About Us
Hey there! Welcome to this website! I guess if you’re here its because you want to know a little bit more about the people behind this whole shindig.
WINDY & WALLFLOWER is a small indie collaborative? Duo? I always struggle with what to call us exactly, the two of us…
WINDY (Tas Mukanik) and WALLFLOWER (Winter Jay Kiakas) started a small business one day after we pretty much committed to a long-standing project (Paint the Town Red) and found that the two of us work together really well so we started combining our efforts on a whole lot of things.
Fast forward a bit and the two of us are engaged now, we’ve been running this business for a few years and are looking to make it just a bit more personal and tell you folks about us even more.
WINDY & WALLFLOWER is a funny little name for a business that creates zainy comics & grungy little objects I think, but it comes from a combination of our two usernames, Tas went by Windyflamingo for years before this (and older followers probably can’t shake the habit even still hehe). Winter’s gone by several but, at the time the most recent username & the one Tas knew them by was TheJokingWallflower. Now of course, the two of us have completely different users online, we’re much older so it only makes sense, but we thought it was neat to immortalise the names we were using when we first met! Felt natural, felt good. Now it’s kinda fun to play with this wispy name and create this kind of grungy aesthetic we’re both really fond of.
The two of us grew up in the 90s & 00s so we’re both a fan of the punk/emo/grunge scene and have been for a long time. It’s only natural, I think that we hit leather and kink when we both realised how queer we really were.
So where does the rest of it all come from? The myths, the dinosaurs? The two of us are not really beholden to a brand. We like to make the things that we make and explore the mediums we explore and what comes of it is what winds up being WINDY & WALLFLOWER. But to give you a little insight here’s a bit about each of us…
WINDY AKA TAS MUKANIK
TAS was originally a music major a few years ago before making the full pivot into comics. They’re originally from Alberta, Canada, home to (one of) the most well known dinosaur museums around: The Royal Tyrrell. Tas has been brought up and enamoured not just by the animations they watched growing up and comics they devoured but by a lot of the natural world around them and that includes most especially the prehistoric world. It was only natural for it to bleed into their work!
WALLFLOWER AKA WINTER JAY KIAKAS
WINTER was poised to fall into animation with their bachelors but found that their one-true-love of publishing was the siren song that pulled them into comics. Montréal has always been amazing for printing so self-publishing was the cure to publishing’s long waits and quick ‘no thank you’s. They can’t stop themself from writing; turning anything they can get their hands on into some sort of story and pulling Tas down the rabbit hole with them. Their particular interest in Greek Mythology shouldn’t be too huge a surprise, it’s in the name.
So now the two of us are creating stories, a whooole lot of comics and prose. All of our self-published work is under WINDY & WALLFLOWER, but we’ve recently stuck our foot into publishing and it’s made a huge difference to the way we prioritise which sorties are right for which. This whole website is dedicated to giving people the chance to get bite-sized overviews of everything we’re working on, both selfpub and publishing right now. Some parts of the website keep folks up to date with new things we’re picking at, and even offer advice (blog). Feel free to take your time roaming. We’ve put a lot of heart into the things we create and the stories that we’re telling and we hope that shines through in the way we talk about them and the way we’ve set this place up to give them the best shot we can to explain them through and through.
If you see anything you like, do us a favour and check it out, come say hi at conventions, pick us up in your bookstores, refer us to your libraries. We’re small and we’re queer and we’re doing our best but its wonderful people like you who make the difference every single day in big and small ways. <3
Thanks for reading! Have fun trawling~
