Local filmmaker releases first comic book

GUELPH/ERAMOSA – Award-winning film director David Antoniuk has always considered himself a writer, and the Guelph/Eramosa resident has now published his first comic book.

“If I could do anything I would sit around campfires telling stories,” Antoniuk told the Advertiser. “In my bones, it’s who I am.” 

Shortly after moving to Toronto from Winnipeg to go to film school in 1989, Antoniuk wrote a short story that was published in Ice magazine. 

Antoniuk was a young man grappling with age-old questions: “Why are we here? And what happens to us when we die?” 

The story explores the question with both comedic and serious tones.

“I never want to preach to people,” Antoniuk said. “I want them to have an enjoyable experience” that gently leads to self reflection.  

The idea began with an image that appeared in Antoniuk’s mind: a vast abyss with nothing but a donut shop. 

The abyss is purgatory: a way station, he said, for people “not quite good enough to go to heaven and not quite bad enough to go to hell.” 

“You have to atone and think and reflect,” he said.   

The main character in the story did okay, he just didn’t do enough for other people, something Antoniuk said, “I think can be said for all of us.

“That’s why we are here – for each other, not for ourselves.” 

Nearly four decades later, that story – Time Spent – has taken on a new life in the form of a comic book. 

Antoniuk  said the story’s message is just as significant now, if not more, than it was when he wrote it in the ‘80s, though he made little tweaks to the comic to modernize it.  

Written by Antoniuk, the book was drawn by Kevin Phillips in a vintage comic book style and coloured by Linda Scott Campbell.

“Colour is an art onto itself,] and Linda Campbell is a true artist,” Antoniuk said. 

He noted he makes time to write on top of his 80-hour work week as a film director because of his love for the craft of writing, particularly its directness. 

“When you go see a movie you experience it and walk away,” he said, but a book offers a more tangible, archival and visceral experience as people hold it in their hands. 

And writing is more personal than filmmaking, he said – “I’m in that story ...  A sense of who I am and my world views comes through.” 

Antoniuk wrote his first story, an adaptation of Frankenstein, when he was in Grade 4, and said he’d consider turning that one into a comic book too, if he could find it. 

He remembers telling his Grade 4 teacher that he didn’t need to learn math, because he was going to grow up to be a writer. 

Time Spent is available to read for free online at davewashere.com, and hard copies can be purchased at Rural Roots in Rockwood and Long Box Silver’s Comics in Guelph or online through Antoniuk’s website.

Antoniuk said he wanted to make it available for free to reduce barriers for people interested in reading it.  

In the first week after releasing the book on July 4, Antoniuk said he made sales on almost every continent. 

People can expect to see more from Antoniuk in the near future. He’s working on turning short horror stories by his wife, author Vanessa Ireson, into comic book form and is also co-writing a young adult graphic novel about a group of kids fighting monsters. 

After that, he’s set to write another comic book he said will have more in common with Time Spent.