GUELPH—When he was attending the Ontario College of Art and Design, Jay Stephens certainly didn’t think he was going to become an award-winning comic book writer.
“I was there to take fine art painting and had dreams of becoming a famous painter,” said Mr. Stephens, who lives in Guelph and is currently a seasonal resident of Manitoulin and expects to move up to the Island as a full-time resident.
“I started writing comics for the college paper in my first year and that’s how I ended up getting into comic books,” said Mr. Stephens. “I had never done one before and amazingly it sold out. The other students loved it. It was a fourth- year student (book designer) who said let’s put a comic together and take it to the comic store down on the corner. And it sold out! I ended up having to make a decision: paying to continue with my art studies at art school or doing comics and getting paid. In my second year at college, it was an easy choice,” he said, noting he has been in the comics business for the past 30 years.
Mr. Stephens has won two Emmy awards for his animated cartoon series ‘Tutenstein,’ and his new adult comic ‘Dwellings’ which made the coveted list in the USA for Best Comic. The hardcover of ‘Dwellings’ will be released in April and is expected to make the bestseller list in the US.
“Dwellings is a horror comic,” said Mr. Stephens. “As a kid I loved the comic ‘Casper the Friendly Ghost’, it was a big favourite of mine. I always wondered how Casper had died. I also read comics like ‘Hot Stuff’ and “Little Devil,” which had supernatural characters who were also wholesome.”
“With Dwellings, I had a scary story written, and I had the thought that I would take the reader back to the 1960s-1970s with the cute character Casper, but to scare the hell out of you,” said Mr. Stephens. “I really didn’t think people would like it. But it resonated with readers.” Six issues were made, with separate stories. Blackeye Books published ‘Dwellings.’ “When I did the first comic, I had no idea how people would respond to it.”
“Then ONI Press, a US publisher saw the project we were doing and the publisher called me and said we could take this nationally and internationally,” said Mr. Stephens. “It ended up being three jumbo-sized issues, with two separate comics in each. And surprise, it sold out.”
“The six comics were done during the pandemic lockdown as an experiment,” continued Mr. Stephens. “Prior to Dwellings I had been working for OWL Magazine, a kid’s magazine. And as things were shut down during the pandemic, there was nowhere to buy magazines. But people would buy them online, and schools and libraries would buy them as well.”
“My friend Michael Vrana and I came up with the idea in 2021,” said Mr. Stephens. For ‘Dwellings’ he received the Doug Wright Independent Comics Award for best small comic. This was quite an honour.”
“In the past I had dabbled over my career with a lot of other comic work. I did a daily newspaper strip called ‘Oh Brother.’ I also dabbled with animation and had two series, ‘Tutenstein’ and ‘The Secret Saturdays,’ on the Cartoon Network.
It was his work with ‘Tutenstein’ that led to Mr. Stephens receiving a couple of Emmy awards. “It is surprising that a humble Ontario kid, working hard in a small apartment, can get these types of awards,” said Mr. Stephens. He was born in Toronto and his dad, who is from Wiarton. now lives in Central Manitoulin.
“I have been living in Guelph for a couple of decades now,” said Mr. Stephens, noting that the city is getting too big, and he is going to be moving to the Island in the next couple of years. He owns what used to be a small white church on Silver Bay Road in Big Lake and is renovating it. He will have a studio to work in here on the Island when he is done. He intends to be here full-time within a couple of years.
“The church was decommissioned years ago, and no one has lived in it since the 1990s,” said Mr. Stephens. “My dad and I are fixing it up, and my brother and sister-in-law have already moved to Manitoulin. So, the whole clan will be living on the Island when I move here. With the work I do, I can send scripts and artwork anywhere online. And the peace and tranquility of Manitoulin is conductive to being creative,” he said.
‘The Dwellings’ hard cover collection will be released in April and can be pre-ordered on Amazon.
