“DO YOU KNOW MY FRIEND RIAN JOHNSON?” ASKS ERIC SAN, PROBABLY BETTER KNOWN TO YOU AND ME AS CANADIAN TURNTABLE MAESTRO KID KOALA. SURE, THE FILMMAKER WHO DIRECTED BRICK - THAT HEAD SCRATCHING, CULT 2006 CRIME THRILLER STARRING JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT, thinks Brainer. “He said he started crying in a room!” laughs the DJ raucously, describing the director’s reaction to the ending of Space Cadet – Koala’s new graphic novel.

Space Cadet tells the story of a young astronaut who, having graduated from space academy, takes off on her first solo mission to discover new exotic plant life scattered throughout the final frontier. What she’s left behind however, is the guardian robot who raised her, and who in her absence is left to ponder its place in the world now that its sole purpose in life has gone. Not wanting to give away the ending that drives Hollywood filmmakers to tears, it’s safe to say that the book is rather poignant. Warm memories are played out only to be shattered by the cold reality of the present, where a deep feeling of loneliness echoes throughout the pages. It’s a feeling effectively enhanced through San’s skilled use of scratch (or etch) boards, lending a texture, detail and feeling of isolation not evident in previous drawings.

“It’s not really the intent of most DJs to make their audience cry,” chuckles San, “but I think after my daughter was born, there’s just a lot of things you re-evaluate. My brain was flashing forward and flashing back, you know, she’s gonna want to be borrowing the car soon! And then you go back to when you were growing up and there’s always a handful of moments where time stands

still and they resonate with you forever – where it just slowed down and everything was bliss.

“I felt like I wanted to approach that idea in this book, but personally my wife and I saw a few of our grandparents pass on. It’s been a transitional few years for us and I had to address it somehow; I wasn’t getting it from hip-hop and scratching in front of a dance floor! Overall I think it’s a very optimistic book, and I think people understand that.”

Although drawing has always been a part of Koala’s life – as a child he was encouraged to scribble away on napkins with his father’s pen to stop him from smashing plates and lobbing chopsticks around the Chinese restaurant – Space Cadet is only the DJ’s second graphic novel in eight years. Quite a hiatus for someone whose “default” setting is to draw.

Cadet actually started life straight after Koala’s first book – the quirky Nufonia Must Fall – was published in 2003. He’d had so much fun making Nufonia that he couldn’t wait to get started on the next book. And, as a result, the story for Space Cadet was finished within a year. Ironically, the reason for using etch boards (to save time and effort on having to draw and colour in space) was the reason the 37 year-old took such a long time to finish the book. “At the time I was using V5 fine-liner pens, so I thought, ‘Ah etch boards! Perfect!” says San. “The funniest part was the second you’re indoors or you’re doing a scene that’s got some background in it, it was just exponentially longer. Like, way longer than I thought it would ever take! If in 2004 you’d said this book won’t be ready until 2011, I probably would have just tried another format.”