Ty Templeton is a very well-known Canadian comics artist who initially gained attention in the comics press in 1984, when Canada’s Vortex Comics started publishing the very well-received Stig’s Inferno comic book series, which gathered quite a large fan following. Ty also taught classes in comic book writing and illustrating in the past, known as “Ty Templeton’s Comic Book Boot Camp.”
Ty Templeton: I wish I still did teach. I’m afraid the cancer battle left me a little bit disabled, and I cannot teach anymore. I’m a happy, sort-of healthy dude, but I’m afraid that physically, teaching a three-hour class isn’t possible at the moment.
First Comics News: I’m sincerely sorry that you had to go through that. Mr. Templeton. May I call you Ty?
Ty: No one calls me anything else.
1st: That’s great! If it’s okay with you, I’d like to start by asking you some biographical questions. If there are any questions you don’t want to answer, just leave those blank, and I’ll remove those later. Firstly, can you tell our readers where you were born and grew up?
Ty: I was born in a small town in Southern Ontrario called “Clarkson”, a former strawberry farming community that became a suburb of Toronto, as the city grew. It’s very suburban now, but as a kid, it had huge Victorian mansions, and vast empty forests and fields, and dirt roads and farms and drive-in movie theatres. I’m sure it wasn’t as bucolic as I recall it, but it was a good home town in the late 1950s early 1960s.
1st: Do you currently live in Toronto?
Ty: Nope. I currently live in what used to be Clarkson, but is now the “city” of Mississauga.
1st: Though I was born and raised in Nova Scotia, I lived in Toronto for several years, from the late 1970s through a good part of the 11980s And, still later, I lived in Barrie, Ontario, where I attended the Georgian College of Applied Arts & Technology, where I took graphic design.
I had no idea that Mississauga was once called Clarkson. I’m a hobbyist historian, so that is sincerely interesting to me! I’m going to research that online, about the former Ontario town of Clarkson.
Ty: All the farms are long gone (in Clarkson, now Mississauga), but some of the gorgeous Victorian mansions are still around. I live about two or three miles from the house where I grew up. New owners knocked it down when my mother passed away a couple of years ago, but the property is more or less on the way to my local comic store, so I used to drive by my old place once a week, on Wednesdays. I still drive by the elementary school I attended, and buy my comics from a shop that is in the SAME location as a variety store that sold comics in the 1960s. I purchased an Avengers #57 off the newsstand in 1968, which is physically in the same location as the newsstand I bought this week’s West Coast Avengers from!
1st: That’s great! I love nostalgia. Avengers # 57, a Silver Age issue, was, of course, the very first appearance of the Vision character. About Clarkson (now Mississauga), sometimes, the more things change, the more things stay (somewhat) the same!
I linked, just for fun, the cover of Avengers # 57, Silver Age issue, that you mentioned. Even though the scan I attached is encapsulated, I’m one of those guys who, when I buy vintage issues, I always open those cases and toss the plastic, before those poor comics suffocate to death! Smile. And, of course, so that I can read them!
Ty: I did spend about twenty years in downtown Toronto, from the 1980s to the early 2000s, but once I started having kids, I wanted to raise them where I grew up, so I moved back to Clarkson. Now that the kids are adults, we’re looking towards moving again.
1st: I’m also wondering if you knew of or ever met Toronto native comics writer, creator and publisher Dave Darrigo?
He sadly passed away last year, but we worked together, several years ago, at Toronto’s Dragon Lady Comics Shop in Toronto, when it was still at 200 Queen St. West; he and I were very close friends for over thirty-five years. Comics artist Dave Ross (not to be confused with comics artist Alex Roth) was also a friend of Dave Darrigo. Dave and I knew him before he worked in comics, but he was a very talented artist, even back then! This would have been, for me, between the early about mid-1980s.
Ty: Dave (Darrigo) used to let me sit in the back of the Dragon Lady Comics Shop and read the comics I just bought that week. I had my ohair back there in the very teeny tiny back room, when it was still on Queen Street.
1st: I used to eat my lunch back there at work, in that same chair, at that same tiny counter! There was only one counter and one chair, back there.
Ty: When it (the store) moved to College at Carlton Streets, it wasn’t my neighbourhood shop anymore, and I’d switched to mostly being a Silver Snail customer.
1st: I remember, very, very well, Ron Van Leeuwen’s Silver Snail Comics Shop, several blocks further west, down Queen Street West, on the opposite side of the street; the south side of the street. I also shopped there as well, for many years, and at the same time. Of course, Silver Snail Comics still exists these days, and in a different spot, under new owners.
I got to sort-of know Ron Van Leeuwen just a little bit, way back when he still owned the store; before he sold it, years after I left Ontario, returning to my native Nova Scotia.
The only time I ever ran into him out of the store, in Toronto, was on the corner of Bloor St. West and Bedford Streets one time (one street over from the St. George subway street stop), one winter, and we had a brief chat. Bloor St. West at Bedford streets was my old neighbourhood that I had lived in, just above Varsity Stadium and the University of Toronto. I had lived just one block north of Varsity Stadium, and one block west, at 32-34 Admiral Road, on the third floor. Of course, I’d also, at around that time, all those decades ago, see Ron Van Leeuwen at Toronto ComicCons back then as well, when the employees of both stores were working those Cons, back then. The Dragon Lady Comics Store was owned by the late John Biernat. I only recently learned (from online) that this gent had passed away some years ago, sadly.
Ty: The Silver Snail is still in Toronto, but it is not in the same location, nor under the same management. it’s just a name nowadays, and not for an exclusive comic store.
1st: Sure. Just so that you are aware, though, Ty, last week, I read an article online, and the gist of it was that the Silver Snail comic book store is going to move back to its original location, on Queen Street West. Or at least, that is what that online article had said.
Ty: Of course, years later, the Dragon Lady became the Comic Book Lounge, (at College and Carlton Streets), and my school moved into the back of the Lounge, but this was after Dave (Darrigo) was no longer there, and it was Joe Kilmartin running the shop; and then Kevin Boyd, when the school was there.
1st: Kevin Boyd is one of my Facebook friends. He’s run Toronto ComicCons for many years. I didn’t know that Dragon Lady became The Comic Book Lounge later, still, but then again, I was back to living in Nova Scotia before that happened.
Ty: I have thousands of memories of Dave (Darrigo); I practically lived in the Dragon Lady when it was the tiny version, on Queen St. West, and near University Street
I happened to meet frequent collaborator Harvey Pekar in the Dragon Lady one afternoon, and the newsletter the shop produced, “The Dragon Lady Dispatch,” published my first-ever professional drawing (of Judge Dredd), to promote Brian Bolland’s Cursed Earth series! I was very connected to Dragon Lady.
1st: Me, too! I never, ever met Harvey Pekar, but I understand from both his self-published magazine-sized early comic and his many appearances on The Dave Letterman Show that he was quite an irascible character!
The first-ever comics pro I ever met was Jim Starlin, around 1979, in an elevator, at a ComicCon as he was leaving for the day; I recognized him, and he had signed an Overstreet price guide for me – for the reason that I didn’t have any of his comics with me, at the time. I had some vintage Dell’s Alex Toth Zorros with me that I’d bought at this early Toronto ComiCon. Starlin had quipped, “Hey, I should sign those!” But of course, he was only kidding.
1st: I also contributed, as well, to several issues of the shop’s in-house fanzine, The Dragon Lady Dispatch, that you mentioned. And, while I am an artist and writer, I only contributed written articles to it. I remember your Judge Dredd art in The Dragon Lady Dispatch, which I still have somewhere. And, if I recall it correctly, I think it was a cover to one of the early stapled-together issues.
When I moved back eventually to my native Nova Scotia, Dave Darrigo and I stayed in touch a lot, writing each other hundreds and hundreds of snail mail mailed letters, over several decades. I’d visit him in Ontario, and one time he missed me and my then-girlfriend at the time in Halifax.
We were also friends, in Toronto, with the late comics letterhack ‘T.M. Maple’ for years, also known as Jim Burke.
I worked on some comics fanzines with Jim. Dave Darrigo, Jim Burke, and I used to go out to dinner in Toronto after the store closed, sometimes; this is after he revealed his real identity to the world. Jim (T.M. Maple) Burk, a.k.a ‘The Mad Maple’, was a computer programmer. That is what he did for a living. He was a very intelligent guy!
Ty: Yeah. I met Jim T.M. Maplee” Burke a few times.
1st: Can you tell our readers how you came to get your first job in the comics industry?
Ty: I was attending art school in Toronto at the “Ontario College of Art and Design” in the late 1970s, early 1980s, and I had a school mate named Anthony Van Bruggen (a very talented Disney artist and designer) who loved comics like I did, and he told me there was a local comics publisher in Toronto called Vortex Comics.
Anthony had a story in the third or fourth issue of “VORTEX”, the publisher’s anthology title, and I went down the street to meet the editor and show him my stuff. He liked what I did enough to offer me a couple of stories — I think I did three short stories in it, before I was offered a series. The publisher was an unscrupulous scoundrel, as most small publishers were at the time, but the title “Stig’s Inferno” got me attention, and it got me nominated for an award for best Black and White title.
I lost to Cerebus, as we all did during this period, but just being nominated got me some attention, and I got a job offer from Eclipse Comics to move Stig’s Inferno over there. Which I did. Jan and Dean Mullaney and Cat Yronwode (the editor at Eclipse) were far less scoundrel-like, and my REAL career began there.
1st: When I was a teenager, Eclipse Comics’ Cat Yronwode and I enjoyed a mutual frequent snail mail, a mailed letters penpal friendship, in which I’d receive these (many) letters from her, profusely illustrated letters, on expensive paper. We probably ‘met’ in the comics lettercols; back then, they published complete addresses with the people’s names who wrote those letters of comment to numerous comics titles. Cat Yronwode loved Marvel’s Doctor Strange, and there were many illustrations of Doctor Strange in these letters from her that she had drawn.
They were quite good.
I don’t even know if I still own those vintage letters from her, deep in the bowels of my comics collection, somewhere. She wrote letters in old-school calligraphy. She was quite talented, both in art and in calligraphy! Did you know she was quite the artist, as well?
1st: I loved Canada’s Vortex Comics, both the comics title by that name they put out – which was the name of both the comics company itself, as well as the title of one of the comics series that they published, and of the other titles they put out as well, especially your Stig’s Inferno!
Whatever happened to that company, Vortex Comics? Are you aware? I’m wondering if they were part of what some comics historians refer to as (part of) the ‘black and white glut’, although I have never thought of it that way, myself. I liked quite a lot of the black and white titles, and to this day, I own all three hundred Canadian issues of Cerebus the Aardvark.
1st: So, after Vortex Comics, you went to Dean Mullaney’s and Catherine ‘Cat’ Yronwode’s Eclipse Comics. Did you do any other titles or fill-in issues at Eclipse, in addition to Stig’s Inferno? Also, what was your next stop where you did comics work, after Eclipse Comics?
Ty: Yeah. I inked and did covers for a superhero title called “New Wave”. It was trying to be an X-Men/Teen Titans style clone, with pencils by a young Lee Weeks and a young Erik Larsen, but the series petered out fairly quickly. I did a couple of other minor things here and there at Eclipse; a backup story in Sgt. Steel, a house ad for Miracle Man, and maybe something else, but who remembers? It’s been forty years.
1st: I completely understand, Ty. There are a lot of things from forty years ago that I don’t remember all that well, either. By the way, I’ve got two years on you.
Oh, and I seem to recall New Wave.
Where did you go after Eclipse, Ty?
Ty: DC Comics. I started with a Blue Devil mini-series that never came out, but I did end up drawing an issue of Blue Devil for Secret Origins, then I started inking Booster Gold for a while, then it gets blurry after Legion and Superboy…
1st: Do you recall all the titles you worked on in your comics career, at Vortex Comics, Eclipse Comics, Marvel, and DC Comics, and can you name them, from memory? Also, whatever happened to Canada’s Vortex Comics?
Ty: No. Early titles included, at Vortex: Mister X, Stig’s Inferno, Kelvin Mace, Those Annoying Post Brothers… And, at Eclipse: New Wave, Sgt. Strike, MiracleMan. At DC: Secret Origins, Legion of Super-Heroes, Tailgunner Jo, Justice League, Booster Gold, Elongated Man, Plastic Man, Superman, Action, Detective, Teen Titans. At Marvel, it’s mostly a bunch of different Spider-Man titles and some Avengers books. I did a Thor book. I did a Thor special that was fairly cool. Howard the Duck was fun. Great Lakes Avengers?
1st: The only one of those I am not familiar with is Tailgunner Jo. I’ll have to look for that one!
Ty: For a while, Vortex did Nascar Comics, I think, for sale at the various racetracks of the circuit. Some of them were drawn by Herb Trimpe, I think. Then the publisher got into the movie business in Canada, and I think he’s a streaming/cable film producer nowadays. I’m fairly sure there isn’t a Vortex Comics as a publisher anymore.
1st: I never knew that Vortex later did Nascar Comics, sold only at racetracks of the circuit! I bet that isn’t that well-known! Beyond Stig’s Inferno and Harley Quinn, did you create other memorable characters for comics, Ty? Also, about your art — did you go to school to perfect your art, early on, or are you entirely or mostly self-taught?
Ty: Mostly self-taught. I did go to art school, but I left after the second year, specifically because they WEREN’T teaching me what I wanted to learn.
1st: That was probably back when comics had far less respect than they do these days. And, of course, it was several decades before comics-based movies came out in theatres, some of which have earned, quite literally, billions of dollars at the box office, worldwide! It’s kind of hard to ignore that kind of success! Which art school did you go to, Ty?
Ty: I ran into instructors who kept telling me drawing Batman wasn’t a useful job in the art world, and that I should be aiming at doing commercial storyboards and magazine illustration.
1st: And yet, you had quite a long run of successes on the so-called animated look Batman titles at DC Comics years later, all of which I bought and avidly read and enjoyed! Did you create or co-create Harley Quinn/The Harlequin?
Ty: Let’s get one thing quite clear: I did not create nor co-create Harley Quinn. She’s the creation of Paul Dini, Bruce Timm, and, to some extent, Arleen Sorkin. I wrote SOME of her early comic book adventures (like her fifth, sixth, eighth, and ninth appearances in comics…maybe a couple more), but I was working with a character already well-crafted by Bruce, Paul, and Arleen. I like to think I helped, but I was a support player for their creation, not the other way around.
1st: Completely understand. I think I had previously (incorrectly) wondered if you perhaps had had a hand in that character’s creation, since you were working on the first Batman Adventures title, if memory serves. Anyway, thanks for clearing that up.
Ty: These are things (commercial storyboards and magazine illustration) I didn’t want to do, so I left the school, and by that point, I was already at Vortex. I figured I’d learn to make comics by making them, rather than arguing with teachers who didn’t like the media at all. I didn’t find out till years later that one of my instructors at OCA, Gerry Lazarre, had drawn comics for a living in the Canadian Golden Age of comics (he was the creator of THUNDER FIST!), and he had soured on the entire comics industry.
1st: Possibly because the Canadian golden age of comics had collapsed a few years later, once World War Two ended, those vintage Canadian comics being in black and white, during the Second World War. As we likely both know, after the Canadian War Measures Exchange Act was withdrawn after World War Two, American full-colour comics were then allowed back into Canada across the 49th parallel joint U.S./ Canadian border. And therefore, Canadian black and white comics just couldn’t compete for kids’ dimes anymore, against those U.S. four-colour wonders. But yep, I know of him. Just imagine, you had met Gerry Lazarre, even if you hadn’t at that time known about his history in the Canadian golden age of comics, or as they are known these days, as ‘The Canadian Whites’, and as the ‘Weca’ War Two comics, as Canadian comics historian Ivan Kocmarek calls them. Here is a cut-and-paste about that from Wikipedia, for those not in the know:
” The (Canadian) War Measures Act was a statute of the Parliament of Canada that provided for the declaration of war, invasion, or insurrection, and the types of emergency measures that could thereby be taken. The Act was brought into force three times in Canadian history: during the First World War, Second World War, and the 1970 October Crisis. The Act was questioned for its suspension of civil liberties and personal freedoms, including only for Ukrainians and other Europeans during Canada’s first national internment operations of 1914–1920, the Second World War’s Japanese Canadian internment, and in the October Crisis. ”
1st: I remember going to Toronto Comicons many years ago, even after I had moved back to Nova Scotia, and you’d be there as a guest speaker, and at least at one of them, I seem to remember you doing monologues with Ed The Sock, a gray sock puppet with green hair, and with big eyes. Ol’ Ed had this big Cuban cigar in his ‘mouth’, if I recall correctly; it was hilarious! I remember laughing so hard watching this that I had tears in my eyes! How is Ed the Sock these days, Ty? Do I have this memory right?
Was that you?
Ty: Yeah, that was me. Ed the Sock was quick and funny, that’s very true. Ed had his local TV series for a while, with minor media celeb LIANA K, called Ed and Red’s Night Party (or something like that) on CityTV in Toronto. Ed’s still around; I think he plays comedy bar venues sometimes. He was vocal during our recent (Canadian federal) election online, but I don’t see him much in person anymore.
1st: Sounds like you and Ed Thock have had a falling-out. Heh heh!
Ty: Steve K. IS Ed the Sock, so he can’t exactly do skits “with” him, unless you count wearing him on your arm as “with” him. But yes, Steve (Steven Joel Kerzner) and I used to hang out a bit, and I came on his show a couple of times, and we presented an awards ceremony together at a convention and hall of fame induction some years ago. Ed and Red (Steve’s wife) were in the buddy group for a while. No big dramatic ending to all that, I just moved to the suburbs when I started having kids.
For those wishing to know more about the (sort-of) celebrity and history of ‘Ed The Sock’, in Canada, here is an interesting link to a Wikipedia article about ‘the man’ himself, Ed The Sock! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_the_Sock
And, of course, in terms of always wishing to advise on practising proper hygiene, I just want to take a moment or two to go on record, to strongly suggest that comedians working with Ed The Sock, in the future, please WASH YOUR HANDS thoroughly, with soap.
After you’ve had your hand up Ed’s ass!
Ty: About ten years ago, Ed and Red created a comic book series that I helped them with…my wife coloured it, and I threw editorial notes around for their contributors, who were mostly my students.
1st: What was the name of that comic book, Ty?
I’d like to know, just for general info for our readers, but also so that I can track it down.
And finally, Ty, I want to take a moment to thank you very, very much for agreeing to chat with me for this First Comics News interview! I learned some interesting things from you, and I sincerely hope that it was fun for you, as well! Thanks again, Sir!
Ty Templeton’s COMIC BOOK BOOTCAMP!!
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