Michael Cherkas

Michael Cherkas grew up in Oshawa, Ontario. He graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1979, and since then has worked in Toronto as a layout artist, graphic designer, art director, illustrator and cartoonist. He has designed corporate brochures, annual reports and magazines for a wide range of clients.

Red Harvest, his most recent graphic novel, is a fictional dramatization of the Holodomor, the Soviet terror-famine that devastated Soviet Ukraine in the early 1930s. The graphic novel was published by New York City-based NBM Graphic Novels in November 2023.

His previously published comic book and graphic fiction work include: The Silent Invasion, co-created with writer Larry Hancock, a four-book graphic novel series best described as a “science-fiction/noir thriller” set in a nightmarish 1950s America; Suburban Nightmares, a collaboration with Larry Hancock and John van Bruggen, a collection of short comic book stories based on childhood fears of growing up in 1960s Oshawa; and The New Frontier, co-created with writer John Sabljic, an alternate world political thriller originally serialized in Heavy Metal magazine in 1990 and 1991.

“Talking to a Hill,” by Larry Hancock and Cherkas, a short story set in Ukraine immediately before the Russian invasion in February 2022, was nominated for a 2024 Eisner Award—the comic book industry’s “Oscars.” It appeared in the Eisner Award winning anthology Comics for Ukraine in 2023.

He is currently working on two graphic novels. The first is a 'super-hero-ing' tale. The second is a very fictional graphic memoir.