Eric Dyck releases new book of New Brunswick-themed comics
When Eric Dyck moved to Moncton from Calgary in 2007, the comic strip artist expected to see the Maritimes through the eyes of an outsider.
But he was surprised at how much he enjoyed his daily experiences as a "come-from-away."
Dyck told Information Morning Moncton on Wednesday that he started drawing weekly comic strips as a way to stay in touch with people in his home province and to tell them about what he was experiencing in New Brunswick.
Soon, many of his strips were being shared on social media and he developed a fan base in Moncton.
He was drawing a weekly strip called "Mon-qui-towne" — pronounced Monkey Town — which he drew for about six years, until he moved back to Alberta in 2013.
Dyck will launch a collection of those strips, called "Fiddleheaded" at The Comic Hunter in Moncton on Wednesday.
Soon after he started the strip, people would get in contact with him about various local people and places that they thought he should include in the strip.
"We would even be invited out of town to go see some weird, strange 400-year-old thing that had been in their family forever, in hopes that it would make it into a comic," he said.
Local food as comic fodder
Dyck said local food played a big part of his New Brunswick experience from touring maple bushes to picking fiddleheads.
"There were things that were part of Canadian identity, like maple syrup, that I took for granted, but to be here and actually experience it was very special," he said.
Dyck said he drew inspiration from just about everywhere.
"It was a daily basis, so it could be just me walking the dog and happening upon something, upon a weird plant that exudes phlegm for no reason. Or it could be sitting in a coffee shop and hearing somebody talk about what a great guy [pro wrestler] Andre the Giant was," he said.
He said the strip featured drawings of real people from Moncton and places in the region.
The artist said he discovered so much that he even took locals to places he had found, that they had never been.
He's kept up the comic strip after moving back to Alberta and many of his New Brunswick fans kept reading them.
Dyck and his wife now live in southern Alberta, "in the land of cacti and rattle snakes," as he calls it.
But he says he continues to use an outsider's eye when he makes his art.
