Indie Edge December 2015: Kalman Andrasofszky

Kalman, please tell us a bit about yourself!

I write the brand-new Captain Canuck comic book series and also provide the covers every month. I began my career producing spot and cover illustrations for roleplaying games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, and Vampire: The Masquerade, among others. In 2003 I co-created and illustrated the comic book series iCandy for DC, and since then I’ve freelanced extensively for comic book publishers including Marvel, DC, and Valiant. I’m probably best known as a cover artist on such titles as X-23, Future Foundation, X-treme X-Men (MAY130734), Bloodshot (DEC121274), R.E.B.E.L.S (MAY100191), Checkmate (FEB080247), Ion (OCT060196), Avengers World (NOV140874), and Marvel Universe. I’ve also drawn comics featuring Captain America, Legion, Dazzler, and NYX among others.

What are your favorite projects you’ve contributed to over the past decade?

Checkmate was the first time I was asked to jump onto a series I’d already been reading and enjoying as a fan, so it’ll always have a special place in my heart.

NYX: No Way Home was the series I really got to make my mark on. Volume 1 had made a huge impact on me as a reader and an artist, so getting to re-imagine those characters in my own style for Volume 2 was a huge thrill.

X-23 with Marjorie Liu is still the cover run I’m proudest of. Sometimes due to scheduling a cover artist can be somewhat disconnected from the rest of the team, but Marjorie always made me feel like an important part of that book. We would chat about upcoming storylines and as a result I was able to pitch concepts to editorial and design visual themes for each arc.

New and Classic Titles by Kalman Andrasofszky

• Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes: The Dominator War (JUN070210)
• Rebels: Strange Companions (MAY100191)
• NYX: No Way Home HC (JUN090654)

What are you currently working on?

The brand new Captain Canuck series published by Chapterhouse Comics is at the center of my work life these days. It’s a reboot of the classic Canadian flag-wearing Superhero of the 1970s and early ’80s (preceding Guardian by four years) originally created by Richard Comely and Ron Leishman. Whatever you may think of the original, we’re playing this revamp absolutely straight, giving our Northern Icon a sci-fi background and a military edge. Working on this book has been a non-stop delight, as has collaborating with series artist Leonard Kirk. I’m incredibly lucky that the first scripts I’ve written for anyone other than me, are getting drawn by an artist of his calibre, and he is killing it, folks. I’m also co-writing season 2 of the Captain Canuck animated web series, episode 1 of which will be dropping on Halloween!

What titles are you currently reading?

The Pitiful Human Lizard by Jason Loo. Jason’s recently joined the Chapterhouse family and they’re reprinting the run to date, but I’d been cheerleading this book since Jason Kickstarted his self-published first issue a year-and-a-half-ago. Somewhere between The Tick and The Jam — with a dash of Optic Nerve (MAR151285) — and set in my hometown of Toronto, it’s funny and sad and weird and I love it!

Russian Olive to Red King (MAR150857) by Kathryn Immonen and Stuart Immonen. Best known for their outstanding Marvel work, these two periodically collaborate on personal works, and here they’ve crafted a haunting, beautiful, literate, and impressionistic book, that veers into object d’art territory by virtue of sheer gorgeousness. And Stuart can draw an obstinate dog like nobody’s business.

We Stand on Guard (AUG158130) by Brian K. Vaughan and Steve Skroce. I love everything Brian Vaughan does, his work is “comics perfection” to me, but a new series from him, that’s set in Canada and is dystopic sci-fi, is almost too much awesome to bear! It’s everything you’d expect from Vaughan, and if you’re Canadian like me, you’ll thrill at the parade of local references… without any of the usual back bacon, beavers, mounties, maple syrup, or ‘ehs’.