Artist Profile
Craig Taillefer
by Ariel Wulff

Craig Taillefer (pronounced Tie-fair) has drawn for as long as he can remember. Born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Craig’s talent showed at a young age. At first his drawings reflected his many interests; comic books, archeology, dinosaurs and cowboys and Indians. His first thought of becoming a professional artist came around age eight, when he realized that archeology (his choice of professions from an even younger age), wasn’t the life of adventure that he had pictured. He had thought it to be one big treasure hunt, finding lost civilizations and cities. He blames Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge comics for giving him those ideas. The more he read up on it the more he came to realize that Archaeology is a discipline of slow and exacting methodology, of patience and luck in excavating and even more patience in cataloguing and classifying what you have found. He was more interested in the fantasy and romance of recreating those lost civilizations. The ‘illustrators’ recreation’ pictures always captured his imagination more than the photographs of ruins and artifacts ever did. As time passed, his interest diverged more and more towards fantasy. He discovered Tarzan and the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and his life was never the same. He filled countless pages with jungle scenes and drawings of the ape man. He tried desperately to emulate the illustrators he discovered; Hal Foster, J. Allen St. John, Roy Krenkel, and Neal Adams. Their worlds and images totally absorbed his nine-year-old brain.

The September before he turned 11, Craig entered a new school and began hanging out with a new group of friends. They turned out to be comic book collectors and one Friday they took him downtown to their comic shop. Craig had been reading comics since he was 4, but until he met these new friends, he had no clue that comics came out on any kind of schedule, or that you could get the new issue every time it came out if you knew where to go. The discovery of a comic book specialty store and friends into the hobby was a huge catalyst in his life. Here was a medium that combined most of his interests and passions, and there was an active market for work. He decided to be a professional cartoonist, pretty much on the spot, and he hasn’t looked back yet.

At the age of 14, Craig met Barry Blair at a comic book creator’s club. He did a few backup stories for Barry’s mini comics that never saw print. At 15, Craig’s parents bought him a drafting table (the same one he uses today), and at 17, when Barry started up Aircel comics, he offered Craig inking work.

There was a loose community of young cartoonists in Ottawa that hung around Barry, and the core Aircel people came from that group. Now a professional cartoonist, Craig was inking Samurai, Elflord, Dragonring, underground and Maelstrom for Aircel. From there, Craig went to work for Hinton Animation Studios, where his credits included the internationally syndicated television show “The Raccoons,” and the Warner Bros. feature animated film “The Nutcracker Prince.” Craig also continued to do freelance comic work, most notably for Malibu Graphics, inking such books as “Dracula,” “Roger Wilco,” “Interactive Comics,” and illustrating the final issue of “Planet of the Apes.” Following his stint in animation, the multitalented Craig spent two and a half years working as a full-time musician playing with a local oldies group “Jimmie Knox & Thee Group,” but frustrated with the music business and musicians in general, he returned to comics, his first love.

A phone call out of the blue from Barry Blair on Christmas Eve 1994, provided Craig the invitation and opportunity to do some inking for Warp Graphics. At that time, Craig was concentrating on penciling and almost turned Barry down. He sent some samples of work and Wendy asked Craig to come down and meet her. So he hopped a train to Poughkeepsie, met Wendy and was handed an issue each of Blood of Ten Chiefs and Hidden Years, and he went back home to work the next day. Craig was familiar with Elfquest. He’d read the first Donning trade paperback book when it first came out and was impressed by the coloring. He had never seen a comic like Elfquest before then. He began reading the regular series with issue #13.

Craig went back to Ottawa and got to work on Elfquest. It wasn’t like working with Barry in the old days at Aircel. Craig kept to himself and turned in his work on time, seldom making contact at Warp with anybody but Mary Lou, the traffic manager. In retrospect, Craig wishes he’d been less on the outskirts of the Warp artist community. He makes it a point now of working in a studio whenever possible. Craig reports that the two “Wild Hunt” stories that Joellyn wrote for him to draw were very enjoyable, and that he liked working with Steve Blevins on Elfquest projects. Although he admits that he didn’t like Steve’s work when he first saw it, Craig says it “grew on him.” Steve’s pencils were solid and tight and a joy to work on. He would have liked to have continued working on Hidden Years instead of Wavedancers.
Working on weak and amateurish pencils is one of Craig’s least favorite experiences in comics, as are unrealistic deadlines. When things were busiest at Warp central, the deadlines at times would be excruciating. On a few occasions when deadlines got hectic there might only be a week to ink a 24-page book! When Craig was asked to pencil and ink the 14-page Wavedancers installments in two weeks, one week for pencils and one week for inks, he felt like he was rushing his work, and he says that it showed.

When he felt that he was not producing the quality of work he was capable of because the time constraints were becoming too hard to handle after an elbow injury, he had to give up the series. It was unfortunate, because he had liked working in the Elfquest style and with those characters, but drawing longer than a few hours at a time was just too painful.

Although Craig’s professional comic career has meant working in relative obscurity as an inker, he finally gained recognition in his own right with the comic “Wahoo Morris.” Craig was nominated for the Russ Manning award “Most Talented New Comer” in 1999, but he was disqualified on a technicality. He currently publishes “Growing Up Enchanted” by Jack Briglio and Alex Szewczuk, and plans to continue with “Wahoo Morris” in January. He says that if the Pinis offered him work again in the future, and he was available to do it, he would not hesitate.

Craig still reads several comic titles, including “Howard the Duck,” “Finder” and “Age of Bronze,” and confesses that he is still a junkie for golden age reprints. You can keep up with Craig’s latest endeavors on his website at www.wahoomorris.com.

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