Anthony Del Col | |
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![]() Del Col at NYCC 2019 | |
Born | Porcupine, Ontario, Canada |
Alma mater | Wilfrid Laurier University |
Occupation | Writer / Producer |
Known for | I Escaped a Chinese Internment Camp, Son of Hitler, Luke Cage: Everyman, Kill Shakespeare, Shakespeare, and Assassin's Creed: Trial by Fire |
Anthony Del Col is a Canadian-born, Pulitzer Prize-winning [1] creator, writer and entrepreneur. Del Col is the writer of the Insider comic I Escaped a Chinese Internment Camp, the co-creator and co-writer of the Joe Shuster Award-nominated comic, Kill Shakespeare , [2] Audible's Assassin's Creed: Gold (starring Oscar-winner Riz Ahmed), [3] Marvel's Luke Cage: Everyman and the controversial Image Comics graphic novel Son of Hitler.
Del Col was born and raised in Timmins, Ontario, Canada [4] and is a graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University, [5] the Canadian Film Centre [6] and the Sundance Institute's New Frontier Story Lab, [7]
Del Col has produced feature films in Canada, including serving as executive producer on the Nelly Furtado Loose Live album CD.[ citation needed ]
Del Col is also an accomplished film pitch consultant; He won the Telefilm Canada Pitch This contest in 2006 [8] and 2010. [9] Anthony also served as a coach for the contest in 2011 and 2012.
Del Col has written for a number of podcasts, including Wondery's hit series Against the Odds. [10]
Along with Conor McCreery, Del Col is the co-creator and co-writer of Kill Shakespeare , which debuted in comic book format in April 2010. [2] Kill Shakespeare is described by the New York Times as, "gripping, violent and dark fun, even if you're not fully versed in Shakespearean lore". [11] As of 2011 [update] , more than 50,000 copies in more than a dozen countries. [12]
Under Del Col's watch, Kill Shakespeare has been produced in a variety of media. In addition to its publication as a comic book, Del Col and McCreery, along with Soulpepper, have staged a theatrical production of Kill Shakespeare, called "Kill Shakespeare Live!". [12] The theatrical production of Kill Shakespeare has been performed in Toronto by Soulpepper, [13] in Montreal at the 2012 Montreal Comiccon, [14] in Chicago by Strawdog Theatre Company, [15] as well as at MEFCC 2013 in Dubai. [16] Del Col and McCreery are also working with Katie Musgrave, an academic, and Brian Kelly, a teacher, to create a teacher's guide for Kill Shakespeare in an effort to encourage teachers to use Kill Shakespeare as an educational tool. [17] The Kill Shakespeare board game was successfully crowdfunded via Kickstarter and was released on February 19, 2014. [18] Del Col and McCreery have also discussed plans to release a Kill Shakespeare mobile app game. [19]
Del Col has also given lectures on comic writing, adapting Shakespeare, and Shakespeare in education. In May 2015, Del Col spoke at Shakespeare's Globe in London as part of the theatre's Shakespeare Inspired special event series. [20]
In March, 2017 Dynamite Entertainment released Anthony Del Col's reboot of classic characters Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys with NANCY DREW & THE HARDY BOYS: THE BIG LIE. Del Col has been a lifelong fan of the characters and was successful in working with Simon & Schuster to secure the comic book rights and then pitch to publishers.
Inspired by Archie Comics' Afterlife with Archie , Del Col is quoted as saying, "So, then I started to think, 'Huh, I wonder what other characters are out there that are well-known that could be rebooted like that,'" Del Col said. "That's when I started to look around and I looked in some properties, and then I thought, 'Wait a minute. Nancy Drew. Hardy Boys. Oh, that would be really cool to do a hard-boiled noir take on them.' " [21]
The series finds characters Frank and Joe Hardy accused of murdering their father, Fenton Hardy, and turning to a femme fatale-esque Nancy Drew to clear their names. The series features artwork by Italian artist Werther Dell'Ederra with covers by UK artist Fay Dalton. Del Col credits editors Matt Idelson and Matt Humphreys with helping him shape the direction of the series. [22]
The series debuted to positive reviews. Comics blog Readingwithaflightring.com declared it, "the best 'modern' approach to updating a franchise like this that I've seen. It works on every level and still fully embraces the heart of who they are." [23] Aintitcool.com reviewer Lyz Reblin stated, "The strength of the series thus far is Ms. Drew, who was absent for most of the first issue. She is a pitch-perfect modernized femme fatale, who could hold her own up against any present-day Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, or the like." [24]
Del Col followed up the series with The Death of Nancy Drew in 2020. The series, with art by Joe Eisma, was announced in early 2020 and immediately received a great deal of coverage. Fans of the character immediately voiced their dissent online, including author Melanie Rehak (Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her), stating, "The idea of killing her really flies in the face of her appeal as a character — if they have killed her, which we don’t actually know." [25] The controversy was profiled by CNN, [26] Newsweek, [27] Polygon [28] and other sources.
Del Col, along with his Kill Shakespeare co-writer Conor McCreery, was hired by Titan Comics to launch a new comic series based on the successful Assassin's Creed video game franchise. The series was the first to star a female modern-day lead character, Charlotte de la Cruz and garnered a great amount of positive reviews. Leading comics site TheMarySue.com said, "It's a fantastic video game based title; it really captures a lot of spirit of Assassin's Creed…captures your imagination from the get-go." [29]
Del Col and McCreery's run on the series ran from 2015 – 2017.
In 2018, Del Col co-created the Image original graphic novel Son of Hitler with writer Geoff Moore and artist Jeff Mccomsey. [30] Matt O'Keefe of ComicsBeat called it a "page-turning graphic novel", offering "an alternate history story with obvious respect for the actual events of World War 2". [31] Son of Hitler is a noir spy-thriller centering around a conspiracy to take down Hitler in the last days of World War Two. Del Col expressed his personal love for historical fiction, noting his love for the "shadows and blindspots" that populate the area between historical fact and fiction. [32] Son of Hitler brings together many aspects of Del Col's comics work in one volume; it shares the historical elements of Del Col's Kill Shakespeare and Assassin's Creed comics and the classic mysterious noir elements of his Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys.
In 2018, Del Col wrote the series Luke Cage: Everyman for Marvel Comics. Jahnoy Lindsay provided the interior art with covers by Declan Shalvey. Everyman was a Marvel Digital Original released as 3 single issues and collected as a trade paperback in November 2019. Reviewers praised it for being "bold" and "political", pitting Luke Cage against a CTE diagnosis as well as villains in his own community. [33] Everyman was called an interesting unconventional look at the Marvel universe, with critics highlighting Del Col's humanizing portrayal of Luke Cage and Lindsay's realistic depiction of Harlem. [34]
On May 8, 2022, Del Col — along with collaborators Fahmida Azim, Josh Adams, and Walter Hickey — were the recipients of the first-ever Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary for their work on "I Escaped a Chinese Internment Camp," published by Insider . [35] The story is a first-person retelling of Zumrat Duwat's experience imprisoned by the Chinese authorities for being a Uyghur Muslim. It was the first Pulitzer for Insider. [36] The victory received some controversy, as the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists subsequently called for the Pulitzers to restore its previous category of Editorial Cartooning. [37]
As of 2014, Del Col lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, Lisa, and their children. [38]
Nancy Drew is a fictional character appearing in several mystery book series, movies, video games, and a TV show as a teenage amateur sleuth. The books are ghostwritten by a number of authors and published under the collective pseudonym Carolyn Keene. Created by the publisher Edward Stratemeyer as the female counterpart to his Hardy Boys series, the character first appeared in 1930 in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series, which lasted until 2003 and consisted of 175 novels.
The Hardy Boys, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional characters who appear in several mystery series for children and teens. The series revolves around teenagers who are amateur sleuths, solving cases that stumped their adult counterparts. The characters were created by American writer Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of book-packaging firm Stratemeyer Syndicate. The books themselves were written by several ghostwriters, most notably Leslie McFarlane, under the collective pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon.
Franklin W. Dixon is the pen name used by a variety of different authors who were part of a team that wrote The Hardy Boys novels for the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Dixon was also the writer attributed for the Ted Scott Flying Stories series, published by Grosset & Dunlap.
Origin is a six-issue comic book limited series published by Marvel Comics from November 2001 to July 2002, written by Bill Jemas, Joe Quesada and Paul Jenkins, and illustrated by Andy Kubert (pencils) and Richard Isanove (color).
Jessica Campbell-Jones-Cage, professionally known as Jessica Jones, is a superheroine appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Michael Gaydos and first appeared in Alias #1, as part of Marvel's Max, an imprint for more mature content, and was later retroactively established to have first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #4 in the Silver Age of Comic Books as an originally unnamed classmate of Peter Parker, created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko. Within the context of Marvel's shared universe, Jones is a former superhero who becomes the owner of Alias Private Investigations. Bendis envisioned the series as centered on Jessica Drew and only decided to create Jones once he realized that the main character he was writing had a distinct-enough voice and background to differentiate her from Drew, though deciding to still name the character after her on the basis of how "two [people] can have the same first name".
Super Mystery is a 36-volume series of crossover paperbacks, pairing The Hardy Boys with Nancy Drew. Earlier crossovers include a 1970s TV series, the novelization of one of the TV episodes, two SuperSleuths books, Campfire Stories, and the Be-A-Detective series.
The Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers is a detective fiction series of books published by Aladdin Paperbacks, which replaced The Hardy Boys Digest paperbacks in early 2005. All the books in the series have been written under the pen name of Franklin W. Dixon.
Spider-Woman is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by Archie Goodwin and Marie Severin, the character first appeared in Marvel Spotlight #32. 50 issues of an ongoing series titled Spider-Woman followed. At its conclusion, she was killed and, though later resurrected, she fell into disuse, supplanted by other characters using the name Spider-Woman.
Cameron Stewart is a Canadian comic book creator. He first came to prominence when he collaborated as an illustrator with writer Grant Morrison, and he went on to illustrate Catwoman and co-write Batgirl. He won Eisner and Shuster Awards for his self-published mystery web comic Sin Titulo, and received an Eisner nomination for The Other Side. In 2020, he was the subject of numerous sexual misconduct accusations.
The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries is an American television mystery series based on the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew juvenile novels. The series, which ran from January 30, 1977, to January 14, 1979, was produced by Glen A. Larson from Universal Television for ABC. Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy starred as amateur detective brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, respectively, while Pamela Sue Martin starred as amateur sleuth Nancy Drew.
Jim Salicrup is an American comic book editor, known for his tenures at Marvel Comics and Topps Comics. At Marvel, where he worked for twenty years, he edited books such as The Uncanny X-Men, Fantastic Four, Avengers and various Spider-Man titles. At Topps, he edited books such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, X-Files and Zorro.
Assassin's Creed is an open-world, action-adventure, and stealth game franchise published by Ubisoft and developed mainly by its studio Ubisoft Montreal using the game engine Anvil and its more advanced derivatives. Created by Patrice Désilets, Jade Raymond, and Corey May, the Assassin's Creed video game series depicts a fictional millennia-old struggle between the Order of Assassins, who fight for peace and free will, and the Knights Templar, who desire peace through order and control. The series features historical fiction, science fiction, and fictional characters intertwined with real-world historical events and historical figures. In most games, players control a historical Assassin while also playing as an Assassin Initiate or someone caught in the Assassin–Templar conflict in the present-day framing story. Considered a spiritual successor to the Prince of Persia series, Assassin's Creed took inspiration from the novel Alamut by the Slovenian writer Vladimir Bartol, based on the historical Hashashin sect of the medieval Middle East.
Josh Adams is an American comic book and commercial artist best known for his work on House of Mystery for DC Comics, as well as design work for shows on the Syfy Channel. Josh Adams is also the youngest of comic book veteran Neal Adams's three sons. Adams' two older brothers, Jason and Joel, are also artists who work in commercial sculpture and comic book illustration, respectively.
Kill Shakespeare is a twelve-issue comic book limited series released by IDW Publishing. It was produced by Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery, who also served as co-writers, with Andy Belanger as artist, Ian Herring as colourist, and Kagan McLeod as cover artist. The first issue was published on April 14, 2010.
Assassin's Creed: The Fall is an American comic book three-issue mini-series published by WildStorm. Set in the Assassin's Creed universe, it tells the story of Nikolai Orelov, a member of the Russian Brotherhood of Assassins, who battles Templar influence in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The miniseries also features a framing story, taking place from 1998 to 2000, which follows Nikolai's descendant Daniel Cross as he explores his ancestor's genetic memories while trying to learn more about his own past and the history of the Assassins.
Papercutz Graphic Novels is an American publisher of family-friendly comic books and graphic novels, mostly based on licensed properties such as Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and Lego Ninjago. Papercutz has also published new volumes of the Golden Age-era comics series Classics Illustrated and Tales from the Crypt. In recent years they have begun publishing English translations of European all-ages comics, including The Smurfs and Asterix. They publish several titles through their imprint Super Genius.
Assassin's Creed, also known as Assassin's Creed: Assassins, is a comic book series published by Titan Comics. Set in the fictional universe of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed video game series, the comic follows the same premise as the games, involving a millennia-old struggle between the Assassin Brotherhood, who fight for peace and freedom, and the Templar Order, who believe in peace through control, to decide the fate of humanity. The comic is primarily set in the modern-day and follows the adventures of Charlotte de la Cruz, a banker who is recruited into the Assassins and partakes in their fight against the Templars. Through the use of a machine called the Animus, Charlotte also occasionally relives the genetic memories of her ancestors at various points in history to acquire skills and information needed to complete her missions.
Charles Stanley Strong was an American writer, adventurer and explorer.
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