About

About Utown

Utown is initially just a big melting pot of ideas, concepts and characters that have stuck with me since high school. Like a lot of aspiring artists growing up in the early days of forums and the humble beginnings of DeviantArt, having original characters (OCs) was almost a rite of passage. Sam, Thomas, Edwin and Étienne were all created around the turn of the century, as “ambassadors” for everything I loved as an impressionable teen (IE: skate culture, the vague concept of “hacking”, and of course, the unattainable “bad boy” trope.)

I kept on drawing them in my free time, as a sort of way to measure my progress as a cartoonist, while my soul was being sucked away by studies in graphic design. At that point, they had taken a life of their own. I tried time and time again to write them into a narrative, often in the form of hundreds of pages of Word document. It never went anywhere but damn, I remember writing for hours on end, completely invested in crafting a universe for them to live in. 

Then, two things happened: I got better at drawing backgrounds, and I started getting interested in urban planning, architecture and housing issues. In 2012, the city of Montreal announced a big renewal plan for Griffintown. I started paying attention to terms like “gentrification” and “promoters”. In the meantime, Nuclear Winter launched as a webcomic and I discovered the infinite storytelling potential of comics. Slowly, the prospect of having my old OCs featured in their own comic was becoming more realistic. In 2013, soon after I had moved back in my old neighborhood, the City evicted a dozen tenants from the Moreau Lofts, an old, derelict factory that housed the last remains of a once-thriving community of artists. “Gentrification is achieved when the artists start leaving.” As a broke, newly self-employed comic artist in an up-and-coming neighborhood, this stuck with me. And thus, the idea of Samuel as a struggling, marginalized artist fighting to keep his home, came up. Utown would be this made-up city outside of time and geographical constraints where I could talk about the issues that were important to me. 

Finding roles for the other characters took a lot of writing, but almost 20 years after drawing Samuel and Thomas for the first time, they finally got their own comic.

About Cab

I’m Cab (Caroline Breault), a comic artist and illustrator based in Montreal, Canada. I’ve been drawing friendly stoners and angry teens for a while now. My first series, Nuclear Winter, was published by Boom! Studios. I’ve done covers for Oni Press and Boom!, as well as a bunch of other stuff I won’t bother naming. Visit my portfolio to see the professional side of things. This is also where you’ll find a good, serious bio.

FAQ

Will there be a Utown comic book?

There is! Utown was published by Oni Press and released in May 2023. It’s available in most bookstores or via the publisher’s website HERE. You can get a signed copy via my online store as well.

What tools do you use to make the comic?

It’s a happy, messy mix of digital and analog. I storyboard in Photoshop, pencil and ink by hand, then do lettering and tones digitally. I ink with a Tashikawa pen, using a G Nib and Speedball ink, on mixed media paper. You can learn all about my process by checking out my Patreon page, which was heavily focused around the production of Utown for the duration of the project.

How can I support your work?

Easy peasy! The best way is through Patreon, which will also get you early access to the comic, plus exclusive material. It has a huge backlog of posts, documenting the very start of the project. Another way is by visiting my online store! It has a lot of Utown-related prints and merch, at affordable prices. And of course, sharing is caring! A good word to friends, a share, a repost, it always goes a long way 😀