When Spider-Man film director Sam Raimi puts the massive online role-playing phenomenon known as World of Warcraft onto the silver screen next year, an entire new segment of the population will become aware of what Canadian comic artist Lar deSouza has been having fun with for years.
From his family home in Acton, Ont., deSouza sketches the stories that his writing partner Ryan Sohmer sends from Montreal. Their Looking For Group online comic has been both a tribute and a parody of the game that has captured the imagination of older Dungeons and Dragons players and latest-technology video-gamers alike.
"We immediately moved it to twice a week because the fan response was just overwhelming," says deSouza from his dining room studio. "The reason we don't do it more than twice a week is because there just aren't enough hours in the day."
Those other hours are taken up by a daily online comic strip of a completely different nature: Least I Could Do tracks the adventures of Rayne Summers, a promiscuous narcissist, enjoyed by over half a million readers enjoy each month.
deSouza got his start in the 1980s. While living in Oakville, Ont., with his wife, the illustrator did contract work for computer companies and later got into the caricature business, drawing portraits at parties and corporate events. Realizing that home ownership in Oakville or Toronto was out of financial range, in 1993 the couple started their family in Acton.
His three-bedroom sidesplit is a classic family home that backs onto a park and is near schools and shopping.
While his wife taught elementary school, deSouza became a stay-at-home dad. Before long he was looking for a space that would act as a studio.
"The main floor is kitchen, living room, dining room -- all very open," he says. "When we moved in, we painted, and it all looked great. I think we used the dining room, properly, twice. Then it just turned into this open-storage pit. I decided to just take it over. I took everything out, gave it a fresh coat of paint and put in some storage and turned an old door into a giant desk."
His workspace is much how one might visualize it. Posters, trinkets, books and screens are everywhere.
But unlike his comic book predecessors, deSouza works exclusively on his computers, the years of pencil to paper now just a quaint idea.
