Get Graphic: Andy Belanger Is A Bad Mother Trucker
Jan 30, 2023
Art by Andy Belanger
Interview by Troy-Jeffrey Allen
If you're a fan of badass art then you've definitely seen the work of Andy Belanger. But what you may not know is that Belanger has a feral alter ego named Bob Anger! After his time with Heavy Metal, Belanger took to the squared circle and reinvented himself in the pro wrestling circuit. The end result is more animal than man!
In the following interview, Belanger explains what brought on this radical metamorphosis and how his titillating/hard-hitting comic Mother Truckers is the kick in the teeth that the world of comics needs!
Troy-Jeffrey Allen: Firstly, who are you and where do hail from?
Andy Belanger: I was born Andy Belanger. I hail from a little town an hour west of Toronto Canada called Kitchener, Waterloo. I’m a comic artist and creator, animator, and storyboard artist. I’ve worked for years in the mainstream comic market, plus a wide variety of projects in the film, television, and video game industries. I worked for such publishers as DC Comics, Wildstorm, Heavy Metal Magazine, TKO, IDW, BOOM!, Valiant, Dynamite, and Image Comics.
Andy Belanger: I created and drew the series Southern Cross with Becky Cloonan for Image, which was optioned by NBC Universal to become an anime in Japan. I drew The Simulationists, Mythopia, and Rattlehead for Heavy Metal Magazine with Grant Morrison, Duncan Trussell, Donny Cates, and Dan Fogler. I worked with Andrew Stott on the WWE Comics line for BOOM! Studios and, at TKO, I illustrated the fight comic Pound for Pound with Natalie Chaidez. My other works include Swamp Thing with Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire for DC Comics, Friday the 13th with Joshua Hale Fialkov for Wildstorm, and The Kill Shakespeare series with Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col at IDW. I was the trailer animator on Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon for UbiSoft which won multiple awards. My career has been amazing but then, 6 years ago... everything changed. [That's when] I began my second career as a pro wrestler named “The Animal Bob Anger.”
TJA: How did you get into comic books as a fan?
Belanger: When I was a kid my parents split early. My father would take me every week to a shop called KW Second Hand Books. He would search and sift through marketing books for his career and plop me down in front of a giant wall of bookshelves with nothing but comics. This is before bags and boards, and they were just in huge heaping piles. The newsprint pages on the outside facing had turned yellow from the owner smoking up the joint. There I fell in love with comics. For hours I’d rip through piles. I gravitated to monster comics. DC’s Creature Commandos - anything fighting Nazis! My gramps was a WW2 bomber for the RAF so I always loved monsters in WW2 stories. G.I. Robot, Werewolf by Night - Buscema’s Frankenstein and Conan. Tomb of Dracula. I was hooked and would go home to draw what I was reading. From age six all I wanted to do was be a comic creator.
TJA: How did you get into comics as a professional?
Belanger: As I said, I was always making comics, hooking up with writers in my later teens to self-publish. In my first year of college, [Stuart and Kathryn Immonen] moved to London, Ontario where I was attending school and they were hosting a comic jam once a month. It was Stuart and Kathryn that really inspired me and showed me the ropes of the craft. How to break down scripts, hard and fast rules about storytelling and pacing. I call them my comic parents because they were the first ones to really take some time and show me how to do it. Eventually, after selling self-published books at cons I moved to Toronto and got in with the RAID crew. RAID is a studio in Toronto of all working pros in the comic field. There I really started to grind out a career starting with my first published gig at Wildstorm. Through DC, they'd acquired Friday the 13th. It was [editor] Ben Abernathy who gave me my big break after we had visited the Wildstorm offices during San Diego Comic-Con.
Belanger: I had some amazing mentors in Toronto that really helped me move along. Darwyn Cooke was like a big brother to me and taught me a lot. As did my best bud Michael Cho and JBone. I ran with a great crew: Scott Hepburn, Ramon Perez, Chip Zdarsky, and Karl Kerschl. I have shared a studio with Karl Kerschl since 2012 and he’s probably the most talented comic creator I have seen. He’s a huge inspiration and a big help whenever I get those artist blocks. I’ve been a professional for seventeen years now, feel more energized about making comics than ever before.
TJA: What can you tell us about the story behind Mother Trucker?
Belanger: When I moved to Montreal in 2012, I was taken to my first indie wrestling show at the International Wrestling Syndicate. It was nothing short of amazing and I never missed another show - my love of wrestling had truly been reignited. I noticed how the match structure felt just like comics. The heroes, the villains - the hero's journey playing out in front of me every glorious match. Right then and there I knew I wanted to make the most crazy insane wrestling comic of all time! Andrew Stott, a local wrestler and writer, asked me to give training a try at their new school (the I.W.S. dojo). By my second practice match, I was hooked. I fell in love with the craft, I fell in love with performing for fans, and my catalogue of ideas for my comic went from a spark to a roaring bonfire. That’s when Andy Belanger went home to be a family man, and “THE ANIMAL” BOB ANGER was born! After six years of wrestling and writing the epic, Mother Trucker was born.
Belanger: Mother Trucker is a sci-fi saga about a space-truckin’, ass-stompin', wrestle goddess, who’s on a quest to find her long-lost daughter and become the greatest trucker of all-time [by wrestling at] the "Champion of Truck Off." The Wrestlemania of the starways. It’s a love letter to the Saturday morning cartoon with a truckload of edge and heart. It’s big dudes, big trucks, and big business brought to heel by one bad Mother Trucker.
Belanger: In a Galaxy where trucking reality shows and wrestling rules entertainment, Truck Off is the ultimate annual event. It is a high-stakes competition where the best intergalactic shipping contracts are won by wrestling on the backs of trucks while racing around the rings of Saturn. Can Mother Trucker go all the way and take the Bridge-mart Championship belt at Truck Off 12 and win the Truck of her dreams? Big wig corporate giants will do anything to keep her from winning, keep her from the prize and keep her from the truth of her past. To take them on she’ll need to become the baddest Mother Trucker in the galaxy!
Belanger: I became a wrestler to learn about how to make the perfect wrestling comic, like a method actor, I guess, but then got totally hooked on performing.
TJA: I look at Mother Trucker and see monster trucks, pro wrestling, and Heavy Metal Magazine. But what is the overall aesthetic you were going for?
Belanger: What I was going for with Mother Trucker was something akin to Over the Top and Running Man meets Barbarella and Wonder Woman. The world she inhabits is 80s WWF Wrestling, Monster Trucks, and far-out Americana. Essentially a Heavy Metal Magazine version of American Kinnikuman.
TJA: What tools do you use to draw?
Belanger: In 2019, I was moving to Italy for the year to Florence, my wife was going to the Angel Academy for painting. Instead of bringing all my art gear, I tried the new large-scale Ipad and Clip Studio. I’ve always been a lapboard guy and don’t like sitting at desks. This was finally the digital solution that fit my needs one hundred. I’m now getting back into traditional for a lot of things and I’m finding that, during those years, digital has improved my traditional work.
TJA: What’s next for you?
Belanger: In 2021, I started LETHAL comics with Karl Kerschl. A boutique publishing house that is based around crowdfunding. We had a monster year last year and are ramping up for next year. I’m finishing a giant 100-page horror anthology based on the film Psycho Goreman. It features 35-plus creators that are going to blow people’s minds. Mother Trucker 2 is shipping out as we speak, and I’m getting into Mother Trucker 3. I’m writing a new horror series called BMXV centered around 1980s BMX kids and vampires. Kind of a love letter to the Lost Boys. Plus, there are a few more projects we are about to get off the ground that I can’t mention yet. It’s going to be a great year!
If you're interested in more of Andy's work then be sure to follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Check out LETHAL Comics to purchase his comics and original pages!
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Underground MMA fighter Dani Libra fears nothing...except for her recurring blackouts and fractured memories that obscure a bloody past. But when her sister is kidnapped, Dani must shine a light on the darkness in her own mind. Only question is -- can she keep her own demons at bay for long enough to save her sister?
Written by Natalie Chaidez (QUEEN OF THE SOUTH, HUNTERS, 12 MONKEYS), drawn by Andy Belanger (SWAMP THING), and colored by Daniela Miwa (THE FEARSOME DOCTOR FANG, THE OLD GUARD).
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Troy-Jeffrey Allen is the producer and co-host of PREVIEWSworld Weekly. His comics work includes MF DOOM: All Caps, Public Enemy's Apocalypse '91, Fight of the Century, the Harvey Award-nominated District Comics, and the Ringo Awards-nominated Magic Bullet.
