Michael DeForge

Michael DeForge (born 1987) is a Canadian comics artist and illustrator.

Biography DeForge grew up in Ottawa and attended the University of Toronto, dropping out after two years.

According to DeForge, he has "always been drawing cartoons" and learned to read and draw from his parents' comic strip collections such as Bloom County, Far Side, Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes. He has described Peanuts as his all-time favorite cartoon strip. He read and tried to draw in the style of superhero comics until junior high and high school. He has described his work as a "props and effects designer" with "odd bits of storyboard work, character design and concept art" and "the best day job I could have ever asked for". which did not make it to air.

He self-identifies as a Socialist.

Work

DeForge had been an active member of the regional Toronto comics scene for several years before his Cave Adventure webcomic and the first issue of Lose brought wider exposure. He has said that attending the 2009 Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) and seeing all the work at the festival provided him with the impetus to make his own comic series, Lose. Lose #2, published by Koyama in 2010, was nominated in the 2011 Doug Wright Awards "Best Book" category. All but the last 3 pages of the 24 page comic features DeForge's story It's Chip, described by Koyama as "a stand alone horror comic about two children and the monsters they find in the woods". Rob Clough, writing in his High-Low column in The Comics Journal, described it as combining "sibling rivalry and family/school dynamics with weird anthropomorphic cuteness with some truly disgusting, repulsive images", a "tremendous success" and "a story I'd point to if asked to name truly successful and innovative Fusion comics".

Spotting Deer (2010), a 12-page full-colour comic described by DeForge as documenting "the biology and behavioural patterns of a fictional species of slug called the 'Spotting Deer,' who are deer-shaped and deer-sized and populate most Canadian cities", won the 2011 Pigskin Peters Award for best non-narrative or experimental work. The comic was developed from the initial idea of "formatting it like an encyclopedia entry". DeForge's work won the 2011 Ignatz Award for "Outstanding Comic" and was nominated for the "Outstanding Artist" and "Outstanding Series" awards. Lose #3 also received a nomination for the Doug Wright Award for "Best Book". Deforge's 2 page comic Young People was included in Marvel's Strange Tales II (Strange Tales MAX #2) anthology for non-mainstream comics writers and artists, published under the MAX imprint. ComicsAlliance described it as a story where "teenage superheroes flee the scene when powers they can't fully control melt one of their teammates into a puddle of sentient water". Frank Santoro's Riff Raff column in The Comics Journal included DeForge's Intermission Funnies, a weekly gag strip, from August to December 2011. DeForge's four-part serial Rescue Pet was published in the quarterly magazine Maisonneuve's 2011 issues. Mothers News have published Deforge's monthly strip, Military Prison, since November 2011. DeForge has described the strip as his "Wizard of Id fan fiction". Abbey Loafer, a monthly strip, was published in Offerings, a "non-profit, volunteer-based monthly newspaper that covers Toronto's fringe music and arts scene", from December 2011 until July 2013.

DeForge self-published Open Country #1 in May 2011 and issue #2 in fall 2011. Originally planned as a five-part series, DeForge abandoned it "midway through, destroyed all the artwork for and then threw away all the unsold copies".

DeForge has collaborated with Ryan Sands on a number of projects. In 2010, they co-edited Prison for Bitches, described by DeForge as "a Lady Gaga tribute zine full of artwork, writing, and comics". Thickness #1 featured work by Katie Skelly, Jonny Negron, Ze Jian Shen, Derek Ballard, True Chubbo. Thickness #3 featured work by Lamar Abrams, Jimmy Beaulieu, Edie Fake, Julia Gfrörer, William Cardini and Sean T. Collins, Gengoroh Tagame, True Chubbo, Andy Burkholder and HamletMachine. The anthology included work by Jon Vermilyea, Derek M. Ballard, Dan Zettwoch, T. Edward Bak, Robin Nishio, Ines Estrada, Lizz Hickey, Mickey Zacchili, Jesse Jacobs, Jason Fischer, Hellen Jo, Angie Wang, Greg Pizzoli, Joe Lambert, Bob Flynn and Chris "Elio" Eliopoulos. Although DeForge has said that he has "never actually had much interest in being an editor", he co-edited Thickness and Root Rot because he supported the idea behind each book, and enjoys working with Ryan Sands and Annie Koyama, who he said did most of the "heavy lifting". and Exams, an 8-page webcomic, was published online by Study Group. Space Face Books published the 8 page minicomic one-shot Molecule, in November 2012.

The fourth issue of DeForge's Lose series, "the fashion issue", was published by Koyama in September 2012 and debuted at the 2012 Small Press Expo (SPX). It won the 2013 Ignatz Award for "Outstanding Artist" and Lose won the "Outstanding Series" award. The issue included Someone I Know and Canadian Royalty together with shorter stories such as The Sixties.

Smoke Signal #15, published March 2013, included two collaborations with Leslie Stein, Watertest, written by DeForge and drawn by Stein, and It's a Lovely Day in Amsterdam, written by Stein and drawn by DeForge. In 2013, Uncivilized Books published DeForge's Structures 24-34, the third issue in their Structures zine series where artists are asked to contribute 11 designs for new structures. Structures 1-11 was by Tom Kaczynski and Structures 12-23 by Vincent Stall. It won the 2013 Ignatz Award for "Outstanding Anthology or Collection". The issue included three self-contained stories, Living Outdoors, Muskoka and Recent Hires. According to Chris Randle, writing for Hazlitt, it "imagines Prince as an unearthly fetish-gear-wreathed enigma, then imagines the implications of that". Space Face Books published The Boy In Question 20 page minicomic one-shot in the summer of 2013. Duk Duk Goose was published online by Study Group in October 2013. The November 2013 issue of ArtReview Magazine including DeForge's 2 page strip Dot Com.

Ant Colony (2014), DeForge's first book-length story, collects his web based weekly strip Ant Comic. Drawn & Quarterly publisher Chris Oliveros described DeForge as "one of those rare talents who emerge, out of the blue, with a fully formed and singularly unique vision" and a "striking visual sensibility and peculiar sense of humor...entirely his own".