Kyle Lees just wants to make people laugh.
The 28-year-old Thunder Bay man is the cartoonist behind Ski Ninjas, a five-days a week comic strip found online.
Lees started Ski Ninjas in January 2007 for Lakehead University’s student-run newspaper The Argus and it can still be found in the paper today. The comic also runs in more than a dozen other Canadian university newspapers and was named one of Canada’s top five university comic strips by MacLean’s On Campus.
And now Lees is looking to publish his first collection of the comic strip – Ski Ninjas Vol. 1: This is Free on the Internet. The collection will feature all 300 strips done in 2012.
Lees has an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign in order to get the collection printed.
His goal is to raise $2,500 by July 5.
Lees considered going back to the start of Ski Ninjas, but felt 2012 was a better showing of what he could do.
Last year was also when Lees started producing the comic five times a week – from Monday to Friday.
“Before that, new strips were made on a weekly/semi-weekly schedule. There’s roughly the same amount of comics before 2012 as in 2012, but a lot of those pre-2012 strips, especially the very early ones, aren’t nearly as refined comedicaly or artistically,” he said.
The ideas for Ski Ninjas are the musings of everyday life.
“(They’re) from walking around listening to people, the silly things that come up in conversation, TV, movies, pop culture – anything and everything basically,” said Lees.
Ideas also come from the local music scene, which Lees has been involved in since 1999.
“I spend the majority of my time at local shows writing down comic ideas. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve had to switch to writing things down on my phone because people have poked fun at me always writing in my notepad,” he said.
“Using a phone, I just look like I’m texting instead of constantly mining for ideas.”
When not working on Ski Ninjas, Lees does freelance work. He is working with AIDS Thunder Bay on the Blood 2 Blood Hepatitis C awareness campaign by creating comics. The first issue came out on May 1.
He also works on commissions like portraits of couples, families and pets and Lees also does a lot of concert poster work.
“Designing and illustrating concert posters is very gratifying creatively and the closest that I get to making ‘pure art,’” he said.
As of Friday afternoon, Lees had about $580 raised on Indiegogo and said he’ll be pleased with whatever amount he can raise.
“It’s great to see the community supporting me like this,” he said. “I’m already well on my way.
