Still adventurous paperboys, after all these years

The final issue of Adventures in Paper-Routing. (Photo by Vincenzo Ravina)

The Curio Cabinet
Vincenzo Ravina
vravina@gmail.com

While still in junior high and high school, paperboys Sean Jordan and Alex Kennedy wrote and drew one of the more successful mini-comics to come out of Halifax. The last issue came out more than ten years ago, but it’s never fully gone away.

It was called Adventures in Paper-Routing, and Jordan says newspaper delivery was adventurous. From “shaking down adults for money” to getting yelled at for being two minutes late, they had plenty to draw from for their comic.

Jordan remembers trying to collect overdue money from a subscriber.

“I showed up and his whole apartment was a police scene. The cops were there taking fingerprints, there was that police tape up, it was crazy. And then the cops started interrogating me.

“And they were like, ‘When was the last time you saw him? What happened? Blah blah blah.’ I’m like, ‘Man, I haven’t really seen him in that long. He owes me 20 bucks.’ I remember the cop was laughing; he was like, ‘Well, you’re not gonna get that money.’”

Sean Jordan and Alex Kennedy. (Submitted)

Most people probably won’t remember Adventures in Paper-Routing, but its first issue came out somewhere in the mid-1990s. The comic lasted five issues, and was available at Strange Adventures.

The paperboys in the comic, Naes and Xela, were unsung heroes, risking their lives to bring you the news.

They had grappling hooks and other weaponry. They battled senior citizen ninjas with Lawrence Welk CDs. Their arch-nemesis was Crazy Lady, a crazy lady.

Jordan says most of their characters were based on real people. There was indeed a “crazy lady” on his route. They based characters on their boss, and their friends popped up in the comic, as well.

Kennedy says being a paperboy offered fertile ground for creativity.

“(It’s) actually a pretty crappy job, in that you’re sort of a combination of delivery boy and collection agent. Nobody’s really ever happy to pay their paper bill.”

The two had written a lot of comics. Superhero parodies and the like. But when they showed their comics to Calum Johnston, owner of Strange Adventures, he identified Adventures in Paper-Routing as their best work.

“I was like, that is funny,” Johnston says. “Because there was a kernel of honesty in it.”

Johnston encouraged the two to make Adventures in Paper-Routing into a mini-comic.

Jordan says, “We were kind of like, ‘Well, no one would ever pay for this.’ (Johnston) was like, ‘No, no, try it out.’”

Jordan and Kennedy went to Kinko’s and made about 50 copies of their comic. Those all sold out. By the time their fifth issue came out, three or four years later, their print runs were much higher. Several hundred of their last issue sold.

“We had a colour cover and we felt all famous,” Jordan says.

Jordan and Kennedy would write the stories and dialogue together, then Jordan would draw the comic. They tried to put out an issue every six or seven months.

Jordan says, “We had every intention of just doing more and more comics, but you know, I went to university and (Kennedy) and I, we just got so busy with other stuff, that it just got difficult.”

They started a sixth issue, which would have introduced a papergirl, but never finished it because of their busy schedules. But they still think about their mini-comic often.

Kennedy says, “It’s weird, because it’s not uncommon that we do get it mentioned to either one of us that people would like to see a return to Adventures in Paper-Routing. It’s something that (Jordan) and I have talked about a lot.”

Johnston says every so often, people will still come into Strange Adventures and ask about Paper-Routing.

Since their comic’s abrupt end, Kennedy moved to Vancouver and works at the University of British Columbia doing AV work. Jordan briefly picked up the route again while in university, then moved to Toronto and now raps under the name “The Wordburglar.” He wrote a song called “The Route,” about his days delivering papers. He also writes a comic called Snakor’s Pizza.

Jordan says that once he’s done with Snakor’s Pizza, he hopes to turn his attention back to Adventures in Paper-Routing.

Kennedy says, “Life got in the way of us working on it together, but we’re still pretty close after all these years …. It’s still something we talk about every time we see each other.”