EricZ

Vancouver, BC

The Olympics are in town and it seems like there’s a continual stream of references to the city I call home in all areas of the pop culture landscape at the moment. With all this attention, I almost feel more prideful of this beautiful city then I am of the Country. And because I’m such a big fan of the comic medium, I’m going to give a shout out to what little I know of the Vancouver comic scene.

It seems like this city’s comic scene has been growing quite a bit over the last couple of years. I don’t know much about the Webcomic scene in Vancouver, but my friend Connor Vernon heads up Natural1. I’m also not too knowledgeable about the indy scene, but I understand that indy publisher Arcana is based around Vancouver and I know that the majority of independent comic artists in the city have participated in Cloudscape’s yearly anthology. Cloudscape is a collective of Vancouver based artists that produces an annual publication. Its founder and CEO is Jeff Ellis, who’s a great guy that I happened to randomly meet at a work Christmas party over a year ago. Also, although I’ve yet to attend one, I’ve heard a bit about the Vancouver Comic Jam, a monthly pub gathering of local comic fans and artists.

Moving up the ladder to a more mainstream independent (isn’t that an oxymoron?) comic venue is Image Comics, which has had four new Vancouver artists contribute to their line of books over the past year. Those artists have been Brandon Graham (King City), Marian Churchland (Beast and Hip Flask), James Stokoe (Orc Stain) and Camilla d’Errico. (Sky Pirates of Neo Terra) It’s interesting to note that all of these artists serve as a jack of all trades in this medium because they tend to write, pencil, ink and colour/tone their comics all by themselves. (Camilla d’Errico only drew Sky Pirates, but she co-wrote her Arcana book Burn)

Other then Todd McFarlane, who lived in Vancouver during his 80’s Marvel years, Vancouver’s biggest comic star is Steve Skroce, who has a hand in pretty much everything the Wachowski brothers do these days. In between working on art for the movies The Matrix, Speed Racer, V For Vendetta and Ninja Assassin, he does the art for his creator owned comic Doc Frankenstein for the Wachowski founded comic company Burlyman Entertainment. In his career, he’s worked on The Amazing Spider-Man, X-Man, Cable, Youngblood, Gambit and Wolverine.

Vancouver is also well known for the couple that make up Pia Guerra (Y The Last Man, Doctor Who) and Ian Boothby (Simpsons Comics). Steve Rolston (Queen & Country, Pounded, The Escapists) teaches an “Introduction To Comic Book Production” course at VanArts and Kaare Andrews (Spider-Man: Reign, Astonishing X-Men) teaches at the 3D training school ThinkTank and is starting to launch his film directing career. I once also met the very approachable Steve Sadowski (Avengers / Invaders, JSA) around town.

Did I miss anyone significant? I’m sure I did. One thing we’re definitely missing in this city is a big comic convention. I’ve been hearing some rumblings about a decent sized convention starting up, but it’ll likely be a while before we get something on the scale of Seattle’s Emerald City Comicon, which has a 2010 guest list that seems to rival San Diego’s.

If I’ve missed anything, please leave a comment below!

Exploded View

I’ve done two short stories for the upcoming fourth Cloudscape anthology. The book, titled “Exploded View”, (pictured left with an absolutely beautiful cover by Camilla d’Errico) is going to be released on March 6. Despite the fact that I drew the upcoming Arcana graphic novel, “The Killers”, several years ago, “Exploded View” will be my first published work.

The Cloudscape guys are a very talented collective of Vancouver artists and I’m proud to be a part of this growing local comic scene. It seems like the professional comic talent coming out of Vancouver has been growing quite a bit lately and this anthology contains a bunch of artists who are definitley going to become some big names in the coming years.

The book’s launch party will be held at the Ayden Gallery in the International Village in downtown Vancouver on March 6th at 7pm. I’ll be in attendance, so if you’re free that night please show up!

I’ll be showing some preview images from my short stories in the coming days.