Episode 271 – East Coast Comic Expo 2026 – Part 2

0:00Previously Today Hi guys he's Ryan here on the floor of East Coast comic Xbox twenty twenty six, and I am with our next guest Michael, Welcome sir. Thank you for having me. Well thank you for being our guest. Welcome back to ECCE. Yes, I think it's been 10 years I've been going to this. It's, yeah you've become more than that. A regular here with this show here. Yeah well it's a month in, you know, my hometown. It gives me excuse to come to a month in. Do you go to a lot of shows? No only a couple every year. Just this and a random thing I might be going to Ottawa might be I should say. I think so and I may go to the, I may be participating in the Dartmouth Comic Con.

1:02Nice, D-Caf. D-Caf. Nice. Might be. Have you done D-Caf before? Yes. I did that four times or something. Okay nice. So you're, you're an old hat when it comes to come into these events. I wouldn't say an old hat. I've only done the local ones. Well I guess I've done the Toronto and Ottawa just can't, Canadian. So and you've been a cartoonist now since about 2008 is that or you've been a cartoonist in the public? 2008 was when I went to the Times and Transcript full time. So a new Brunswick that was kind of the start of a full-time stint of my life. But before that it was in the Halifax Daily News. I've been drawing cartoons well since university but I would say my professional career took off in 1998. What got you into this? Accident. I was, when I was younger I was always a big fan of Mad Magazine and I drew little goofy

2:03sketches. I could copy. I used to draw my own Mad Magazine and junior high and give it to the kids. You know I just copy the styles. It would be set up just like even with a fold in the back. And when I went to high school I wanted to be a painter. I got accepted to university and a fluke. It's a crazy story. But when I attended I painted and got involved with the school newspaper. And then I, all those Mad Magazine drawings that I used to do came back and I did a strip. I did a strip for the paper and that's kind of got me. That was the foot and... And then the rest is they say history. Well, it's after ten years of struggle. Because you're reaching... If you ignore that... Millions of readers every week you're one of the most popular cartoonists in Canada. Uh, yeah. It's unbelievable. How does that feel when you hear that though? Amazing. Because there was a time in the periods between...

3:04Well pretty much from day one in school that I didn't know if I'd mountain very much and I didn't know what I was going to do or how things are going to work out. And they worked out great. So it's amazing. Because it's interesting. Before we started the interview you were asking Jamie and myself how we got into this and how all this came about. I mean, what do you tell people when they come to you and say how do I get into doing what you're doing? It depends where you are in your life. If you're at university I would suggest you work for the school newspaper. That's the best way if you're in university. If you're just a person who draws and is thinking about becoming a political cartoonist, the best way, and this was told to be my Roy Peterson back in the 90s when I was asking for advice. He said, he said, get published. It doesn't matter if it's free or whatever. Just get published.

4:05Get a deadline and that makes you work and work and work and then you get... That's the way to get better. Unless you're self-disciplined and you can just obsessed and want to post it online. On these days getting published you just have to post online. Right. It's a little easier at that. Yeah, you get your kick. Once you... Hey, that's a great advice. Just get published online, put it online, get the reactions of people. If they don't like a cartoon, learn from that. Learn from your mistakes and eventually you should get better. Do you have people come up to you and say, can you look at my portfolio? I used to have a lot and I do now and then, but I used to have a lot when young people were actually interested in editorial cartooning. These days they don't really see editorial cartooning like people in my profession used to see it, which was in your morning newspaper. So, people these days aren't inspired to do editorial cartoons.

5:12If they're into politics, they tend towards other things. They have a whole multimedia... They have access to multimedia that I didn't have access to these days, just on their computer. I mean, right now I think it would be easy to say that, as a political cartoonist, you have more than enough content these days. I would say in the last ten years at least, especially with our neighbors to the south. Well, yeah, it's when the world burns cartoonist thrive. I mean, there's other than stand-up comics, I don't know a profession that thrives more on other people's displeasure and unfortunate circumstances. Yeah. I'm curious, I'll ask you a question here. We ask a lot of our guests when they come in as an artist and cartoonist.

6:15Is there a bucket list of yours that ever, somewhere down the road, you'd love to take a shot at a character out there or someone you'd like to create? I think when I really... Well, these days, every day, there's ten people that like to take a shot at. So it's like looking at a herd of people you want to take a shot at. So you never get to everybody. But when I really get angry and pissed off and I want to draw someone, I just go for it. And I... There's some cartoonist, editorial cartoonist, who draw their work in politicians, collect their work, you know, like they think it's cute to be drawn by that cartoonist. I like to be the cartoonist that the politicians don't want. They don't want copies of my work. So I know I've come to your table a couple of times at past events and you've got amazing prints out there. Have you ever, are you ever putting them in a collection in a book? I've had two books already, but that was quite a while ago.

7:19I don't know if I will... I'm looking at doing a book. But collections of cartoons don't... I shouldn't say this in case a publisher is watching, but they don't sell as... Well, as they used to because everybody sees them online. And they feel like if they ever want to... There's a book already online, which is called Twitter Feed or Facebook Feed. You know, they can see everything just scrolling down. Michael, I'm going to get you out of here on this last question. We're asking all of our guests this today here because it's probably one of the most important questions out there. This summer we have two very big events. Last summer we had two very big events. This summer is the same. Supergirl or Spider-Man? Which way are you leaning? Oh, well, I grew up being a Spider-Man fan, but I really like this supergirl. I really like that five minutes from Superman that she appeared.

8:20I thought that was impactful for me. I thought it was hilarious. I like everything about this supergirl. I know that she's getting a lot of feedback. I think she's beautiful. Everybody's saying she's... Or, you know, the Twitter spheres questioning her looks. I think she's perfect. Of course. Michael, for me, this has been... I've been very excited when we were going... I knew I was going to get a chance to talk to you because I have like bucket list of people who I have always waited to have a chance to talk to. And in the cartoonist world, there was two. I talked to Aslan once. I've met him and now I've had a chance to talk to you and meet with you. So thank you very much. That's very super kind of you. Thank you very much. My bucket list was talking to Aslan and now I'm friends with them. It kind of slows me away. That's incredible. But thank you very much for doing this today. I hope you enjoy the rest of the con. Oh, I will. It's great. I love it. Thank you very much. This is Kurt Woodsmith and you are listening to the recap sequence with these two dumb athletes.

9:24Guys, it's Ryan here at the podcast room at East Coast Comic Expo 2026. Super excited to talk to Mike Ruth. How are you, sir? I'm doing well. How are you guys doing? Very good. It's so good to see you. We were talking before we did this. It's been, it's been almost six years now since we last. Five years, I think since we last saw you. It's been about six years since my last trip to the Maritimes. But I think I, I feel like I was at the East Coast Expo here back in 2018 was the last time. So, okay. It was a different venue. Yeah. The show has blown up and gotten so big. It's amazing. It's just, they got a huge guest list this year. It's been awesome. Yeah, awesome to be back. Well, glad you're a part of it. Thank you. Yeah. It's good to have you back here in Monkton. How's the convention treating you so far? Oh, like gold. I honestly, these guys, the care they put into the actual comic culture and the care they put into the comic guests, it sets a bar at a new height. They have covered, you know, they've covered all my, any issues I might have had. Have all been addressed. Have everything's been good.

10:24It's been smooth. His heck. The food out here is great. Everyone's awesome. Yeah, it's been, it's been great. There's an amazing crew running this show. And the volunteers are amazing. And the fans are great. I just love coming here. My blood pressure drops about 15 points when I come to the East Coast. So it's great. Yeah, but then you have the East Coast food and the East Coast. Yeah, like we had midnight, Schwarma last night. And that was maybe a bad choice. But, but you know, we'll survive. Well, like I said, never be a stranger. You're always welcome back to the other times. What are you up to these days? So currently, I am a series cover artist for Red Sonia. She devil with a sword, which is a relaunch of the new, of an old classic type. And I'm going to be a pilot at Dynamite Comics. It's been a thrill. I was trying to get work on Thunder the Barbarian. And the editor, when he finally connected with me, he's like, I can't give you a Thunder, I'm like, but I can give you a Red Sonia. And I had no idea it was a regular monthly gig. So I've since January, I've done seven Red Sonia covers.

11:26The second one just came out last week. And they put me on another mini series that crosses over with some of their IP. They have Vampirella, Red Sonia, John Carter of Mars, and Tarzan. And it's called Warlords. Altered State's Warlords. It was written by David Avaloni. And yeah, getting into covers for that. I've been painting a lot more for these covers. So I'm trying to embrace those, you know, those gods of the, those whose shoulders I'm standing on. I get to do these things like Red Sonia, classic characters. I mean, I've probably had a crush on Red Sonia since I was seven years old. And I saw my uncle's savage sort of Conan books when I was a bit too young. Yes. But it left an impression on me. So getting a chance to draw her has been just wonderful. And I have a lot of freedom in the job much more than I thought. I don't really have any art direction. They just say make something cool and iconic. And it's been great. So I'm curious then, is there more pressure when it's a mini series run as opposed to a longer stretched out run?

12:27Not so much more pressure. It's just when they overlap. So in my case, I had a Red Sonia cover every month. But I also had one of these mini series ones. And it's all done now. So I had to do two covers a month, which is great. I'd love to do two covers a month forever because it's just enough. It pays just enough to kind of cover what I need it to cover. And you know, when you've been freelancing as long as I have, you get used to long periods of drought, where you might have three or four months without any work and, you know, sometimes longer without any pay. So yeah, it's just more of a time management thing. But that's the only pressure. The pressure is what you put on yourself. The art direction I've had with the editor Joe Rybant and the people that work with at Dynamite has just been amazing. Yeah. Nice. Now, you alluded to earlier, you know, on the shoulders of gods who came before you. Who were your influences to get in to become an artist? Well, you know, I don't think when I was young, I was aware of who they were. I was just so into the comics. I don't think I even read the credits, you know, pages. But John B. Sama is probably my all-time favorite.

13:28He was the, you know, the kind of the ultimate Conan artist for me. And then, you know, I also think Frank Frazzetta, who did those great iconic Conan looks. I mean, he only painted something like 12 Conan paintings back in the day. But they kind of set, he did the covers for the old novels. And I think they, you know, the look of Conan has never strayed very far from the Frazzetta stuff. And I feel like that he just kind of cemented what Conan looks like and everyone just kind of followed his lead. So yeah, I've been trying to paint more to try not to ever be a Frazzetta, but I'm trying to paint more to kind of call back to that. And I really think that when I was a kid, I always think of these, the band Molly Hatchett had the, had the death dealer, the Frank Frazzetta death dealer paintings used as their album covers. And I saw those when I was really young and I think they just left a really strong impression in me. So, so B. Sama, Frazzetta, those guys are my Conan guys. But there's also, you know, Alfredo Alcala who inked a lot of B. Sama's stuff and then Frank Thorn who did the Red Sonny stuff and there's a, yeah, there's, there's a million

14:32of them named, yeah. Okay. So what do you tell people who come up to you and say, Mike, this is my work or how do I get into this industry? What's your advice to these people? Well, if they want to work in the comics, I always just say there's only one way to break into comics and that's just to make comics. You know, you have to, there's no, there's no fast way to get in. There's no secret door. You just have to put the work in and hopefully build an audience around what you're creating. The one bit of advice I would give would be to not worry about writing your great big opus, your 200 page, you know, massive story. Like try to tell short stories, try to, try to tell a little five page stories and, and just get them done and move on. And you're always going to be critical of what you've done. So why not be critical of a five page thing instead of beating yourself up over, you know, the years you put into a 200 page thing that flops. You know, you can always move forward when you have these bite size kind of stories you want to tell. As far as artists go, like I spent years as an illustrator before I got into doing comics.

15:36Mainly because when I went to school for illustration, I was kind of told that comics, comics weren't for me. I was told that comics would not be a thing I would be good at and I should just avoid it. And basically, and, and, you know, that's what I wanted to do. But, you know, I was paying these instructors big dollars to go to college and I thought, well, they know what they're talking about. So I listened to them and I had a whole career drawing, children's books and doing advertisement and instruction manuals and painting signs for menu boards at restaurants and doing trade show exhibit designs and props and anything I could do to get my artwork out there and create a body of work I did. But I wasn't happy with any of it and eventually I got a job with a children's book company and I had to produce comic books for them and it was like Canadian history and some American history but converted into graphic novel format to make it easier to digest for kids who are coming up because there's a major literacy problem in our education systems, you know, in, you know, North and South of the border and you have kids graduating, you know, high

16:39school who somehow have managed to slip through without learning how to read. And so the books that I was doing for Rubicon publishing and for Scholastic books were really just the way to try to make content that had to be taught more palatable by having, you know, illustrated picture books. So I did something like 40 graphic novels between the period of like 2002 and 2010 and then one day they called and said, Mike, we have to lay off the entire art team. I'm sorry. It was a Wednesday afternoon by Friday I was out of work. I was 35 years old at the time. I'm 51 now. I decided at that point, okay, you know what? I always wanted to do comics and that's what I'm going to do. And I just started focusing all my energy towards doing comics, mainly doing covers and things like that because I enjoy telling a story with one picture. But I've had a chance to do some interior work as well. And it's just a whole different set of muscles but it's just been great. It's been awesome. So a couple quick questions and we'll get you out of here. Sure. Tell me the term freelance art mercenary. Well, yeah, it's a freelance art mercenary.

17:40So I basically, I'm kind of my own boss. I work for whoever's going to pay. And that sounds kind of mercenary I guess in a way. But I've done work that surprised me. I did really cute, see children's book stuff, really stuff for small kids. I've done some really graphic horror stuff as well. I've done really technical manual stuff. So I have a skill set that is applicable to different avenues. And so yeah, that's kind of it. If the job is, whatever the job is, if I think I can manage it, I'll do it. And if the, I mean, when I was younger, I didn't even care what the pay was. I just wanted to have work done. I wanted to create a body of work so I could keep on getting more work and get to a stage where I can start calling the shots a little bit. So yeah. OK. That's what a freelance art mercenary is. You in your career have done so many characters, Batman's, one thing, TNT, Teenage Mutant Injitardals, Vampirella, Red Sonia. Is there a character out there in your bucket list that you've waited you haven't had

18:43that chance to do? Yes. OK. Who is Ben Grimm, the thing from Fantastic Four? Yeah. I've worked on Marvel licensed product before. I've done, I've worked on games and card sets and things. I've done advertisements in Marvel Comics. But I've never been able to draw any Marvel comics. And the thing has always been my avatar. He's always been since I was a little kid. The thing has always been my favorite. I mean, I think when you're a kid growing up and you struggle through your hard times, I would always keep in mind that whatever hard day that I was having, Ben Grimm was out there somewhere having a worst day than me. And so that kind of kept me straight and kept me on the straight and narrow. But yeah, I still, I'm 51. I don't know when that day is ever going to come, but I feel like it's somewhere in my future that I'll get to draw the thing one day in an official capacity for Marvel. But it's not the end goal. In the meantime, anytime they want to hire me to draw Conan, I feel like I'm on Cloud 9. And of course, Swamp Thing and Red Sonny and these other characters that I love. These are things I never thought I would ever get to touch as a freelance artist.

19:45And then in 2024, I did something like 20 covers for TMNT, which is another huge property that I love. And so I never thought these things would happen. So it's taken a long time and I've gotten old and fat. It's been a long journey and it's been wonderful. You're happy, right? I am. Yeah, I am. Last question and this is the big one here. Sure. There's two big events this summer that's happening. We're asking all of our guests. Supergirl, Spider-Man. Which one? Oh, you know what? That's tough. I've been kind of out of flavor with Marvel for a while. Again, I'm a fantastic four guy. I did not love that movie. It had all the components to be a great movie. I won't get into that right now. But it didn't deliver it for me. And so I love that Spider-Man though. I love the fellow play in Spider-Man right now. Yeah, he's fantastic as Peter Parker and a Spider-Man. But I think I'm more excited about Supergirl because I've got to say the Superman movie lit me up and filled me with hope and hope is something all of us need. And then Jason Mamoa as Lobo, that is just a match made in heaven.

20:46Yes. So I'm very excited about that. All right, Mike, I cannot thank you enough. We could sit here all day talking about your characters. Sure. I will not keep you. I hope you enjoy the rest of East Coast comment. Oh, I'm having a blast. Thank you. Don't be a stranger. Come back anytime. And thank you for doing this today. Thank you so much, guys. Yeah, take care. The recap sequence will return after these messages. Hey, this is Jamie. This is Ryan. And we're the recap sequence. Be sure to tune into us every Wednesday night on CHSR 97.9 FM. We're online at CHSR 7.8 7PM Atlantic 6PM Eastern. And if you don't catch us live, you can catch our podcast on Spotify, on Amazon, anywhere you get your favorite podcast. And we also have a YouTube channel. You may have been watching. And if not, you should be catch us on YouTube at recap sequence. So subscribe. Subscribe. Yeah, please. We now return to the recap sequence.

21:48Hey, guys. And here on the podcast room here at East Coast Comic Expo 2026. And I'm with Pierre Guerra. How are you doing? Well, it's a really fun show. Welcome to Monkton. Thank you. Welcome to the show. Do you get out to do a lot of conventions? We've been a little hermitted up since the pandemic. We've been on maybe to one since then, or two or two. So this is the first one in like this year, I think. So how's the convention treating you so far? I'm very good. Everyone's lovely and having a great time and meeting wonderful people. And it's also nice just connecting with other creators again, because you used to be that, do that all the time. And so it's like coming out of a hole and like, hey, there's people. And we can all talk about our nerdy likes and have a good time. And so I miss that. So it's great. Now, of course, you're one of the co-creators of Why the Last Man. Is that what you would say people come to see you? Because that one is still a good guy. Yeah, I did that for a very long time. But I also do editorial cartoons. And now I'm doing gag cartoons for the New Yorker, and for our Patreon, at Manicant on the Moon.

22:48So I'm doing a wide variety of things. But most of the people know me from Why the Last Man. Yes. And of course, you are an award-winning artist. The Joe Schuster Award. Congratulations for that. Thank you. Also nominated for Eisner and Harvey Awards. One, two, Eisner. Congratulations on that. Wow. How did you get started in all of this then? Well, I've just been drawing since I was a kid. And when I was in high school, I would hang out with friends and go to local swap meets. And one of them had several of them had creators and editors who would come in. And I would bring my drawings, because I love drawing comics. And they would just say, you know, you can do this as a living. And it's like, no. And it's like, no, really. Because my dad's a musician. And so when he was just doing music, it was never like, it was always a struggle. And so it's like, I kind of learned early that the artist's life is a hard life. And so try and find a backup plan. And so then I would meet artists who are like, how no, I got a mortgage in a car and kids. And I was like, wow, OK, I'm in. And so I would just start listening to advice

23:48and improve my portfolio. And I started doing small gigs all through the 90s. I met Heidi McDonald at San Diego Comic Con and kept in touch with her for a couple of years showing her my continuous work and my samples. And then around 2000, she called me and was like, OK, I got something to try you out on. And it was quite the last man. That's incredible. Wow. So who were your influences then? I have been reading comics since I was 10. So it's a whole worldwide variety. A lot of X-Men, a lot of Teen Titans, Vertigo stuff. George Perez was huge. And when it's Bill St. Kiewicz, Kyle Baker, so many people. It's like, it's hard to nail down any one artist because I just read everything. So I was like, I'm going to be a little bit more in the future. So my question here is sort of a two-parter. I mean, how much fun is it being on the other side of the table when people come up to are now in your position? When you first started saying, can you look at my portfolio? Or how do I get into this? That's always really nice to have those conversations

24:51because something I learned from artists early on is like, a lot of the artists that would give me advice would tell me, like, look, when we started coming in, we learned this from other artists who came before us. So it's like, we're happy to spread, you know, to help get the next generation going on this too. And I get it. It's like, if I see that enthusiasm in someone, I want to help nurture that too, because we need more of that in this industry. And you have to love it to be in this industry. It's not something you just go into. Like, I'm going to make a ton of money. It doesn't work that way. You have to really enjoy doing it. And maybe you get lucky. Is that something that you get? You make sure you get across them, though. Yes. You've got to put the work in. It's a lot of work. And I think it's not something that people are prepared for. Also, not always prepared for the fact that it can take a really long time to break in. Like, some people kind of just show up and have their portfolios. And they have that enthusiasm. They think they're going to show what they have and go, yeah, I'll get a job today, right? Right. And it's like, no, it can take years to,

25:51because you want to establish relationships with your editors and just show that you can produce on a schedule, because editors have been burned a lot. And they know that they can't just take the fresh new thing and expect them to produce on a deadline. So they see the samples. They see the changes they make. They see how they're receptive to feedback. And they want to see that it's there's someone that they can work with who will produce. So, yeah, you can have a really fantastic portfolio. But if it takes you a year to get a few pages done, that's not going to be very helpful to them. So you have to tell that to kind of impart that. That it's, you're not just showing what you, how pretty something is, you're giving the whole package and doing a good worker. And I applaud that because a lot of the people we talk to, they all say the same thing as well as, you know, they've got to get that point across. This isn't, you're going to, you can show me your book. Doesn't mean I'm going to let you dress Spider-Man right away. Yeah, it's a job. You have to show that you can perform because their margins are really tight. So they have to make sure that what they produce is going to sell,

26:53even a few failures are just going to take their, you know, can take a whole division. And so many comic companies have gone under, you know, because they thought they could just reach for that and get it and it doesn't work that easily. Is it easier, you would say, nowadays, with the internet out there, that you, you know, social media and let's just put your work out there? It helps. Yeah, it really helps. I mean, I know I've gotten a lot of jobs when I was starting on Twitter. And, you know, I would have people DM and say, hey, are you free for this? And so I was really surprised at how much it can open doors. There is a lot of competition, so you have to kind of be really consistent. So even then, when you're talking to someone, if you're producing a webtoon or something online, even on Instagram, as long as you're producing on a regular basis, and getting things out there and to a point where people expect it to, like, oh, on Thursday, I'm going to see more from this. Yeah. And if it's consistent, then you'll get an audience. And then editors will notice you're getting an audience. And then they'll talk to you. Yeah.

27:53So, yeah, it's again, they want to see someone who can produce. Tell me about Frostbite. Well, that's coming out in August. Two seconds. This is a project that my husband and I have been working on for a long time. Right after our honeymoon, we came back. We had another week off from the book. So I was like, planning completely just to rest and kind of recover from the events. And we had a recovery from the reception and the trip and everything. And Ian had this outline that he'd been shipping around to his agent. And so he got a call on Monday. And he said, we love the outline. Can we get a script by Friday? And Ian was like, I don't think I can do this. And I looked at him and was like, we can do this. And so I was like, I'll start this. I'm going to sit in that chair. I'm going to start writing the screenplay. I'm going to send you scenes and you're going to fix it how you want it. I'm going to get this done. And it did it all week. I was in that chair.

28:53Yeah. Friday, we got it just under the deadline by an hour. So so much for relaxing. Yeah. We did not relax at all. It was all work, but it was nice to do a different kind of work instead of just sitting and drawing. So I was game. And so they loved it. And then, but shortly after their company went under. So we shipped it around. But it wasn't new. It didn't really kind of grab hold. So we put in the door for a while. We kept thinking like, maybe if we do it ourselves, could we kick starter this? Can we find a producer? Do we do as a short film? My sister is a, a man, which is a filmmaker. She went to Langar, she's got a director's cert. And so we're like, let's do some, some sizzle reels and get some interest going. Did that? They were up in the mountains, taking advantage of the snow up there, splashing blood all over ourselves. We had so much fun. And still it had trouble finding funding for this. So, okay, we'll, we'll sit on it some more. A couple more years go by. And then we used our niece, who was this time around 13.

29:54We're hearing how she loves horror movies. And her mom is just like, just a gassed at all this. Like, yeah, her friends come over. They sit in the living room. They scream all night in the living room. They're watching the nun and hereditary and all of these. And they love it. They love screaming. And then that's what I looked at. And it's like, this book is for her. Because she loves graphic novels. And so that's what we're going to do. So we tooled it as a graphic novel. We changed a bunch of it to kind of fit her audience and to fit her age group. To kind of her interests. And it just became like, yeah, that's the story. And then we shipped it to Scholastic and they loved it. And it comes out in August. In August. Wow, that must be exciting to finally see this come to fruition. Yeah, yeah. We've had notes from our niece the whole time. She loves it. So I'm really, really excited for it. I hope it does well. Yeah. But it's for her. Nice. A couple quick questions and we'll get you out of here. Yeah. You're here for everybody else. And we thank you for that. Sure. First of all, where can people find your work if they're looking for you?

30:55We have a Patreon, a mannequin on the moon. And I'm online at Instagram. It's at Piagera. And I'm on Blue Sky as well. As we're always producing stuff. If I get mad at something, I'll be doing editorial cartoons. Yeah. So keep it busy. Okay. Now you had a chance to hear on our last interview with the last two questions. So you've had a little bit of time over there. Yeah. So bucket list. Is there any character out there you would love to take a crack at? Oh my gosh. You know, there's so many out there. Actually, that wasn't the question I heard. Okay. So this is totally different questions. So now you got me on on. Ah, that's that was mean. Let's see. I, you know, for a long time, I loved Buck Ru Bonsai. But I don't know if that's ever going to be made into a comic. Because I just love all those characters. I love ensemble pieces. Okay. So teams, teams are fun. I used to love Teen Titans next, men. Yeah, it's hard to say. I've already done my dream one with with with with Hellblazer.

31:57I really enjoyed that. Yeah. Okay. So you've had your book. That's fine. That's great. You've had your book list. Yeah. That's awesome. So then the last question we'll get you out of here. You heard this earlier. The big event this summer. There's Supergirl or Spider-Man. Supergirl. Wow. There we go. Yeah. I just love that they're doing just going all in with crypto. I just want to see it. The graphic novels based on was beautiful. And I want to see what they do. So you were a fan of the Superman movie last year then as well? I loved it. Okay. I was just so charmed by it. And yeah. And I still love Fantastic Four as well. I thought that just because from a visual side of it it was gorgeous. I just kind of fell into that world. Really loved it. The story was just was was good and solid. Like yeah. I mean, I'm really into it. But I just want to see what they do with Supergirl. And see if they have that same kind of energy and fun that they did with Superman. That's awesome. Pia, I cannot thank you enough. This was fantastic. Thank you. Thank you for coming to East Coast comic expo. Thank you.

32:57Thank you for coming to Mountain. And again, don't be a stranger. Come back anytime. Love to. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Thank you. Hey, this is Laura Van DeVort. Elena Michaels from Bidden. And you are listening to the recap sequence with Jamie and Ryan. Guys, it's right here on the podcast room here at East Coast comic expo 2026. And I'm sitting across from Fadi Hakeem. How are you? I'm well. How are you? Very well. Thank you. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here. How's the content of the song? The hospitality second to none. Yeah. No, the drive over here was unbelievable. We kind of took our time. I took my, I brought my wife and kids. And we stopped off in Quebec City, Moshe Don Over. It was like lovely. She broke your trip up then nice. But the trip up, yeah, I took a couple of days getting here. You're going to take a couple more days on the tail end of this? 110%. No, absolutely. I was just saying we stopped off in Frederickton. Yeah. And had a beer at, oh my gosh. Again, I want to call it. Pickle Roons. Pickle Roons, I was going to call it Padawan again.

33:58But yeah, and walked that bridge that was right next to it, which was really lovely. Nice. Yeah, yeah. So this is nice. The kids have never been to the East Coast before. So you're getting some East Coast hospitality. I hope everyone's treated you well then so far. And finally, phenomenally. Yeah, yeah. And this convention is just, it's amazing. Yeah. It's one of those that are, it's smaller in terms of, like, let's say Toronto standards were from. But we more enthusiastic. That's excellent. Yeah, like, incredibly. Yeah, yeah. We like coming to these events here because I find like, East Coast comic, I suppose, much more intimate with the creators and artists and writers as opposed to going to the big boys, Fanfester San Diego, that kind of thing, right? 100%. Yeah. Yeah, this is definitely a special one for sure. So if I get this right, you're a publisher and principal at Lev Gleason. Is that, or how did you get into this field? Funnily enough, like, all right, you got it.

34:59How long do we have to choose? Colds notes. Colds notes break. I'll break it down. So I'm a restaurant tour in Toronto. This is how it happened. So, 18 years ago, I took over a place that was from 1932. It's called the Lakeview Restaurant. It's a diner in Toronto. Stuff like cocktail has been shot there at the shape of water. It's one of those, like, it's just an art deco time capsule of a diner. So anything that is in Toronto that needs shooting, they shoot there. Basically, yeah, it's phenomenal. It tons of commercials, tons of, I just, the list goes on and on. So I took that over and started curating that, and it kind of sat like, it wasn't doing well for the decade before and that sort of thing. I took it over, I had all this kind of own clubs and restaurants in Toronto. I took it over and I started, we started the new menu and I called the new menu. One of the, one of the female bacon sandwich, the Captain Kenuk. Because that was the first comic book I ever bought with my own money.

36:01And all these, I'm an avid comic collector, of course. Anyhow, so, and then a lot of people would be like, oh, Captain Kenuk, of course, Captain Kenuk, I remember Captain Kenuk. And then at one point, I put a poster in the kitchen, told all the staff about it. It was a 24 hour restaurant, too. So it sort of, you know, it was just a lot of, a lot of, a lot of interest in it. And then at one point, it came, it came time to do a kids menu. And I said, well, imagine if Captain Kenuk was on the kids menu. That would be amazing. They could color in Captain Kenuk, which is a red, red crayon. And so I reached out to Richard Cumberley, who is the creator. And he answered. And I was like, okay, great. And then literally a week later, he's sitting in front of me in one of the booths. And he's like, yeah, I'll totally give this, this is amazing. I would love the kids to, you know, to be on a kids' menu. And I was like, what do you want for it? And he's like, well, just give me gifts or certificates. I was like, okay, this is amazing. So then I asked him, what's going on with Kenuk?

37:02Like, where, what happened to it? Like, I used to love it as a kid. And it just kind of disappeared. What happened? And he said, well, you know, it kind of, he tried to resuscitate it. He tried to resuscitate it a couple of times. And now like afterwards, like with reborn in the 90s and that sort of thing. And at the time, he was doing another book called Legacy. And so I took out an ad, the late viewer restaurant took out an ad in the back of that. That comic book, he had a, it was a number one. And, and then he basically said, look, the license is up for renewal. I think it was a production company called Sinking Ship. And I was like, who are actually doing really well? I mean, not a Sinking Ship at all. They're actually great guys doing extremely well. But basically, it lapsed with them. And so then I was like, you know, let's all, I took it. And then started an animated series. I did a Kickstarter for it just to kind of bring everybody out of all the Kenuk fans back. Kind of together.

38:03And it kind of took off. We got national press. And had some great, great, great actors that joined like Chris Holden Reed, who was on Lost Girl and, uh, voice Kenuk. There was Tadyana Mislini who was obviously shehold now. She did Redcoat, Laura Vandervert. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Laura Vandervert. She did Blue Fox, which is amazing. She did a great job. Tons of other small cameos. And then like, the watchman gave us a song, Stereo. Putt and Blonde, it doesn't really matter. And standing in the dark and then Rush gave us working, man, which is great. Wow. Yeah, for episode five. And so it was great. It was, uh, it was just knocked it out of the park. And then I had licensed the comic book to a fellow named George Zoddy, who was with us kind of from the beginning. And he started working on a comic book with Kalman and Rizofsky. And about, uh, an issue and a half in, he started to run out of money. And he's like, Tady, I'm writing out money.

39:04And I was like, you know what, let's take the first issue, put it up and freak for free comic book day. We applied to Diamond, got it immediately 80,000 copies later on that first, on that first, it was amazing. And then the whole thing started from then. And that was around 2015 with a company called Chapter House. That kind of turned into Lev Gleason publications. Yeah, Chapter House, as an imprint still exists. Yeah. But Lev Gleason is kind of the umbrella company now. That has comic house, which is our superhero universe. So basically what we did with Kanaku is we put Kanaku in a shared superhero universe with other legacy characters like freelance from the 40s, Phantoma, who predated Wonder Woman in 1939. There was Northguard from the 90s, from Mark Sheenblum and Gabriel Morissette, and a host of others. And also with Lev Gleason came a lot of, Lev Gleason was a publisher in the 40s out of New York.

40:06And so we actually took, we bought that company and took all of the IP, including the original Daredevil Silver Streak. There's a Captain Battle and a crimebuster as well. That was featured in Boy Comics. So now they're all in a shared universe with Kanaku with Kanaku at the helm. That's incredible. That's incredible. Now in your career you've written or edited over like 30 different titles, like including Kanak, Daredevil. The one that jumped out to me was crazy. It was the hilarious house of frightened style. Yeah. I mean, that brings me back to my kid. I mean, and now you're working, so tell me this though, this documentary, The Captain Kanaku story. Yeah, for sure. Tell me about this. Yeah, it's a lot of fun this one. So we kind of, it was the 50th anniversary of Kanak last year. So we're kind of still celebrating that idea. And obviously with what happened across the border, there seems to be a bit of a resurgence in Canadian pride, which I'm very, very happy about.

41:07Basically there was like during COVID, there was a bit of a time with Kanak and with Canada Day. In the beginning when we got Kanak Canada Day was a big deal. And then around COVID people started to question Canada and the whole idea we found. Nobody was interested in Captain Kanak, whereas we would always get reach, a national post, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, would always reach out around Canada Day. And of course, that stopped happening. But this sort of everybody started talking about Canada again, and kind of our separation from the states, which is about time as far as I'm concerned. And which is amazing. So it's starting to take Canada seriously as our home and proud of it. So basically what happened was, it just coincided with the 50th, and I got Richard Cumbly to, we were in Calgary five years ago, and I remember he did this sketch cover for this guy who wanted,

42:09it was the first Trump, first time Trump was offered. Yes, so it was around that time. And he did a Mad Magazine blank cover of the Kanak rustling up Trump. And it was genius. And I posted it and went, not, yeah, it was great. And so then I said, hey Richard, for the 50th, why don't we do this? Because we're touring again. We're going to every convention in Canada. That was the idea. And so we did this variant cover for Captain Kanak season five issue three, of that, but and Richard did that cover again. That's outstanding. And so that kind of just went viral. Obviously it just kind of hit at the right time with what was happening with Trump. And that was it. So we made national news again, and you know, anywhere that we went, we saw that of the cover. And that kind of got, got a whole engine started again a bit with,

43:11and so I had been friends with the fellow named Adam Beach, who was an indigenous actor from way back in the day in my first place, I owned a place called the Colored Stone when I was 21. Richmond and Duncan. I mean, he was an actor. They filmed a rap party before it danced me outside that he was an actor. And so we kind of met, you know, we started shooting pool together. It was a pool hall that I opened. I started shooting pool together. And then there's a once in a while with doing what we chat and stuff like that kind of kind of captain touch. And that sort of thing. And so, Richard wrote Captain Kinnuck as half-may-team. So I started talking to Adam, and we were at the end of season seven in Captain Kinnuck that's coming out very soon. Basically the entire universe ends, and restarts again. And this is where sort of brave new voices are going to join in, and start telling disparate stories of Kinnuck. So it's not just one storyline.

44:12It's going to be a fractured amounts of in different timelines. And so I was like, Adam, I'd love for you to just, you know, write a bit of this because coming from that, coming from the Indigenous perspective, which is huge. And so he's all on board. And then we started to talk, and he sort of, and I told him about this documentary. This idea that he would travel from convention to convention, speak to Karnie and Trudeau, and a lot of politicians, anybody who's kind of worked on Kinnuck, any artist, a Canadian artist, you know, everyone from Ty Templeton to the Raid studio, to Max Lamont Animation, et cetera, et cetera. And any of the fans, and basically ask fans and ask them what a superhero should be, so that he can kind of discover who Captain Kinnuck is, so he knows how to voice and write him as well. So any kind of been taken off, our next stop is, we've done Baltimore, we went to the States, which is kind of cool. So Baltimore, we did obviously Toronto, Vancouver.

45:14Oh shoot, where else? I feel like for some more, just not. Anyway, Montreal is coming up, and we're going to go back, go to the birthplace of Kinnuck, which is Winnipeg. Nice. And actually funnily enough, where Adam is from. So that's kind of neat. And so, yeah, and so basically that's, and we're planning on it launching, is going to launch nationwide at every synoplex. Okay. Every synoplex across Canada, and then at San Diego Comic Con for the US. That's outstanding. Yeah, and then of course it'll hit a streamer and we'll tell you a little more about that when it comes around. Awesome. Yeah. Last question, we'll get you out of here. There's a big event this summer happening. Where do you land, Supergirl or Spider-Man? Oh, come on. You can't make me pick. I mean, I love them both. Spider-Man is awesome. But I'm really curious to see what's going to happen with Supergirl. Yeah, I can't say.

46:14But I mean, you know, I am a big Spider-Man fan. It's the way to go. Listen, Faddy, thank you so much for doing this. We cannot thank you enough. This has been awesome. I hope you enjoyed the rest of the con today. And enjoy the rest of your trip here on these coastlines. 100% I'm really looking forward to it. Don't be a stranger. Come back anytime. Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Faddy. Thank you. Be sure to tune in to our next episode for even more East Coast Comic Expo 2026 interviews right here on the Recap sequence.