Dec. 17, 2003

     I've given this Blog page a lot of thought about how best to present it. Trivial facts about my upbringing? A timeline of professional highlights? A cautionary tale? In all immodesty, I didn't want this page to be a one-time read, later ignored if the reader decides to visit this site again. I also didn't care to fill it with a chunk of text that takes 20 minutes to plow through until you realize, "Oh, I'd better see if 'Scoresman123' responded to my rebuttal on the message boards yet!"

     Much as I like to ramble on, I know some things are taken in mild doses. So I decided to offer smaller slices of my professional, for lack of a better term, "insights", in an easy-to-digest episode format, which I'll update every Tuesday. As Bill Cosby used to say at the beginning of Fat Albert: "...and if you're not careful, you might learn somethin!".

     Certain touchstones in my life opened my mind to the idea that I could actually one day break into the comics biz: When you're on the outside looking in, every bit of encouragement counts. And I was on the outside for a verrrry long time, so take heart, creators of tomorrow!

     * When I was 13, I had read about Jim Shooter writing The Legion of Superheroes when he was only 13! Thus emboldened, over a period of weeks, I commenced typing a full-script Avengers story of my own from beginning to end. Something about The Crimson Dynamo building a team of multi-colored Dynamoes (The Albino Dynamo was my favorite!) This produced nothing that stood the test of time, but at last, I set a comics-related goal and accomplished it.

    *Getting my first letter published in a comic (hint: a 1980's Marvel). The first one to email me with the correct answer will receive a free "Sojourn Arwyn & Kreeg" resin statue! This is the same 71/4" one that retails for $89.99. The contest ends February 1st, 2004. Eligibility restricted to the continental U.S., sorry! Whoever guesses the second will get a consolation prize of four Mystic or Scion trade paperbacks.

     * Years later, in response to my mass-mailing art samples to every editor from The Big Two, I received a call from then-Punisher Editor Don Daley (on a Saturday, no less!), stating plainly that I wasn't ready to break in, but encouraged me to keep trying. I was floating on a cloud for a week.

     *The next year, the grocery company I worked for promoted me to Advertising Manager, relocating me to Atlanta. I only stayed at that job for seven months. I was putting in 14-hour days plus weekends. My boss had major heart surgery, so I had to pick up the slack. I thought "That's my future". The final straw was a lengthy expletive-packed browbeating from the General Manager about some mistakes made my department was responsible for, even though we were terribly understaffed for the volume of ads we generated each week. Then the light bulb went on over my head.

     *It occurred to me that I was still young enough to get out of this miserable (though financially-comfortable) job while I had my health and sanity. All the time and energy I exerted towards my thankless tasks could be applied to really, really trying to break into comics. I put in my two weeks notice, with no job to go to. All I could find was temp work, doing minimum-wage jobs to pay the rent. Folding towels at department stores, security guard work, etc. Finally I landed a job at a printing company. It paid little better, but it freed my evenings and weekends to work on my portfolio. I began to accept that my penciling style was too slow and laborious to make any kind of living in comics, but my inking line was getting steadier, as part of my job involved cleaning up photocopied logos and type. This was during the last, dwindling years of prepress paste-up production, before computers took over, saving a lot of time.

     *I placed an ad in the Comics Buyers Guide, looking for an amateur who was half-decent and fast with a pencil. The idea was for us to break in together. This penciled drew in what was then the new "image style", but still rough around the edges, as was I. However, he kept crapping out on me. Trying to coax him to produce, I asked him what he'd like to draw. He said the Avengers (again with the Avengers!), so I spent the weekend writing a short story, full-script, then mailed it off. Nothing came of it. During our last conversation, he said he had to hang up because Tek War was coming on. I knew I'd have to rethink my strategy.

     Six months later, in time for Dragon Con in Atlanta, I had my latest samples ready. Trying to ingratiate myself to the small publishers, I bought a comic at each of their booths, running up quite an expense of average-to-crappy comics. Also, I could get their mailing addresses to forward samples. And then in Artists Alley I met Dave Johnson...
 
To be continued...
 
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