Anger | Intro: Ok, (cracks knuckles) I do so hate the typical formal “my name is blah…blah…blah!” hey, the names not as important then the person behind it. Art and film has been in my blood since childhood, at the age of ten I was collecting ALL types of “Horror” magazines,monster models and the "Drive-In" era was in full swing. By the time I had hit the age of fourteen I discovered comics wondering into a local 7-11 and a copy of “Amazing Spider-Man # 119” grabbed me by the throat with cover art by all time great John Romita Sr. featuring the Hulk facing off against every ones favorite web head. There were so many illustrators that I grew up with which inspired me on, spending relentless days and nights drawing like mad. The funny thing is, growing up in the 70’s there weren’t any schools for want-to-be comic artists. I was pretty much self-taught honing my skills trying to learn the mechanics behind comics, which wasn’t easy but half the fun is the sense of discovery. Years later I settled down and had to put my dreams behind me, so I put off any aspirations of doing comics for a living. It wasn’t until the latter 80’s into the early 90’s that I got back in the saddle and went after my dreams of getting work in the comic book field, but instead of wanting to draw comics for a living…I discovered that I really enjoyed inking even more. My start was a bit weird to say the least. Like most I worked on a few indy comic projects while I kept working up inking samples over photocopies of pro-penciled-pages.Thankfully,through a mutual friend I met an established “Marvel” inker Chris Ivy who was working on Moon Knight and Darkhawk at that time. Chris was really nice and liked my work enough that he fed me six full pages of ‘Darkhawk #27.’( I was Un-credited, it was my first job “Ghosting” someone elses work…Yep, this is true folks!) From there Chris took me to the offices of Marvel and I was nervous as hell, I did meet many editors who were kind enough to look over my portfolio giving tips and some very sound advice. (It was a pleasure and honor to have known Chris, I learned alot through my association with him. Since I never had the chance to before, I want to take this time out to say I wish Mr. Ivy the best of luck where ever he is...a true professional and a good person.) This lead into an inking submission for a contest being held in the now defunct “Marvel Age: New talent Department”, which was to have novice talent doing a five page Spider-Man story. It was announced in issue #110 that I was chosen to be the inker, needless to say I was jacked big time, a dream come true…unfortunately this project was unceremoniously scrapped. But, I didn’t give up and eventually landed work on an issue of "Thor" and “Fantastic Four Unlimited” I did about six pages for issue #6 then was given the entire fifty page run of issue #7. The pencils were by 70’s “Hulk” artist Herb Trimpe, whom was doing pretty much breakdowns with very little back grounds in the “Then” house-style, which was Rob Liefeld inspired… Rumor has it that Herb didn’t like my inking (I was also informed that Herb’s son pitched in to do pages…Hey, I didn’t say that this is substantiated) but editor Mike Rockwitz assured me that he was more then pleased with the work I was turning in. Confession of an inker chapter one, If given the opportunity to do this issue over again I would have approached the pencils with a more “old school” inking technique. After all this was a “Kirby Monsters” tribute issue. A short time later with the glut of comics on the market the BIG crash soon followed, of course a lot of small Indy publishers dried up and the big three were cutting titles meaning fewer jobs to be filled. No surprise to me that things were pretty rough for everyone in the business of comics trying to eek out a living, I eventually had to find other avenues to keep my own head above water and feed a family. Once again I had to bite the bullet and find a real job! Now, here I am years later trying to establish myself as a professional…“Never say never” I am always interested in taking on new challenges and commissioned work. My contact info:darkcold101@yahoo.com Please feel free to give criticisms and comments! That’s all…for now! |
Sta.sh
on h&h !!
