0000

Those who think comic book geeks and computer nerds are two mutually exclusive groups have never met Ryan North. The Toronto resident and writer behind The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Adventure Time and Dinosaur Comics also holds a masters in computer science with a focus on Computational Linguistics — teaching artificial intelligence how to speak more naturally. His love of computer science also bleeds into the pages of the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, aiding in its progressive picture of what makes a female heroine. Even his effort to bring back the choose your own adventure genre – Romeo and/or Juliet – refuses to define society along gender lines. Not bad for a guy who can’t draw, but still left what his parents called, “a respectable profession” to create comics.

@ryanqnorth

www.ryannorth.ca