Comic belief: cod moratorium seen through colour and ink

Paul Tucker was 10 years old in 1992 — the year the cod moratorium began, and the year he bought his first comic book.

Now Tucker has created a comic book of his own to commemorate that grim anniversary.

What you see on the pages doesn't look much like the moratorium Newfoundlanders and Labradorians remember.

But that, he says, is the idea.

"Where it's such a sensitive subject, I thought the more out there I went, the more licence that would give me," Tucker said.

The CBC in Newfoundland and Labrador approached Tucker to create a comic book treatment of the cod moratorium.

He has taken that licence and used it to explore the moratorium in a science-fiction fantasy.

"So my conceit for the story was create it as if it were a comic that was made in 1992, just after the moratorium," Tucker said.

"And from that point make it a speculative fiction. OK, it's ’92, the moratorium has just happened, let's look 20 years in the future."

Though the story takes place in an imagined future, Tucker wanted the comic to look like it was printed in the past.

To do that, he used traditional techniques — first creating rough pencil outlines, then inking the pages by hand.

Only then did he bring technology into the process, using a computer to make it look like a finished product.

Even though he used a computer, Tucker gave the comic a retro look, so it appears to have been printed long ago — a style that added depth to the story.

"You know, nostalgia's a powerful tool," he said. "If you give it this dusty, yellowed kind of feel, people can remember old comics, the smell of the newsprint, the way the ink feels on the paper. It just adds that layer of texture which, I think, kind of compliments the kind of story I wanted to tell."

Tucker’s comic book can be found here on CBC Newfoundland and Labrador's website cbc.ca/nl.