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.

It’s been 10 years since I defined myself as a comic book artist with a day job. The change from that identity to one of a graphic designer had its beginnings as soon as I started self publishing in the mid Nineties and was tied to the rise of personal computers powerful enough to do graphic design on.

It was also due to the influence of Derek Mah. I met him when he contacted me through The Global Gazette in ’95 or ’96. Derek was also doing mini comics in addition to other graphic design stuff while working as a waiter in Calgary. He’d get very good at web design and illustration.

We were very different people. Where I was lacking self esteem and suffered from deep social anxiety, Derek was balanced and confident, and able to work well with others. I think Derek saw that I was basically a decent person with talent and some pretty huge personality flaws. He’s a sports guy who loves to coach and see people reach their potential. I think I presented him with a pretty big challenge, the way I was then. I certainly didn’t make it easy for him during my darker moments, but he stuck with it, and though we’re pretty much the same age, he became the mentor I so very badly needed.

I needed to learn how to stand on my own, to be less concerned with how the world looked at me. Derek came from an entrepreneurial background. I knew I wanted to be that, but nothing in my background or experience had shown me how to be that. Beyond my immaturity, this had been one of the primary factors in my failure the first time around at art school. I had not taken full responsibility for my actions, looking to others to tell me what to do.

While Derek couldn’t imbue me with self confidence, he made sure I didn’t wallow in self pity. He threw that back in my face every time. It pissed me off something fierce, but it was my fear talking. I had been shit upon so many times for my choices that I did not trust my own mind. So I expected failure every time and got it. But with his help I kept moving forward a jerky pace at a time.

Self publishing my own books, doing everything from start to finish, was the first step in finding out what I could do if I put my mind to it. Working on material that was my own, doing it to my standards in my time, and then packaging and distributing it developed my sense of craft and self worth. It just wasn’t lucrative.

While I was not making much money working in the photo lab, it was a stable period in my life and it allowed me to put out a number of books. That changed in 1997 when I switched labs to make a buck or two more an hour, which was significant to me. However, that job did not work out and I found my hours greatly reduced (with the instruction to find another job) in the summer of 1997.

A second change was accidental but was also important. I had been using an Amiga computer running PageStream for laying out the text portions of the mini comics. Amigas were a great computer system in their time and I probably would have continued to use mine for a couple of years longer. But in the spring of 1997 I was adding an extra hard drive and soldered a drive cable to it. However, I accidentally reversed the power wire for the grounding wire and fried both drives and the motherboard. It was an innocuous little ztt when I turned on the power. RIP Amiga.

Derek was a Mac guy and I spent a lot of time talking tech with him. Illustrator was very damn cool, and Derek’s use of it for typography in his own work and the Atomic Fruit story he drew for the Gazette was more than enough to make me envious.

I knew I wanted a Mac, but I was barely able to break even every month. Macs came at a premium price then and spending thousands of dollars – even on credit over time – was a stupendous thing to consider. Through Derek’s influence, I was changing, and was starting to see beyond my immediate needs to plan for the future, to invest in myself to improve my quality of life. Take a few calculated risks. I was helped by a sale of refurbished Macs that got me a system for about $1,500, and it took me two years to pay it off.

I was not just thinking of comics when I bought it. I saw it as my way back into the world of graphic design. Before desktop systems, doing page layout and typesetting was confined to design firms and other companies with resources. After computers, anyone thought they could do it. Thankfully, I had the basic skills and it got me around the weak portfolio, and lack of demonstrable experience and confidence that kept me out of the design world. It would take a few years, but I developed my computer-based skills.

At the time, I never thought that it would take me away from comics, but doing different things and trying to expand your horizons can change your priorities.

I had done as well as could be expected with the mini comics. Unfortunately, it had not yielded any opportunities with the larger publishers, and I no longer considered working for the smaller publishers on their material as profitable or helpful. I was now in my early 30s, and it was becoming clear that making it as a comics artist the way I was going was not going to happen. I had nothing to show for it, nothing I could take to the bank. I hated looking at it that way, because it was in part based on fear and giving in to what society would reward me for, but it was a reality I could not escape. I needed to defer my own wants and needs as a person and an artist in order to build something that would get me out of near poverty. I had hit my end of the road with that and needed to push outwards. Being a designer wasn’t what I wanted for my primary focus, but it was still being a creative and something the market would support.

After the Reaper story in 1998, my interest in comics became fractured. I had taken a final job in a top photo lab, thinking that I was working in a first-rate place, but finding it just as limiting as every other lab job. A saving grace was coming into contact with Brian Chu, a freelance designer in the same building who was pretty decent to me. Still, I did not know how to break out of my limited circumstances.

I met a woman and fell head over heels in love for the first time in my life. And I know it was real because I was willing to work through it. She was ultimately absolutely the wrong person to be with, but she was important. I hadn’t given myself much credit for being a decent man before that, but I knew I wanted to do better in my life when I was with her and accepted my responsibility to work hard to provide for both of us.

It was a hard decision to make to try my hand at being a freelance designer while her job as a server paid the bills. She moved in with me in my small basement suite. The previous time I had put myself in that position had been disastrous. This one didn’t work out well either. Beyond our relationship problems at the end, I knew how to be someone’s employee, and being a self-employed-get-yourself-in-front-of-people kind of person I was not. So I had one contract that was supposed to be the start, but promises fell through within a few months and I eventually sputtered to a halt. Today, I would realise that freelancing is feast or famine and have the experience and maturity to deal with it, but back then it was not good, and I had the wrong partner to do that with. She tried to be supportive, saying that I could do it when my confidence flagged. I worked long, long hours, still learning the new design craft and she was not overly understanding of that. The mixed messages eventually caused conflict. Her interest in our relationship waned, and I found myself trying to hold something together that had not been real in the first place.

The break up happened in 2000. Within 10 days of the moment I found one more photo job, this time a desk job for a wholesaler and did my last convention as a creator. I got her out of the apartment very quickly after that. If you weren’t with me, you were against me, and since then I’ve never kept anyone around that doubted my will and ability to make something of myself, no matter how neurotic it’s made me at times.

I did up a number of flyers and other small bits of design during my time with the wholesaler. That and a few other pieces got me my first marketing design job. A junior position, but I didn’t care. It was more than what I had. That led to a magazine designer job a number of months later, and then a magazine art director’s position.

It wasn’t without tremendous anxiety as I went from being a relatively-isolated low-stress service worker to that of an office-based person who needed to interact with others. I was 35 with a fair amount of skill, but painfully bad interpersonal skills. I nearly killed my career at one point because of atrociously bad behaviour brought on by being overwhelmed by stress, but I made it through it with counselling that helped me to understand what I was going through and how to deal with it in a more positive manner. In spite of that very dark period, I have been fortunate enough to not remain unemployed for very long, and mostly by my choice when I needed to recharge.

Going back to school in 2004 to finish off my degree did a lot to hold up a mirror to myself showing I was no longer that unfocussed fuck up who had been crushed when they asked him not to return almost 20 years previously. I had come a long way and proved myself.

I find myself now in my mid 40s established enough to know I can keep working as a designer for the foreseeable future. I don’t think I will ever be a superstar of design, but people know I am responsible and accountable and bring a range of skills to the table. I had some hopes of building a larger design career in an agency when I got out of school, but that didn’t work out. I was just turning 40 when I got out, and knew who I was by then, and what I did was as important as how I did it. Pure advertising wasn’t the place for me, and I wasn’t the fresh young junior. The firms in Calgary took a pass on me. I took to freelancing even though being the get-out-there-in-front-of-people guy kills me, and did okay for a while. Eventually, I found positions with companies that wanted someone steady and stable with a broad range of abilities.

I continue to explore my own opportunities as a designer outside of the work that supports me. I may not ever develop the life and business skills to be a purely independent creator, but I’m not willing to surrender that piece of myself. I spent too many years knowing it is the best part of me.

“Comic Book Artist” was me saying good bye to my identity as a comic book artist. I didn’t know what was in front of me and was putting a brave face on the unknown. I would be paralysed with extreme anxiety over the loss of my comic book career dreams, the failed relationship and what to do next for months. It finally broke when I was forced to ride my bike to my photo wholesaler job during a transit strike. It was over 10 kilometres away and it was February, the middle of winter. Taking that simple action of getting myself to work on my own – and the heavy physical challenge (for me) of riding through ice and snow – was enough to stop my mind from racing. I found my focus again. 2000, scanned from original art.

Superman vs Godzilla. This is what happens when you try to draw when you’re an emotional wreck. I still like the idea of a Shuster Superman going up against Godzilla, but holy crap what a piece of crap this drawing is. 2000, scanned from original art.

Revisiting The Brave & The Bold. One of my favourite drawings in spite of the gibbled left shoulder on Three. 2002, scanned from original art.

I loved a lot of the lesser-known series. Paul Levitz and Steve Ditko’s Starman a personal favourite among them. Trade paperbacks were starting to become an important part of the comic industry. I drew this one up. Lord Oswin (top left) sucks, but the rest still works for me. I coloured it up, redid the logo in Illustrator and laid the piece out as a cover with support text, recoloured one of the story pages, and sent it off to DC. I hoped to recolour and design the book. A few weeks later I got a nice letter from Robert Greenberger, then the senior editor of collected editions. He thanked me for sending it, but said that anyone who wanted to read that version of Starman most likely had the original issues. There was no, “By the way, since you sent this in…”, so that was all there was to it. It was the first real communication I had received from DC since the late Dick Giordano used to reply to my fan letters with short notes when I was a teen. 2002, scanned from original art, showing bleeds and crop marks. With Greenberger’s letter following it.

Henrik VanDyke and I knew each other from the early Nineties. He had a new series called Saints & Sinners he was developing and asked me to ink the pages. I enjoyed working on these, but it didn’t go anywhere. 2004, scanned from original art.

The Alex Toth-designed Blue Falcon was pretty cool, but I hated DynoMutt. So I made the dog a real Doberman Pinscher. 2005, but pencilled partially sometime before, scanned from original art.

I always hated inking on vellum. Even putting a light tack of spray adhesive on the back of the overlay to secure it to the paper underneath felt like you were inking under water. Lines went down heavier and if you got a bit of hand sweat on the surface it resisted the ink. A computerised workflow allows us to take a scan of pencils and print it out in non-repro blue on a light bristol from either a inkjet or colour laser printer and it’s almost like working over physical pencils.

Finding this pinup of Green Lantern by Gil Kane was a happy day. I wish I had a whole story of his stuff to ink. Actually, lots of stories of Kane’s to ink. 2005, pencils found online, inks scanned from original art.

I never knew Tom Grummett well, but I liked his work (go Privateers!) and found this drawing of Jungle Girl around the same time of GL. 2005, pencils found online, inks scanned from original art.

G. Gerald Garcia has been on the comics scene in Calgary as long as I have. He asked me to ink a sample page for a series called Darwin’s Island. I think I could have had the gig, but if I remember correctly it was a low-pay or a maybe-pay thing and I was working hard making okay money as a freelance designer after my year of school and that was more important. If I wasn’t designing, I was hustling the next gig. 2005, pencil scans supplied, inks scanned from original art.

I think it was someone in the Maple Ink online comics community that asked people to contribute to a charity colouring book. I pulled out the simpler outline style I’ve used and did up this piece quickly. Pretty meh. 2006, scanned from original art.

I hadn’t done anything personal for a while, and did up this piece on three Captain Canadas (one of them my character from The Historical Society), and Northguard and Captain Canuck. It’s a pretty crappy drawing because I was out of practice, but it made me momentarily happy. 2007, scanned from original art.

After almost 25 years in Calgary, a city I had stayed in after art school because it was simply where I was, I made the conscious choice to leave it to try working for an agency in Kelowna. It was a god-awful experience (with only one good project that came out of it for the portfolio), but I’m glad it happened. After six months, I found a magazine design job in Edmonton and got my ass back here. I may not like the conservatism and the myth of the rugged individualist that still runs underneath the surface in Alberta, but the attitude of get it done and make something of yourself through personal accountability, hard work and investment was more ingrained in me than I gave myself credit for. I grew up in BC, but the man is from Alberta. I just wish there was an ocean or some really good lakes.

Calvin Daniels’ Black Wolf is a pulp-style character I learned about through Facebook. A number of fans were contributing to the gallery there, and I felt like doing my own piece.

So much of what makes good drawing after you learn the skill is all about where your head is. I had spent a couple of tumultuous years and this drawing came at the end of it. A nice piece, knowing that I still had a hand, even if I did phone in the leg. 2009, scanned from original art.

I began this series of posts after two things happened. I had looked through the often-started-but-never-followed-through-on volume 2 of Three & the Historical Society. I expressed my frustrations at the reflexive nature of pulling it out when I was not liking my present circumstances in this blog post.

That led to a conversation with writer Andrew Foley one day in Happy Harbor Comics. Andrew asked me why when I so obviously loved comics that I was no longer doing them. It was a complex question, and while I had taken the time to colour and put much of the work you’ve seen here online in previous versions of my websites during the 2000s, I had never sat down and really taken the time to assess the work and the life I lived while doing it. A lot of it was not pleasant to talk about, but it was important to figure out what I really thought about this stuff years on.

Going from being a comics creator to being an archiver of past material is something that happened as I moved on to the next phase of my life. I hope that by sitting down and writing these posts as honestly as possible will be the last thing I needed to do to put this work to rest. Not forgotten or dismissed, but understood. Much like throwing away my early work propelled me forward to find that first professional level, perhaps now I can stop mourning what I couldn’t achieve as a young man and focus on what comes next.

I don’t know if making comics is part of my future. I would like to hope they are. As good a designer as I am, it has never filled that place in my heart that comics still holds. Just being a fan with a good collection is a pale substitute for actually practicing my craft, and while I satisfied myself with that for the past 10 years, it doesn’t give me much joy anymore.

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