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| Mighty Mutanimals was the first comic book I ever bought. |
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| Felpausch, a regional grocery store, had a comic book section that I would eagerly browse when my parents would shop there. |
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| The first issue of Bucky O'Hare by Continuity Comics was another comic book I purchased from the same store. |
When my grandfather was in the hospital for cancer of the larynx and was having a laryngectomy, I had a lot of time on my hands while my parents were dealing with all that. It was in that hospital that I began drawing my own comic books. I recently learned that if I folded computer paper sideways and I planned out the pages, I could make my own comics. The one thing dad had a lot of was computer paper - he was always printing things.
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| Just like riding a bike. I drew this in less than a minute. Unfortunately, none of the original comics survived, but I can draw him exactly as he looked back then. |
What I created that day was the Adventures of Stick Figure Man, but that wasn't my first comic book character. It was my second. In the fourth grade, we had an art assignment and I wanted to create an original super hero. I thought about all the various characters and their powers and realized the one hero they hadn't yet created had plant-based powers (I wasn't aware of Swamp Thing at the time). I created my own super hero I called Plant Man.
It was on this very assignment that I first met who would become my best friend, Andrew. I paid attention to everyone's submissions, comparing them to mine. Then I saw something that really took my breath away - someone had drawn almost perfect replications of the Simpsons. Then I felt something that I had never felt before or since - an impulsive desire to meet this person. I had never before or since wanted to meet anyone in my life. Even meeting my future wife on a blind date filled me with anxiety. Most of the time I just want to avoid people and observe them and learn from them afar. For whatever reason, I said to myself - I want to meet this person and I had absolutely no anxiety whatsoever. Whether he wanted to be my friend or not, over the years, I willed it to happen.
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| Andrew grew up to be quite a dapper fellow. I realize now that there are very few pictures of us together even though I was his best man at his wedding :/. Ironically, he turned out to be a much better writer than an artist. Ah, maybe a co-writer or editor instead? :D. |
My lack of drawing ability always nagged at me and being an impatient kid, I never really had the discipline or time to practice. So over the years, I made friends with people who I thought could draw well. There were outliers of course, but unconsciously, I was always recruiting an artist to draw my comic books. Of course in almost 30 years, that still hasn't happened. I promised myself that if I couldn't convince anyone to be my artist, than I would take back up the pencil and do it myself. Here I am at 37 and I think finally ready to get started.
