Saskatchewan father-daughter comic book duo ready to release latest issue
Jeff Burton officially became a comic book writer in 2016, with the release of "The Adventures of Auroraman."
"Auroraman is just a regular guy. He's a husband and a father, a high school teacher, and one night he happens to find a cosmic powered staff, and decides to become the superpower of the prairies,” said Burton.
Burton, who a high school teacher in Englefeld, Saskatchewan, says the name inspired by aurora borealis, and just like the many of the themes and villains in his comics, is an homage to living life on the Prairies.
"Everybody thinks the Prairies are pretty quiet and tame, but there's lots of wacky and zany things happening,” he said, referring to characters like monsters made out of wheat and grain, and even werecows.
"Everybody knows that werewolves are a thing, but you dig into that lore a little bit and it could be any animal, so I just thought it was rather appropriate to be a cow. My dad was a livestock farmer for a long time and most of my life, so it just kind of fit.”
One of the latest villains in the series, Gamemaster, was created by his 15-year-old daughter Kyrra, who has written the latest issue: The Adventures of Auroraman #9.
"It's pretty crazy, I never really thought it would happen,” said Kyrra of taking the reins of her dad’s comic book series.
"I was very nervous. That's one of the reasons why I actually created Gamemaster because then, one of the main characters can be someone I created myself so I didn't have to worry about getting them right.”Burton says Kyrra, who was recently diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, would join him at comic shows like the Saskatoon Entertainment Expo over the years, so the idea of her writing alongside him wasn’t surprising.
"We just kind of seemed to meet on this idea that she had, and eventually now has blossomed to her writing it,” he said.
She assures fans of the series the latest issue won’t have much of a departure in style.
"I don't think they’ll notice too much, because (my dad) was very influential with the whole process and making sure that what I was writing was good,” she said.
"She's being very modest,” said Burton. "My help was more for formatting and style, I did not change a whole bunch when it came to the actual writing. She writes a little funnier than I do so, I think they might notice that the humor is a little more … I don’t know, better.”
"It's more together,” Kyrra added. "It's pretty much if I come up with an idea, I can show it to dad and if he likes it, I can write it down and then we just go from there.”
Now Kyrra is the one answering questions at comic shows — even signing a comic for her principal — and will join her dad at Amazing Stories Comics in Saskatoon for the release of The Adventures of Auroraman #9 on August 14.
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