Comic artist Tony Gray and The Incredible Conduit are joining The Chatham Voice.
Gray, who has worked with the likes of Marvel and DC Comics, will see his superhero character come to life on the pages of The Voice.
The artist sees it as a great fit.
“I love newspapers,” Gray, a former prepress supervisor at several daily newspapers in Ontario, said. “
Gray, a Windsor native, calls Chatham as his home these days, or at least part of the time, as he still has his studio in Windsor.
As for The Conduit, Gray’s superhero, he is following somewhat in his artist’s footsteps. Raymond Cole, The Conduit’s secret identity, has moved to Chatham after being in Windsor. After an explosion destroyed his student lab in Windsor, Cole shifts to Chatham to attend St. Clair College here, and work part-time as an investigative journalist for The Voice.
The Incredible Conduit will appear weekly in this newspaper, starting with “Trouble on the Thames.”
His love of comics, specifically of The Amazing Spiderman, actually opened doors for Gray at an early age.
Gray said when he was 11, his mother took samples of his comic artwork to New York when she was on a group trip. Those drawings wound up in the hands of John Romita, the artist behind Spiderman.
“He sent it back with notes to help me get better,” Gray said. “Years later, after I began working in the industry and was known enough to get called out to conventions, I got to know John. To me, I was that seven-year-old kid again. I was meeting my hero. He was a great guy to talk to, full of advice and kindness.”
But the years in between were not filled with drawings and comic success for Gray. He turned from art to music, playing in bands as a teenager, and gravitated eventually to working in newspapers in the pre-press department at the Windsor Star by the mid-1990s.
When the Star opted to revamp its comics page, Gray penned one of his own and threw it into the mix.
The strip, Saturday Afternoon, started appearing in late 2000. It was soon syndicated and ran for a time in 130 newspapers around North America.
Through it all, Gray remained “a superhero guy,” he said, and he pitched the idea of developing a Windsor-based superhero, and The Conduit was brought to life.
Eventually, Gray teamed up with fellow Windsorite and comic artist David Finch and the two formed Glass Monkey Studios with the intent to diversify into film. But the work that came in remained in the print form, Gray said.
Finch moved on and “took over the Batman strip” with DC Comics, Gray said, while Gray did freelance work with both Marvel and DC; work that continues to this day.
However, Gray took time off away from comics. It was to be a year. That turned into seven. He worked with the comedy duo Kenny Hotz and Spencer Ride (of Kenny vs. Spenny fame).
But when the pandemic hit, Gray pivoted and started drawing comics again. Now, he’s looking to share his concepts once more with the public.
Enter the Conduit. The feature will focus on Chatham-Kent locations and people. The hand-drawn elements will be unique to our municipality.
The Conduit is not a graphic novel come to life on the pages of a newspaper. It is a throwback to the golden age of comics. Think of the Adam West-led Batman television show. The bad guys are colourful, yet not always competent.
As Gray’s new endeavour lights up the pages of The Voice, readers will see the Thames Gang plan the heist of one of the cars in RetroFest. Will they succeed? Stay tuned.
His goal with the revamped and relocated Conduit is to share his love of comics with today’s youth, and the youth of yesterday.
“I remember the impact comic books had on me, learning to read, learning to draw, learning vocabulary,” he said, adding that letting his Conduit come alive in a free publication such as The Voice is a great way to share his passion.
As for Chatham-Kent, Gray said he really likes the municipality.
“I feel rejuvenated since I got to Chatham,” he said. “This is just nice to walk down streets. There aren’t thugs roaming about. There’s a sense of peace coming to Chatham that I haven’t felt since I was 13 or 14.”
