This is really, really deep From the Vault territory.

I think it was 1991 when I first decided, in high school, that I wanted to pursue a career as a comic book artist. My graduation yearbook bio even says, under goals: to draw comics for Marvel. At the time there weren’t really any resources for aspiring comic book artists with information about pages sizes, paper types, drawing tools, etc. Not like now, where all you have to do is google it and you’ll get a thousand YouTube tutorials. No, back then, all I had was a lot of guesswork and maybe a hint of something from the letters column of a comic. Eventually I got a copy of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, which was a game-changer, but most of the following pages predate that.

The first sample pages I ever drew were created on 11×17 typewriter paper and featured Rogue and Gambit of the X-Men. I was a huge fan of Jim Lee’s work and as you can see (or maybe you can’t), I was just doing my best to copy his style of drawing. This 3-page sample is what I took to Chicago Comicon in 1992 (the birth of Image Comics) to show to other artists and editors for feedback. They were very kind and encouraging despite these pages being objectively awful. These scans are of the original pencil work on paper that I dug up from my parents’ basement. Sorry about the mould…

I was pretty proud of those at the time, believe it or not. The next attempt, taking whatever advice I was given by creators at the con, was a 7-page Magneto story set in the Savage Land. Again, more direct riffing on whatever Jim Lee was doing in X-Men at the time. That Magneto and Rogue in the Savage Land issue is a classic. The notable thing on this sample (to me) is that Brenden Fletcher is credited as co-plotter! Brenden is one of my oldest friends and my constant collaborator (ISOLA, Wednesday Comics, etc) and it’s fun to see our early efforts here. This sequence is a little more readable, I guess? The panels are less confusing and there seems to be a logical flow to the story. The drawing is slightly less awful than it was in the first sample, but not by much. I’m actually impressed that we made it to seven pages…

I can’t remember who I showed those ones to, but they must have made the rounds at a convention or two (probably in Detroit at Motor City Comicon). Next up, the three-page sample that ACTUALLY GOT ME HIRED. This must have been in mid 1993 because my first work was published in 1994. By this time, I had gotten a contact at Marvel–a guy named Steve Geiger–who I had met through his cousin or something at a local video store. Anyway, Steve was cool enough to get on the phone with me and talk through my samples and even send me a couple of sample comic book scripts to work from. He also let me visit the Marvel offices one time when I was in New York and gave me a bunch of free comics, which was amazing. Thanks, Steve!! One of those scripts was an Avengers script (issue 213, I think) and I chose to use the first three pages of that script for my next submission. The first this you might notice here is that my style has veered slightly away from Jim Lee territory and into JAE Lee territory (I was loving his Namor issues at the time) and everything is more angular and has more black. The panels are more interesting now and easier to read. And the pencil work is much more sure and precise–fewer wishy-washy lines and a lot easier to ink. The anatomy is still terrible and so is the perspective and depth but there’s a bit of attitude that, in 1993, was enough to impress a small publisher with.

As hard as it may be to believe, these were the pages that landed me my first two gigs. One was a cover job on the Green Hornet (published by NOW Comics, who never paid me) and the other was a regular penciller position on Judgment Day, a new series by new publisher Lightning Comics. I would not have given me work but I’m grateful that those guys did; it allowed me to learn on the job, and doing 20+ pages a month is a great way to improve quickly. Not that these issues are any indication of that:

And there you have it! My earliest foray into comics creation. There’s so much more after this, and Lightning Comics is its own story (come to think of it, I have so many copies of that first Judgment Day issue lying around that I should pack them up as gifts for you subscribers). But that’s stuff for a later post. Hope you enjoyed this look at the old stuff. At the very least, I hope it inspires any of you who might be aspiring artists to persist–everyone sucks when they’re starting out. I was single-minded enough (and delusional enough) that I kept going. Which is lucky for me because I had no backup plan. 🙂

Until next time…