UFOs, Flying Saucers, Conspiracies and Union City

Many fans and readers have asked us (all right, maybe one or two) “Where is the Union City that we see in The Silent Invasion?” Now is a good a time as any to try to answer this burning question.

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As you can see by the sign in the above panel, Union City is miles from “Rockhaven” (see “The Rockhaven Conspiracy” in our upcoming book The Great Fear), but only a short drive from Endicott which is just down the road from Johnson City and Binghamton, New York. However, Orangeville is northwest of Toronto. Obviously the aliens have been messing with our universe.

It is a place dripping with paranoia.

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The Union City found in The Silent Invasion is not located in New Jersey, California or Ohio. It could be located in Ohio—but not where the real Union City, Ohio is on the border of Indiana. And it’s not in Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Montana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania or Tennessee (other states that have places named Union City).

Our Union City is a place where the streets are have no names and are devoid of life. Buildings tower and twist over the few brave souls who venture out into the lonely night where newspapers blow through the empty streets.

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When we set out to create The Silent Invasion, Larry and I both wanted to set the series in a generic comic book city much like Superman’s Metropolis, Batman’s Gotham City or The Spirit’s Central City. It would be a place that was fairly large, close to a million people in population. It would be located in a fictional part of America that’s not far from deserts, mountains, cottage country or rolling farmland. Union City is close to whatever setting a particular story demands.

And of course it’s always 1957, whether the actors in our stories like it or not.

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But where in that fictional America? We like to think it’s located on one of the Great Lakes. No deserts or mountains nearby, but it’s an alternate universe. How do we know that? Because in The Silent Invasion Union City is one of 12 American cities to have a franchise in a 24-team Canadian Football League. More on this in a future post for all you CFL fans out there!

In this page from a new story set in 1970, we see Walter Sinkage’s work pals trying to get him to watch a game between the Union City Pipefitters and the Sarnia Imperials.

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At the end of the day, I think our real inspiration for Union City was Buffalo, New York.

I grew up in Oshawa, Ontario; Larry in nearby Whitby. They’re on the north shore of Lake Ontario, about 50 kilometres east of Toronto and almost directly north of Buffalo. As kids, we watched American television coming out of Buffalo. American TV was always more exciting than the fare being served on Canadian channels. Commander Tom was on at 3:30 showing the old Superman TV show; Irv Weinstein read the news on Channel 7; and there always seemed to be a fire somewhere in Buffalo with “film at eleven!”

And Toronto didn’t start to become exciting until at least 1967, maybe even a few years later.

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Larry has said Union City might be located somewhere on the south shore of Lake Ontario between Buffalo and Rochester.

But I think the real location is in the dusty corners of our imaginations…

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Remember to watch the skies!

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For more information on The Silent Invasion click here.

Before The Silent Invasion

Long before The Silent Invasion ever saw the light of day, I had worked with John Ellis Sech on a short-lived feature called Dick Mallet. The series was a pastiche of the the hard-boiled private detective genre. Dick Mallet’s superpower was that he didn’t carry a gun. The strips appeared in the Canadian Comics Annual and the Canadian Children’s Annual. Then Larry Hancock wrote a couple of Dick Mallet stories that appeared as back-ups in Cerebus.

Here’s a page from Dick Mallet’s very first appearance in the Canadian Comics Annual:

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Then a full-colour adventure from the Canadian Children’s Annual:

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Dick Mallet was one of our initial proposals to Renegade Press. Even though the Dick Mallet proposal was rejected, we included Mallet as a minor character in the very first issue of The Silent Invasion.

Here’s a layout sketch…

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And the first three pages of The Silent Invasion…

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Poor Dick Mallet. The lesson is: Be careful when you watch the skies!!!

Behind the scenes with The Silent Invasion

Larry and I are long-time collaborators on The Silent Invasion and other comic book work. We work the “Marvel method.” That is we discuss the story and roughly formulate the plot over a pizza or burger. I make a few rough sketches, then go away and do tighter layouts and send them to Larry. He scripts the story. I take the script and pretend to make it work. We make additional edits over much gnashing of teeth, fist fights, Sugar ‘n’ Spike inspired tantrums and other childish behaviour. I pencil it using non-repro blue pencils; letter; and ink the page.

I’m pretty methodical about it the process once I start pencilling. I begin with page one at each stage and work from the top left-hand panel on the first page to the bottom right-hand panel on the last page. A creature of habit, I guess.

Here’s a sample page ( a page from chapter 4 of “Abductions”) from the first rough sketch to final product:

The initial sketch done at the pizza meeting:

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Larry’s script with my scribbles:

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The page layout:

The pencilled page:

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A test ink sketch that I usually do while I’m finessing the point on my brush:

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And the final page:

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Next time: more on the CFL in The Silent Invasion!

Remember to watch the skies, because they are watching you!

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The Terror of the 1950s

The Roots of the Silent Invasion

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The Silent Invasion first appeared back in the age of dinosaurs, 1986, to be precise. It was released by Renegade Press, a line of indie comics published by Deni Loubert. We had contributed a couple of back-up stories to Cerebus; when she left Aardvark-Vanaheim to start Renegade, Deni asked us to develop a series for the new line. I (we) jumped at the opportunity. I knew I had no chance at working in mainstream comics (couldn’t draw then, still can’t today). So I quit my day job as a graphic designer and art director and committed myself to the project for the next few years.

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And that’s when we looked to the skies for inspiration.

During the 1950s — and well into the 1960s when I was growing up — there were numerous UFO sightings across North America. UFO researchers called them “UFO flaps.” Even my older brother claimed to have seen a flying saucer.

I was fascinated by these UFO sightings. I grew up in Oshawa, a city located on the north shore of Lake Ontario about 30 miles east of Toronto. It’s claim to fame is the junior hockey team, the Oshawa Generals, and the GM plant. Oshawa is not not the entertainment capital of the world, so in looking for diversions and excitement, I would — with a couple of pals — spend long evenings staring into the night skies hoping to see one of these mysterious discs visiting us wretched earthlings from the deep reaches of outer space.

But, alas, we had no such luck.

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My imagination was fuelled by “bad” sci-fi movies; Fate Magazine; the charlatan, George Adamski, who claimed to have been taken on tours of the solar system by friendly aliens; and the story of Barney and Betty Hill, the New Hampshire couple famously “abducted” by aliens back in 1961.

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Larry and I decided to build the series around these UFO sightings and abductions; and the communist witch hunts of the 1950s that were orchestrated by Joseph McCarthy and his crowd of hooligans.

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Our main character — the diligent, idealistic reporter Matt Sinkage — gets caught up in this mess. whose grip on reality might be described as tenuous. Sinkage is sure there is a deep state of corrupt capitalists, politicians and scientists who are manipulating events to the benefit of the chosen few. He just needs to convince the public through the efforts of his investigative reporting. Of course no one believes him. He’s accused of being paranoid and worse. He is our classic “Dickian” (as in Philip K. Dick) anti-hero.

I had “discovered” Dick in the mid-1970s (long after everyone else had). I’d been aware of him since I started reading science fiction as a young lad but didn’t read any of his books until I was at art college Then I read Time Out of Joint and I was hooked.

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Into that bubbling stew of UFOs, “commonists,” and the shifting realities of Matt Sinkage, we added aspects of film noir, the wacky 1950s, bad sci-fi movies and good European comics. The Silent Invasion was born.

After the first 12 issues of The Silent Invasion were completed we didn’t abandon comics all together. We collaborated with John van Bruggen on a 4-issue mini-series called Suburban Nightmares. Then, with John Sabljic, I worked on The New Frontier (not to be confused with DC’s The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke). The New Frontier was an alternate world political satire that in retrospect seems somewhat prescient as it resembles Trump’s America.

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In 2001, we returned to The Silent Invasion with a sequel set in the 1960s. NBM serialized the 5-part story, titled “Abductions” as a floppy comic and next year they will publish it for the first time in a more widely available collected edition. For those completists out there, I will be redrawing three pages for the new collection.

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Now, over to you Larry…

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The Return of The Silent Invasion

The Silent Invasion is back after a hiatus of almost 20 years. NBM will be releasing four volumes; the original series as two books, the never before collected story “Abductions,” and then a brand new volume with the working title “Dark Matter.” And after that, who knows?

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Stefan Blitz of NBM recently asked us a few questions to set the scene of our return to graphic novels…

So where have you guys been for the last two-decades? Hiding somewhere up in the frozen wilds of Canada?

Michael Cherkas: I’ve spent the last 30 years working as a graphic designer, art director and sometime illustrator and cartoonist. Most of the work I’ve done would fall under the category of editorial design; magazines, corporate publications, annual reports, etc. Let’s just say I’ve created a lot of landfill over the past 20 years. And after staring at type on a computer screen for 10 hours or more a day, my eyes were pretty tired, so I had no desire to sit at a drawing board for another four or five hours.

Having said that we did continue to dabble in comics though our output was minimal. We wrote and drew “Abductions,” which NBM published as a 5-issue floppy-comic mini-series way back in 2001…

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Then we self-published one issue of The Purple Ray…

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I wasn’t happy with the art in that; I am in the process of re-drawing the entire first issue. There was also a three-pager I did for a small-press anthology. Larry actually was a character in the story. Stay tuned and you might see that 3-pager right here.

I’ve also been working on a graphic novel about the Ukrainian terror famine of 1932-33 known as the Holodomor…

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This is also a good time for me to get more involved in comics again as I’m now the “president and chief bottle washer” of a one-person world-wide design empire which gives me more opportunity to work on comics or graphic novels.

Larry Hancock: In my daytime secret identity, I am a professional accountant. Back in 1998 I became self-employed and have been extremely busy. Because of my affinity with the arts I have a lot of clients who are authors, artists, animators, singers, film people, etc.

Michael and I get together quite often to talk story ideas, but we have not been highly motivated to work on comics. Back in the nineties, the comic book world was concentrating very much on violent superheroes and gimmicky covers. But these days there is so much variety available that it is time to dip our toes in the ink again.

Why The Silent Invasion again? Does it have something to do with the strange political culture America is living through?

MC: The premise of The Silent Invasion is that there is something terribly rotten in the American government. Books 1 and 2 are set in the 1950s during the time of the communist witch-hunts. But Matt Sinkage, our main character, believes he’s on to something when he thinks he discovers evidence that a recent rash of UFO sightings is somehow connected to the so-called communist infiltration of government departments and agencies. What’s never clear is whether the “communists in government” is a cover story to detract from the “alien invasion of earth” or the other way around.

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So yes, the story should resonate today since the current president is no stranger to creating and sustaining conspiracy theories. I don’t think he’s ever seen a conspiracy theory he didn’t like unless it has something to do with Russian influence on his election.

LH: As Michael mentioned we self-published one issue of our Purple Ray comic book. On the back we put a fake ad for the next Silent Invasion book, saying that it was coming soon, but not too soon. We weren’t really serious at that time. Yes we had, over the previous several years, been talking about the plot for a next book, if we ever did one, but we had no plans as to when to actually following through.

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Then, when we met Terry Nantier in Toronto at TCAF in 2017, he looked at that fake ad, raised a quizzical eyebrow, and suggested the time is ripe to re-introduce The Silent Invasion to the wider world. I looked at Michael and said, “Let’s do it!”

MC: And I, grumpily, agreed.