Jay Stephens is a Guelph, Ontario-based and Toronto-born comic artist and cartoonist who joins Aaron for a live episode from The Guelph Comic Jam on the day of the 2019 Joe Shuster Comic Book Awards, which honours Canadians like Joe Shuster – the co-creator of Superman – who make their living in mainstream comics. Jay began his career getting bankrolled by a Guelph comic shop called Collage, under Tragedy Sucks Comics, to create his own indie and underground comic anthology called Sin where many of his most well-known characters first appeared. These are characters like The Nod, (not to be confused with Domino's Pizza's The Noid) JetCat and Tutenstein. The Nod would go on to be the title character in The Land of Nod – Stephens' most critically-acclaimed comics work to date, having been nominated for both an Eisner and a Harvey Award. Meanwhile, Tutenstein would live on in a cartoon of the same name on Discovery Kids and JetCat would be part of Nickelodeon's KaBlam! segments.

Speaking of animation, thanks to his underground comics work on Sin, Stephens was soon plucked from that realm to work on a favourite of Aaron's childhood – YTV's absurdist '90s sketch comedy show, Squawk Box starring the very underrated, but never imitated child actor Dov Tiefenbach. Not only did Stephens write on the show, but he also created the animated short Wonder Duds about a hapless superhero who only ever did the bare minimum necessary to call himself a hero. In addition to being influenced by classic Hanna Barbara cartoons and Harvey Comics like Casper, Richie Rich, and Hot Stuff, he was also fascinated by creepy horror comics and monsters of legend, which was a heavy influence on his Cartoon Network show, The Secret Saturdays, which featured its own toy line from Mattel.

As an artist who tells Aaron that he peaked kind of early, his latest work, Dejects, represents a revival of sorts featuring lost and rejected stories starring his most well-known characters: Tutenstein, The Nod, Wonder Duds and JetCat. It also marks a reunion with his old Tragedy Sucks editor Michel Vrana who has revived his old publishing outfit Black Eyed Books to put out Dejects. On the pod, Aaron and Jay get personal to talk about the ups and downs of his career. They answer where he has been and what he has been doing since his peak? They talk about his occultist upbringing, which had a huge influence on his art, what the comic scene is like in Guelph and his mainstream comics work with the original co-creator of the Teen Titans Bob Haney in what would be his last and lost Teen Titans script – eventually released in 2008 (four years after Haney's death) as Teen Titans: The Lost Annual.

This episode is sponsored by Hairy Tarantula at 3456 Yonge Street in Toronto and Saskatchewan's Bam Coffee Co. Don't forget to go to bamcoffee.ca and use SB15 at checkout to receive 15% off your own Bam Box, which combines coffee and amazing geek swag our listeners drool over.

@Jaypopgun

Buy Dejects

Jay's old archived website

Jay's old Monsterama blog circa 2010

Jay Stephens entry on Lambiek's Comiclopedia

Buy t-shirts with Jay's design

Buy Welcome to Oddville

Owl Magazine – Arrowhead (Jay's creation from the True Patriot Canadian superhero anthology)

Black Eye Books – Jay's Publisher

@blackeyebooks

The Interesting Case of The Secret Saturdays

JetCat on Nickelodeon's KaBlam!

Sponsors

Hairy Tarantula

Bam Coffee Co.