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 M...
Mar 29, 2017•1 hr 46 min
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 ...
Mar 23, 2017•1 hr 39 min
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 ...
Mar 16, 2017•59 min
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 a...
Mar 09, 2017•55 min
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 ro...
Mar 02, 2017•40 min
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 d...
Feb 23, 2017•1 hr 7 min
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 ho...
Feb 08, 2017•1 hr 3 min
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...
Jan 25, 2017•1 hr 1 min
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 bo...
Jan 11, 2017•1 hr 31 min
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...
Dec 14, 2016•1 hr 37 min
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...
Nov 22, 2016•55 min
The first guest on our experimental Comics on Comics series, Comedian Ben Miner is the host of Comic Stripped, an interview show with comedy’s biggest names, on Canada Laughs – Sirius XM’s uncensored comedy satellite radio station. In addition to being a stand-up comic since he was 14, he’s also come in the top 16 of Master Chef Canada and absolutely loves comic books. He gives us an inside look at life as road comic, tells us why he hates Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, explains why diversity in com...
Nov 08, 2016•1 hr 17 min
Ad Astra Comix is a Canadian comics publisher specializing in comics with social justice themes. It was a mission first ignited in founder Nicole Marie Burton while reading the pulitzer-prize winning holocaust graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman way back in elementary school and hasn’t really stopped since. The latest books in her slate include a republishing of War in the Neighbourhood by Seth Tobocman and the anthology Drawing the Line: Indian Women Fight Back! She comes to us while on a road...
Oct 25, 2016•1 hr 26 min
Yaron Betan is the director of a new documentary premiering on Oct. 14, 2016 at the Carlton Cinema in Toronto called Heroes Manufactured. It features many former guests of this podcast like Mark Shainblum, Shane Kirshenblatt and Meaghan Carter and follows them as they make a living on Canada’s comic convention circuit. Yaron talks about how reading comics taught him how to tell a story and what it is about the Canadian convention scene that makes it distinctly different from the convention circu...
Oct 12, 2016•1 hr 8 min
Brampton, Ontario’s own Ricky Lima went from comic retailer to comic writer after being exposed to many seminal works in the medium. It was quickly evident that writing comics was his true calling after creating graphic novel Deep Sea with D.A. Bishop and ongoing series Black Hole Hunters Club with Shane Heron. But even though his latest effort, Happily Ever Aftr, was funded in only six days on Kickstarter, he suffers from an inferiority complex – struggling with the confidence to take popular p...
Sep 18, 2016•1 hr 38 min
Kitchener, Ontario native A. Shay Hahn spent his childhood buying comics from the late legendary retailer Harry Kremer – namesake of the Harry Kremer Retailer Award presented to Canada’s best comic retailer by the Joe Shuster Awards. He would eventually grow up to produce his own comic books: Cryptozombic, Battle Rally and the local indie hit, Homeless G-Men. Before that he was a fine artist exhibiting his paintings in galleries and doing background set painting for the period TV productions of ...
Sep 02, 2016•1 hr 24 min
Meaghan Carter’s love of manga and anime informs all of the webcomics she does. Take Off features fantastical creatures working together with their human partners like Digimon or Pokemon. In a way, Godslave is the same, but the relationship is a master-student dynamic, like the ninja schools of Naruto, with a lot of Egyptian history informing the narrative. It’s no wonder the strips have garnered her enough of a cult following to earn her a gig as the new colourist on The Pitiful Human-Lizard. S...
Aug 19, 2016•53 min
The Strange Romance Anthology is a series of short romance comics with a genre fiction twist. Whether a fantasy, western, science fiction or something else entirely, love is always at the centre of these stories from a wide array of international collaborators. It’s a modern tribute to the Weird Love comics of the 1950s without entirely being a pastiche. Editor Adam Prosser stops by in the midst of the Kickstarter to produce a print version of Vol. 1 (ending Aug. 13, 2016) to explain the book’s ...
Aug 08, 2016•1 hr 13 min
As one of the founders of the Space Channel and a producer on the homegrown genre fiction culture show Innerspace, Mark Askwith has more than made his mark in the long history of comic book fandom in Canada. (Although, he” far too humble to agree on that fact.) He has personal ties to the likes of Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore and Frank Miller. He is also a staple in the history of Canadian comic book television with the seminal “Prisoners of Gravity,” and was a pioneering manager of The Silver Snail ...
Jul 23, 2016•54 min
Chris is the owner, founder and curator for The Sidekick, (www.thesidekickcomics.com) a Toronto East End coffee and comic book spot. Chris wanted to have a combined shop since her high school days, long before the two cultures were mutually engaged the way they are in a few comic shops across Toronto. Chris opens up about how comics helped her through her difficult formative years and how growing up in Windsor was particularly difficult for a budding comic fan. Her challenges had far from relent...
Jul 10, 2016•56 min
Comic artist Marcus To (Red Robin, New Warriors, Batwing, Soulfire and Hacktivist) stops by to discuss Joyride, his first creator-owned project, published by Boom Studios. He reveals how the story of a girl who steals a spaceship to escape an oppressive earth was informed by his mother’s escape from China during the Cultural Revolution and his own friendly rivalry with his brother. He also drops knowledge on what it takes to break into mainstream comics, tells us what influences the youthful dra...
Jun 09, 2016•1 hr 13 min
After opening the show with a tribute to Darwyn Cooke, (1962-2016) local Toronto indie comic talent David “D.A.” Bishop (@Renerd) drops by to talk about his ongoing fantasy title, Of Stone (available digitally from Comixology). The series follows Gan, the ogre king, as he wrestles with a secret that can change the fate of his people. We also talk Alan Moore’s now classic run on Swamp Thing and how that, and The Walking Dead, reawakened a long dormant artistic talent within him. Bishop is a class...
May 25, 2016•1 hr 6 min
Aaron tries mealworms live on air, which fits with the politics of consumption brought up by The Salesman — an original graphic novel from our guests John Little and Jon Sufrin. Little takes us through the long, hard road to publication: the book was released online, he hated it, so he recruited food journalist Jon Sufrin to help him re-write it. The result is a morally absolutist fable that pulls no punches and will leave many uncomfortable. Both men say, ‘That’s the point.’
May 06, 2016•1 hr 16 min
Aaron was introduced to Jay Clark after claiming that past guest Alice Quinn was the only comics journalist in Toronto – Jay is proof to the contrary. He is the host of An Elegant Weapon, a podcast that interviews voiceover artists, actors and comic book creators from all over the geek media sphere. Jay tells us what goes into many of his interviews, how he lands big name guests like John Ostrander, (Grim Jack, Suicide Squad, Star Wars) Ryan Stegman (Superior Spider-Man) and Jim Cummings (The vo...
Apr 22, 2016•1 hr 26 min
Shane Kirshenblatt is the former proprietor of the now shuttered Temple of Toys – a retro toy store which had its retail location inside The Comic Book Lounge and Gallery in Toronto’s Little Italy neighbourhood. As a result, he was once the business partner of our last guest Kevin Boyd. Shane is also a custom action figure and Pop Vinyl maker, art teacher and comic book artist (The Jewish Comic Anthology, Anything Ghost, Dorothy Gale: Journey to Oz). Here, he schools us on the finer points of cu...
Apr 08, 2016•1 hr 26 min
Kevin Boyd is an integral builder of Toronto’s comic book community. He’s now the Comics Programming Coordinator for Fan Expo Canada and the Toronto Comicon, as well as the director of The Joe Shuster Canadian Comic Book Awards. He was also the owner of the now closed Comic Book Lounge and Gallery and was the co-founder of the now defunct Paradise Comicon. In the final part of our interview, Kevin talks about what brought him back to working for his one-time bitter rival and former employer, Fan...
Mar 20, 2016•43 min
Kevin Boyd is an integral builder of Toronto’s comic book community. He is now the Comics Programming Coordinator for Fan Expo Canada and the Toronto Comicon, as well as the director of The Joe Shuster Canadian Comic Book Awards. He was also the owner of the now closed Comic Book Lounge and Gallery and was the co-founder of the now defunct Paradise Comicon. In part two, Kevin tells us why he founded The Shusters – Canada’s national comic book awards. He also talks about opening The Comic Book Lo...
Mar 19, 2016•45 min
Kevin Boyd is an integral builder of Toronto’s comic book community. He’s now the Comics Programming Coordinator for Fan Expo Canada and the Toronto Comiccon, as well as the director of The Joe Shuster Canadian Comic Book Awards. He was also the owner of the now closed Comic Book Lounge and Gallery and was the co-founder of the now defunct Paradise Comicon. In part one of our interview, he discusses how he got into comics and why he went from creating comics to selling his collection at conventi...
Mar 18, 2016•59 min
The editors of volume three of The Toronto Comics Anthology stop by to preview the new book, promote the Kickstarter campaign and detail their own careers writing and editing comics. Allison talks about her story in the collection — “Ghosts Over Garlic Mashed Potatoes” — with art by Meaghan Carter, while Aaron details “The Dark” — a story that takes place in Toronto’s O.Noir restaurant – with art by Josh Rosen. Aaron has written for various independent comic collections like this, while Allison ...
Mar 11, 2016•1 hr 23 min
We open another podcast from our archives in January 2014, just a few days after losing someone integral to Toronto’s comic book community. Debra Jane Shelly didn’t work in comics, but the mark she left on the scene was just as indelible. I look back on her impact with indie comic book creator and animator Brian Evinou. Brian self-publishes his own comics, (Fight Song, Lucy Legacy) has animated some of the most innovative cartoons, (Ugly Americans, Moon Beam City) and is the co-editor of a grand...
Jan 24, 2016•54 min
