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,...
Jan 22, 2018•1 hr 19 min
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 w...
Jan 08, 2018•1 hr 25 min
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 Darede...
Dec 18, 2017•44 min
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...
Dec 04, 2017•25 min
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...
Nov 20, 2017•59 min
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, muc...
Nov 06, 2017•1 hr 25 min
Robb Mirsky was working the checkout at a liquor store when David Craig showed up in his line wearing a Chester Brown t-shirt. The two bonded and Robb invited David to the next Toronto Comic Jam. Taking place the last Tuesday of every month, the jam happens in the back of the Cameron House bar where participants are expected to grab a page and finish the next panel of the night's various half-started comics. At the end of the night, the pages are collected and that month's issue is published. It...
Oct 23, 2017•1 hr 15 min
Stephanie Cooke cut her teeth in the comics industry as one of several hosts on one of the original comic book podcasts – Talking Comics . From there, she was able to work behind-the-scenes at many comic conventions, eventually becoming the personal assistant of some of the biggest names in the industry. Now, she has struck out on her own as the founder and editor-in-chief of Rogues Portal a pop culture review and commentary website. A writer in her own right, her work has appeared in the Toront...
Oct 09, 2017•1 hr 20 min
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 Chapterhou...
Sep 25, 2017•1 hr 36 min
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 ...
Sep 11, 2017•52 min
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 ...
Sep 01, 2017•1 hr 14 min
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 ta...
Aug 18, 2017•2 hr 7 min
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 a...
Aug 04, 2017•1 hr 37 min
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 ...
Jul 28, 2017•1 hr 29 min
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 -- al...
Jul 21, 2017•1 hr 9 min
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 defe...
Jul 14, 2017•1 hr 17 min
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 wh...
Jul 07, 2017•1 hr 27 min
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 orig...
Jun 29, 2017•1 hr 13 min
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 ...
Jun 22, 2017•43 min
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 ...
Jun 15, 2017•1 hr 14 min
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...
Jun 08, 2017•1 hr 32 min
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 w...
Jun 01, 2017•57 min
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 ES...
May 25, 2017•51 min
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 o...
May 18, 2017•1 hr 4 min
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 ...
May 11, 2017•50 min
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 tou...
May 04, 2017•1 hr 35 min
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 Toron...
Apr 26, 2017•1 hr 29 min
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 Collect...
Apr 19, 2017•1 hr 7 min
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 B...
Apr 12, 2017•1 hr 20 min
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,...
Apr 05, 2017•1 hr 7 min
