Whazamo! Profiles: Evan Munday

Name: Evan Munday

Hometown: Toronto? (Originally Ramsey, NJ, or Oakville, ON)

Website: www.idontlikemundays.com and www.sketchkrieg.blogspot.com

Role: Sometimes illustrator, sometimes cartoonist

Latest Work: Stripmalling (written by Jon Paul Fiorentino), ECW Press

What’s It About in a Nutshell: Stripmalling is a hybrid novel that is equal parts memoir, fiction, comedy and comic book. It follows a young man, Jonny, on his perilous journey from directionless Winnipeg gas jockey to moderately successful Montreal writer (with slightly more direction). And somewhere in there is a pretty compelling and amusing critique of big-box consumerist culture. Sections of it are told in comic book form, and I drew those parts.

What first inspired you to create comics or graphic novels?
Chris Claremont's Uncanny X-Men. There is nothing about his run on the book that did not capture my juvenile imagination and hold it for ransom.

What for you makes a comic or graphic novel AWESOME!?
When it somehow reflects what I've loved about past comic books, while doing something completely new -- something I've never seen before, or (better) something I never would have even thought of.

What subjects are you obsessed with?
The post-apocalypse, local mythology, genre-melding, humour, dead things.

If you weren’t doing comics or graphic novels, what would you be doing?
Well, doing comics is not my full-time job. So I would probably be acting as publicist for Coach House Books. (Much like I do now.) Or forensic accounting: the path not taken.

What is your favourite Canadian graphic novel, or What’s your favourite graphic novel of all time?
Toss-up between the Scott Pilgrim books by Bryan Lee O'Malley and Ragmop by Rob Walton.

What are you working on now?

Quarter-life Crisis . A 120-odd page comic book set in a post-apocalyptic Toronto, in which everyone except the 25-year-olds have mysteriously died. The book follows the Yung brothers, who live in the box above OCAD (now destroyed) and eke out an existence in the tribal yet futuristic hellscape.