You can click on the image above to download a PDF of the pages. You’ll enjoy it more if you read the blog post first.

The end of 1993 and all of 1994 were rudderless times for me. The failure of how I handled myself on Nightmark – and the deeper failure of not getting back up – led me to believe that I wasn’t going to be able to make it as a comic book artist, and that had been my only plan since I had been a teenager. It seemed like that was now very much out of my reach.

Where to go from here was a question that was too big to deal with, and so I didn’t, drifting from thing to thing. I tried out to be an air traffic controller (hahahaha) and applied to be a police officer (passed the written, barely survived the physical, got dropped at the interview), while working in a photo lab. I had no clue what to do next.

I did start what would become the first Three & the Historical Society story in 1994, but after a few pages it was abandoned, and I packed up the drawing table. I just couldn’t do it.

Part of it had to do with the fact that I couldn’t make a living at comics and it broke my heart to continue trying. Working for the smaller companies – which were beginning to disappear as the black & white boom faded – was a no-gain situation. You did it part-time for the love of it, or you had hopes of doing enough good work that you could be noticed by DC or Marvel. I never figured out how to get out of the slush pile of the submissions desk of the big two, so that was out, and I had been so single-minded in my pursuit of comics that I had left no room for anything else. I was an average comic book artist on my best days and the rest was poor business and life skills. I needed to work a bit of that out. Mostly, I just needed time to heal, having realised what some of my failings were and what was in front of me.

The police tryout had come and gone. I had thoughts of trying out again next round, and I was volunteering with the service doing paperwork in the spring of 1995 to beef up my non-existent public service. I hadn’t drawn anything for a number of months.

I had recently picked up a complete back-issue set of Captain Canuck. I had never read them all or owned any of them, and as I got to the later part of the run, I was hooked. Those books were something special. So I came home after work or volunteering and started on the piece that’s in this post’s package. It took me a week to do, an hour or two at a time. It wasn’t about anything other than just enjoying drawing, something which had become a burden during Nightmark. The inking is quite delicate as I worked slowly and meticulously on it, getting my eyes right down to the paper, finding my hand again. By the end of it, I had lost interest in becoming a cop.

I set up the drawing table again, and finished the Three story for the first issue of The Global Gazette – my very own mini comic – in a timely manner. I was about to enter my most prolific period doing comics. I thought that this might be my ticket. Mini comics were a step back, but maybe I could turn them into something bigger.

After Black Scorpion, and before Nightmark, I came up with the Masquerade concept as a villain and pitched it to Dave Darrigo. Special Studio was starting to wind down, but we talked about it a bit. Masquerade was very much in the Gil Kane GL/Atom mould, and the ad design mimics the house ads from the mid Sixties in DC’s books. Dave’s response was to have a guy in a trenchcoat with a big book of theatre quotes he would use as quips. He rechristened him as The Terrible Thespian. The book never happened. 1992, scanned from a photocopy.

I had a penpal in Nigeria and he sent me a Captain Africa comic by Andy Akman. It was strange and bizarre and I thought it was amazing. This piece was done for my penpal and myself. 1992, scanned from original art.

I’ve never had a strong interest in fantasy, but I drew the dragon by request. 1992, pencils and inks scanned from photocopies.

I met Michael Betzler and he introduced me to mini comics. He had a wacky pop culture sensibility that drew upon the Sixties and you could call his work post modern. His work on Skin Phantom was nothing like my piece. Mine was a send up as a pulp hero and nowhere near as fun. Ha. 1992, scanned from photocopy.

If I’m remembering right, the original logo for The Global Gazette was done purely for its own sake. I’m a big Art Deco and Art Nouveau fan, and old newspaper mastheads are very cool. I’d use this on the first couple of issues of the mini comic, but it really needed to be at tabloid size to work. 1992, scanned from original art.

The Captain Canuck piece was an amalgam of the original run’s characters and the early 90s reboot. If I were to do another CC overview piece, I think I’d do it on just the original series. 1995, pencils scanned from photocopy, inks from original art.

Michael Betzler had shown me that you could put together a comic that was your own without spending a lot of money. What I hadn’t liked about being part of the assembly line was that I was an author of my own work and doing just one part of it was less than satisfying. I was always looking for the opportunity to do my own stuff, and I never found it being just a penciller or inker. If I didn’t play well with others, I should just do my own thing and make it what I could.

Once I embraced mini comics, I became a big fan of them. There were a huge variety of titles with subject matter that ranged from the mainstream to the out there, done by rank amateurs and people who could be professionals alike.

Part of my enthusiasm came out in doing pinups for books I liked and sending copies of them to the authors.

Bob was about… Okay, you’ve got me. I’ve forgotten. But he looked cool in a S.H.I.E.L.D. outfit with his happy face. 1995, scanned from original art.

Thunder was… Yeah, I’m too lazy to dig it out of the collection right now. Aping Moebius. 1995, scanned from original art.

The revised Global Gazette logo worked better on a comic book cover. 1996, scanned from original art.

Up next : The Global Gazette #1 : Three & the Historical Society

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