ABOUT
Ken Boesem is a Canadian artist, writer, cartoonist and pop culture historian based in Vancouver, Canada. Currently, he is hard at work on two major projects:
and;
- MAPLE LEAF HEROES - An in-depth history of Canada's first modern comic book publisher...Vancouver's Maple Leaf Publishing (1940-1947)...which also produced Canada's first science fiction comic book feature in The Earth Torpedo & first costumed super hero in The Iron Man (both by cartoonist and company co-founder, Vernon Miller) but perhaps better known today for John Stables' character Brok Windsor, whose costumed adventures were Kickstarter funded into a beautiful archive edition recently by the incredible Canadian comic book diva, Hope Nicholson.
- THE SUNLESS LAND - The first ever comic book adaptation of Canada's seminal science fiction novel...just in time for the upcoming 130th anniversary of that novel's original publication in 2018!
In 2012, Boesem provided colourful illustrations for award-winning writer Tony Correia's popular Web-serial Foodsluts at Doll & Penny's Cafe and the book cover for it's collected print edition.
How God Built Earth, a short graphic tale created by Boesem at just seven years old and published in 2002, was reprinted in its entirety in Geist magazine in 2006. The same year, he was included in a list of "notable creators" in Canada's small press field in historian John Bell's Invaders From the North: How Canada Conquered the Comic Book Universe.
From 2005-2012 Boesem produced a serialized comic strip called The Village, set in Vancouver's Davie Village gaybourhood, that was syndicated to Pink Triangle Press' former Xtra print publications in Vancouver & Ottawa.
His 2003 short story 1918, about the influenza pandemic of that year, received national attention in Maclean's magazine, which called it "a moving account of a medical tragedy."