GRAPHICA SPOTLIGHT
Outside the lines
Cole Pauls’s work is inspired by ’80s and ’90s comic strips, punk rock, and his own Tahltan heritage
BY ANDREW WOODROW-BUTCHER
ILLUSTRATION BY COLE PAULS
MY VIDEO CHAT WITH CARTOONIST COLE PAULS is just getting going when I hear an alarm coming from somewhere in his cozy-looking Vancouver apartment. “I have a timer every hour,” the 27-year-old explains. “I have to vote for Tim.” Broken Pencil’s annual indie illustrator contest is ending that night, and Vancouver comic artist Tim Bauer is in the running. Pauls puts our conversation on hold for a minute to cast a vote for his friend, and then we’re back.
Pauls is infectiously enthusiastic about the release of his second book, Pi Punks, despite the particular challenges of 2021. In a nonpandemic year, there is a circuit of in-person comic arts festivals across Canada where new books like his generate sales and buzz. It’s a scene infused with an analogue, DIY ethos and an emphasis on community. But in the face of a second year of COVID-19 cancellations, artists are still figuring out how to connect with readers from a distance.
The launch of Pauls’s first graphic novel,Dakwäkãda Warriors in 2019 was a different story: a huge celebration was held in his hometown of Haines Junction, Yukon, where the book is set.
Dakwäkãda Warriors is a unique project: both a rollicking adventure with starships and laser battles, and a work of Indigenous language reclamation that, in Pauls’s words, “assesses colonialism and living in the future as an Indigenous person.” The book’s pop-culture tropes mix with Southern Tutchone language, elements of Pauls’s Tahltan identity, and a fantastical sense of the place he grew up in to create something that readers of all ages love.