iFanboy Upstarts: Simon Roy

Following up after a well-known comic creator is no easy task. Imagine being the writer or artist picked to pick up after Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s run on Fantastic Four, or Jonathan Hickman as he aims to fill the shoes of Brian Bendis as he takes over the primary Avengers title The successful ones do it sometimes by following closely with what was done before, while others make a noticeable shift to differentiate themselves with what’s come before and place the project squarely in their own styles. When Image announced that Rob Liefeld was reviving his Extreme line of titles, seeing the names Brandon Graham and Simon Roy on Prophet seemed like a misprint of epic proportions. Two indie artists working on Liefeld’s knife-wielding time-lost warrior with the headgear? Graham and Roy have bucked the odds and delivered a very different kind of Prophet, steeped in strange science fiction, alien panoramic vistas and a heaping helping of blood and guts. Graham was already known in some comic circles for his work on King City, but for Roy it was his grand coming out party.

Hailing from British Columbia, artist Simon Roy was introduced to most fans with his breakaway work on the revived Prophet series with Brandon Graham. Far removed from the stereotypical “Extreme” styles of Rob Liefeld, Dan Panosian and Stephen Platt, Roy’s work harkens less to the Image era of the 90s and more to European sci-fi artists and the loose line-work of Gipi. Roy made his formal comics debut three years prior to Prophet, on his small-press graphic novel Jan’s Atomic Heart. This 48-page black-and-white book shows a younger, less refined Roy penciling but with the same sense of style and subject matter, as Jan’s Atomic Heart follows a woman named Jan who has to live her life through a robot body after her own was mangled in a car wreck. This isn’t the stereotypical cyberpunk apocalypse, but something more personal and political. Roy followed that graphic novel up with another one in 2012 titled Murder Book with his frequent letterer Ed Brisson writing the script. After those two small press print outings, Roy pulled back and bared down on his college curriculum at the Alberta College of Art and Design while publishing smaller comics works on the phenomenal web comics group site the Study Group. Roy was brought back into print comics by Brandon Graham, who recommended him to Prophet’s owner Rob Liefeld as an a ideal artist for Graham’s vision of the book. Roy did the first four issues of Prophet, and is scheduled to return to the series later on this year.

With Roy’s extensive webcomics work there’s alot of great material floating around online for comic fans to gorge themselves with, and we’ve pulled up a selection for you to get to know Roy’s talent today.